Books Lying Open
¤ DragonSinger, Anne McCaffrey
¤ Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ The squishy part in the middle.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because early morning visitors require extraordinary precautions.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your auxiliary cat see nothing wrong with sleeping peacefully on your lap for 2 hours, then hissing and trying to bite you when you finally put him down so you can get up and go pee.

ot much of a weekend in these parts. Malaya and I managed to complete most of our Xmas shopping a week or more ago, so at least we weren't out fighting the mobs the last two days. Saturday she was out all day at a relative's place with her parents, and Sunday she had early morning Kali class, so I was home alone quite a bit of the time. Our only real encounter with a crowd came Sunday night, when we went to the Laundromat and found all but one of the normal washing machines in use. This was unprecedented, and we were forced to put all of our dark stuff into one of those huge 50 pound capacity machines that most people use to wash horse blankets and pickup truck bed liners and other such oversized things.

It actually worked out pretty well, since what would normally have taken us 3 machines to wash fit into one machine. Of course the big one cost $5.50, but since the normal ones are $2 a load, it actually saved us fifty cents, while taking 15 minutes longer to render a verdict of clean.  Our real worry was that we'd never get our stuff dry, since dryers take much longer than washers, half of them were in use when we got there, and all of the clothing in the washers was going to need to be dried.

So you can imagine our surprise when we returned after half an hour browsing other stores and found the Laundromat completely deserted, all the dryers empty, and the washers unloaded.  It's actually sort of a mystery; who uses 8 or 9 washing machines at once, and then takes all of the unknown clothing home with them without drying it? It was dark and cold by the time we were loading the dryers too, so it's not like there was a huge field of clotheslines waiting in a sun-kissed meadow.  Imagine just carrying home 8 or 10 loads of wet clothing? Heavy, dripping, and slow to dry? Wherever they went, they went away, clearing the field for us to take our dryers of choice! Such excitement.

¤ As for my usual Monday NFL babbling, I'll keep it short this time. I saw a bit of the late game on Saturday, and was entertained. Sunday I was up late working and slept right through the early game, and when I got up it was nearly 2 and the late game was underway, with Jacksonville leading Green Bay. The early game on TV here was Dallas @ Philly, and with the Eagles requiring 3 crappy hours of football to eek out a 12-7 win over the disappointing Cowboys, I was glad I'd slept through it. I might have gotten up early to watch my old home town Chargers play, but I was glad I missed that one too, when I saw that they beat the hapless Browns 21-0, in freezing cold and snow, and apparently they used the ground game to do it, since Brees threw just 6 passes. In the entire game!  It was obviously a sound strategy, given the outcome and the weather; after all, the Browns' QB threw 28 passes for a net gain of just 105 yards, while SD was 4/6 passing for 83 yards and a touchdown. But I can't imagine it was an especially exciting game to watch transpire.

I'd make some playoff predictions, but there's still no telling who the wildcard teams will be, or if they'll even have any wildcard teams in the NFC. I guess someone has to get in, but with either Green Bay or Minnesota likely to be wildcard #1, and three dreadful 6-8 teams tied for the last wildcard slot, and none of them very likely to win their last two games, they're not exactly deserving.  Luckily for the illusion of parity, Denver and Baltimore have been losing lately, and have fallen into a four-way tie of 8-6 teams for the last wildcard slot. If both Denver and Baltimore had kept winning there might have been an 11 or even 12 game winning team left out of the playoffs, which would have been heartily unjust. Of course now there's almost certain to be at least one 10-6 team left out on tie-breaker, but at least the last two weeks will be entertaining. On the downside, ESPN will now spend countless broadcast minutes tediously explaining tie breaker protocols and displaying the remaining schedules of the ten teams within shot of the wildcard, and worse yet, the increasingly-incoherent Chris Berman will likely take it upon himself to do the explaining.

Next week should be interesting though, not least because I'll be in San Diego, and get to see 11-3 SD @ 11-3 Indy, a game that's going to determine the 3rd seed in the AFC. Of course there's really no telling if the teams will want to win or lose that one, considering that the 5th seed is almost certainly going to be the NY Jets, a team that strikes fear into no one's heart despite their inexplicable 10-4 record, while the 6th seed might be the streaking Bills, or defensive terror Baltimore.  I suppose you always want to win, but even assuming SD and Indy both won their first round games, the odds of them each winning in round 2 at the #1 and #2 seeds, New England and Pittsburgh, thus setting up a SD/Indy rematch in the title game, with the 3rd seed hosting, seem pretty damn low.  Pittsburgh seems a lot more beatable than NE, simply because Pittsburgh can't score any points, but they're both 13-1 now, with NE's only loss at Pittsburgh, so it's not like they won't be favored at home against anyone they play.

It's not a great game by any measure, but it's quick (just one hit per game), and while the outcome is 90% luck, it's mindlessly-addictive. The only strategy I can see is to hit the pengu head as low as you can, while still getting it over the spikes. The reasoning is that you gradually lose forward momentum, so a higher shot will bring you to a stop sooner, as you keep bouncing forward and blasting into the air off of the landmines. Still, it's almost all luck; a high tee shot that comes down right on a mine will go much farther than a screaming low shot that needs a bounce to hit one.

If you want to compete, there's no high score listing, but Mikkel, who sent me the link, said a friend of his managed an 1178. I've gotten a few scores in the 1050 range, but really, it's just luck, since the landmines move every time, and you can't really aim anything other than your first shot. I'd imagine you could churn out a 2000+, if you got very lucky or just tried it for long enough. Infinity is not possible, since you lose forward velocity with each landing, even if you come down right on top of a landmine. You gain height though, and it's fun to get lucky and hit 3 or 4 straight mines, especially if you get a spawn with two of them overlapping, and go 10 or 12 times higher than your visible screen, resulting in your pengu head falling almost straight down, followed by a veritable ocean of pengu blood. 

I wrote a bunch more reviews over the weekend, as well as sorting and captioning a bunch of random photos, so there's a review below, and three more of them waiting to roll in the new year. I think I'll post the photos in Wednesday's blog, and that will be the last blog for a week and a half, since I'm not going to update while I'm out of town for the Holidays. Things will return to normal on Monday, January 3rd, when I'll post some sort of Xmas travel run down, and maybe even a review, if you're lucky!

As for the news:

¤ Check out this enjoyably-vitriolic rant about the use of once-cool rock music in commercials for every piece of shit under the sun.

Maybe rock n' roll finally died, really and truly and once and for all, roughly a decade ago, when Microsoft shelled out a whopping and still quite ludicrous $10 million to Jagger & Co. for the use of the Stones' classic "Start Me Up" for the massive overblown launch of the utterly awful and terrifically bug-addled Windows 95.

And maybe that sad epitaph was writ even larger a few years back when stodgy old Cadillac bought the rights to Zeppelin's manic mega-anthem "Rock n' Roll" for use in hawking the wildly mediocre CTS sedan to wealthy boho yuppies, all of whom vaguely remember inhaling back in the '70s and who might've once believed Page & Plant to be demigods but who now only fantasize about owning a riding lawn mower and having sex once a month and glimpsing the babysitter's nipples through her Avril Lavigne T-shirt.

Funny how the author of the piece reserves his fiercest criticism for the targeted consumer, rather than for the group who sold out, or the ad execs who bribed them to do so, but insulting suburban over-consumers, or Midwestern pick up drivers (elsewhere in the article) is certainly easier to do.

Why should anyone care about the music sold to hawk garbage?

Because make no mistake, there is no longer any even the remotest argument that says cool rebellious artistic integrity still exists as any sort of separate and distinct category from crass commercial whoredom.

Not that it ever really did, I know, but it was a wonderful delusion, wasn't it? Especially in music, especially in rock music, where the universal belief was once held that rock n' roll really could change the world and affect minds and rejuvenate souls, largely by defying and nonconforming and by screaming out against injustice and cube-farm-itis and the very hollow and heartless megacorporate establishments that have now wholly co-opted it and turned it against itself.

This is clearly something for Yuppies to worry about, since those of us in the younger generations grew up with our favorite music being sold and used to sell everything almost as soon as it was written. As such, it's nothing to us. I remember hearing the whining and protesting that commenced when Nike used The Beatles' Revolution to sell shoes, while comprehending none of it. I rather liked the guitar scream at the start of the song, but The Beatles meant nothing to me, and while it didn't make me think for a second about actually buying the overpriced sneakers in the commercial, it was more fun to watch than 95% of the other commercials out there.

And my formative rock music years were in the 80s, when metal and industrial and grunge were still pretty outside; imagine how the kids feel today, growing up with totally corporate bullshit like boy bands and Britney Spears and American Idol? The entire concept of music not being something used to sell a product must be like a foreign language to them.

The Punisher is yet another action-heavy movie based on a Marvel comic book character. The comic has been around since the 80s, and it's a very violent and hard-boiled strip starring an ex-cop Vietnam Vet named Frank Castle. He and his family were killed by mobsters when they witnessed a crime, or at least so the mobsters thought. The wife and kids died, but Frank Castle lived, to be reborn as The Punisher. He lives for revenge and for vigilante justice, and he's not a superhero; he doesn't have any magical or mutant powers; he's just a hard guy with a lot of weapons. Sort of like Batman actually, minus the gothic touches and tool belt; The Punisher just shots or knifes people to death, old school style.

Was the movie any good? Not really. Did it have some cool things and the potential to be pretty cool? Definitely. To the scores. (Click here to see these categories explained.)

The Punisher
Script/Story: 2
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 7
Humor: 5
Eye Candy: 4
Fun Factor: 4
Replayability: 6
Overall: 5

With an improved script and plot, this could have been a really solid action movie, with some quirky sub characters, some unconventional happenings, and some quality action sequences. Unfortunately, for all the good the script did by making most of the characters much more interesting than your usual stock action guys, it threw in numerous utterly boring and predictable events, far too much character-based stuff, and an unnecessarily-convoluted revenge plot with several twists that no one asked for.  Still, the movie had potential, and with a quality rewrite this one could have been a classic cheesy action movie.

More on the film in a bit.

I actually wanted to see this film. While I read a few issues of the comic decades ago, back in the 1980s, I haven't seen it (or any comics) in at least fifteen years, and I didn't have any expectation of quality when news leaked that they were working on a Punisher film. Then when the first teaser images of The Punisher came out, and the unknown star, Thomas Jane, looked like a wimp, I pretty well wrote the film off.  I still watched the teaser trailer when it came online, but since it wasn't very good, I had no hope that the full trailer would change my mind.  Surprisingly, it did, and after my first, "You know, that wasn't bad." reaction, I watched the trailer a dozen more times over the next few weeks, then watched the film clips, and enjoyed them. Could the movie actually be worth seeing? Even with John Travolta as the chief bad guy?  It didn't seem possible, but I wavered on the edge of wanting to see it until the release date was finalized, and it turned out that The Punisher, little-known comic book revenge tale, was opening the same day as Kill Bill Volume Two. Much better known comic book style revenge tale.  Nice job on the scheduling there, kids.

Predictably enough, Kill Bill 2 opened at #1, with $25m, while The Punisher limped in with $14m, and with poor reviews (28%, 41/144 positive on Rotten Tomatoes) it dropped like a stone after week one, finishing the US theatrical run with just $34m. I never saw it in the theaters, largely because it opened against another action revenge flick, I was dying to see Kill Bill 2, and when it got great reviews and The Punisher got the shaft I forgot about paying $8 for the privilege.  I didn't forget the film though, and when the DVD came out I kept my eye on it, and when Blockbuster dumped dozens of used DVDs into their discount bin on a 3 for $25 sale, we picked up The Punisher along with two other titles.

So why didn't it work? It tried to hard, mostly. Plot spoilers follow, but trust me, you won't be watching this one for the brilliant plot. In fact, I gave it a 7 on Replayability solely because the plot is so stupid that there's no way anyone will sit through this film in it's entirety more than once. You'll just skip to the good parts and skip over the crappy exposition and attempts at intrigue.

The basic story is that Frank Castle is an undercover federal officer. He sets up a weapon sale to an underworld guy, gets busted along with the buyer, and as part of his cover gets shot by blanks to fake his own death. Unluckily for him, one of the buyers is the son of a money laundering megacrook, played by John Travolta. The son gets nervous during the bust, pulls his gun, and gets killed. The bust was Castle's last job before retirement, and he heads off after a going away party, happy to be clear of the dangerous business.

Unluckily for Castle, Travolta is not happy about his dead son, and he uses his money and connections to find out that the supposed gun seller was an undercover cop, and he orders his guys to kill Castle at his family reunion, before his wife ups the ante by telling them (while in her black veil, at her son's funereal) to wipe out Castle's whole family. While it's necessary for the plot, Travolta's rage at Castle seems ridiculous. Of course he wants to get the man responsible for his son's death, but Castle didn't pull the trigger, and he didn't entrap Travolta's son. A bumbling sidekick of the family is the one who actually set up the gun sale to enrich himself, and Travolta's son only went along since he wanted to impress daddy. If I were Travolta and I were making up a list of who was most responsible for my son's death, Castle would be about sixth on the list, after the bodyguard who was never supposed to leave the son alone (who Travolta kills), the sidekick who set up the sale, the cops who actually shot the son, etc. I think the plot would have worked a lot better if Castle had actually shot the kid himself; I suppose they wanted to make him entirely blameless in the whole thing to make the slaughter of his family more uncalled for and his vengence more deserved, but instead of creating moral ambiguity (The Punisher is very much an anti-hero, after all.) they just made Travolta's anger seem misplaced.

So Travolta's men head to the Puerto Rican island that the Castle family reunion is on, and they gun down everyone but Castle, his dad, and his wife and kid. Castle and dad are in the house and they fight back and kill a few of the attackers, and his wife and kid make it to a truck and drive like hell to get away. Of course the bad guys see them and pursue and catch and murder them, with Castle arriving a minute too late to save them, but in plenty of time to get beaten up, shot several times, and nearly immolated in gasoline. He survives, of course, after a local black magic guy finds him (Really; though any supernatural element you might have hoped for begins and ends right there.) and a month or so later Castle is back, completely healed save for a limp. He walks through the site of the shooting and finds the Punisher t-shirt his son gave him just before he died, washed up on the shore line. How it got into the water and was still there a month or two later is left unanswered, but since the kid said it was some sort of talisman to ward off evil creatures, you're thinking this will all tie in with the black magic voodoo healer priest. Nope, it's never mentioned again. Remember what I said about the movie trying to do too much?

The action thus far, which is nothing but set up for the second act, has taken at least an hour, which is at least 30 minutes too long. There's way too much time spent with the Castle family before the shooting, there's way too much time spent with the emotionless Travolta pseudo-mourning his son, and there's way too much time spent before Castle starts enacting his revenge.

So Castle's alive and he heads back to Tampa Bay where Travolta is headquartered. Somehow Castle now has infinite resources; he has every sort of gun and ammo, bombs, grenades, high tech military hardware, and so on. We find out later that he did numerous tours with the Special Forces and specialized in anti-terrorist ops, which played perfectly into his career as an undercover guy. It's also meant to explain how he's able to infiltrate and spy and plot his overly-elaborate revenge, but since all of that stuff just seems ridiculous when it happens, it's the movie trying to do too much again.

The entire Tampa section of the film seemed like it was missing a character; some old military buddy to help Castle out. Not a full on sidekick, but someone to give him money, sell him guns and bombs, etc. As it is, with his entire family dead and himself presumed dead, we're left wondering how the hell he gets all the hardware. We also assume he's keeping his survival secret so he can get his revenge without anyone knowing who he is... but then after he mock-tortures the bad guy sidekick, a weasel who promptly befriends Castle since he doesn't like Travolta since he's been turned into a suck ass lackey since he got Travolta's son killed, Castle immediately rips his own gravestone out and dumps it on the golf course Travolta plays on. Where Travolta is the first to see it, despite the fact that it's obviously about noon when he gets to the hole, and every golf course on earth has dozens of groundskeepers roaming around, other golfers playing, etc.

Okay, silly but dramatic, and maybe Castle wants Travolta to know he's coming for him to give him some fear. That doesn't work very well since Travolta spend the entire movie impersonating an android and never changes expression, much less seems sad, happy, scared, pensive, etc. But any chance of understanding Castle's logic ends when he stalks up to some sort of press conference with the chief of Tampa police, and demands to know why his family has been dead for a month and there haven't been any arrests.

This scene is ludicrous on numerous levels, but besides the obvious drawback of blowing his cover and putting his face on the evening news, what the hell is the Tampa Bay police chief going to do about the murder of an American family in Puerto Rico? It's entirely out of his jurisdiction, and it just reminds us that we'd initially expected to see several hundred federal agents swarming all over the scene of the Castle family execution. After all, Frank Castle was a highly-decorated ex-soldier, and an important federal agent who was murdered several days after he retired. It would be a huge national case, and nothing for the Tampa police to be involved in, unless they were cooperating by providing foot soldiers for some larger investigation.

After the chief says, "Now now Frank, I can see that you're upset." Frank goes off on a little rant about, "Upset? I used to get upset when I was stuck in traffic, or when the Yankees won the series..." The writers obviously thought it was clever, and it's not bad writing, but it seems entirely out of character since thus far Castle has been almost monosyllabic, and why on earth is he wasting time and exposing himself by arguing with the impotent chief of police anyway? The scene concludes with... Frank just walking away.

From there the movie really goes oddly, since we're expecting him to start punishing people. Travolta's character, for starters, and maybe his family too, since Castle is supposed to be all hardcore and burnt out and suicidal with his family dead. He drinks and sulks all through the rest of the movie, but since he's hardly any more expressive than Travolta, you can't distinguish his "Sorrow at everyone I ever loved being gunned down." from his "What did I have for lunch yesterday?" expression. Thomas Jane's lack of acting ability isn't a real problem though, since no one wants him acting anyway. This is an action/revenge picture, after all. Emotions are for the weak, damnit. Quit sitting in your second story garage/apartment and start killing bad guys, damnit.

More unnecessary characters come in with his three wacky apartment mates. There's the battered woman/waitress, played by Rebecca Romjin, in utterly-inexplicable casting. She's never seen in any sexy clothing, never seen other than full dressed, and never really even in makeup. So why hire a supermodel/actress if you're going to put her in baggy dresses and have her play ugly? Aren't there real actresses out there who could have done the role with real emotion for about 1/50th the price?  Besides Romjin's non-romantic interest, there's a fat guy who appears to be some sort of chef, at least some of the time, and a troubled geeky little guy with a lot of facial piercings, ten thousand dollars in high tech equipment in a $200 rathole apartment, and severe lingering childhood issues. None of these characters are even a tiny bit plausible, but they're much more interesting than the sidekicks in most movies. Unfortunately this is just more overwriting; with the script working too hard to make the diversions fun, while neglecting the main plot.