Tomorrow and Tuesday: pre-production and then filming a commercial in which the entire town of Burlington, North Carolina gets heinously destroyed.
One week from now: playing host to and partying with a contingent of 4 or 5 Belgians.
No rest for the wicked, aye? :-P
To the best of my knowledge that makes at least four separate blogs - none of which are my own - that have set out to counter Robertson and his gang of ecclesiastical bullies.
(Incidentally, this coming week marks two years since Robertson posted anything new on his own blog.)
And then there's this YouTube video that was sent to me today, proclaiming Johnny Robertson to be this week's "Con-Artist for [Another] Jesus"...
I have been told that Robertson and his goons have been harassing quite a number of legitimate churches in the area lately (apparently they've got a "tent revival" or somesuch going on). Robertson's son Micah even attempted to interrupt a service at one Baptist church in Danville recently.
In the past month or so I publicly asked the following questions on another blog devoted to answering the cult. So far, no one from the local "Church of Christ" that is known for its bullying tactics has dared to answer them. So I will pose them here as well...
1. If Johnny Robertson, James Oldfield and their followers have proclaimed all other denominations are "false", then what evidence is there at all that their own "Church of Christ" is true?I've said before: I don't care what these loons choose to believe in. Because I believe that every person has the right to seek God as best he or she possibly can. But when it comes to someone (like the "Church of Chris" cult) trying to interfere with others' right to seek God and to the point that it becomes illegal harassment... then there is a problem.2. Where is the evidence that the "Church of Christ" that Robertson and Oldfield represent is described in the Bible?
3. If no such evidence exists, then why are Robertson, Oldfield and their followers in a church that is not in the Bible?!
And from the looks of things, a lot more people are standing up to this kind of nonsense.
And this blogger absolutely applauds it! :-)
So in one week we have lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson... and now commercial pitchman extraordinaire Billy Mays, found dead this morning by his wife at their home in Florida.Gonna miss him. It was always so easy to make fun of Billy Mays and that voice of his (which seemed to be a natural gift for his chosen profession) but let's face it: the guy was very good at his job. He did his best to be a pitchman and in turn became something much more: a bona fide legitimate character in his own right.
Thoughts and prayers going out to his family today.
The Eighties. What a time to have been alive.
Personally, I think America hit its high water mark as a culture around 1994. There was a kind of dynamic that seems to have vanished about the time that O.J. Simpson went for that ride in the Ford Bronco.
I don't know if we'll ever see days like those again.
But just as King Arthur came to cherish at the end: It was a fair time that will live on in memory. And so long as the memory of that time endures, it may yet come again.
This is already the most taxed state in the southeast. Piling on more taxes is not a smart move by any measure. But sadly folks, this state's head honchos have long been drunk on wild spending and are desperate for any way they can find to keep their mad orgy going.
North Carolina, ladies and gentlemen: "The California of the Eastern Seaboard".
Any so-called "legislator" who votes on a bill WITHOUT READING THE FRICKIN' THING needs to be dragged out into the street and shot.
As several folks have written in about: Tonight's episode of MTV's new show DJ & The Fro, titled "Birds", featured a good-natured mocking of my "Star Wars"-inspired campaign commercial for Rockingham County Board of Education in 2006.
In the episode someone calling himself "Inbred Velcro Warrior" sends the Fro a link to the commercial. "In space, nobody can hear you scream" notes Fro as he and DJ cheer on the Death Star destroying the little red schoolhouse. Fro continues: "That's also true for his mother's basement, where this guy clearly lives!" DJ says "That's the biggest loser in the desert since Moses!" I had some friends over to watch this ('cuz the good folks at Titmouse Productions told me last week it would air this evening) and suffice it to say, everyone in the house thought it was hilarious! I got to show off my lightsaber and rotoscopin' skillz before a national audience, Rockingham County North Carolina got a shout-out, Melody Hallman Daniel's awesome vocal talents got a lot of airtime (well about as long as the commercial anyway)... and I might very well have become the first and last person to get the words "No Child Left Behind" and "unfunded mandates" spoken on MTV!!
The "Birds" episode is scheduled to air quite a few more times over the next several days and weeks. Check yer local listings if you wanna take a gander :-)
According to those who adhere to the legend, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba had a son named Menelik I, who eventually came to Jerusalem as a young man and spirited the real Ark of the Covenant away (with Solomon's blessing).
It is there, in that land which in ancient times has been called Aksum and is today known as Ethiopia, where the very Ark of the Covenant which contains the Ten Commandments that G-d gave to Moses is said to be kept in this chapel, with a lone guardian tending to it night and day for as long as he lives...
(According to some reports, the Ark guardians don't live anywhere near a full span of life and have a tendency to developing cataracts, supposedly a testament of the Ark's awesome power.)
The patriarch has said that a museum is being built in Ethiopia where the Ark will be displayed for all to see.
If it is the real Ark of the Covenant, let us hope that these guys know what they are doing, and have read the instruction manual (namely the Old Testament) really meticulously.
Or else, who knows what might happen...
UPDATE 06/26/2009 9:20 p.m. EST: As many have noted, the announced time of today's "revealing" of the Ark of the Covenant has more than come and gone, with nothing to show for it. There are some allegations coming out of Ethiopia that Abuna Pauolos has a shady background. Here's WorldNetDaily's report on the failure of the patriarch to produce the goods.
Maria Barbu of Brasov, Romania was found by her parents laying next to the laptop, and police think she "may have tried to plug in the computer's mains power lead with wet hands after the battery ran down during a long Twitter session".
Here's what I have to ask in case no one else has: why was this girl Twitter-ing from a bathroom to begin with?
In one of the more bizarre stories to come out of Iran in the past week or so, it's being reported that the country's state-run Channel Two is running a marathon of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, intending to keep protesters off of Tehran's streets and watching the adventures of Frodo and Sam instead. The average citizens of Iran are quite fond of movies from the United States and Europe, but usually only get to watch them once or twice a week on television. Since the protests began, Iran's ruling regime has increased it to two or three movies per day.Methinks that this might not be a good move on the part of the Iranian government, especially since one of the bigger messages of The Lord of the Rings is that "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future" :-)
Farrah Fawcett has died at age 62, succumbing to a cancer which she had valiantly fought against for so very long.
First it was Ed McMahon who was taken from us earlier this week, now Farrah Fawcett. Once again, we seem to be losing our legends at a harsh rate.
I raised my hand and shouted "Police car!" Which was the right answer. So I ran down to collect my reward.
Which turned out to be this...
A copy of Britney Spears' new CD Circus!
And I thought I was gonna get a Transformers t-shirt, or somethin'...
I saw it at midnight on Wednesday night (meaning the wee hours of yesterday morning) along with fellow bloggers Phillip Arthur and Matthew Federico. And I am compelled to echo the sentiments that just about every reviewer on the planet is saying about this movie: that it's far too long, it's much too juvenile and there's way too much to expect a viewer to take in.
I anticipate that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is going to become a textbook example of how a movie demands good editing, because there's a ton of material that could have been left on the cutting room floor that would not only not be missed, but would have made for a much tighter and more enthralling film. Some of this stuff was just plain embarrassing to watch: Sam's mom hopped-up on marijuana-laced brownies is but one of them. Other elements should have never progressed beyond the conceptual stage... and I'm thinking mostly of Skids and Mudflap (or as many are calling them, "Car Car Binks"). Seriously: Skids and Mudflap are the very worst thing to happen to the Transformers franchise in the history of anything. A lot of people are wondering aloud if these two Autobidiots are meant to be stereotypically racist. Whether they are or not, Skids and Mudflap should have never been given such an obscene amount of screen time. Regardless of anything else, these two characters offend good taste in ways that Mel Brooks barely did with Blazing Saddles. What the hell were screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (along with Ehren Kruger) thinking?! Hard to believe that these two 'Bots sprang from the same brilliant minds that gave us Star Trek last month.
(I'm not even gonna go anywhere near Devastator's testicles...)
But mostly, I think that much like Spider-Man 3 a few years ago, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen suffers from an excess of plot and character.
Imagine the sequels of the Pirate of the Caribbean series - Dead Man's Chest and At World's End - smooshed together into a single motion picture. That is what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is: one movie that should have been divided into two. It starts off well enough, with Optimus Prime (again voiced by Peter Cullen) describing the events of the past two years and how the Autobots have formed a covert team with the United States military to hunt down Decepticons that have come to Earth. And right off the bat, director Michael Bay is pouring on crazy helpings of his trademark "Bay-hem" style: lots of dizzying 'splosive action that should have utterly broken Industrial Light and Magic's CGI render farm. The opening fight between the Autobots and the huuuuge Decepticon Demolishor is a sequence of well-orchestrated carnage indicative of how this movie is solidly better than Terminator: Salvation, the most recent blockbuster that I had seen in past weeks. There is quite a bit of thoughtful "building off" of the mythology that the first film began, and I liked that. One thing that I appreciated in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is how this movie finally addresses some questions that have been around since the Transformers first hit the scene a quarter-century ago... like how Transformers are born, hatched, whatever. And I think that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is wildly successful at showing us a world-wide conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons (several people in the audience cheered when they saw that the Autobots were driving through North Carolina on the military's map).
But about an hour into the movie and it's glaringly certain that there's too much mythology being hurled at us to take in for one film. The most obvious aspect of this is the sheer number of Autobots and Decepticons overwhelming each other. The original Autobot characters from the first movie? They are barely in this one. We finally get to see Arcee, but she and other female Autobots are hardly noticeable. Soundwave (voiced by Frank Welker!) has a fairly important presence, but I thought we should have seen him take a more active role among his fellow Decepticons. Concepts from the earliest canon like the Pretenders and the Matrix of Leadership and the Space Bridge and more assault the viewer's mind and if you haven't been indoctrinated in Transformers terminology, I can see how it's gonna be very easy to be lost in it all.
This is a movie that should have been split in two, with a Transformers movie for this summer and one for the next. And I know right where the divide should have been at, but won't talk about it here for fear of spoiling it for those who haven't seen it yet. Let's just say that something of a Transformers "tradition" takes place that would have made for an excellent cliffhanger to be resolved in another installment.
There were too many Transformers in this movie. The effects in this movie are nothing short of jaw-dropping. I just wish that there had been fewer Transformers to spread more of the visuals around. Devastator - the combined form of the Constructicons - is the most complex digital model that Industrial Light and Magic has ever made. Too bad we don't get to see the individual Constructicons in action: they're pretty much just sitting vehicles that merge into one colossal robot... without ever getting to see their individual 'bot forms! The final battle at the pyramids between the Autobots and Decepticons has so many Transformers that hardly anybody will be able to pick out who's who.
So far as the humans go, I thought the carbon-based characters were pretty good, but again: a lot of their scenes should have been cleanly excised away from this film. Sam and his wacky family carry over well from the first movie (apart from Judy Witwicky's reefer-crazed rampage) and if you liked John Turturro's character of Simmons in the first movie, you'll be glad to know that he's back and with a bit more to do in this one.
Overall however... I'll have to say that I liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen enough that I'll probably want to see it at least once more in the theaters, even though I definitely recognize that it could have been a better movie had it received more editing and fewer robots. The lesson of this movie could be that "special effects do not a character make". Let's hope that the next Transformers movie will bear that in mind.
And what says me about Steve Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? Loved it! Jablonsky really built upon and explored further the themes that he did for the first movie. I gladly bought his score from iTunes yesterday and have been listening to it ever since.
Anyway, in the end: I'm not going to jump on the "Bash Revenge Bandwagon" that this movie is having to endure across the media. I won't say that it's a "great" movie either like The Shawshank Redemption or even Star Trek. But I will say that warts and all, I sincerely came out of seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen much as I did from seeing Transformers two years ago: thoroughly entertained.
What more could one ask of a summer blockbuster? :-)
It came out last week and I haven't been able to post about it 'cuz I've been out of town since then (maybe it's time to finally get a laptop?) but "Weird Al" Yankovic has done it again. His latest release "Craigslist" is about the (in)famous classified ads website, done in the style of Jim Morrison and The Doors. It is hilarious and Al even got Ray Manzarek to do the keyboards for the song!Click here for the "Craigslist" music video on Al's YouTube channel, which also includes links where you can buy the song from iTunes and other online outlets.
That was CNN in 1989.
In 2009 it is Twitter, of all things, that is marking the end of television's dominance of the news.
Here's the Twitter feed for most of the "tweets" about what's going down in Iran. At this hour there's a massive rally in Tehran by anti-Ahmedinejad protesters. The police have opened fire and killed at least one person. Just about everything we know about all this is coming from regular people who are sending live reports via Twitter.
Remember this well, folks. June 2009 is when people in Iran took hold of the power of "you media" and played it to the hilt. This is real revolution in more ways than one happening at this moment.
I hope this kind of exuberance spreads to more countries. Including my own :-)
EDIT 2:12 p.m. EST: I made a link to this blog post on the same Twitter feed (#iranelection) and right now, The Knight Shift is getting SLAMMED with more international visits than I have ever seen in the five-plus years of this blog's operation (along with quite a few folks from across the United States).
So a hearty hello to everyone who's finding their way here this afternoon, and here's raising up some thoughts and prayers for our friends in Iran who are taking their destiny into their own hands. May they be an inspiration for us all!
