Beav after a night on the town?

Check out the comic strip "Rhymes With Orange" for 12/8/2008 .

Uncle Sam's my boss again!

No, I didn't re-enlist or get a commission as an officer. I am now a civilian in the employ of the US Navy.

Basically the JFCOM folks I was supporting as a contractor loved what I was doing and didn't want to lose me so they offered to transition my contractor position to a GS position. So what does that mean? Well, the pay is about the same and the Thrift Savings Plan has a little better match than I was getting, but the primary reason is that as a contractor I was getting a total of 19 days/year for general leave (vacation + sick) and only 9 holidays/year. Now as a GS, my 11 years prior active duty service counts toward leave calculation (because I didn't retire). So I start out with 20 days/year annual leave + 13 days/year sick leave and 10 federal holidays and every base down day/extra day given to the military. 14+ extra days a year off is worth it I think.

Basically the only thing that has changed @ work is the source of my paycheck...oh, and the fact that I get to go to more meetings now since I can officially represent the gov't. They don't know what they have done...

It's been a while...

Okay not too bad...less than 3 months (barely) since my last post.

Okay, HERE is my Johari quad--it isn't really a square--if you want to add your insights into my personality. (Insights into - isn't that redundant?)

And no, before you even check, obsessive-compulsive/anal-retentive/stickler/picky isn't one of the options.

The Clone Wars...I Surrender

George, what have you done?

I went to see "The Clone Wars" with my 6-year-old daughter this past weekend. It was...okay. That is about as positive as I can get with this review.

And to answer the question above (since Mr. Lucas doesn't read my blog)--"I have completely sold-out. I have milked the Star Wars franchise for so long it is now completely dry, but all I know how to do is tug on that udder so I will keep on a-yanking until I die or the cow does." I understand that it has long since become simply a revenue source for Mr. Lucas...gone are the days when he had a vision and a real story to tell. That doesn't mean I have to like it. With A New Hope, Lucas paid homage to Kurosawa. Now he just pays homage to himself.

Enough with that...let's talk about the movie...

I was gonna write a bunch a stuff, but I found way to many other reviews out there, so I will repost one...

Aug 15, 2008, Eric D. Snider

The only thing slightly mollifying my hatred for Star Wars: The Clone Wars is that it's meant for kids, not adults. It's shallow, cheap, and silly, just like a Saturday-morning cartoon -- which is what it's supposed to be. The Clone Wars will launch as an animated series on Cartoon Network and TNT in October, and this movie serves as a sort of pilot episode.

The story is set between prequels 2 and 3, with the clone wars raging and Count Dooku's separatists fighting the Republic. In this episode, Jabba the Hutt's infant son has been kidnapped, and the Jedi Council tasks Obi-Wan Kenobi (voice of James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) with rescuing him. Why? Because Jabba controls space routes that the Republic needs to pass through safely in order to fight the war. This fact is mentioned at least a dozen times, in case the viewer forgets why the Republic wants to curry Jabba's favor.

While Obi-Wan participates in a less-important subplot that I have already forgotten about, Anakin goes on the rescue mission with his new trainee, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein). Yes, surly Anakin has a padawan! And she's a teenage girl, and she's really spunky, and they get on each other's nerves! And they have to rescue a baby Hutt and take it to Tattooine! It's Star Wars: The Sitcom!

It's every bit as awful as it sounds, and maybe worse. The dialogue, credited to three TV-cartoon veterans, has Anakin and Ahsoka bantering and teasing each other relentlessly, though never in a way that's funny or interesting. It's always drivel like this:

ANAKIN: (as Ahsoka catches up to him in the heat of battle) I knew you'd get here eventually!
AHSOKA: Always in time to save your life!

Repeat that formula a hundred times and you get the idea.
Then there's the fact that Jabba refers to his son as his "little punky-muffin," Ahsoka calls Anakin "Sky-guy", and the battle droids' moronic personalities that turn them all into stooges, and Ahsoka's cutesy nicknames for everything (the junior Hutt is "Stinky," while R2D2 is "Artooie"). There's the ongoing battle scenes, which are completely devoid of suspense or excitement -- partly because we know who's going to survive them (we've seen the stories that come after this one), and partly because they're animated in generic, assembly-line fashion.

And then there's Ziro the Hutt, who is bound to become the most infamous Star Wars character since Jar Jar Binks. Ziro is Jabba's uncle, a jazz-club denizen who seems to be a gay pimp, or possibly a drag queen, and whose voice (provided by Corey Burton) sounds like a combination of Truman Capote and Droopy the dog. He is painfully unfunny comic relief in a movie that's already lousy with shtick, shenanigans, and cartoon lameness.

Say what you will about the Star Wars films, at least they never looked cheap. The Clone Wars looks cheap. The computer-animated faces are expressionless, and the general quality of the art is light years behind Lucasfilms' usual standards. They went with mostly no-name voice actors to save money, hired somebody cheap to bastardize John Williams' musical themes, and slapped together a movie that insults everyone's intelligence. Anakin's conclusion while investigating the kidnapping sums up the entire movie: "This smells like Count Dooku to me." Yes, Ani, it smells like Dooku to me, too.

Grade: D-

Got Drunk?

Recent quote from our President, the leader (sic) of the Free world...


Bush on Economy: 'Wall Street Got Drunk'

Explaining the current economic downturn to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk."

"There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

Bush made the remark at a closed-door fundraiser for Republican Pete Olson, who is challenging Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas). No cameras were allowed in the fundraiser, but an ABC affiliate in Houston acquired the video and posted it on its YouTube page Tuesday. Last week, Bush indicated that he fears YouTube moments such as this making it to the web.

After asking a room of 400 supporters gathered for a fundraiser in Tucson, Arizona to turn off any recording devices, Bush said, "I don't know a lot about technology, but I do know about YouTube."


I don't know what bothers me the most about this. Could it be that President can only relate the current financial crisis in the terms of a drunken fratboy? Could it be that he knows he is gonna say something stupid and wants to make sure the cameras are off? Could it be that, regardless of whether he is going to say something stupid or not, the President doesn't want a record of what he says? Or maybe that he knows more about YouTube than technology, and the economy too, it seems?

Back from Vacation...Back to Reality

Was away...at the beach...but now I'm back.

While on vacation I finally unwrapped and watched the DVD "Across the Universe" which I have had since Christmas. And here's the review...

-----

I remember about 1 1/2 years ago seeing the first trailer for "Across the Universe". My first reaction was something along the lines of "Come on...give me a break...they are going to ruin the Beatles' songs" whilst images of Moulin Rouge filled my head. After looking up the movie online, I realized that there might be a chance that the film might be good...but I was still leary.

So I bought the DVD, but never got around to watching it. I took it to the beach because I knew that I would have time and since it was vacation (time to relax, not worry about things, etc.) if the movie turned out to be drivel and tripe, then oh well, at least I would still be at the beach and could easily make another Pina Colada to make me forget about it. Needless to say (what good is that idiom?), the movie was great. BTW, I did have a couple extra Pina Coladas anyway.

One of my hesitations going in was wondering how the vast scope of the Beatles songbook could be laced together to tell a coherent story. I knew that the background was Brit dude (named Jude, from Liverpool) comes to America, meets Lucy and falls in love during the tumult of the late '60's. So there was an expectation that the movie would be too political, too anti-war, too drug induced/trippy, etc. It was all those things, but I believe in just the right measures. A lot of the movie is told through the lyrics and the accompanying visuals...not a lot of dialog to push the story along. Mostly unknowns in the film, but very good appearances by Bono, Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard.

Not every Beatles' song is in the film, hey, it's a 2-hour film...not a mini-series. For me it is kind of a love-hate thing for me. Having listened to The Beatles' my entire life, their music is ingrained into my being and I don't normally like other people re-doing the almost sacred. Take for example the soundtrack to the decent Sean Penn movie "I Am Sam". Loved the movie, the soundtrack not so much. About half the songs I liked because they were "true" to the original...not necessarily new artists trying to sound like the original, but trying at least to capture the original intent. The rest I could live without.

There are several good re-interpretations in this film however. One is "With a Little Help From My Friends". It starts out as the Sgt. Pepper's' version and morphs into the Joe Cocker version...very well done. But the best by far IMHO is toward the beginning when Prudence (yes...we have Lucy, Prudence, a Sadie and a Rita, along with Dr. Robert and Mr. Kite, more on this after the music discussion) is singing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". Here is my esteemed colleague's take on the music...

"The arrangements are sometimes familiar, sometimes radically
altered, and the voices are all new; the actors either sing or
sync, and often they find a mood in a song that we never knew
was there before. When Prudence sings "I Want to Hold Your Hand,"
for example, I realized how wrong I was to ever think that was a
happy song. It's not happy if it's a hand you are never, never,
never going to hold. The love that dare not express its name
turns in sadness to song." Roger Ebert, Sept. 14, 2007

The film is full of stunning visuals and interpretations (Check out the interpretation of "She's So Heavy"...wow!) However, the joy to be found is the multitude of references to other songs/lyrics/Beatles trivia scattered throughout the film. Of course there are the aforementioned character names...almost all of them are there. Some are a little obvious and you see them coming a mile away. Like when Prudence shows up in Sadie's apartment in NYC. She climbs up the fire escape, enters the apartment and makes herself at home. When Sadie sees her, she asks the other tennants, "Where did she come from?" Jude's reply? "She came in through the bathroom window."

Then there are the other small things that only the true Beatle-phile would pick up on...like when Jude (the artist) is sitting at a table sketching an apple. He seems to have "artists' block", so he takes a knife and cuts the apple in half as if in desperation to get a new perspective on his subject. Yes the apple is a Granny Smith...wonderful reference. We also have Lucy's brother Max (yes, short for Maxwell). When he meets Sadie to rent a room in her apartment, she jokes that he doesn't look like the kind of guy that would murder his grandmother with a hammer. Priceless! I will definitely be watching the film again...I am sure I missed the majority of the references...much like the first viewing of the video to "Free as a Bird".

Okay... a little wandering in my review...but it is good, go get a copy, watch multiple times for full effect.

I'm Back!

Okay, okay...I know. It's been over a year, and this makes only my 2nd post since oh, about Christmas 2006?! I was busy, sort of. Actually I just forgot about the blog as other things arose. It wasn't until I saw Beav at a former co-worker's retirement ceremony last week, and he chastized me for lack of upkeep that I got with it and created a Google account to I could access the blog again. Okay that's done, and here I am.

So what's been happ'nin' with me? I have changed jobs since my last post (and getting ready to change again), now working for a different gov't contractor (soon to become a gov't employee dong my current job) in a different location, but still within commuting distance from home. Good thing now is that my new location is about 1/4 mile from where the wife works, so we now carpool. Not bad seeing as how gas is 3 times what it was when I last posted!

I promise I will try to post at least once a week...maybe more. At least with the election coming up, there is always something I can rant about.

Later!