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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
Alan Horn, head of the movie studio at Warner Brothers, demanded that the smoking be cut out of the film adaptation of Watchmen to such an extent that Laurie won't be enjoying that weird but neat-looking pipe of hers. According to director Zack Snyder, it was either remove the smoking or "the movie wouldn't have been made, literally." Although the Comedian will still be puffing his cigars because he was deemed "evil" enough.
So let me get this straight: Watchmen is a story that includes a hero who is racist and anti-black (Captain Metropolis), another who speaks favorably of Hitler (Hooded Justice), features a brutal rape scene, shows a little girl murdered then cut to pieces and fed to dogs, has a main character who is struggling with sexual dysfunction, and maybe a dozen other very bad images and concepts...
...and yet showing a grown woman smoking is supposed to be worse than all of these things?
I can't figure that one out at all. Especially since Laurie's smoking, I thought so anyway, is foreshadowing for a certain big reveal about her character later on in the book (and presumably the movie).
This kind of "political correctness" all too often goes way too far. Studio execs like Horn really should take a more hands-off approach with stuff like this, and trust the directors and producers and script writers with how they want to bring their vision to life. I'm not saying forgo all accountability, but this situation really is micro-management to the extreme.
Sara B. Hays of Hugh Moore Historical Park is boggled by TSA's mandate. As she puts it: "We have one boat. It's pulled by two mules. On a good day they might go 2 miles per hour." The article also states that the "park's two-mile canal does not pass any military bases, nuclear power plants or other sensitive facilities. And, park officials say, the mules could be considered weapons of mass destruction only if they were aimed at something." Hays tried to get a waiver from the Transportation Security Administration. It responded to her request by "noting the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 applies to all mariners holding U.S. Coast Guard-issued credentials."
I hate that things in this country have devolved to the point that I have to state such an obvious truth, but: any government that thinks two ornery mules are a threat to national security, is a government that has clearly gone out of control and gotten too big for its britches.
I can kinda see how a re-do of Arthur (a movie that I haven't seen in ages) might work. But Total Recall and The NeverEnding Story? I have Total Recall on DVD: nineteen years after it first came out and it still holds its own against just about anything contemporary.
But regardless, I guess we are going to "Ged yor ahss to Mahs" all over again.
It's not my policy to render assistance to anyone who is not only a heartless liar, but has also without any evidence whatsoever accused a church of engaging in child pornography.
And I do not believe that this man was sincere at all in asking for my "help" to begin with. It was no doubt some silly stunt. The purpose of which likely only making sense within the confines of his own gray matter.
"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" is how brilliant television rewards the loyalty of its viewers. Future showrunners, take note!
That one hour of television, by direct implication or indirect inference, touched on nearly every bit of mythology of the past four-some seasons. And then it kept pouring on more.
WHY DID BEN DO IT?!? Everything was hunky-dory, until the moment that Locke mentioned Jin being still alive. That was... DANG!
Did anyone else catch that the Ajira plane landed on what looked like a prepared runway... perhaps the "quarry" that Kate and Sawyer were made to work on in Season 3? I caught that immediately.
"There's a war coming, John." At this late in the game, it's still not clear who are the good guys and who are the bad. Or is this just some private tiff between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore, with the entire world caught in the middle?
Let me be the first to say: "WAAAAAAAAALT!!!"
(Sorry, couldn't resist :-P )
Okay. Must watch again. Best episode of the season by far. Darned better television than we possibly deserve.
Whether by fate or fortune or free will, this blog - I like to think anyway - offers up something for everyone. In the past five years it's been an outlet for commentary, a chronicle of what it's like to run for office, a "cinema" of sorts for rolling out new movies, a quiet spot to meditate on God and His wondrous ways, a front line in the fight against evil in this world, a rallying stump for civil disobedience, a showcase of community theatre, and many other things. It has made national and even international headlines a time or two.
But you know what? None of those things thrill me nearly as much, as being able to share with you, Dear Readers, the all-too-rare and unique stories that make one stop and appreciate that in a world that has seemingly gone off the rails and full-tilt bonkers, there still exists a lot of good. And that is exactly what I'm having The Knight Shift celebrate today...
Through friends that it turns out we share, I recently found a new one in Kristel Reid Faris. She lives in New Hampshire and as of this month is the newly-minted wife of husband Keith! And Kristel and Keith had made arrangements for their wedding, but a fierce snowstorm, in addition to other things, caused them to have a smaller ceremony instead.
But really, it's much better if you read Kristel's account in her own words...
"Keith and I are both 33... and had both, on our own before ever meeting one another, submitted to the Lord's will last summer that we were single because that's what He wanted. Then... through a mutual friend... we met and a cosmic, supernatural, only-God-can-do-that kind of atttraction gripped us and we feel deeply in love.
"We had planned a big ceremony... complete with gowns and tuxedos and hors d'oeuvres, but that plan was interrupted when I became suddenly ill and nearly died of liver failure. It was an odd turn of events, but one that the Lord used, in His infinite wisdom, to reveal to my fiance Keith and me the true extent of our love for one another.. .and our complete and utter love for Him. Once I was released from the hospital, we sought out our pastor and pulled together the wedding. Our immediate families, as well as our friends in Portugal who were Skyped in, gathered in a friend's home and we committed our lives to one another."
And here is the video of Keith and Kristel Reid Faris getting married!
Kristel continues with more good news...
"I am also pleased to report that I am completely and fully healed...and all of my doctors (and there are nine of them) are in total shock at how fast I was healed. I should have been in the hospital for 2 - 6 weeks...but it was 7 days. And my liver should have taken 4 - 6 months to return to normal....but it was 4 weeks. :)
"Our gratitude to our loving, patient Father is something we offer to Him every day. We know that our meeting, instant love, survival through crisis, and marriage are all because of His strength, His mercy, His grace, and His love."
Keith and Kristel, that is an amazing story, and I am deeply honored to have been given permission to share it here so that others might find it, and be likewise encouraged by your faith and your love.
And congratulations! May God shine His blessings upon you now, and in all the years to come :-)
The last time I heard any news about Gore Verbinski (who helmed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Disney), he was gearing up to direct the big-screen adaptation of the video game BioShock. And Universal was said to be wanting it to come out in the summer of 2010.
Look, here's the thing: Clue has already been done!It was a movie that came out in December 1985 starring Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn and Martin Mull (among others). And it was a good movie, as its now-cult status has proven. If you've never had the pleasure, I would definitely recommend getting it via NetFlix or whatever. The gimmick of Clue the movie is that they filmed three different endings, so depending on which theater (or which screen at that theater, as some carried more than one version) you went to see it at, there was possibly a whole different outcome of the story. It was a brilliant take on the rules of the classic game.
Trust me: this is one movie that doesn't need to be remade. It is well enough on its own, still today. But Hollywood now seems hellbent on exploiting board games as its next "money-making" genre, what with Ridley Scott directing Monopoly, Michael Bay producting Ouija Board and Ethan Cohen writing the script for Candyland (?!?!?).
Gore Verbinski, if you ever read this: I'm begging you good sir, please... don't do this. There's nothing wrong with BioShock. That's a movie you were born to direct. Trust me: there's nothing but grief that can possibly come from another Clue. In the name of all that's good and holy, I urge you to reconsider.
"'We have to go back'? 'We have to go back'?! Who do you think you are?! You call me over and over again for two days straight, stoned on your pills! And then you show up here with an obituary for Jeremy Bentham?! Well he came to me, and I heard what he had to say. I knew he was crazy. But you... you believed him. Him! Of all people!"
"You know, when you came back, I was waiting for one of you to come see me, but nobody did. Do you know who did come see me? Jeremy Bentham. I don’t understand why you’re all lying."
"Bentham's dead."
"Why do you call him Bentham? His name..." "Don't say it!"
"About a month ago. Yeah, yeah he came to see her too. He told me, that after I left the Island, some very bad things happened. And he told me that it was my fault for leaving. And he said that I had to come back."
"Jack, I said 'all of you'. We're going to have to bring him too."
I've been looking forward to tonight's episode, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", for a waaaay long time. This is the mystery that became the most intriguing new enigma that Lost had introduced of late. Guess the reason being is that for whatever reason Locke chose to be called "Jeremy Bentham" after he left the Island, it seems to be much more than a simple alias. What happened after he "fixed" the frozen wheel and left the Island (and where did he wind up at for that matter)? Why did he start going around as Bentham? And what were the circumstances regarding his death?
Tonight on Lost, we will find out at last. And I've a gut feeling that my usual post-episode reaction is gonna be one of abject bewilderment :-P
It's taken about a month of on-and-off work, but tonight I put the finishing touches on eight pieces of my first playable army for Warhammer 40,000...
So yeah, now I've gotten into Warhammer 40,000: a game that some have told me "is worse than crystal meth, don't even think about it Chris!" But I couldn't help myself. Recently I got back into playing BattleTech for the first time since college, and some people commenting on this blog said I should give Warhammer 40,000 a try. I ended up playing a game over the Christmas break, liked the experience, and that propelled me to HyperMind in Burlington where I bought the Warhammer 40,000: Assault on Black Reach intro set. It comes with 17 Space Marine miniatures, 29 Ork miniatures (including three riding "Deffkoptas"), basic rulebook, dice, rulers, templates, plus a book that introduces the Warhammer 40,000 universe and a sheet of waterslide decals for your minis. If you're looking for an inexpensive route into the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame, the Assault on Black Reach set is the way to go right now.
As you can see if you know anything about Warhammer 40,000, I chose to build a Space Marines army with my initial foray into the hobby, and opted to make them the Ultramarines chapter. Maybe someday I'll create my own chapter (I've a really strange idea for one that worships the forty-thousand year old ancient visage of Alfred E. Neuman, making his face a harbinger of death). But for now these little Ultramarine guys - along with the commander, sergeant, Terminators and the Dreadnought that are also now being prepared - get to be the first that I'll be sending into battle against Orks, Tyranids, and the Traitor Legions of Chaos. And later on I might build some Eldar and Tau armies, 'cuz I kinda like those too.
Okay so what I really want to know is: how did I do decorating my first Warhammer 40,000 minis?! :-)
(And if you want to know more about Warhammer 40,000, I'll heartily recommend Bell of Lost Souls.)
As I do every year, at the moment I am watching the Presidential State of the Union Address. And by "watching" I mean that, per my usual custom, I have my back turned to the television so that I'm not tuned in to the imagery at all. Stripped of the visual component, my brain is more keenly listening to what Barack Obama is really saying.
So what do I think? He is definitely far more articulate and presidential-sounding than George W. Bush. Unfortunately he's talking about wasting money just as bad as Bush ever did.
(And as an aside, I miss tuning in to this without the live and uncommonly wise commentary of young master Kyle Williams. Hey Kyle, I know you're reading this: it's way past time for you to start a blog or something 'cuz I still get lots of e-mail from people asking how you're doing and wanna read more of your thoughts! :-)
Anyway, Obama is more than keeping up the tradition of what I call "Christmas in January". And nothing of this speech so far has anything to do with the real state of the union. In fact, I can't recollect any President since Ronald Reagan who ever took this yearly ritual seriously. It doesn't even have to be an annual event: the Constitution only calls for the President to relay his observations on the condition of the country from time to time. And it need not be a live speech, either: for a very long time the President simply sent a letter to Congress containing his State of the Union thoughts. But nowadays, it's not much more than guaranteed airtime for whoever is President, to shill for himself. And doesn't it say how shallow our country is when it's expected that "the other party" give us a "response"? I mean, the State of the Union...whatever, is not defined in the Constitution as a political event at all.
Color me apathetic if you wish, but I'm gonna say it: American mainstream politics has become an activity for either the weak and timid, or the strong and corrupt. It is not a thing that endears itself to those who choose to think and act on their own.
Okay, that's my rant for this year's State of the Union. Hope y'all who thought that I wouldn't be as hard on Obama as I was on Bush, are happy now...
Comet C/2007 N3, better known as Comet Lulin, is having its apogee (closest approach to the Earth) this evening. Earlier tonight I went out with a good pair of binoculars and found it in the west-southwestern sky, to the right of Saturn (Fox News has more on where to find it). Out in the darkened countryside, with a clear sky and a cold night (meaning less air turbulence), Lulin could easily be picked out with the naked eye and with binoculars, the greenish tint of this very strange comet - it's also traveling backwards from where the tail should be, by the way, and retrograde (opposite) of the direction of the planets - was readily discernible.
So far as comets go, Lulin is certainly the best naked-eye viewing since Hale-Bopp back in 1997. Lulin will still be visible for a few days: catch it if you can, 'cuz it's going way out there and probably won't be back for a million years or so.
Here are some photos that I took in Dad's knife shop from this past weekend.
This first one is of a roller bearing welded to a piece of rebar, heating up in Dad's propane-powered forge. At around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, you can understand why I dubbed this the "Marshmallow from Hell"...
Another shot of the forge. Dad is on the left and Eric Smith is on the right...
The next couple of pics are of a wood splitter that Dad built years ago, which was later converted into a machine used to press and bend the red-hot steel. It's particularly useful when working with Damascus (multi-layered) steel...
In this photo Dad is using a pneumatic-powered hammer (which he also designed and constructed) to "draw out" the steel into the more general shape of a blade...
Eric Smith holds the "finished" blade blank, after it had cooled-off enough to touch. In his left hand he holds two of the bearings, such as the one that was just forged into shape...
And even though it still has a lot of work ahead of it, here is Dad's current project: a Bowie knife with sheep-horn handle...
I'm looking at posting some video on YouTube in the near future of Dad practicing his art. 'Twould be neat to document how he takes a piece of steel from start to finish.
Yesterday's Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams brought whole new meaning to the term "comic strip" (while also skewering the entire "green" movement). Click to enlarge...
It is very difficult to argue with him. In my own neck of the woods, Media General is furloughing employees for ten days of unpaid leave in an effort to cut costs. It's now being whispered that my hometown's The Reidsville Review may not survive past the year. Meanwhile, there is evidence that The New York Times may finally crash and burn come later this spring. Fully a third of American newspapers might be bankrupt come summer, according to the article in The New Zealand Herald.
Well, can't say we didn't see this coming. Between the general state of the economy and how a considerable portion of the population gets its news from online, it was only a matter of time before traditional newspapers started feeling the blows.
But I'm of the mind that this is really just a period of "realignment" for the newspaper industry. Newspapers won't completely go away, but if they are going to survive they must figure out ways to adapt to the new order of things that is fast arising. I think that also means that the bigger outfits - like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and perhaps even regional papers like our own The News & Record - are going to have to scale back, while the smaller community-oriented outfits are going to continue to thrive.
Well since I wrote that, I had to take my copy of the game back to the Target store that I bought it from. Why? 'Cuz my copy of the Windows version didn't have the white sticker inside the box that had the Windows LIVE Access Key printed on it for that particular DVD. So I uninstalled Fallout 3, exchanged the original copy for one that did have the sticker with the key numeral, and installed the game fresh.
So everything was cool... except that the game "hung" shortly after the birth/character creation scene started, and would go no further.
Some reading on the Intertubes showed that a lot of people have been having this problem also.
Well, this morning I worked at it a bit, and I found a solution. So I thought it'd be a good thing to share it with others who are also going through this...
If you are playing Fallout 3 on Windows Vista or XP, uninstall the game. Make sure that the Bethesda Softworks folder that's within your Program Files folder is deleted also.
Now here's the messy part that requires a bit of daring: use Regedit (you can run it from the Start button) and do a search in your Windows registry for all entries containing "Bethesda" or "Fallout3". This is what I figured had snagged me: my computer was having an "identity crisis" as to which copy of Fallout 3 it was supposed to be running. So scour your registry and carefully delete anything that refers to Bethesda Softworks or Fallout 3.
When that is done, close out Regedit. Then reboot Windows.
You should now have a fresh, pristine machine on which to re-install Fallout 3, that so far as it's concerned there'll be no evidence that the previous install ever happened. Since going through this procedure I haven't had any further problems with Fallout 3: it's running perfectly, and I also ran the update to version 1.1.0.35, again without any trouble.
Hope this helps some folks out. Now go gird up and get ready to take the Capital Wasteland by storm :-)
According to a story up on Gizmodo, a 14-year old boy in China is dead following the explosion of a gas cylinder in the base of the office chair that he was sitting in. The cylinder, which is used to adjust the height of the chair, blew up and propelled "chunks of metal into his rectum". The teen subsequently bled to death.
Here's a photo of the culprit chair...
That has to be the most freak accident I've ever heard of involving something as mundane as a chair.
Anyone else thinking of sitting on Kevlar-reinforced seat cushions from now on?
