Man, What a Steaming Pantload!

I'm flying!

Well, hello all! How's things, eh? Come on, don't be shy. Tell me! Wait... you mean this isn't a round table discussion? It's more of a narcissistic monologue, whereby the speaker imagines that everyone is actually interested in hearing him prattle on wearily about himself?

Oh, ok! I'm good at that!

Ah, all the exciting things that have happened since last we spoke! Where to begin!?!?

Got my annual physical today! Woohoo! Actually, I'm a few years behind on the "annual" part. Speaking of "behind", yes, I did get my prostate checked today. Oh, joy! When my doctor got out the latex gloves and the little bottle of KY, I knew I was in for a treat... I asked him, "Hey, don't you have to buy me dinner first, there, big guy?" Needless to say, I'm glad that experience is "behind" me. BUAHAHAHAH!! Oh, and he said everything was fine in there, lol. So I have *that* going for me...

What else? Well, I got my braces fixed a few days ago. Had some interesting dental issues while I was on my 6 week sabbatical. It involved a root canal, antibiotics, and wildly wandering tooth, a couple weeks of snaggle-toothed embarrassment, and several woundings of my pride. Probably good for me, ultimately. Anyway, that's all fixed now, so now I can flash my stunning smile at you all again. Through my webcam, I mean... I will be Skyping each of you individually and smiling at you for a few moments, and then rudely hanging up on you. Prepare yourselves...

A small refrigerator, for a single can of soda! And it's USB powered! Someone needs to win an award for that!

That reminds me, I lied to my doctor today. Twice, actually. First, he asked me if I drank sodas, and I said no. I drink soda maybe once every other week (that's twice a month, for those in the back rows)... not sure why I didn't just say "twice a month"... maybe I thought it was close enough to a "no" to qualify. The other lie I told was that I exercised three times a week. That's a 50% overstatement of the facts. I work out once with my trainer, and will throw the weights around my livingroom once a few days afterwards. So the real answer should have been twice a week...

I LIED!!!! What is wrong with me!!!?!?!? Oh, the shame and the ignominy! See? See the type of openness and soul-bearing and honesty that goes on in this blog? See what I sacrifice of myself to entertain you!?!?!

There's also sole-bearing happening. Here, see the bottom of my shoe? See?

So today was 9-11. Like just about everyone, I remember where I was when I first heard about what happened that day. I was driving into work. By this time, the collapses had occurred a few hours earlier. I turned talk radio on, and they were talking about planes hitting towers and towers collapsing, and the remarkable video of it all. At the time, I thought they meant at the airport, referring to air traffic controller towers. I figured it must have been foggy and maybe a plane missed the runway and hit an airport tower, knocking it down, causing a crash. Honestly, I shrugged and turned the radio off. Bummer, right? Plane crashes suck. It wasn't until I got into work that others filled me in on what actually happened. Weird.

Of course, then I got really into the whole thing, reading everything I could find. And, as many of you know, kinda got into the whole "government is behind 9-11" conspiracy stuff for a while. Thankfully, I found my way out of that mindset.

On a wildly different note, I have a quick summary for you, of Things I've Seen Lately that have either Impressed Me or Disappointed Me.

On the positive side, I watched 3 seasons of Justified, and loved every bit of it... although now that I've had a few days to let it simmer, I'm seeing some of the weaknesses in the series that I didn't see before, being too close to the action. I still love the writing, the acting, the storytelling, the production values, the presentation, etc.... but really, some of the characters were inconsistent. And some of the choices that were made were kind of PC when I think about it. I mean, many of the characters were rather hard-core white supremacists... but other than some dialog demonstrating such in Season One, they toned it WAAAYY down, such that even though many of them had the nazi tattoos and such, they never really did or said anything to demonstrate that they were any different in their beliefs (and thus, their actions) than any of the other non-skinhead characters. I'm not a fan of racism, real or fictional... but I do wonder about those character choices.

Also, man, so many people get killed in that show... I bet Raylon (the lead character) uses his gun more in one episode than most US Marshals do in their entire careers. The dude goes through ammo like it's coffee... Harlan Country must be the murder capital of the country, lol...

OK, so Justified is still awesome, in spite of its emerging weaknesses. Also, I got Star Trek Into Darkness on Blu-ray and watched it again. MAN, what an awesome movie. That movie is like a Master's class on making an action film. They should show that in Director's School (if there was such a thing, lol). So well made, it isn't even funny.

On the flip side, I've seen some real stinkers lately as well. I watched a Jason Statham movie called "Parker" recently with Wifey. Avoid this movie at all costs. It is rank fecal matter on celluloid. Also lame is the film Riddick, in which Vin Diesel tries (in vain) to make a gourmet meal out of baloney (figuratively speaking, of course. In other words, bad script). So sad to see "them" destroy a cool action character like that. I'd elaborate on it, but it would depress me.

Finally, I watched, after all these years, "Chaplin" (1992), in which an Oscar-nominated Robert Downey Jr tries to bring Charlie Chaplin to life on film. I suppose I simply waited far too many years to actually see this one... I was prepared to like it. I was not prepared for the schlocky, hokey, poorly-written, limply-acted 2+hour mess that I sat through. I was stunned! It was shocking how lame it was. Perhaps for 1992, that's what the world considered Oscar-caliber acting and film-making, but it definitely does not stand up today. 1992 was the year Unforgiven won for Best Picture, and Al Pacino won the Best Actor statue for Scent of a Woman. Also nominated for Best Actor were Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven), and Denzel Washington (Malcom X) and that dude from Crying Game. That RDJ was included in that group is kind of amazing to me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his current acting, especially his Sherlock Holmes and Tony Stark... but, man, his Chaplin was so ham-fisted, it was stunning to me. And his accent! OMG his Cockney/British accent was hilariously bad...

So, yeah, avoid Parker, Riddick and Chaplain.

It's been too long since I included a "you can't just walk into Mordor" reference...

Oh, and that fantasy short story collection I'm reading (called Unfettered) has hit two homers at last. After a string of mediocre attempts by many prominent names in the fantasy genre, The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian and Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood are absolutely wonderful efforts. Definitely made the book worth buying. I'm about half-way through the title at the moment, so many more pieces of writing lay ahead. I'll keep you posted, eh!

I think I'm going to hit the road now. Hope you're all doing well.

Adios for now,

Dave the Unfettered