…even after the trek to Chesterfield yesterday! So, for lunch my coworkers took me to Michael’s in Maplewood where I had an awesome gyro samdwich! Everyone else also enjoyed their meals, and Angel LOVED real tatziki instead of the stuff that comes from a plastic container from Shop n Save.
Then, for dinner Andy and I went to Canyon Cafe at Plaza Fronetnac, where I had this lovely “2 drink limit” maragrita, that I swear was pink the last time i had it, but oh well….
Brooke is going to be updating her blog a bit more often. As in. Every day, and hopefully with a picture! You should check out her blog for details!
She also has a picture and description up from her car over the weekend, which had its windows broken out by hooligans…grrrrrr… Thankfully, car insurance paid for most of it and it’s all taken care of now, but when you’ve got multiple weddings to attend over Memorial Day weekend, having to deal with such things is an annoyance.
So…..I woke up Saturday morning to my driver’s side windows both being smashed out. Our cars are always parked on the street, so it’s really not all that surprising, but not how I expected to spend my Saturday morning. So, I made the police report, settled everything with the insurance company, and have new windows, but this morning I had to drive to Chesterfield to have an estimate made of the damages to the inside from the glass and rain. As far as I know, the punks (or “knuckleheads” according to the officer who took my report) have been apprehended and are being charged with breaking the windows out of multiple cars.
As far as this blog goes, my plan is to try to update more frequently since I feel like I consume an awful lot of internet information without putting anything back out there, so I’m trying to even out my kharma a little. And I needed another good reason to purchase our Nikon D60 and this seemed like a good enough one! Comment often and enjoy!
If you haven’t seen any Terminator movies, or Transformers, this probably won’t amuse you. But if you have, it’s pretty hilarious… 🙂
The first “Terminator” movie came out in 1984 and helped to make James Cameron a household name. It would be seven years before “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” would grace the screens, again helmed by James Cameron, but those seven years were well-spent, as “T2” is largely considered the best movie in the franchise (and one of the best sci-fi movies of all time). “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” didn’t come until 2003, almost seen as a re-boot of the franchise, but this time without James Cameron directing. This one was decent, but probably the worst of the three.
Which brings us to 2009, and another re-boot of the franchise. “Terminator Salvation” takes place in 2018, after the machines under the control of Skynet had nuked the planet and started eradicating the human race (which the first three movies were trying to prevent). Basically, the first three movies centered around machines from the future sending back Terminators to the past to kill off John Connor, who would grow up to lead the resistance against Skynet. Well, all the details surrounding this fictional history are kinda complicated, but long-story-short, this most recent movie has jumped to the future where the actual resistance is occurring, giving us an idea of who this John Connor really is.
This movie, “Terminator Salvation,” probably falls somewhere between “The Terminator” and “Terminator 3” on my list of best movies in the franchise. It does many things well, including special effects and acting (especially in the case of Sam Worthington, a relative unknown that actually does a better job than Christian Bale, in my opinion). The story itself is mediocre, however. John Connor isn’t quite in control of the resistance, yet, but has many followers and commands much respect for his knowledge of the machines and Skynet. He learns that he and Kyle Reese (his father…as explained in the first movie…) are being targeted by Skynet, so he needs to find Kyle and save him. Marcus (played by Sam Worthington) is a new character that knows little of his past but, as we later find out (and as is implied in the previews), is actually a cyborg of sorts created by Skynet. John doesn’t trust Marcus, but from his previous experience with Terminators, knows that there are more to the machines than others think. John and Marcus, thus, work together to rescue Kyle from Skynet.
That whole “rescue” part is, by far, the best part of the movie. The whole first half sets things up, but pretty slowly. Once Marcus and John go after Kyle, we start seeing more Terminators, we get more action, and, in a particularly badass way, we get to see Arnold Schwarzenegger. How was this done? Well, advances in digital effects now allow a VERY convincing digital form of circa 1984 Arnold pasted on top of another actor. You have to see it to believe it. It’s uncanny.
Other than that, though, the movie is just “okay.” The effects are good, the acting is good, the dialog could be better, the story could be better.
In short, better than “Wolverine,” not as good as “Star Trek.” See it if you’re a fan of the franchise, but as you may have noticed from the description(s) above (if you even made it that far…), if you haven’t seen the previous three movies, “Salvation” won’t make much sense to you.
“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
This article in the New York Times outlines what an Explorers group (a Boy Scouts of America co-ed affiliate program) are doing in Imperial, TX. What is it these Explorers are doing? You know…camping, backpacking, getting leadership skills, etc?
Give up?
Being trained to fight terrorism and serve as border-patrol agents.
We’re talking 14- to 16-year-old kids using air pellet guns to learn to chase “down illegal border crossers” and to experience “more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out ‘active shooters,’ like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses.”
Now, I realize that not all Explorer posts are doing this, but at least according to the article, while there are other Explorer posts more focused in science, aviation and medicine, “more than 2,000 law enforcement posts across the country are the Explorers’ most popular, accounting for 35,000 of the group’s 145,000 members.”
I just generally don’t like it, but I’m not sure I have a valid reason. Many of the boys in my Boy Scout Troop growing up were the kinds of kids that went hunting with their fathers every Fall and didn’t generally go on to big name colleges, let alone graduate school. Law enforcement is certainly a viable career choice and well-suited to people that have gone through the Scouting program, but it somehow feels like these kids are being used as a breeding ground for more law enforcement agents. There are all kinds of other activities that the skills from Boy Scouts can be very useful, including leadership and survival skills, as well as the ability to cooperate with other people for common goals. These are abilities that lend themselves to a wide variety of jobs, not just law enforcement or military.
I guess I’d just like to see a bit more variety. And the idea of having 14-year-old kids learning to take down someone crossing into the United States illegally seems a bit excessive.
For some new changes and hopefully more frequent posts!
So, you may remember awhile back when we picked up an Acer Aspire One netbook to replace Brooke’s current laptop. Well, that thing didn’t work very well…it couldn’t play an MP3 without skipping, couldn’t stream audio or video from websites, and just seemed overly slow overall. We returned it to Wal-Mart a few days after giving it a try, vowing to look into other options. Well, we later tried a few other netbooks that other people had, or at other stores, and decided that the one we had purchased earlier was just a lemon and it was worth getting something else.
Well, this time, we got a Dell Inspiron Mini 10. This one has nearly all the same features as the Aspire, but it has a 10″ screen (and a better keyboard, I think). This one is way better and does nearly everything it should. I’m not sure it streams video at full-screen mode perfectly yet, but it certainly does it better than the Aspire we tried earlier. Brooke took a picture of it with our new camera for your enjoyment.
Speaking of “new camera,” we picked up one of those, too. 🙂
We bought a new point-and-shoot last year to replace Brooke’s old one, but we still haven’t been happy with it for certain applications. My Dad is something of a photography aficionado, and Brooke took a photography class back in high school, so we’ve both been exposed to the wonders of SLR photography. It’s something we’ve both wanted for awhile, but they haven’t been that reasonably priced until recently.
This little bad boy is a Nikon D60 dSLR (we already had the cat…not anything new there…). We bought it as a bundle from Sam’s Club, so it came with a pretty decent lens that had VR (or “vibration reduction”) built-in (as Nikon, like Canon, builds that into the lens, not into the camera body). It’s a 10 MP camera and has all kinds of bells and whistles that I can’t begin to understand…but it seems to take decent pictures…
Brooke’s planning on re-doing her blog more along the lines of what The Pioneer Woman does (her most recent idol…), doing something involving photos taken on a daily basis, and sometimes taking pictures of her various food-based creations. We’ll see if it happens or not. 🙂
Leonard Nimoy, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto were on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live on Saturday night.
Enjoy. 🙂
It’s no secret that I’m something of a “Star Trek” fan, and I’ve been looking forward to this movie ever since the first few images started coming out over year ago. Well, the day finally arrived and I saw it last night at 10:00 on a glorious IMAX screen…and lemme tell you, that’s a heckuva way to see it for the first time… 🙂
Basically, for those that don’t know, the story to the new movie is a prequel that goes back to the first voyage of the Enterprise, and how the “gang gets together.” In many ways, this movie actually mirrors the first feature film, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in that the majority of the movie is spent getting everyone together to combat some evil that’s going to destroy Earth. The villain, Nero (Eric Bana), is good in his role, but it actually seems that he’s something of a minor character: someone that’s only in the movie to serve as a reason to get this origin story completed (as opposed to “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” where it was much more of a personal interaction between the crew and a particular villain). Don’t get me wrong: Eric Bana does an excellent job, but he may have been a touch underutilized.
But I digress. J.J. Abrams has put together a “Dream Team” of sorts to put together a compelling story that tells the tale of the Enterprise’s first mission. In particular, the back story of Spock and Kirk, their first meeting, and how they came to respect each other and solidify a friendship that would last 3 television seasons and over 6 films. The actors given these iconic roles pulled off the task admirably, making me forget entirely that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy weren’t the primary players in these roles (although, Nimoy does play Spock in the movie…). It’s said that Chris Pine (who plays Kirk) hadn’t really watched much “Star Trek” before being given the role, and it probably did him well because he made Kirk his own character: one where we could see a glimpse of what Shatner did for 3 decades, but something fresh and new. Zachary Quinto (who plays Spock) pulled it off beautifully, to the point where I couldn’t imagine anyone else taking on that mantle.
As the previews suggest, the effects are nothing short of spectacular. ILM did them this time around (they haven’t since, like, Star Trek: First Contact) and it really shows: I knew it was all CGI, but at the same time, it looked real enough that I was completely immersed in the experience. The ship battles were reminiscent of the new “Battlestar Galactica,” with much closer those of the ships, making things seem quite a bit more chaotic than in traditional “Star Trek” shows and movies. Personally, I find this to be a welcome change.
The movie was also genuinely funny. Not that it was trying to hard (as some lines from the Next Generation movies seemed to be…), but actually laugh-out-loud hilarious. The required “I’m a doctor, not a physicist” and “I’m not sure she can take anymore, Captain!” lines were in there, as well, and the audience cheered each time. The interactions between Bones (played by Karl Urban), Spock and Kirk made me think [DeForest] Kelley, Nimoy and Shatner were delivering them – the delivery, and the writing, were that “spot on.”
Another aspect I liked about the movie was the sense of scale. Because of all those close-up shots of the ship, you got the impression that these things were huge. We didn’t see much of the interior of the ship, besides the bridge, the hallways, and sick bay, but engineering is the one that stands out as getting a massive overhaul. Rather than a room with a blue-ish warp core in the center, now we’ve got a sprawling, factory-like room full of knobs, bells, whistles, etc. You know, like a modern aircraft carrier would have. It just seems a bit more realistic that a room of that size would be required to actually run a star ship.
The thing fans will have to wrestle with is the complete re-writing of “future history,” in that this movie essentially turns Star Trek Canon upon its head. I’m not really sure how else the movie could have been done, personally, so it doesn’t bother me so much. They do address the change(s) in the movie, suggesting “alternate realities,” etc. If you see it, and know anything about Star Trek, you’ll know what I mean…
In summary: the movie is badass. Go see it. I don’t care if you don’t like Star Trek or not. It’s just that good of a movie.
Think of it this way: “The Dark Knight” got a 94% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 264 reviews) and “Star Trek” is currently sitting at 96% (out of 219 reviews). Whether you like science fiction or not, it’s a great movie and a great re-imagining of the franchise.
