"Jimmy V finally found somebody to hug."

It instantly became one of the most classic moments in sports history.

Coach Jim Valvano's North Carolina State - a scrappy team that had fought tooth and claw in defiance of all the odds - against University of Houston for the 1983 NCAA Basketball Championship. Houston: the team of "Phi Slamma Jamma". Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. No wonder one sports writer said that "Trees will tap dance, elephants will race in the Indianapolis 500 and Orson Welles will skip dinner" before Jimmy V's Wolfpack would beat the Cougars.

But we all know what happened. With seconds left in the game and the scored tied at 52, State's Dereck Whittenburg made a desperate launch of the ball. Lorenzo Charles was right at the basket, caught the ball and dunked it hard!

North Carolina State had done it! And in those wild seconds after the buzzer, Coach Valvano - overwhelmed with elation and disbelief - ran onto the floor looking for somebody, for anybody, to give a hug to.

It's moments like these that are the stuff of legends.

Jimmy V passed away ten years later in 1993, nearly a year after being diagnosed with bone cancer.

And yesterday afternoon, as '83 team member Thurl Bailey put it, the coach "finally found somebody to hug."

Lorenzo Charles died yesterday in a bus accident on I-40 in Raleigh. He was 47.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family and loved ones.

In his memory, here are the final seconds of the 1983 championship, featuring Charles making what many have said is the single greatest play in college basketball history.

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An encouragement for those who might need it...

God never writes a "perfect" ending to our story... but He is capable and ready to write each of us a happy ending!

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Germination of the Bhut jolokia has begun!

Awright, I've been putting this off for too long now. I knew that this day would come. Not gonna run and hide anymore. Here, live or die, I will make my stand.

This afternoon I began the process of growing my can of Bhut jolokia.

And as I said when I first wrote about coming into possession of this stuff back in February, "This is either one of the bravest things that I will have ever attempted... or it is the stoopidest of my entire life..."

The Bhut jolokia: regarded by the scientific community as THE world's hottest naturally-occurring pepper. Native to north-eastern India, in the local tongue "Bhut jolokia" translates into "ghost pepper". Because as the natives like to joke, one bite of this could send you to an early grave.

Spicy heat is measured in Scoville units. Regular Tabasco sauce has a "hotness" of 2,500 Scoville Heat Units.

The Bhut jolokia? More than ONE MILLION.

So ever since this can arrived (you can order some for yourself from the good folks at ThinkGeek) it's been sitting on my desk, and I've been... looking at it. Studying it. Contemplating its potency.

And finally today, like Jeff Goldblum's character does in that scene in The Fly, I finally came to the place where I had to say "What are we waiting for, let's do it." So I followed the package's directions, put enough water into it that it began draining through the opened bottom, and set it in sunlight.

In another month or so, the crimson red agony-ridden peppers will have arrived.

And then, the fun really begins.

My good friend and fellow blogger Steven Glaspie is still set to chronicle my eating this pepper on video (he also did an excellent job being co-cameraman on Vaporware Nevermore! the other week :-). That he is a volunteer firefighter trained in first aid, was of course another factor in considering him for the task. I have another friend who is scheduled to be here, who has brewed his own brand of beer just for the occasion. As beer is said to be a very fast and effective counter-agent for spicy-hot burning, we're going to have his brew on hand as a last resort.

So... have I finally gone too far? Have I crossed a terrible, terrible line? Is your friend and humble narrator gone mad? Will this be the end of Chris Knight?!?

Tune in later this summer to find out!! :-P

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SESAME STREET riffs on SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK!

It's not a good sign for Broadway's most beleaguered show when none other than Grover is mocking it...

That's a promo for Sesame Street and it's forty-second season, beginning in September! Would LOVE to see this as a full-length sketch :-)

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Someday, this could be a President of the United States...

Aimi Eguchi is a 16-year old music star in Japan, with a loyal following of several thousands of fans. She lives north of Tokyo, has an official website, and enjoys track and field sports.

And she doesn't exist outside of a hard drive.

Good friend and fellow blogger Lee Shelton was the first to draw my attention to the intriguing but also unsettling story of Aimi Eguchi: a computer-generated composite of six different girls, who until now had fooled many people into believing she was a real flesh and blood person...

Click here for more about Aimi Eguchi's "biography".

I'm telling you people here and now: one of these days, this is going to be an American politician who "runs" for office. Whether or not it wins is a commentary that I shall leave as an exercise for the reader...

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Weird Tolkien-ish map of "Flat Earth" comes to light... and it's pretty neat!

About the same time that Operation: Desert Storm was going on but before the ground war started in Iraq back in 1991, I read The Hobbit for the first time. Immediately after that I plunged into The Lord of the Rings. And it wasn't long after that when I thought that since I was on such a hot streak that I'd read The Silmarillion as well.

And my brain immediately got befuddled by the vastness of J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology that had only been hinted at in The Lord of the Rings.

The thing which I most couldn't wrap my mind around was Middle-earth before the fall of Númenor: Tolkien had the world that would eventually be our own as a "flat Earth", and it stayed that way until the last king of Númenor sailed into the west to try to wrest away an immortality that could never be his. It was an act of defiance that led God Himself to break the world, sink Númenor and forever afterward made the Earth round.

I know, it's all fantasy... but Tolkien infused plenty enough realism that even such wild geography should make sense somehow... right?

That's been the most frustrating quirk of Tolkien's legendarium for me, for the past twenty years. Until last night when I came across this story about a fella named Orlando Ferguson and his clever "Square and Stationary Earth" scheme...

That's a map that "Professor" Ferguson compiled in 1893, combining his understanding of the world's geology as depicted in the Bible along with the scientific knowledge of the day. The result? A flattened Earth that... is kinda a viable model. Gotta love how it keeps all the water from Earth's oceans contained in a Roulette wheel-style bowl, with the North Pole at its center. Ferguson was a real-estate developer in South Dakota and he had ninety-two pages of lecture material prepared to defend his flat-Earth thesis.

Well, even if it's scientifically way off-kilter, at least Tolkien's mythical First Age geology finally makes sense to me :-P

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Peter Falk has passed away

A few weeks ago we lost James Arness, who played Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke. I'd come to regret that I didn't post anything about it at the time and promised myself that I'd try to do better when it came to marking the passing of an iconic person who excelled at their craft.

Unfortunately, this afternoon I am having to do such sooner than I would have liked...

The very sad news coming off the wire this afternoon is that Peter Falk, who played Lieutenant Columbo from 1968 to 2003 (yowza!!) on the television series Columbo, has died at the age of 83. In addition to Columbo, Falk is also well known for playing the grandfather in the movie The Princess Bride.

Think that in remembrance of Peter Falk, that I'm going to spend the rest of the day carrying around a cigar while badgering and harassing people incessantly with questions. Peppering it with lots of "just one more thing..." 'course.

Seriously though: he was a terrific actor, and he will be greatly missed.

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Muppet cross-breeding

It is the eternal question: "What if Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy DID marry and have kids?"

Now we know...

All I can really say to this is: Heaven help us if the folks at Rovio Mobile ever see Avenue Q! :-P

Mash down here for more "Muppemathics" courtesy of one "idiotjim" at Picture Is Unrelated. Click here if you haven't been addicted to Angry Birds yet. And if you don't know who the Muppets are well, shame on you!

Thanks to fellow blogger Scott Bradford for a great find! :-)

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Look! Info about Steve Jablonsky's score for TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON!

Hey gang, we are just a few days away from Transformers: Dark of the Moon and, starting to get stoked about this movie in the biggest way! Maybe it's something to do with having bought the Blu-rays of both the previous films last week and watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for only the second time ever. And oddly enough, two years later I'm much more entertained by that movie. It still has its problems (namely "Car Car Binks" aka the Autobot twins, and I genuinely feel sorry for whoever it was at Industrial Light and Magic who was handed the task of digitally animating Devastator's ummm... "wrecking ball testicles") but y'know, I wound up digging it way more than before as a Transformers live-action flick. In fact, as I write this my desktop PC is busy ripping the Blu-ray so I can put both these movies on my iPad!

Awright, so we've got the third movie coming out next week. And a lot of you have been writing me about the score that Steve Jablonsky has composed for his third outing with the Transformers saga. Maybe the inquiries are coming here because of, ummmmmmm... how totally crazy I went for Transformers: The Score four years ago. Longtime readers remember how this lil' blog sorta wound up being where many people coalesced their desire to see that score released. We eventually got it and four years later, I've heard from bunches of people how it gets consistently played on their iPods or whatever (including my own :-). And thankfully we didn't have to go through that in order to get Jablonsky's score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (a score which was no less epic than the one for the first film).

But what about the score for Transformers: Dark of the Moon?

Apparently the CD (and presumably iTunes availability) was supposed to have been June 7th. Those industrious Trans-fans at Seibertron.com are now reporting that it has been pushed back to June 28th: this coming Tuesday, just before the movie smashes its way into theaters. However it's not showing up on Amazon.com yet. And as of this writing the official Transformers: Dark of the Moon music site is merely stating that the score album is "Coming Soon".

Hmmmm...

I'm inclined to believe that it's gonna be coming out and sooner than later (likely much sooner) 'cuz Film Music Reporter has snagged the complete track listing! It's there if you wanna read all the track titles, but be warned: there might be (read as: "definitely are") some spoiler-ish details about the movie that can be gleaned from them.

Oh yeah, that's not the official album cover art either. Just a placeholder that I'm seeing on a few sites. No doubt the real score album cover is gonna look much better :-)

Anyhoo, there y'all have it. Don't fret: Steve Jablonsky's Transformers: Dark of the Moon score is heading our way. We aren't going to have to fight for it this time either! And there's a good chance that a week from now we'll all get to have it in our grubby lil' paws.

Good times! :-)

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"The thing works!" On the church and history

The other week was Pentecost: the day that Christians remember as the start of the church as Christ's kingdom of emissaries in this temporal realm and age. It is the Sunday that many churches take to honor the coming of the Holy Spirit onto the followers of Jesus, as recorded in Acts, chapter 2.

I spent this year's Pentecost visiting with a friend, at a United Methodist congregation. It was also the final Sunday that the minister of this particular assembly would have with the people that he had served for many years. Per a tradition that hearkens back to the days of the circuit riders, United Methodist ministers will be at one church for a few years before being assigned to another, at which time the congregation will receive a new minister who will serve them until the next time that the conference gets to the task of re-assignment.

So it was that this wound up being the first and possibly last time that I listened to this good man of God. But as I told him when we left the worship service, he gave me a bunch to think about. One of which I was bursting to tell my friend when we got to the car...

"It really is one of the most amazing things about Christianity," I was feeling led to observe, "that the church has persisted for two thousand years... in spite of the most RIDICULOUS things that Christ's followers have done to themselves!"

Think about it. All the nonsense and stupidity and even grief that too many of us who bear the name "Christian" have done to ourselves, to the name of Christ, and unfortunately to those who we should be witnesses to as examples of Christ in this fallen world. We have condemned each other for trivial matters. We have tortured many and led a great number to their deaths, even... all in the name of Christ. We have split ways from each other over how one measly word might or might not be translated. We have even held others in slavery and bondage and claimed a biblical mandate for it.

Let's face it: Christianity has a reputation, and not at all entirely a good one. And that's not Christ's fault at all. It's like a bumper sticker that I once saw: "Lord, please protect me from your fan club."

And yet, despite it all: the church has endured, for darn nearly two millennia.

It has endured in defiance of everything that we who follow Christ have done. And I'm not talking about the historical stuff like the Inquisition, the sacking of Constantinople, the Salem witch trials and all that horrible crap.

No, I'm talking about the ubiquitous failings that all of us have... including and especially Yours Truly... as those who must live in this carnal plane. And we know from scripture that even those earliest Christians were not miraculously immune or imparted some special grace that kept them "perfect" in the ways of doctrine. Peter and Paul had severe disagreements with each other. Paul and Barnabas argued and went their separate ways. The church at Corinth had former prostitutes and idolators among its number... and not a few of them were being tempted to go back to their old ways. The seven churches of Asia Minor couldn't possibly be called models of Christian unity and non-division! The New Testament is rife with these examples and many, many more.

When one studies the historical record, it seems nothing short of a miracle that the church survived past the first century... let alone the twentieth!

Indeed. How could it be anything but a miracle?

Because man, for all his schemes and devices and cleverness, is still a fallen creature. And I can not believe that men left to themselves could have created such an enduring institution.

This good Methodist pastor emphasized something during his sermon, that I have also thought much about: that the work didn't begin or end with him. That the church was there before he came to serve it, and it will be there long after he would be gone. Because the man... and the woman too, no chauvinists we!... is not the finished work. The person is not and should never be the purpose and the focus of the one true great work. We, each of us, are only laborers for a time in the Kingdom of God. We do this not for our glory, but for His... and one of the neat incentives about working for Him is that He does honor us in His own wonderful way. But that isn't why we work. We do so because we love Him and because we love others as He has instructed.

And so it is, that the work has been done across the centuries, and across all the body of Christ. It matters not if we worship in a Methodist congregation, in a Baptist congregation, in a Catholic congregation, in a Pentecostal congregation, as a non-denominational Christian, or whatever. As I have written here before, there is NO such thing as "denomination". There are only different perspectives of Christ. Given that Christ is too magnificent and too wondrous for any one man or group of men to fully comprehend, that is only natural and only understandable that we see Him only with earthen eyes and mind. In the fullness of time we shall know Him as we are meant to. In the meantime we strive to gaze through a glass darkly...

...and even so, the church has endured.

How can this be, other than the work of the Holy Spirit which came to those first Christians at Pentecost? How has the church, as the complete body of all followers of Christ, persisted for all of this time against all the odds and against every screwy bit of craziness that His believers have done to others and even done to themselves?

I know of no other way to put it, than one another writer exclaimed after his own study of the Book of Acts...

"The thing works!"

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Review of ALPOCALYPSE: "Weird Al" Yankovic has conquered again!

Yesterday, June Twenty-First, Two Thousand and Eleven... was a date which will live in hilarity! It was almost five full years coming, but at last we "Yankovictims" (that term will make sense once you watch the accompanying DVD) got a new album from the crown prince of parody: "Weird Al" Yankovic!

Yes folks, the Alpocalypse has cometh!

I drove more than an hour and a half yesterday afternoon so a group of friends could party like true Al-oholics and enjoy listening to Alpocalypse together (contrary to rumor, Twinkie wiener sandwiches were not served... although they were contemplated during the planning stages).

So, what sayeth this life-long Weird Al fan? Alpocalypse was well worth the wait. And going further than that: this is some of Al's freshest and most vibrant material ever. I must confess than when Al began releasing many of the songs from this album two years ago as part of his Internet Leaks collection, that I couldn't help but worry: "If he keeps releasing songs before the album, what's going to be left for the album itself?!"

Be of good cheer, fellow Al-iens! Because this album is so well-balanced and orchestrated, that even if you know the Internet Leaks songs by heart, they'll feel all shiny and new when you hear them on Alpocalypse. How many other recording artists can pull off that trick? Only two honestly come to mind: The Beatles, and Elvis. That alone says much about Al's prowess as a musician, when ya think about it.

Okay well, on to the review!

Track 1: "Perform This Way" - A dead-on spoof of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way". Al released the music video for this song on Monday and it has gone viral big-time! I'm hearing a lot of people say that this is Al's best video since the one for "Amish Paradise" fifteen years ago... and it is definitely a hoot! The song itself is full-tilt distilled essence of Gaga's bizarre wardrobe. Al said earlier that this album was waiting for the next pop culture paradigm shift for him to parody. I would say that with "Perform This Way", mission accomplished! I foresee this song will be hot in demand on the karaoke circuit :-P

Track 2: "CNR" - One of the Internet Leaks songs (first reviewed here). A style spoof of the White Stripes, praising the metahuman might of the one and only Charles Nelson Reilly (similar to the popular "Chuck Norris Facts" floating around the Internet). I love this song! It's just plum catchy and that it's about Charles Nelson Reilly makes it all the more fun. And strangely quotable: "He had his very own line at the D-M-V, he made sweet sweet love to a manatee, oh yeah!"

Track 3: "TMZ" - A parody of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me". Is it okay to say that "TMZ" is very entertaining... but it's also something of an indictment against our celebrity-obsessed media, and culture in general? Weird Al songs very rarely engender that kind of sober reflection on real life. But in true Al fashion, he does so with his unique style and good humor. And Al has captured Taylor Swift's style perfectly. I've already heard "Perform This Way" played on the radio and "TMZ" is just as worthy of airplay!

Track 4: "Skipper Dan" - Another song from the Internet Leaks set (first reviewed here). A Weezer-style original song about a poor guy who could have rocked 'em on stage and film, but instead has wound up a guide on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Every time I listen to this, I can't help but feel sorry for this dude. But it also ends on a bit of an upbeat note (especially if you watch the music video).

Track 5: "Polka Face" - THIS MIGHT BE THE FUNNIEST POLKA MEDLEY AL HAS EVER ARRANGED!!! Obviously "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga is in the medley (it's the first song to get the polka treatment) and also in the mix are Justin Bieber's "Baby" and "Tik Tok" by Kesha. I would rank this as perhaps my favorite polka medley that Al has done alongside "Polka Your Eyes Out" from Off The Deep End and "The Alternative Polka" from Bad Hair Day. It's just... go listen to it for yourself! I haven't the verbiage to describe how awesome "Polka Face" is!

Track 6: "Craigslist" - Originally released two years ago this month (original review here), this wound up my most favorite song from the Internet Leaks set. Two years later and it seems even more energetic now that it's on a proper album! Al sings about the anarchic Craigslist website, in the style of Jim Morrison and The Doors (with Ray Manzarek himself doing keyboard accompaniment!) At our lil' Alpocalypse release party last night I was wearing my "Craigslist" t-shirt that I got at Al's concert in Knoxville last year (LOOK HERE! :-) and... just couldn't help getting up to imitate Al's performance. Probably a good thing (for once) that that won't make it on YouTube :-P This was my favorite Internet Leaks song and it's one of my favorite on Alpocalypse. And as a dear friend noted, it's likely the only song in existence to make so many references to "styrofoam peanuts"!

Track 7: "Party In The CIA" - Miley Cyrus' "Party In The U.S.A." goes to Langley, as Al sings about the trials, travails and tribulations of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. Has "water-boarding session" ever been used in a song before? Well, it sure has now. Another Al song that is inherently catchy!

Track 8: "Ringtone" - First released in August 2009, Al channels Queen and Freddie Mercury to mock the never-ending inanity of cell phone ringtones. Like the other Internet Leaks releases, "Ringtone" seems newly frenetic on this album.

Track 9: "Another Tattoo" - Parody of "Nothin' On You" by B.o.B. featuring Bruno Mars. LOVE THIS SONG!! Maybe it has something to do with how I've been watching for some time that there is too much tattooin' going on out there these days! Seriously people, don't you realize what a tattoo actually is? It's a permanent reminder of your temporary insanity! Something which Al celebrates(?) in this song. Favorite part? Boba Fett... playing clarinet!

Track 10: "If That Isn't Love" - an original song done in the style of Hanson (who I first heard about on CBS' The Weird Al Show back in '97). This one was fun the first time I listened to it and it's starting to grow on me even more. My personal favorite of Al's "love songs" is still "Since You've Been Gone" but this one is pretty good too :-)

Track 11: "Whatever You Like" - First released in October 2008, "Whatever You Like" was retro-actively declared to be the first of the Internet Leaks collection (original review here). Nearly three years later and Al's parody of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" (yes the parody shares the same name as the original :-) seems even more fitting and appropriate to the times in which we live! A rollickin' fun anthem - or dirge, if you like - for our current economic downturn.

Track 12: "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" - I was literally honking with laughter when we played this song for the first time! But it took me awhile to recognize what Al is doing here: a style parody of Jim Steinman, who has written a lot of songs for Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tylor. And Al retains Steinman's signature lyrical flow with this screed-in-song protesting junk e-mail about cookie recipes and Mister Rogers' exploits in Vietnam. An awesome song and in my mind the perfect way to wind down Alpocalypse.

And that is the album itself. But that's NOT all! Because if you choose to buy Alpocalypse in stores you've got a choice between the CD alone, or for a few dollars more the CD along with a DVD with music videos for ten of the songs on Alpocalypse! The video for "CNR" (animated by JibJab.com) was released along with the Internet Leaks single two years ago. So were the videos for "Skipper Dan" (animated by Divya Srinivasan), "Craigslist" (live-action directed by Liam Lynch) and "Ringtone" (produced by Josh Faure-Brac and Steven K.L. Olson). Well for Alpocalypse we also get new videos like the Bill Plympton-animated "TMZ" (which might inure you to the sight of a naked butt, if you aren't already), "Party In The CIA" animated by a bunch of different people and directed by Roque Ballesteros, "If That Isn't Love" helmed by Brian Fisk, "Whatever You Like" (animated and directed last year by Cris Shapan) and the kinetic typographically-animated "Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me" produced by Koos Dekker. But by far the video that will be most analyzed by Al fans is the one for "Another Tattoo": Augenblick Studios' dizzying montage of eclectic body art, some of which has until now probably never been conceived of by mortal man. Or woman for that matter. And yes: Boba Fett does get to play clarinet. You'll see. Along with... wait, what is that happening to Papa Smurf? It's just a shame that the video for "Perform This Way" couldn't make it onto this disc. But word is that Al is even now working on a video for "Polka Face": his first ever for a polka medley! That means that there will soon be a music video for each and every song on Alpocalypse! Hey, maybe we'll get another release of this album with an updated DVD in the near future. I would certainly plunk down more coin for it!

So I'm gonna give Alpocalypse by "Weird Al" Yankovic my biggest-most possible recommendation: it's well worth buying from a store or from Amazon.com or from iTunes, but I must heartily suggest the CD/DVD combo: it's probably the best single original package of music entertainment that I've come across in a heap many moon. On a scale of 1 to 10, I hereby give Alpocalypse a 27... and 1/2!

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"Weird Al" Yankovic's DISTURBING "Perform This Way" music video!

Here it is! The so very wrong and yet so insanely right music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody of Lady Gaga's hit "Born This Way". Here is: "Perform This Way"!

Weird Al's latest album Alpocalypse streets tomorrow! Can. Not. Wait!

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Don't be crabby: HERE'S that new Lauryn pic already!!

Awright awright... I KNOW that it's been since March that The Knight Shift has had a new photo of my exceptionally beautiful, sweet and inspirational (can't say enough how much she has encouraged me in my walk with Christ) second cousin, Lauryn. Yes in case you don't know already, this blog has an official (more or less) pin-up girl! Okay, maybe "pin-up girl" isn't quite the right terminology, but you get the idea.

So here's a new one, and this one demonstrates that Lauryn looks downright gorgeous no matter what it is that she's doing... including feasting on crabs in Maryland!

Remember guys: Lauryn is a taken gal. And even if she wasn't, you'd have to get through me. You get through me, then you'd have to deal with her father Bob... and you don't wanna mess with Bob :-P

So now that that is done, I've got The Knight Shift's beautiful quotient filled for the next good while :-)

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Bachmann and Romney mad at each other or something about pro-life "pledge"

sigh...

Every time I come across a story like this about how inane our "political process" has become, I can't help but think of that line from Battle for the Planet of the Apes: "Ape has killed ape!!!"

So newly-announced candidate for President of the United States Michele Bachmann is feigning righteous wrath (I know of no other way to put it) at fellow candidate Mitt Romney because he hasn't signed something called the "Susan B. Anthony pro-life pledge".

Here's what the pledge is about, according to the story at LifeNews.com:

The pledge has the candidates promising to support only judicial nominees who won't interpret the Constitution in a way that supports Roe v. Wade, select pro-life Cabinet members on positions affecting abortion policy, supporting legislation to stop taxpayer funding of abortions and Planned Parenthood, and to support a fetal pain bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Y'know, every single item listed here, I agree with. In a lot of ways my personal beliefs about abortion are even more legally stringent. For one thing, Roe v. Wade is atrocious legislation from the bench, and not even something that should have reached the Supreme Court. It should have always been a states issue... and that is why so many abortion "rights" supporters have done their damndest to keep this a federal matter. Because they know that left to the individual states, that abortion would go down in flames in this country. But I digress from my line of thought...

It just seems to me that if a candidate knows what he or she stands for, then that candidate won't need to sign any "pledge" at all. Congressman Ron Paul has apparently signed it. But even if he didn't, it wouldn't bother me: having read his record for myself, I know he has an adamant pro-life position. That's something that can't be "earned" by the stroke of a pen on a pledge that at election time are a dime a dozen.

Here's what I'm getting at, folks: a person's values and virtues, ultimately aren't something that can be defined or not defined by whether or not that person signs this or that statement. That only serves to cheapen the candidate and it even cheapens the impact of such statements when they can be instruments of weight and worth.

And they cheapen us and what we should be expecting and demanding from those who offer to serve us in public office. If I vote for a man or woman for President, I don't want to be voting for a party automaton. I will and always shall vote for a person, not a product. Y'know: someone who can think and hold on to a position and understand why that position is held!

Or maybe I'm just asking for a little too much enlightenment from our political process...

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Remember last year when the planet Jupiter underwent stellar ignition?

Here's a reminder in case you missed it...

Y'know, 2010 - Peter Hyams' follow-up to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - is by now a horribly dated film: the Soviet Union was long gone by the time this movie's eponymous date rolled around, and we've yet to return to the Moon, much less have manned missions to Jupiter...

...but so help me, I positivalutely love this movie all the same. And that scene, where the planet Jupiter is forced by the monoliths to ignite into a new star, is on my very short list of all-time favorite science fiction moments in film. Everything about that scene is orchestrated perfectly together.

Anyhoo, fellow blogger Scott Bradford has compiled a neat list of "past" science-fiction "history". As in, events that sci-fi foretold but somehow never quite seemed to pass (or did they?). Like, back in 1996 when Khan Noonien Singh mysteriously vanished in the aftermath of the Eugenics Wars that devastated much of the world. Or the year before that when Dr. Sam Beckett was forced to use himself as the test subject of Project: Quantum Leap.

Great list, Scott! But if I might make a suggestion, it's probably a good thing that we never got the 1997 that John Carpenter envisioned in Escape from New York...

Yeah, another horribly dated movie by now. But that soundtrack is still a beast! And Isaac Hayes absolutely ruled as the Duke of New York. 'Twould be neat to see that rumored remake finally happen (maybe with Josh Holloway as Snake Plissken)...

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Review of GREEN LANTERN: A mis-focused but fun movie!

Maybe I should disclaimer this by admitting that before going to see the movie, that I bought a Kilowog action figure just so I could have a Green Lantern power ring to wear while watching this flick. Well, that and to also have an action figure of Kilowog to pose on my desk, 'cuz he's my favorite member of the Green Lantern Corps.

But I don't think that would be enough to subjectively color my perception of this movie when I say that I for one enjoyed the heck out of Green Lantern: the live-action adaptation of one of the most classic and revered superheroes in the DC Comics stable, which opens today. But I would also have to admit that this movie is far from perfect, or what it should be at a minimum.

Green Lantern is mis-focused far too much for the film that it should be: about a high concept cosmic mythology. Thor pulled that trick off beautifully when it opened last month. Unfortunately the high concept mythos is there in Green Lantern but doesn't get played up nearly as much as it ought to be. The scenes on Oa, and our glimpses of the Corps and of the Guardians of the Universe and the bits about how green is the color of willpower and yellow is the color of fear, etc... I loved that stuff!! Heck, I could have sat for the entire 114 minutes of this film's running time with nary a glimpse of Earth...

...because we get Earth too dang much in this movie about Green Lantern. That's my biggest beef with this film. And it's sadly ironic: that for a story about choosing to be fearless, director Martin Campbell (who also directed Casino Royale a few years ago for the James Bond franchise) and his crew were afraid to let their baby take off and soar out into the larger universe where Green Lantern belongs.

Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, the human entrusted with the Green Lantern ring by the dying Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison, perhaps best known for playing Jango Fett and his zillions of clones in the Star Wars prequels) pulls off the role admirably, if also with a touch of clunkiness. The thing about Jordan's fear after the freak accidental death of his father, resonated with me with all the grace of a rusted cowbell. It was definitely something that could have benefitted from some rewrite and better editing (or being excised completely). Come to think of it, quite a bit of this film could have been edited away and it would have felt much slicker. I also liked Blake Lively as Jordan's girl/boss Carol Ferris. Tim Robbins also appears as a United States senator and Angela Bassett plays Amanda Waller (a DC Comics character and I'm wondering if Waller's turning up here is helping to set things up for the Justice League movie I'm hearing whispers about, much as Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has been crashing almost all the Marvel movies of late).

But by far the worst of the human characters, and the single most distracting element of Green Lantern, is Hector Hammond, played by Peter Sarsgaard. I don't necessarily blame Sarsgaard himself but... well, there's no way around it: Hector Hammond sucks. He's a character more at home in a David Cronenburg film than in a blockbuster comic book adaptation. But that Sarsgaard plays him like he's channeling Seth Brundle from The Fly doesn't help matters any. At best Hector Hammond comes across as just too powerful for his own good and at worst, like Rick Moranis' nerdy accountant in Ghostbusters after becoming the Key Master. Too much crap like this and not nearly enough of the Green Lantern legendarium...

...but when we do get pure-D Corps, the movie is an absolute hoot to behold. Michael Clarke Duncan is firing on all cylinders as Kilowog, the Green Lanterns' drill instructor. And for Sinestro, I really can't see any better than Mark Strong as the Corps' respected warrior, soon to become worst enemy. That doesn't happen in this film, but the setup is there (stick around during the credits). I'm looking forward to seeing Sinestro going full-tilt against the Guardians in the sequel (which, based on this film I do believe is merited).

The special effects in Green Lantern are CGI intensive, and at times a bit cartoony... but given that this is a Green Lantern movie, I can forgive that and even say that it's about what I expected. James Newton Howard turns in a fine score. Conceptually, the scale of this film is vast. It's just not exploited to the fullest hilt. As I said, Thor made it work and there's no reason why it can't in a Green Lantern movie. Maybe in the follow-up we'll see Hal Jordan hanging around on Oa more and on Earth less (and speaking of Oa, I thought the Guardians were handled magnificently: elder beyond reason and yet a vital and breathing component of the Green Lanterns' realm).

Green Lantern isn't the best superhero movie that I've seen, and it's somewhat frustrating that it's not the film that it could and should have been. But neither is it the train wreck or the bomb that I'm seeing too many other critics panning it as. I went in to see it braced for anything. Coming out, I realized that it is what it is: a fun summer popcorn flick. I won't say that I'm gonna give it my highest recommendation, but I will say that Green Lantern is worth considering plunking down some coin at the box office to see.

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Ya see, THIS is where wacko environmentalism is taking us...

Japanese researchers have announced that they have created a meat substitute... manufactured from human excrement.

The laboratory sample is even labeled... may the Lord forgive me for ever having to write this... "SHIT BURGER".

Darn. This stuff makes Soylent Green sound downright palatable!

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