In case you missed it, Neil Armstrong gave a very rare interview with Ed Bradley on last night's edition of 60 Minutes. It came soon after the release of a new biographical book out about Armstrong. It was a pretty good interview, covering his life from growing up in Ohio to getting his pilot's license at age 16, to flying in Korea and then into a career at NASA, where at age 38 he was named mission commander for Apollo 11. It's been fairly well known for years that Armstrong has shyed away from much publicity: I've heard that he's VERY reluctant to give out autographs. And now I think I know why: he came across in the interview as being a very humble guy, who didn't want his one step on the lunar surface to overshadow the fact that he was just one of about 400,000 people who worked for eight years to make that happen. Armstrong is 75 now, looking really good and toward the end of the segment it had how he gets his flying kicks now: soaring in gliders. One of the highlights of the segment was a reunion between Armstrong and former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, who if nothing else will always be remembered for his commentary during the early years of NASA's space exploration. Anyway, it was a pretty good story and well worth catching if/when 60 Minutes ever broadcasts it again.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Sunday, November 06, 2005
FINALLY, a LIGHTSABER of my VERY OWN!!
Last year I gave Chad and Melody - the two leads in Forcery - real lightsaber effects. But I never did that for myself, even though I've had a Jedi costume for two years now. So this past week I put on the costume and did some antics in front of the video camera. I "premiered" this tonight to my two little cousins who are visiting from Florida, and they thought it was pretty funny. So here it is, Chris "Jedi" Knight cuttin' loose with his lightsaber...
8.3 MB Quicktime Video
They don't do television like this anymore
Yesterday Lisa was flicking across stations on the TV and came across the Hallmark Channel, which all day yesterday up 'til 11 PM was showing the entire miniseries The Thorn Birds. I'd heard about it but until now have never seen it before. Well, it came as big a surprise to me as it probably will anyone else that I started watching it with her and found myself thoroughly captivated by this series. Guess it's because I'm a big fan of the multi-generational genre (hence my love of the Star Wars saga). The Thorn Birds covers about 60 years history of a family in Australia. The story centers on this lady who falls in love with a priest, who obviously is forbidden from returning her love. The priest is played by Richard Chamberlain, who back in the day was in just about every miniseries being made.
It's a powerful, moving story. And it made me think about how it is that for the most part, there is no more television of this caliber being made anymore. I'm talking about the mini-series, which actually should have been called "mega-series" because most of them racked up running times of 8 to 10 hours... or more. I think The Winds of War was 12 hours, and its sequel War and Remembrance something like 24 hours. Two decades ago this kind of television was considered a high art form. Now, the most recent one that really springs to mind is Lonesome Dove, and that was all the way back in 1989.
I have to wonder if today's television programmers would have the patience to allow for something so sweeping and grandiose. Could something like Shogun, or The Winds of War, or The Blue and the Gray or even Lonesome Dove be broadcast nowadays? Unless it's on a specialty channel like Hallmark, or perhaps HBO, I don't think so. Today's television is like most everything else: it caters to fleeting attention spans. Modern entertainment allows for the convenience of not having to be patient, and that's a real shame because for those who do have the patience, these way-long movies provide a great deal of entertainment and enlightenment. Today it's get-it-shown then get-it-done: fercryingoutloud CBS not long ago took Helter Skelter (which thirty years later is still THE most shocking true-life crime story ever done for television) and boiled it down into a two-hour remake that was... well, mediocre to put it mildly. What would they do with The Thorn Birds, or The Winds of War: probably show about two minutes of the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor out of two-hours running time tops.
Anyway, I enjoyed The Thorn Birds, or what I was able to see of it (prior engagements made us miss quite a bit of it). Enough that I'll probably find a DVD of it sometime soon and watch the entire thing at my leisure. Wonder if I could fill out the bookshelf with any more good movies like that...
Blog keeps the dream of Carolina Circle alive
One of the best stories (and they're all great) in Neil Gaiman's epic The Sandman comic series is the one taking place in ancient Baghdad, the most glorious city in the world. The city's ruler knows that such beauty will not last forever. He makes a deal with Morpheus, the series' protagonist: he will give Morpheus the city of Baghdad, if Morpheus will forever preserve the city in dreams. Thus, the Baghdad that once was will always exist despite whatever ruin might (and would) come to it.
That story came to mind when I found a blog this morning, run by a young man who's also dedicated to keeping alive a place that once was and now is not. About three months ago I posted a lil' essay about the Carolina Circle Mall here in Greensboro. At the time demolition was well underway but you could still see where most of the stores used to be. We drove past the site yesterday and there's now nothing but an empty lot with just a little debris left, and piles of material that are going to be used to build the new Wal-Mart Supercenter there. It was a great mall in its heyday though. Well, a 15-year old blogger named Billy has set up Carolina Circle City, an online chronicle of Carolina Circle Mall's life and times. It's a pretty neat place to check out if you're someone (like me) who has fond memories of the place, or if you're just interested in things like urban design and architecture. Billy has plenty of pictures of the site both pre-destruction and afterward, and he documents a lot of the stories associated with the place.
Nice work Billy: thanks to you, there will always be a Carolina Circle Mall, if only in our dreams...
Paris riots a harbinger of what might happen here
What's happening in France right now has its roots in something that's already taking place here in America: a MASSIVE, uncontrolled influx of immigrants from outside the country, who are put on the government dole but for all intents and purposes are told they do not have to assimilate to the culture.
Doesn't that sound like our own situation with wild out-of-control illegal immigration that sees millions of people streaming across the border each year?
Listen to the rhetoric coming out of groups like La Raza: they sound pretty much like what's coming out of the Muslim rioters in and around Paris right now. They just haven't had the right spark to light their fuse yet is all. But it's coming, someday.
And when it does you can thank people like your President George W. Bush and members of both parties in Congress and insane "multicultural" proponents and too many of corporate America's leadership for not only letting this happen, but eagerly promoting it. Take a good look at Paris right now, folks: we're being led down that same road too.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Lisa's review of Children of Eden
Last night we caught Greensboro Day School's production of Children of Eden. If you've missed it so far you can still see it tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow afternoon at 2. Anyway, I was going to write a review of it but Lisa wanted to do the honors, since she now has a blog all her very own now. Read her review of Children of Eden here. 'Twas a REALLY good show by the way :-)
"Remember, remember, the Fifth of November..."
Today our Brittish brethren (props to whoever recognizes the origin of that misspelling) are celebrating the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes' "Gunpowder Plot". It was on this day in 1605 that Fawkes and some other conspirators were caught trying to blow up Parliament - killing the king and everybody else - by placing dozens of kegs of gunpowder beneath the building. If they'd gotten away with it they would have perpetrated one of the most legendary acts of terrorism ever. But they didn't, so Fawkes is now burned in effigy and fireworks go off all over the English countryside every year on this day. Happy Guy Fawkes Day all y'all on the other side of the pond. Now, if we could only have the release of the Wachowski Brothers' V for Vendetta to coincide with today's celebrations, that would have been perfect. But it's been pushed back to March! Ahh well...
Friday, November 04, 2005
The latest on Honey, the hero cocker spaniel pup
Two days ago I posted about Honey, a cocker spaniel puppy who saved her owner's life when he was pinned inside a vehicle for several hours. Well there's an update to that story: Honey was reunited with Michael Bosch at the hospital yesterday. Here's the story from the Marin Independent Journal...
What can ya say: Every dog has his (or her) day :-)Hero, victim reunited A Nicasio man and his cocker spaniel puppy were reunited yesterday in a hospital room at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael just days after she saved his life after a car crash.After being placed on the bed, Honey licked Michael Bosch, 63, on the face and roamed around the bedding, satisfied to be the center of attention. Bosch, for his part, couldn't have been happier.
"All my pain went away," he said.
Bosch, a real-estate broker, was backing down his driveway off Nicasio Valley Road on Monday morning when his car slipped 50 feet down an 80-degree slope, pinning him in the overturned vehicle. Honey, whom Bosch had adopted only two weeks earlier, escaped the vehicle, climbed up the slope and alerted a neighbor to the crash when the neighbor arrived home that night.
After more than eight hours inside the car, Bosch was extricated by firefighters, who had to cut away part of the vehicle to get to him. He was flown via helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to be treated for five broken ribs and leg injuries he suffered in the accident before being transferred Wednesday to Kaiser.
Bosch has scratches on his arms and face and remains in bed due to swelling in his left leg, but otherwise he is happy to be alive. He suffered a heart attack just two months ago.
John Bennett, 27, who works with Bosch at Coldwell Banker, brought in Honey yesterday along with Godiva chocolates, some dog biscuits - and a stuffed toy superhero dog complete with an eye mask and cape for Honey to play with. Between the heart attack and amazing rescue, he said Bosch is the talk of the office.
"Everyone is shocked," he said. "No one could believe it."
Bosch said he'd been in touch with the Marin Humane Society for more than a year about adopting a dog before going there to look at a Labrador retriever rescued from Hurricane Katrina. The Lab was nice, but Honey had his heart from the moment he laid eyes on her.
Bosch admits Honey still needs potty training, but he couldn't resist the urge to gloat about how smart and beautiful his dog is.
"She was the most popular dog at the humane society," he said.
Review of the Revenge of the Sith DVD
I've had a few days to play around with the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD. Well, the REAL one anyway, not the unlabelled DVD that wound up arriving here back in June that turned out to contain Episode III, in surprisingly good quality too. It even had a crude menu system. That one is forever going to be a curious item in my collection: I've never had a bootleg copy of a movie before. It ain't the one that's going to be shown and shared with my children someday though. That honor belongs to the real DVD, which is now sitting nicely between Episodes II and IV of the complete collection on my shelf.
So, how is it? I'd give the Revenge of the Sith DVD a score of 8 out of 10, with a few things keeping it from being totally perfect in my opinion. The first has nothing to do with the DVD itself: it's where I purchased it from. Wal-Mart is packaging Episode III with a "bonus" disc, "The Story of Star Wars". What's NOT being said very much is that this isn't a freebie: the extra disc tacks on an extra four or five bucks to the cost of Episode III. I watched this disc and though it does a fairly good job of synopsizing the stories of Anakin and Luke Skywalker, I was rather disappointed in it. The details from the third prequel are prominently absent: Threepio mumbles something about not being allowed to talk about the REAL details of what made Anakin turn into Darth Vader. If you're a completist collector you'll probably want this disc, but in retrospect I would have been perfectly happy to buy Revenge of the Sith by itself from somewhere else like Target, which packages a nice collector's coin in with its DVD. "The Story of Star Wars" just wasn't worth the extra money, I have to say.
Disc 1 of the set contains the actual movie, and it's a beautiful and vivid transfer (easily two or three times that of the bootleg I received months ago). English Dolby 5.1 Surround and Dolby Surround 2.0 are available, as is the option to watch it with French and Spanish audio. You can select to watch Episode III with commentary by George Lucas and a few other Episode III production notables. Ever since The Phantom Menace came out on DVD there's been a pretty high bar set so far as the the quality of these discs go, and Episode III meets or exceeds that easily.
What I really like about Disc 1 though is its DVD-ROM capabilities. If you have a DVD drive in your computer, you can access a special section of the StarWars.com website that will display either the script as the movie plays, or various production notes and bits of lore from the movie. Ever since first doing this with the Attack of the Clones disc a few years ago, I've really liked this feature. If you ever wanted to know what kind of ship that Obi-Wan flees Utapau in or who that blue-skinned guy in the hat at the opera house is (it's George Lucas by the way) or who built what miniature set, this feature is for you.
Disc 2 contains the special features, including the much-anticipated deleted scenes. The one everyone wanted to see has got to be the stunning (albeit short) scene of Yoda arriving on Dagobah for his self-imposed exile. I can kinda understand why Lucas left this out of the final cut, because we do know where Yoda winds up later on in The Empire Strikes Back. What I can't understand being left on the cutting room floor are a couple of scenes that show some of the political backstory of Episode III, including one that has Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Padme and a few others (including one of my favorite characters, Fang Zar) forming what would later become the Rebel Alliance. Establishing Mon Mothma here as the Rebellion's founder would have been a perfect set-up for when she reappears in Return of the Jedi. Why this was left out, I've no idea... but it's still nice to see it here.
The documentaries make up the bulk of Disc 2. My favorite was "Within A Minute": taking one minute from the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel on Mustafar and dissecting it apart to discover EVERYTHING that went into making that one minute of film possible, from the script stage to concept art, to stunt training and filming, and finally post-production putting it all together. What I especially like about "Within A Minute" is that it credits EVERYONE that worked to make this minute of action - and the rest of the film - come together. "The Chosen One" is a shorter work that delves into the mythos of Anakin's transformation into Vader and his ultimate redemption. "It's All For Real" focuses on the stuntwork of Episode III. The disc also includes all of the online video documentaries that had previously been made available during Episode III's production to members of the StarWars.com paid Hyperspace service. All of the movie's promotional trailers and TV spots are also collected here.
If you have an Xbox you can insert Disc 2 and play a demo for the new Star Wars Battlefront II game. It took several minutes for the disc to load up some info into the system, after which play could begin. I controlled a clonetrooper during a battle on Utapau. I never played the original Battlefront so I don't know how this compares to that, but I thought it was okay.
I found this to be a good 2-disc set, but there were some things lacking with this release of Revenge of the Sith, in my opinion. You've probably heard of the "dancing Yoda" easter egg already, but otherwise this DVD seems terribly bereft of any hidden features. The DVDS of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones had hilarious outtake reels that you could watch, along with some of the visual gags that the ILM crew came up with during production (remember the 200 MPH sandcrawler on the Episode I disc?). There's none of that here that I've been able to find, and the REALLY upsetting thing about it is that I know that there were some hilarious gags that were done for Episode III: the DVD-ROM content makes mention of several, and I've seen a few myself, like the clonetrooper holding Jar Jar's severed head. Unless you happened to catch that at Star Wars Celebration III, you might never get to laugh at seeing that. Things like that would have been perfect on the Revenge of the Sith DVD, but they're not there, apparently. Maybe someday Lucasfilm will release a DVD containing ALL the crazy things that have happened during the production of the Star Wars movies, and those jokes will get their day in the sun. I'd sure be the first one with cash in hand at the local Best Buy to get that.
All in all though, I'm pretty happy with the DVD release of Revenge of the Sith. It's wonderful to have all six films lined up in sequential order, to be enjoyed with family and friends for years to come. There was no better way to have ended the run of Star Wars movies that we've had for going on thirty years now than how George Lucas did it here, and apart from some minor qualms this was a good way to finish the DVD collection.
Behold the Eighth Wonder of the World: New King Kong trailer is glorious
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Children of Eden at Greensboro Day School this weekend
This is, hands-down, the sweetest little musical I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Elon's drama department performed this seven years ago and I've been enchanted with it ever since. Heck, I even own the 2-disc soundtrack CD of it. I've been waiting years to take Lisa to see this and lo and behold this weekend it'll be playing less than five minutes away down the street! Children of Eden by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin and more recently Wicked) and John Caird (Les Misérables) is a musical about the first eight chapters of the Book of Genesis, from the moment of creation to the Great Deluge. It's a moving, touching, and very often funny examination of the eternal conflict between children and their parents, as seen through the stories of Adam and Eve and then Noah and his family. If you liked Schwartz's work in the movie Prince of Egypt, you will utterly adore Children of Eden. The story is spellbinding and the music is phenomenal: I'd have to say my favorite song from the show is "Generations" at the beginning of Act II ("Oh Noah, you go-a, ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE PROTOZOA!"). There's plenty more great music in this, covering every style from reggae to gospel to lounge crooning. The effects are terrific: just wait 'til you see how the gathering of the animals aboard the ark is done.Anyway, if you want to see it and you're in Greensboro this weekend, Children of Eden is playing at the Greensboro Day School on north Lawndale Drive, 7:30 PM from tonight (Thursday) through Saturday, and then 2:00 PM on Sunday. Tickets are $8 for adults. Click here for more information at Greensboro Day School's website.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
BLOG FREE OR DIE! The Knight Shift heads into outlaw territory
Well, it was a good run of "fun" stories there. But now something serious has to be said...
Earlier today the U.S. House of Representatives defeated a bill that would have excluded blogs and other Internet communications from government regulation by the Federal Election Commission. Meaning that as of now, blogging is an activity that falls under the purview of McCain-Feingold: that wretched, EVIL piece of legislation passed in 2002 as "campaign finance reform". For that alone, President Bush is damned as a betrayer of America. He signed this stupid thing, telling us "oh but it'll SURELY get overturned by the Supreme Court, trust me!" Instead the justices upheld McCain-Feingold. And now it's hanging over the one venue of ideas that until now has remained free and clear of government regulation: the blogosphere.
As a result of this bill's defeat today in Congress, The Knight Shift - and every other blog out there - is legally bound to adhere to whatever the #&$@ the courts decree is or is not "free speech".
Well, to hell with the courts. To hell with McCain-Feingold. To hell with Congress. To hell with Bush.
I'm almost tempted to say "to hell with anyone who actually voted for these clowns" too.
This is the kind of squelching of public discussion that happened under Joe Stalin, or the Nazi regime. Maybe not muzzled by force but certainly muzzled by the very laws that we are told are there to uphold and protect our freedoms.
I'm drawing the line here. And making a public declaration...
This blog is a virtual reflection of my persona. No one - and no government - makes the determination of who I am, or what I believe in. My writings here are an expression of my soul... and my soul yields to no man.
So I'm choosing to ignore any "regulation" by the federal government as to what I can and cannot say with my blog. If I endorse a candidate, that's my business. If I condemn a candidate, that's perfectly within my rights, for whatever reason I happen to believe. If I choose to use this site to actively campaign for someone (which hasn't happened yet, but it'll probably happen someday) then I'll do so, without regard to the Federal Election Commission.
This all probably sounds pretty reactionary. Maybe even paranoid. But bank on it: you will see a crackdown on political speech on personal blogs at some point in the future. I'm choosing to say something about this now, before it gets to that point.
I'll be sure to post any "cease and desist" notices that this blog receives for flaunting McCain-Feingold, if it happens. In the meantime, back to posting the usual...
(P.S.: I'm far from the only one who feels this way. Take a looksee at the growing insurrection.)
Cocker Spaniel pup saves owner's life
From the "Awwwww how cute!" file (and KATU.com):
I just had to post this, dog lover that I am :-)Man saves puppy, then puppy saves man
By KATU Web Staff
MARIN COUNTY, Ca. - The neighbor of a California man who brought home a pound puppy says the young dog led her to an accident scene where the man was pinned for hours in a wrecked vehicle.
Monday night, rescue crews were able to extract Michael Bosch, 63, from his mangled SUV and transport him to the hospital, where he is expected to survive.
The story began some weeks earlier when Bosch picked up Honey, a cocker spaniel puppy who had been brought to the pound by an owner who could no longer afford to care for her.
Bosch and the dog became fast friends, and Honey frequently rode with Bosch while he was driving his white SUV.
But on Monday, Bosch was backing the vehicle up on his property and went too far, and it tumbled down into a steep ravine, landing on its roof.
The car ended up out of view, and Bosch was tightly pinned against the steering wheel, unable to escape, and badly injured.
Honey, unhurt, was able to eventually escape the vehicle after Bosch was able to get a window open. He reportedly told the small dog to go for help.
Half a mile away, Robin Allen was at home when the dog suddenly appeared, and according to Allen, the dog lead her to the crash site.
When Allen discovered the scene, she immediately called for help.
At last report, Honey was waiting for Bosch to come home.
Man saves puppy, then puppy saves manMy lovely spousal overunit has entered the blogosphere
Lisa finally decided that I was having way too much fun for my own good without her, so tonight she set up a blog of her very own. Notes From Lisa will be her online chronicle of her life as a musician, a teacher, and as wife to a very oddball man. Expect her to post musings on various subjects, reviews of movies and music, maybe even a recipe every now and then. In her first post she writes about disc golf, which I'd never heard of until she told me about it this afternoon. We're gonna fix her up with some custom graphics sometime too. Make it a pretty blog for a pretty lady :-)
Strike a pose!
While wearing my Jedi costume a couple days ago I visited my wife's school just when the kids were all having their Halloween parties. A photographer from the Reidsville Review newspaper was there and he took a pic of me wielding my lightsaber. This was one of the photos that appeared on the front page of yesterday's edition:
Pssst... Hey you, wanna laptop computer for $398?
Somehow a lot of Wal-Mart's secret day-after-Thanksgiving sales prices have slipped out, according to CNN. Among the deals: a 12-cup coffee maker for $4.24 and a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer for $398. Here's praying that the slashed prices will extend to the Star Wars action figures :-)
While we're talking about Wal-Mart, you might recall that I reported my original hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina got a Wal-Mart Supercenter last week. Well I need to make note of something that's happened since then: previously the average price of gasoline in Reidsville had been around $2.45 a gallon. Then Wal-Mart opened and started selling gas for $2.29. Ever since last Wednesday the average gas price has plummeted all over town: it's now around $2.25 in most places, with the Wal-Mart itself selling it for $2.15 per gallon as of yesterday. That's thirty cents cheaper than the average price here in neighboring Greensboro. Lisa has been telling me that Wal-Mart coming to Reidsville would bring economic benefits with it but I hadn't been sure about that (you gotta know Reidsville to understand what I mean by that), especially considering that Rockingham County will have three Wal-Mart Supercenters in a few months' time, in one of the most rural counties in the state. But right now, it's hard to argue about that with her. If its arrival to Reidsville will continue holding gas prices at bay, I'm all for it being there now :-)
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
The Last Midnight Madness: Revenge of the Sith DVD at the local Wal-Mart
I spent practically all day yesterday in my Jedi garb (even wearing it to the dentist office). So I was already set when Darth Larry swung by the apartment last night for what was possibly the final time we'll ever do a midnight run for new Star Wars goodness. This time it was the Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD that went on sale at 12:01 am this morning. Since I've chronicled all the other midnight madnesses on this blog, I brought my camera along to capture the fleeting moments for posterity...
Yeah it wasn't as crazy as it was back in April when we hit Toys R Us and Wallyworld and Target for a joyous Starwargasm of merchandise, but it was still a lot of fun. We had to do this, if for no other reason than to be able to tell our children what it was like to be out at an insane hour for sake of a saga. Anyhoo, I'll try and post a review of the DVD soon. And Darth Larry, it was great to do this one last time with you effendi :-)
