First press release about my run for school board

This is the first press release to come out of my campaign to be elected to the Rockingham County Board of Education. It'll get faxed to all the local media today.

PRESS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR SCHOOL BOARD

August 7 2006

Christopher Knight has announced his candidacy for one of the at-large seats on the Rockingham County Board of Education after filing to run on August 3rd.

"I believe that I will bring a fresh and unique perspective to the Rockingham County school board," Knight said. "The realm of education is one that I have experienced much during my young life, from studying to be a teacher to actually running a classroom. I'm looking forward to contributing a new voice toward school policy-making."

At the top of Knight's list of priorities if elected to the school board is finding ways to reassert local control over Rockingham County schools. He cites the No Child Left Behind Act as an example of the federal government determined to micromanage local school systems. "There may not be much we can do at this level toward changing that legislation, but we can at least try to adapt ourselves around it," Knight said. "We are presently very much a system focused on outcome-based education because of the end-of-grade testing, and I believe that's wrong. We should encourage our teachers to be proactive instead of reactive." Knight also said that he is a firm believer in fiscal conservatism and is a supporter of such programs as the arts.

If elected, Knight has pledged to visit every school in the Rockingham County Consolidated School system and to meet with principals and teachers in order to listen to them and discuss how to improve county-wide education.

Knight is a freelance website designer and works part-time as a master control technician at WGSR-Star 39 in Reidsville. He is also the co-founder of KWerky Productions, a North Carolina-based film production company whose first major work, Forcery, gained rave reviews and has been shown in countries as far away as Norway and Argentina. Knight is a 1992 graduate of Rockingham County Senior High and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Historical Studies from Elon University. He is also an Eagle Scout and an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 797 in Reidsville. He has been married to his wife Lisa for four years. This is his first campaign for public office.

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There's also going to be a website going up in the next few days that will have more of my take on some things.

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Dining at Kabuto Japanese Steakhouse

Last night I took Lisa out to something she's never been treated to before: a live performance by a chef in a Japanese steakhouse. We went to Kabuto Japanese Steakhouse in Greensboro: a place that I've heard of for at least twenty years now but had never actually gone to before. We had a few things worth celebrating so Friday I made reservations (highly recommended at Kabuto) and were taken to our seats at 6 on the dot... just before we were about to order some squid from the sushi bar.

We were seated at one of those combination dinner table-and-stovetop along with several other people, and it wasn't long before our chef for the evening came out with his cart containing our dinners to be cooked before our very eyes. He squired something on top of the stove and lit it up with a match: flames burst out and threatened to burn us all... well that's what it looked like for a second or two anyway. The chef wasted no time preparing to cook while simultaneously entertaining us: one thing he did was arrange a sliced onion into a "mini-volcano" that spat out fire. He was also pretty quick with the jokes.

Well, Lisa had the ribeye with shrimp and I had the ribeye with chicken, along with generous helpings of rice and vegetables. For dessert our chef made sliced banana covered in a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon. The entire meal was delicious: I can still taste the bananas when I think about them.

Kabuto is a pretty reasonably priced place. Well worth checking out if you're in the Greensboro area and want to try a different dining experience sometime. We'll definitely be paying another visit to the place in the future.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm now a candidate for public office

Readers of my blog are the first people from the general public that are going to hear about this. The official announcement is going to come early next week: I'm still trying to figure out where I should hold the press conference.

I filed late yesterday morning. I am now officially on the ballot this coming November as a candidate for an at-large seat on the Rockingham County Board of Education. This is the first time that I've ever run for public office (Lord only knows if it'll be the last time too, but I'm gonna try for this).

You can find a complete list of filed candidates here. I'll be writing more about this in the next few days or so, including why I chose to run, what my beliefs are in regards to public education, and maybe a little about what to expect from my campaign committee (there's no real committee... it's just me but by law I have to have a campaign committee for the paperwork).

Awright, any questions? :-)

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Something I'm watching with considerable interest

According to the Israeli news service Haaretz, Muslims in Jerusalem are demanding that Jewish groups be kept off the Temple Mount today, the Ninth of Av on the Hebrew calendar.

What they're really trying to do is prevent the Temple Mount Faithful from coming anywhere near the Al Aqsa mosque - i.e. the "Dome of the Rock" - and do what they've set out to do for the past several years now: set about rebuilding the Jewish Temple.

Some years ago when I was a reporter I interviewed Gershon Salomon, the founder and leader of the Temple Mount Faithful. Ever since then I've kept my ears open to anything pertaining to him and the Temple Mount Faithful, especially when it comes to their attempts to approach the Temple Mount. Every time over the years when they've tried to come to the Mount to set the cornerstone of the temple, they have been foiled by their own government. This time the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that anyone can visit the Mount on the Ninth of Av. I can see Salomon - by far one of the most extraordinary men I've ever met - girding up now with his fellow believers to make one more go at it.

You may want to watch this in the next few days, especially with what's going on right now between Israel and Hezbollah. Particularly with Ehud Olmert at the helm in Israel. Who knows... but this may finally be the year when the Temple Mount Faithful are able to begin rebuilding the temple.

All hell will break loose like Jerusalem hasn't seen before if they try to do it.

I say, let 'em build. It's their land anyway. The Muslims didn't even care that much for the site until Israel was established in 1948 anyway, then it became "sacred" to them.

By the way, Gershon Salomon obliged me with an autograph. Would be neat to know someday that I have the signature of the man who led the effort to build the third Jewish temple.

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KWerky Production update at the front end of August

Well, we tried. Honestly, we did. But in the end there was no way we could really get The Charles Schulz Code done. The biggest obstacle was that we couldn't find anyplace suitable to be where we would shoot the art gallery scenes, which were crucial (and demanded some unique specifications). The real hurdle though was how bad The Da Vinci Code bombed at the box office, at least in terms of all the hype that it had generated before it even came out. This was supposed to be a $300 million monster blockbuster right out the gate - something like the newest Pirates of the Caribbean - when instead it creaked its way toward, I think it's something around $200 million after all these months, or maybe less. And general interest in the whole Da Vinci Code thing is finally beginning to wane bigtime. A few years from now a lot of people who bought this book will be asking themselves why did they even bother to pick it up in the first place. However it is, it ended up just not being that good a material for a satire like I was aiming for. Maybe I'll post the script for it sometime though, to let anyone who might be interested see what was going to happen.

Meanwhile, work continues on other projects. And I'll post more about those as they develop.

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What I think about the whole Israel/Lebanon mess

Tonight I was on the phone with a friend, and he asked me what I thought about what's going on right now between Israel and the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. It was the first time that I gave some ventilation to what's been going through my head about this ever since it started... what... three weeks ago?

In the past month or so I haven't posted that much "serious" stuff on this blog. Not like I usually do. There's a lot of reasons for that. I've been thinking deeply on a lot of subjects lately and rather than blab about them on the fly here, I've been letting them percolate more. In the meantime this blog seems to have become about nothing else other than entertainment and minor trivia. Now it's starting to shift back to "real world" stuff.

So, what do I think about this mess in Lebanon right now? I don't believe the United States should become involved in it whatsoever, because this has become a conflict with bad guys but no real good guys either. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself against those that have actively been trying to destroy her... but that does not mean that Israel has to stoop to the level of killing innocent civilians wholesale in order to get to those bad guys. So of course our "brilliant" leadership is practically giving its blessing to Israel to keep putting innocent Lebanese in the line of fire.

Think about it: would the United States government be in the right, at all, if it supported Great Britain if that country began to carelessly slaughter Irish women and children just to get back at a handful of IRA members?

And this may mark me as a strange Christian, but I can't honestly say that I support the state of Israel as many of my brethren do. Yes, we are instructed in the Bible to honor our Jewish forefathers and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem... but nowhere is it written that we are to thoughtlessly acquiesce to whatever the government of Israel chooses to do. There is a difference between the Jewish people and the government of the Jewish people in their own homeland, just as there is a difference between the American people and the government of the United States: one is not necessarily representative of the other.

So no, I don't completely support the Israeli government in this. And I believe that too many Christians should reconsider why it is that they are blindly supporting that government. No government is that perfect and let's face it: the Old Testament is 60% - or more - about times where the then-Israeli government botched things up. Why should we expect any greater from its present-day incarnation?

So chalk me up as someone who thinks that Hezbollah should be ended as a threat... but also thinks that Israel is fast destroying - if it hasn't completely done so already - its moral credibility in this matter.

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Iraq war vets suffering mentally, study finds

This is what I've feared most during the past three years: the long-term effects of the war in Iraq on our returning military personnel. According to the results of a new study, veterans of Iraq suffer feelings of confusion and even mental lapses at a rather common rate.

I'm afraid to say this, but I expect the suicide rate among those returning from this ill-conceived conflict will rise markedly in the years to come. Especially after President Bush leaves office and whoever is next finally starts to withdraw our soldiers... then it'll finally start to be asked by practically everyone just what were we doing there in the first place. Realizing that one fought in and suffered for a meaningless war is going to pack an emotional whallop, no doubt.

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From the creative mind of George Lucas...

George Lucas really hasn't released that many movies over the years when you think about it. So when one of his greatest triumphs ever reaches a milestone it's a fitting thing to commemorate it. It was twenty years ago today - August 1st, 1986 - that Howard the Duck was hatched in theaters. Yes the summer of 1986 gave us many great cinema classics - Aliens, Transformers: The Movie, etc. - but Howard the Duck certainly stands out as... well, something. Anyway, happy 20th birthday Howard!

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Only twelve posts for the month of July

Must have been a slow month or something.

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I kept waiting for somebody to slap her good

Last week I did something that, in all my thirty-some years of being a southerner, I'd never done before: watched the entire movie Gone With The Wind.

What did I think of it? I thought it was one of the best period pieces I've ever seen. But it got to the point where I was just waiting for somebody, anybody, to slap the heck out of Scarlett O'Hara. She was way too hung up on Ashley Wilkes for her own good and it cost her everything: in the end she's this poor delusioned woman clinging to vague hope that it'll all be somehow better. In a way I can kind of empathize with her though: she didn't want to be alone in this world... but to resolve that she tried to have something that wasn't meant to be hers at all.

Anyway, it's a pretty good movie, even if it's soooooo long. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again but at least now I've cinematically lived up to my southern heritage.

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Weird Al's coming STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD on September 26

After a week of tantalizing teasers, yesterday "Weird Al" Yankovic revealed the title and full cover artwork for his newest album. Straight Outta Lynwood arrives in stores on September 26th. Here's what it'll look like:Maybe it's just me, but this title and cover seems to be a lot more "serious" than the typical Al album. Guess I was expecting something along the lines of the covers for Bad Hair Day or Running With Scissors. But whatever it is he's got on this new album, you can be sure that I will be buying it on September 26th!

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Four years ago today...

...I became the happiest man on the face of the earth.

Happy Anniversary, my dear Lisa :-)

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"Game over man, game over!"

A little bit of cinema history: it was twenty years ago today - July 18th, 1986 - that the movie Aliens debuted.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST review

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is one of those movies that just gets better and better the more I think about it, now four days after Lisa and I watched it at a theater in Newport News, Virginia. It was a really neat movie experience to wrap up what was a terrific - if completely unplanned - vacation. Now with some time behind me that was spent on "digesting it all in, I feel like commenting on it.

Let me go ahead and state something that everyone else seems to be saying: this movie is a lot like The Empire Strikes Back (Philip Arthur makes note of many similarities in his review of Dead Man's Chest). But it's like a lot of other movies too. I thought the ending seemed very much like The Matrix Reloaded and maybe I'm the only one seeing this but the East India Trading Company as its depicted in Dead Man's Chest seems an awful lot like Weyland-Yutani - otherwise just known as "the Company" - from the Alien movies. But there's nothing wrong with any of that. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a smart amalgam of plenty of classic elements and story devices... and as the first half of a two-part story, it's just about perfect.

When we last saw young Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, respectively) had just helped pull off an escape for Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Dead Man's Chest opens with the repercussions of their aiding and abetting the scoundrel, as they are arrested - on their wedding day no less - on orders from Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who represents the East India Trading Company (and who it's strongly implied had a run-in of some kind with Captain Sparrow years earlier). Beckett is willing to cut a deal with Will: steal Sparrow's seemingly-broken compass and he'll let them go free... but fail to get the compass and Elizabeth will "dance the Tyburn jig" from the hangman's gallows.

It's around this time that Captain Jack Sparrow - the hub around which everything else revolves around in this movie in one way or another - is brought into the picture. Remember how Sparrow makes his first appearance in The Curse of the Black Pearl? Well, his first moments of screentime in Dead Man's Chest are just as memorable and perfectly true to his outrageous character. Onboard the Black Pearl Sparrow has a spectral visitor: Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård) has come to tell Sparrow that it's almost time to make good on a debt he owess to none other than Davy Jones. So it is that the events are set up: Will Turner is going after Sparrow, while Sparrow is desperately trying to escape his fate, and it's not long afterward that Elizabeth is going after both of them. And above it all lurks the tragic story of the devil-of-the-sea himself, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and the mysterious chest that is about to become sought by all.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is foremost a movie intended to give fans of the first film what they've wanted most: more Captain Jack Sparrow! From beginning to end, everything that happens in this movie does so as a ripple from the presence of Sparrow landing in the pool. Johnny Depp is obviously having fun with this character. This may be the portrayal that he'll forever be known for, as much as Sylvester Stallone is known as Rocky or Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. I'm of the mind that Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the few wholeheartedly original characters that movies have given us in the past several years. If you enjoyed him in The Curse of the Black Pearl you'll love him even more here and if you've already seen Dead Man's Chest, it's only another ten months before we arrive at World's End and get more.

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are fine in this movie, as are the others that have returned from the first movie (including Pintel and one-eyed Ragetti, who is trying to study-up on the Bible since he's now mortal). We are also introduced to several new characters, including the Voodoo priestess Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris).

But the real standout of this movie, apart from Depp's Captain Jack, is Davy Jones and everything associated with him: his ship, his crew of the damned, and the man/thing himself. Jones is a completely computer-generated character and for the first time in five years, at least since before WETA ran away with the artform with Gollum and the rest of their stuff in The Lord of the Rings, Industrial Light and Magic are back on the ball with digital animation. My biggest complaint with ILM's CGI work has been that their stuff has looked too "shiny and new". In Dead Man's Chest they've finally learned to get away from that look. Davy Jones looks frickin' real, in a way that ILM has never done anything before. WETA's Gollum set the benchmark for what's to be expected from CGI and now ILM has more than surpassed that goal. As for the Kraken... well, the least said about it to the uninitiated, the better.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is pure fun with a bag of popcorn and hopefully someone to share the experience with. It's not a completely perfect movie (there seems to be too long a lull in the action in the second half, but remember this is just part one of a two-part story) but it's a great summer flick that from the start of the closing credits will have you hungering for the next installment. Highly recommendable.

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Pictures from our Hampton/Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Newport News excursion

Lisa took a lot more pictures with her film camera that I'll probably be adding on to these eventually, but here's a look at some of the stuff we did this past week after arriving in Hampton, Virginia:
U.S. Navy aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk

Another Navy ship berthed in Norfolk (we caught this pic on our way back home.)

Tuesday I got to do something that I've been wanting to do for years: drive the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. We paid $12 at the southern entrance in Virginia Beach and entered the 19-mile long (17 miles of it over and under the water) causeway:On the bridge-tunnel's south artifial island we stopped at the gift shop and I got to take a very special picture of Lisa: I've been on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel twice before, in 1984 and 1992, and both times I had my picture taken at the northern-most point you can get on the island. Well, a few days ago I took this photo of Lisa at the exact same spot:Here's the reason why the Chesapeake Bay Bridge has two tunnels: so that boat traffic (like Navy ships such as this one out of Norfolk) can glide across the bay and into the open waters of the Atlantic unimpeded:Driving through the first Chesapeake tunnel:We drove a few miles on Virginia's eastern shore and then turned back around for the return trip to the mainland (since we were returning within a 24 hour period from our initial crossing it only cost us $5 for the return drive).

Here's Lisa later that night, on the "boardwalk" of a beach in Hampton:

The next day we visited Yorktown, where British forces under General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington, thus ending major fighting in the Revolutionary War. Here I am standing with the victory monument in the background:

And also at Yorktown, here is the "Poor Potter's" kiln and earthworks... which actually turns out to have been the first major pottery operation of its kind in colonial America (linked image is larger so you can see the detail of the archeological work done at the site):

The next day (Thursday) we visited the Virginia Air and Space Museum (which also has an IMAX screen showing Superman Returns in 3D, but we didn't watch that again). Here's me standing in front of the command module from the Apollo 12 lunar mission:

After we finished there we returned to our hotel for awhile, then went to the mall nearby where I bought the latest Mad Magazine, and then came back and rested a bit before heading out to eat dinner and seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at a theater in Newport News.

And, that's basically our trip in a nutshell. We had such a great time that we're planning on going back in the fall when its cooler, and then take in such sites as Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown settlement.

Look for pics from Lisa either here or on her own blog soon :-)

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Return from the land of a thousand 7-Elevens

Lisa and I pulled back into home about 2:30 this afternoon, four days after taking off with no idea whatsoever where we were headed. All we knew was that we were going to head out of town and we didn't care where that put us. And I think the original plan was to try and make it at least as far as New Jersey and maybe take a quick jaunt into New York City. But in the end, Monday evening saw us marginally lost in Virginia Beach, headed up I-64 to Hampton, where we stayed until leaving this morning. And given our lack of planning, we had a heck of a trip! Tuesday I got to do something that I've wanted to do for years: drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, all 17+ miles of it over and under water then turned around and made the return trip (cost seventeen bucks to do it but I thought it was worth it). Lisa and I got to play in the surf at Hampton and Virginia Beach (finally using the boogie board we bought at the Outer Banks three years ago) and on Wednesday visited the site of the Battle of Yorktown, then took Colonial Parkway past Colonial Williamsburg and the site of the Jamestown settlement (will have pics of those up soon hopefully). Then yesterday made a visit to the Virginia Air and Space Museum and caught Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at a theater in Newport News.

Yeah, darned good trip! But what I can't figure out for the life of me is why are there so many 7-Elevens in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Hampton area? I swear, there were three located within about two blocks of each other at one spot in Virginia Beach. We didn't visit any but they were plenty ubiquitous enough.

Anyhoo, that's where we were for the past several days. We may visit the area again sometime this fall.

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Eye-MAXed out on SUPERMAN RETURNS

At the behest of Darth Larry (who wrote a report last week after seeing it) and because we felt like a short trip was in order, Lisa and I ordered tickets this past Monday night for Superman Returns in IMAX 3D at the only IMAX screen (of two) in North Carolina that was showing it. The showtime was at 7:45 and when I told my friend Chad about it he ordered him up a ticket too. So we hooked up at his pad, went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant not far from the Exploris Museum (where Raleigh's IMAX is located) and then went on to the Exploris. We picked up our tickets and, per Darth Larry's recommendation got in line about an hour before the show, which was a good thing 'cuz the lineup was fast lengthening.

So we show them the tickets, they gave us these funky 3D glasses with some kind of polarized lenses (not the blue/red 3D that were big in the Fifties) and we got some good seats for the show. After a short intro about what IMAX is (the screen at Exploris is about five stories tall, with 44 speakers pumping out 12,000 watts of sound) and how to use the glasses (put them on when the green glasses flash at the bottom of the screen, take them off when the flashing glasses are red) and then some trailers - all in 3D - for movies like The Ant Bully and Happy Feet (why couldn't there have been a 3D trailer for Spider-Man 3?) the show started.

And it was terrific! This was the second feature film that I'd seen in IMAX (the first was The Matrix Reloaded three years ago) and it was nothing short of spectacular. Not every movie can have the honor of being IMAXed, but the epic scale of Superman Returns absolutely demands it. I've written my review of the movie after watching it a week ago so I won't go much into the movie itself, but seeing the movie THAT big no doubt maxed-out the irises of everyone looking at the screen.

Yes, Superman Returns in IMAX 3D was a beautiful thing to behold... but only 20 minutes of the movie is in 3D! Those include Clark's remembering when he first learned he could fly, the rescue of the space shuttle and the 777 jetliner, some of when Lex is "growing" his new continent (STILL the dumbest criminal plot in a movie ever) and the final scenes showing Superman flying toward the sunrise (like how Christopher Reeve did it in his movies). There were PLENTY of other scenes that could have been 3D-ized, like Superman and Lois's first reunion, the part where Luthor enters the Fortress of Solitude, even Superman's return to Earth... THAT would have been spectacular! But I guess it must have been too expensive to convert the entire film over to 3D... and IMAX 3D at that. Still, Lisa and I both had the same sentiment: that we wished there had been more of it in the movie.

But anyway, all around it was a fine evening. Am glad we were able to catch it and fairly close by to where we live, too. Well worth the higher cost over that of a regular movie ticket to see at least once.

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