Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "hella"
¤ Usage: "Hella m'ungry, Punchin!"
¤ Origin: Old Valley-Girl speak, or something like that. It was big in the 80s, vanished, and has been reborn largely thanks to Cartman.
¤ Etymology: It's short for "hell of" I suppose, even though no one has ever used that two-word phrase for the purpose that "hella" exists. It's basically a synonym for "very" or "extremely" and is best used to great excess, or for intentionally-annoying sarcastic effect, in much the same way adults can effectively use L33t sP34k.
¤ Notes: An annoying and stupid word, but one you'll soon find yourself almost powerless to cease overusing, if you dare take a verbal step down that mixed metaphor of a road.  Cartman says "hella" about twenty times in an old episode of South Park, driving everyone else crazy, and while it's amazingly annoying to hear him say it... neither Malaya or I can keep from throwing it into conversation when we get a chance.  Mostly to each other, as a sort of "that sounds so stupid it's funny" joke, but we slip up and use it when talking to other people from time to time as well. Much to their horror, I'm sure. -- May 3, 2004

arning: Long blog ahead.

I've been planning to do some reader mail for a few days, but I keep wanting to talk about other stuff, and not getting to it. Today there's a long movie trailer talk below (yes, again) and since I had the Pat Tillman stuff partially written three days ago I really need to post it before it's no longer relevant/everyone forgets who the hell he was in the first place. Which means that the other reader mail will have to wait until next time, or possibly even the May mailbag, which you can expect around Halloween, given my usual mailbag processing speed.

Funny how I can do 3 or 4 reader mails per blog, if I'm in the mood, but it takes me six months to put 10 of them together onto a mailbag page. And by "funny" I mean "sad, and slightly suspicious to boot."

Since you're reading this on Friday, it's obvious that the cable modem chose to cooperate. I shan't rehash the entire saga, as written about in great detail on Wednesday, but suffice to say the cable modem was working, then not working, then working again, with nothing logical about its failures or successes. Sounds like the science of reality TV there.

Anyway, after not working through the splitter at all for about three days, the modem now... works perfectly through the splitter. It didn't, I had to run it straight from the wall and disconnect the cable to the VCR (since we don't have a cable box) to get online, and then suddenly... it fixed itself. Or something.

As Snowy said in an email:

I think you hit the nail on the head.. it doesn't have to make any sense. Shockingly enough, you seemed to get halfway competent people on the phone. When mine went out and I called, I had to put up with someone who was probably in India, telling me to try everything that I already had tried on my own thankyouverymuch, and then of course the techie sent to look at it never showed up. At least the service call ended up being free, even if the techie was pretty stupid -- I told him flat out that the cable modem had died, and it took him an hour of examining all the connections to make a stupid face and go duurrrrrrr your cable modem looks like it is dead.

Oh well, they have to be sure, and at least you can count on them scheduling your appointment quickly, at a time that's convenient for you, and arriving to begin work exactly when they promised they would.

No really, I'm serious.  I swear.

At any rate, Malaya and I have been back to surfing happily, side by side, for the past day and a half, and we've got no idea why it's working now when it wasn't three days ago.  As for the router, which I mentioned yesterday with all the trepidation of a novice lion tamer facing a chuffing female in estrus, it wasn't working normally. I fixed it by unplugging it, unplugging all of the ethernet cables, turning it back on, turning it off again and plugging in the cable modem, and the computers, with Malaya's computer in the first slot and mine in the second one. And when we both started up, we both worked fine.

I hate computer accessories. Why must they taunt me so?

I've also yet to hear from the cable company for our scheduled repair, but that doesn't surprise me at all.  If the damned thing keeps working another day, I guess I'll call them again and report that it is working now, and see if they're still going to send out a repair guy to see if he can figure what the hell was wrong with it.

I'd just wait for him to come as scheduled on the 13th, but they say they charge you $50 for a repair call if the problem is on your end (Which I suspect it usually is, given that most people can't even run Windows Updates or a firewall successfully.) and I want to be sure this "it was broken but now it's working" isn't going to be blamed on me.

In other news, Pat Tillman died in Iraq last week, and was promptly sainted by the media, and other conservative, pro-war forces in the US. After all, after 9/11 he walked away from a multi-million dollar football contract to join the Army Rangers and head off to Afghanistan to hunt terrorists. He's perfect!

Imagine if Pat had survived a bit longer, come home from Iraq, and joined the anti-war movement, educated by his wasted years in the Iraqi quagmire and primed to convince people that we're going about it all the wrong way? He'd be a modern day John Kerry! Not that I imagine too many of the conservatives who were busy sainting him were thinking of that comparison.

Anyway, in my comments on the issue last week, I wasn't unsympathetic to his desires and sacrifice. On the other hand, just because someone means well and tries hard doesn't mean they were expending all that effort on a worthy, just, or intelligent cause. I also speculated that perhaps he wouldn't have been so eager to head off to war if he hadn't been stuck on the perpetually-horrible Arizona Cardinals football team. Snowy mailed in with some comments on the issue, and even some corrections.

First off, I think if everyone stopped and thought about it, they'd agree that Tillman would be pretty disgusted at all the pub his death got. This is the same guy that when he left the Cardinals to join the Rangers (with his brother, I might add), he didn't speak to the media about it... his coach broke it to the media. In an article at the time one of his teammates said he just didn't because he knew the media would try to make him out to be some kind of hero.

Secondly, you wrote:

"I wonder if he'd have been so eager to get out if he'd been on a decent team, or a bigger star player?"

He was offered a 5 year $9 million dollar contract by the St Louis Rams in 2000. This was just after their Super Bowl, of course. He turned it down to stay with Arizona for $512,000 instead. Arizona was his home apparently, he went to ASU and he felt a sense of loyalty to the organization. (one can argue if the Cardinals deserve that, but that's another topic entirely...)

I'll argue it. They don't. Aside from maybe the Clippers and Brewers, there's not a worse-run professional sports organization in any major US sport. The Cardinals owner is as crazy and manipulative and unethical as Al Davis, with the sad fact that he's never won anything on top of it. On with the email though.

I really got the idea that you were projecting your loathing of the war onto him. I think it's turning into a total disaster because they had NO idea what they were going to do after tossing Saddam out, and it's showing. But what I saw here was just someone who walked away from what most people could consider the American Dream, playing in the NFL for big money, and serving his country because after 9/11 him and his brother felt an obligation to do it. To say that he got what he was asking for is a little bit over the top. Neither do I think he should be annointed a saint but it's interesting all the backlash against him when he actually at least had convictions unlike 99% of the spineless athletes out there like Michael Jordan for example, who wouldn't touch a political issue if his life depended on it. 

In short it was just the media looking for a story for big headlines. Projecting it any further is pointless -- don't blame Tillman, he never sought any of the pub and as I opened out with, he would surely be disgusted at the spectacle it caused. I do think it was heroism -- if serving your country and hunting for bin Laden isn't, then what is? What I DO also agree with is that his heroism isn't any different than the other soldiers who enlisted, or made the cut into the Rangers, etc. Lest we forget, we have an all volunteer military.. I really don't understand why people want to hate on the soliders when ultimately they are the only thing that stands between us and them. (overly melodramatic I know, but in the end that's what it boils down to) Maybe it would be one thing if he HAD been all gung ho and Rambo about it, boasting to the media about what he was doing, etc. But he didn't. He didn't even want to talk about it.

I'd forgotten that Tillman had left the Cardinals with zero publicity, and had done no interviews about it, hadn't written a book to cash in on it, etc. He just did what he thought was right. Whether or not you agree with him is up to you. I also meant to say that after 9/11, rightly or wrongly, most everyone on earth thought invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do.  It was only a year later when Bush pulled out of Afghanistan before the job was done, and turned his attention to his long-planned Iraq Attack, an objective that had nothing to do with 9/11 or fighting terrorism, that the support of the world and informed Americans faded away. For all I know, Pat Tillman knew better, and thought going to Iraq was a horrible idea, and was mortified to be stuck in the Rangers and forced to head to Iraq to stir up Arab hatred of the US and create millions of new terrorists and support for the 9/11 plotters. Pat joined up to fight the 9/11 terrorists, but he was a soldier; he had to go where they told him to go and shoot who they told him to shoot.

And that's where I get my "he basically got what he deserved" comment. He certainly didn't join the Rangers to get killed, but come on. Everyone who joins the special forces does it since they want action and will be shooting at other people. You know that they're going to be shooting back some of the time, and you're risking your life being there. You're not asking to be killed, but it's certainly a strong possibility.

On the other hand, some other readers were a bit less nuanced in their feelings about Pat Tillman's demise.

As for Pat Tillman, joining the army rangers sounds like the least useful thing an NFL player could do. Why not donate your $3.6 million to families of 9/11, homeless people, animal shelters, or whatever. It would also save the tax dollars needed to train his ass, send him to Iraq, and ship him back in a box. He can play some computer games if he wants to play soldier.

-Richard

In a similar vein, here's the infamous Ted Rall comic about Pat's death. It was posted before I wrote about Pat, but I didn't see it until a couple of days afterwards.  Various warbloggers and other conservative types have been in an absolute lather of hatred over this cartoon, but when you read it with an open mind, and knowing what we know now, what's there to be so upset about? It says some mean things about Pat, who wasn't a bloodthirsty idiot, but it's hard to separate him from so many others who did what he did (minus the $3.6m part) and are violent idiots. And the "never seen an instant of combat action" hawks who so eagerly sent him off to die.

Now obviously, the people who are really upset by this (rather than those who just use their pretend anger as a political tool) believed everything they think Pat believed, and utterly reject everything Rall is saying in this strip. I don't know how much of it I agree with, but Rall spent months in Afghanistan before, during, and after the fall of the Taliban. He's written books on the subject, done endless research on the issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he knows far, far more about the topic than 99.9% of us. So you can hate him and disagree with his opinions on the issue, but it's sort of awkward to do so when he knows so much more about it than the rest of us.

A day after the comic went up, he blogged about his intentions in it, and defended his point of view pretty well, I thought. After all, he's a political comic. He's not trying to write punchlines; he's trying to stir debate. And he succeeded, perhaps too well in this case.

...Mr. Tillman served an evil president and an evil cause. Anyone with an open mind after 9/11 could easily have learned the truth, that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq occurred instead of a war on terror, not as part of one. A person who planned to risk his life in combat should reasonably be expected to dig a little deeper rather than to fall for Bush's transparent lies. We all judge each other, and while Tillman's decision to sacrifice millions of dollars for his beliefs is admirable, his belief that killing the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan had something to do with defending America was not. At best, Tillman was foolish and misguided.

I've been asked what I would have done, as president, after 9/11. I've written about this extensively, in books and essays, but to summarize:

I would have leaned on Egypt, which receives $2 billion annually in US foreign aid, to track down the masterminds of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. IJ is the group that killed Anwar Sadat, and all 19 hijackers were members. They were also all Egyptian--the 15 "Saudis" merely held Saudi passports. I would have demanded that those leaders be prosecuted for mass murder on 9/11.

Regime change, if necessary, should have focused on Saudi Arabia, which funded the attacks, and Pakistan, which is--contrary to media myth--Al Qaeda HQ. General Musharraf's ISI intelligence agency created the Taliban and spread militant anti-American Wahhabiism throughout South and Central Asia. Get rid of him, and you eliminate funding for the camps in Afghanistan, a nation that was before 9/11 nothing more than a back lot for Pakistan's misdeeds.

Tillman's youngest brother, Rich, wore a rumpled white T-shirt, no jacket, no tie, no collar, and immediately swore into the microphone. He hadn't written anything, he said, and with the starkest honesty, he asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides.

"Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''

...

His brother-in-law and close friend, Alex Garwood, described how Tillman handled his duties when he became godfather to Garwood's son. He came to the ceremony dressed as a woman. Not as a religious commentary. He was doing a balancing act.

"We had two godfathers, no godmother,'' Garwood explained. And what NFL player turned Army Ranger wouldn't don drag to make that math work?

...

"He talked about gays,'' Lyle Setencich, the former ASU assistant said. "He asked me, 'Could you coach gays?' " Setencich told Tillman yes. He could, and he had. He repeated that at the memorial service, televised on ESPN, in front of the sports world, showing another side of a coach, another side of an American hero.

Tillman talked about everything, with everyone. According to the speakers, he had read the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and he underlined passages constantly. Garwood recalled how he'd mail articles to friends, highlighting certain parts and writing in the margins: "Let's discuss.'' A quotation from Emerson, found underlined in Tillman's readings, adorned the program.

Pat Tillman the man was clearly not easily summed up. The complexity of his personality clearly contradicts all of the hero worshiping "he's a warhawk saint" conservative reactions, while also confusing the knee jerk liberal reaction, as typified by Ted Rall's summary judgment.  Pity the real Pat and his funereal got about 1/10000th as much media coverage as his death did, so that most people will never have to spend even a second living up to the "challenge yourself" theme of his funereal, as they think, or rethink, their feelings about the so-called War on Terror, and the Iraq Attack that Pat died in.

he summer movie season unofficially opens this weekend with Van Helsing.

Malaya and I are a lot less interested in it now than we were several weeks ago, and the 80% negative reviews aren't helping much either, but we're probably still going to see it Friday evening. Every review, even the positive ones, says more or less the same thing; too busy, too frantic, too much mediocre CGI, and the guy playing Dracula does much to redefine bad acting.  I suspect Malaya and I will come away with much the same reaction, but in the past we've found some joy in gory, action-filled cheese-fests like Underworld and Freddy vs. Jason, so we just have to go into Van Helsing not expecting a masterpiece or one line of decent dialogue, and enjoy the pretty lights and colors.  Check back Sunday to hear how successful we are.

In happier movie news, there are a ton of cool new trailers out now. The best place I know for them is The Movie Box's trailer page, and while I'm not going to go down a whole long list of them like I did a week ago, here are a few recommendations:

¤ Collateral: Tom Cruise is a hit man trying to wax five guys in one long night in LA. I had no interest in this one pre-trailer, and though I didn't dislike the trailer, my interest in it is still pretty faint. I've never been a fan of Cruise, and though he's not playing his usual smirking pretty boy here, I don't see why he's in the movie. He looks stocky, John Travolta-esque, and he's got platinum dyed hair and plays everything very seriously. Why pay Tom Cruise money for a role a dozen other actors are better suited for? Sure, the movie would make $40m with anyone else, and it'll make $100m with Cruise, but this just doesn't sound like anything anyone was asking for.

¤ Speaking of movies no one was asking for, The Chronicles of Riddick is coming in June.  The #2 trailer is new and improved, and I guess I'm interested in seeing it, but only because I like this sort of scifi/war/action movie. I never saw Pitch Black and since it only made $39m in the US and $53m worldwide, and wasn't a huge hit on DVD, I'm not sure too many other people did either. It's pretty clear that it would never have warranted a $100m+ sequel if not for the success of the Vin Diesel starring Fast and Furious, and it's equally clear that they started working on this one long before Vin's last headline pictures substantially under-preformed.

¤ Shrek 2 has a second, somewhat better trailer out, but it's still nothing to get all that excited about. I hope that every good joke in the movie isn't in the trailer, since 1) that makes actually watching the movie boring, and 2) there aren't really any funny jokes in the trailer. Unless this one has a lot better plot and funnier stuff in the movie than the trailer, it's never going to make a fraction of what the first one did. The first one was a really good movie, got great reviews and word of mouth, plus three years ago fully CG movies were still somewhat of a novelty, and people were willing to see it a second time just for the visual candy. No longer.

¤ There's a new, Internet-only trailer for I Robot, and while it improves over the first one by not including any horrible Will Smith attempts at smirking humor, it's still not any good. Lots of cheesy-looking CGI robots leaping around, with machine guns and people running. This could be any movie, starring any actor, and it's got nothing to compel anyone to see it. And I'm saying that as a person who goes to see damn near every semi-decent action movie. The marketing for this one needs a huge overhaul if they intend to break even on their $100m+ budget.

The only good trailer for it yet was the first teaser one, in the form of a fake, Mac-like ad. It ends with a website URL listed: http://www.irobotnow.com. So if you're like me, you had to wonder who beat them to http://www.irobot.com? Check and see if you're curious; it appears to be a real robot selling company. They list the Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner, and also have pictures of tank-like things that look to be used for mine field detection or bomb disposal.

¤ Lastly, and the best of the lot is The Bourne Supremacy trailer. I saw the first movie in theaters, and enjoyed it enough to blog about it and recommend it. I've never seen it since, letting Malaya (who never saw it at all) talk me out of paying $10 for the used DVD at Blockbuster when we saw it there months ago. Still, I remember aspects of the film fondly, and want to see it again. The action was good; raw and fast, especially the driving and fight scenes, and while much of the plot was ridiculous and the characters did various stupid action movie things, it was a pretty good spy thriller. What James Bond movies would be if they hadn't become such glossy event pictures.

The trailer for Bourne 2 has a tone very much like the first film. Hard, fast, very real stunts and action. Sort of the opposite of Van Helsing/Hellboy/X-men type comic book films, where everything is melodramatic, CGI, you see the fights coming 5 minutes before they begin, most of the action is in slow motion as character dive away from obviously-CGI fireballs, etc. I'm looking forward to the second one, and I've been looking for the first one used at Blockbuster for a couple of weeks, without luck. They had some months ago, when we passed it up, but we can't seem to find any now.

It's funny that the trailer is out now, since just a couple of days ago I was reading the Entertainment Weekly summer preview issue, saw a mention of Bourne 2 which sounded good, and realized that no, I hadn't ever seen a trailer for it, and that yes, it really was coming out in just two and a half months. Apparently they got the idea for it, wrote it, and filmed it quite quickly, and it's coming out very soon after the filming ended, which is one benefit of not doing 500 CGI shots in an action film. Still, not even having a teaser out three months in advance is unheard of for a major film, especially an action one of the type that Internet users like to debate. *cough* I wonder what the delay was?

Also, speaking of Blockbuster. I long boycotted their homogenized evil, but I have to admit that they're getting pretty good at stocking a variety of used DVDs. You'll never find any independent art films or foreign masterpieces, but let's be honest; for all that we criticize stores like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster for stocking nothing interesting or original, how many of us ever watch that stuff anyway?

Blockbuster only just started selling used DVDs in a major way a few months ago, and at first they were mostly $15 or more. Which was ridiculous, when you could usually get them new for $14, 3 months earlier. Prices have come down and selection as gone up since then, and they generally have every used DVD at $13 each, or 2 for $20. And since people seem to be bringing in their old DVDs for some miniscule trade in price, the selection is increasing, especially of movies from more than 6 months ago. Stop in and browse some; once you get past the 40 copies of Gothika and Bad Boyz 2, you might actually find something worth owning.

In one last movie mention, I had a hankering for mindless action movie enjoyment a few days ago while Malaya was out. I couldn't decide what to watch, and scanned the DVD library a few times before Matrix: Reloaded  (M2) popped out at me. I hadn't seen it since right after the DVD was released, and Malaya and I had watched it, dismayed at how lame it was once the whole post-Matrix 1 rush of trying to understand the philosophy of things was past. I still have not seen Matrix 3 again; we saw it opening day in the theater and Malaya hated it. I didn't think it was a good movie, since it was such a limp conclusion to the potentially-brilliant plot started in M1 and sort of continued in M2, but I did appreciate the visceral thrill of the action and hovercraft combat and explosions and such.

So I wasn't expecting much from M2 on my latest viewing, but I hoped I could at least watch the action scenes, enjoy the coolness of the Twins, and get some joy from the endless freeway chase scene. How did it go?  Awesome.

I really enjoyed it, to be honest. The opening action montage of Trinity with the motorcycle jump and security guard fight and leap out the window from the agent was not as overkill-esque as I remembered, though it wasn't exactly pulse-pounding. But the freeway chase and the Twins were still great, the Neo battle in the weapon room wasn't as cheesy as I remembered, and even the super brawl with Neo taking on the 100 Agent Smiths was okay, so long as I didn't peer at the pixels, trying to pick out the fakery of it all. Sure, you can tell that Neo and the Smiths are CGI a few times, and the constantly roving, spinning, flying camera angles are a bit much, but it's not such a bad scene on the whole.

I even enjoyed the good dialogue scenes: The Oracle on the park bench is lovely, the Marovingian and his wife were cool, and Neo talking to the Architect was intelligent and made more sense after seeing M3.

What I was most surprised by was how greatly-improved the M2 viewing experience was by the fast forward button. Skipping every scene in Zion, especially ones with the overeager kid, the Smith-possessed dude, Commander "stick up his ass" Locke, and any old person with white hair and robes pontificating on the nature of man and machine and prophecy took the movie from a D+ to a C. Skipping every bit of dialogue from Morpheus, especially the godawful Zion speech, the passionless Neo and Trinity love scene, and the embarrassing "How is it raining underground and why are we all wearing transparent nipple shirts?" Zion rave segment raised it from C to B. And skipping ever scene where other, unimportant ship captains flap their gums took it from a B to an A-. Watch it again, skip all the crap, and just pretend the whole thing didn't end with Trinity dying so Neo could hack Agent Smith and earn a completely temporary truce with the machines, while changing absolutely nothing in the long run.

Though I've not tried it yet, I imagine similar success could be hard watching the best hour of Matrix 3. The ships flying and Zion squid battles were pretty damn entertaining, after all, and the Neo vs. Agent Smith fight might even be good, if I could just forget how silly it seemed that The One could fly, see through the code of the Matrix, bring back the dead, channel magical power from The Source in the real world, and yet couldn't do anything more than throw telegraphed punches when battling his ultimate enemy.

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