Shots Across the Bow

This review contains spoilers so, be warned.

Short version: Beautifully filmed but deeply flawed adaptation of Moore's masterpiece.

8.5 out of 10

My thoughts:

Iron Man rocks. The story works; the acting is excellent; the effects are spot on.

Robert Downey Jr does a great job at bringing the flawed genius to life, taking him from playboy to hero without caricature and Gwyneth Paltrow makes Pepper Potts stand out as more than just a hero sidekick. Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane is passable, but I was a bit disappointed with Terrence Howard's Jim Rhodes. He seemed too bland.

I was a little bit surprised they let the origin story run for fully half the movie; it never seemed to drag, but it did make the second half of the movie feel a little rushed.

While some reviewers are saying that the movie makes it seem like America is responsible for all the wars in the world, I didn't see that at all.

The special effects were excellent. The blend between model and CGI was nearly seamless as far as I could see.

We went to see it at the Millertown Cinema by Knoxville Center Mall. The 10:05 showing was nearly empty.

The Samuel L Jackson cameo was perfect,and sets up the sequel,as well as an eventual Avengers movie.

We went to see Vantage Point Monday night and let me tell you, if you want to have a theater all to yourself, go see a movie on a Monday evening.

Short version: Imagine the plots and subplots of an entire season of 24 edited down to under 2 hours. It would make about as much sense as this movie does. Wait for cable.

Long version: The plot tells the story of an assasination plot against the US President, played by William Hurt, who is about to sign a multi-national treaty that will supposedly end the threat of Islamic terrorism. The gimmick is that the story is told over and over through the point of view of five major characters, including a small girl, a Secret Service Agent, and an American tourist.

Using a non-linear format for telling a story is always a risk. The audience may become bored by the repetition or they may lose concentration and miss a key element. Or the writer may overly rely on the format to try and build suspense. Writer Barry Levy does a good job changing things up enough to avoid the first two issues, but falls prey to the third, ending two scenes with the Secret Service agent, played by Dennis Quaid, seeing something, yelling "Oh my God!" and running off screen. We end up having to wait through another retelling of the story from another point of view before finding out what it was he saw.

But there's a bigger problem. When you tell a story using a non standard format, the story has to be strong enough to be served by the format, not the other way around. In the case of Vantage Point, the format overpowers the story. As we move back and forth through time, subplots and characters are introduced to serve a plot element, then disappear without explanation. By the end of the movie, there are enough abandoned plot threads left dangling to weave another full movie, and sadder, that movie might prove to be the more interesting of the two.

Despite that, the movie is moderately entertaining, and the cast, with the exception of Matthew Fox, gives solid performances. Sigourney Weaver stands out in a smaller role as a cable news producer covering the story. Matthew Fox could have been replaced by Matthew Broderick and it would have been more believable.

I was in Best Buy the other day, looking for a mount for the TV I bought for the living room. My middle son just signed a lease for a new apartment and he's moving out. The problem is the boy plans on taking his 50" TV with him. Talk about ungrateful! Anyway, I was in need of a new TV to replace his and I found a great deal on an Olevia 42" 1080p TV at WalMart for under a thousand dollars. I grabbed it but they were out of mounts, so I was off to Best Buy, and while I was there, I looked at a few Blu-ray DVD players. I was reluctant to purchase a Hi Def DVD player until the format war between HD and Blu-ray was over, but now that Sony has won a very expensive victory (while Sony hasn't officially said anything, the rumors are that they gave billions to the movie industry to get them to support Blu-ray) I thought it might be time to consider buying.

Nope.

There's still a fly in the ointment. You see, Blu-ray today isn't the end standard. Sony was rushed by the arrival of HD players, so they cobbled together a standard that kinda worked, and rushed it out to market. And by kinda worked, I mean didn't really work at all. Most of Blu-ray's touted advantages over HD, like dual layer dual sided storage and built in Java support, failed miserably, especially in the first generation players. Sony had significant technical difficulties in manufacturing the Blu-ray discs themselves, to say nothing of obtaining the blue lasers that their technology was named for. But, taking a page from the Microsoft marketing manual, they decided that market share was more important than product quality, and they shipped what they had.

Here's where it gets fun.

Sony is getting close to perfecting their Blu-ray standard, which they now call Blu-ray 2.0, and guess what? Blu-ray 2.0 movies will not play on Blu-ray 1.1 machines. For those of you keeping score at home, all BluRay drives shipped to date are Blu-ray 1.1. What this means is that sometime in the next 12-18 months, your $700 Blu-ray machine will be obsolete.

That's just a bit too quick for me. I'll wait until they get the format locked down and I can buy a player and not have to replace it within a year or so.

And I really don't expect the movie studios will be releasing movies in Blu-ray 1.1 and 2.0. If they did, that would reduce the demand for Sony's new product line, and after spending billions to win the market, I'd expect Sony to demand that the studios release movies only in the 2.0 format. In fact, I'll make a prediction right now. Some of the most eagerly anticipated next generation releases are Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. I'll bet that you won't see either one of these series released until the 2.0 standard is released, and that they both will be released exclusively in 2.0.

Any takers?

SEMI-SPOILERS BELOW!!!!

In my review, written in the wee hours of the morning, I mentioned almost in passing that Cloverfield was the first attempt by Hollywood to deal with the reality of terrorism in America. And that it happened in just the same way that Hollywood dealt with American worries over nuclear war, with a monster movie.

This makes Cloverfield, albeit totally inadvertently, kind of important.

Let's go back a couple of decades to the Cold War era, to 1956 and Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Directed by Don Seigel from a story by Jack Finney, (a heck of a writer by the way. Check out "I'm Scared" if you can find it.) Body Snatchers is all about paranoia. People are being replaced with aliens from pods and the aliens are identical to the original, except that it's just a masquerade. The pod people are taking over hiding under the cover of our own friends and neighbors. While Seigel and Finney both denied any deliberate subtext to the story or the film, the obvious parallels with both creeping communism and raging McCarthyism are too strong to ignore. For a story to be effective, it must touch people, and the only way to do that is to play up the things that move them emotionally, the things they love,and the things they fear. The Cold War was a time of deep paranoia and uncertainty, and Body Snatchers played right into that pre-existing feeling.

While Don Seigel set out just to make a good scary movie, he managed to touch on the worries and fears that preoccupied Americans in the 50s, so it's no wonder the movie was so popular.

Now let's look at J.J.Abrams, and Cloverfield. Like Seigel, Abrams claims to have nothing more on his mind than making a good old fashioned monster movie. Well, like we just saw with Body Snatchers, that doesn't mean that there isn't anything more going on under the surface. When you look at the sheer randomness of Cloverfield, combined with the physical devastation, and the utter helplessness of the military, you can't help but see a comparison to the events of 9/11. In fact, the one shot of the Empire State building collapsing, sending a thick cloud of dust roiling towards the camera, could have come from the shots captured on 9/11.

The threat of future terrorist attacks is too real and too big for our minds to deal with. We either reject the possibility out of hand, (read Democrat), or we downplay it, gloss over it by indulging in meaningless actions to try and prevent it from ever happening again (read Republican). The nasty fact that there are people out there who want to hurt us and destroy us, and that those people may have access to nuclear weaponry is our new national nightmare. Nobody wants to talk about it.

So here comes Abrams who taps into that underlying fear with a movie about a random, inexplicable attack on New York City. Whether it was deliberate or not,he tapped into the underlying fear of our time. The cool thing is that by transferring that fear from the real to the unreal, he makes it easier to deal with. We've seen New York utterly destroyed now. We've seen our worst fears realized, even if only in the movies. By experiencing the worst, even vicariously, we remove some of the fear it causes.

I still don't like the movie,and won't bother seeing it again, despite all the little bits hidden here and there in the film, but I can understand how and why it works for so many people.

Think Godzilla meets the Blair Witch. Now toss in the motion sickness inducing first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

That's Cloverfield, all 85 minutes of it. Counting the credits.

Nothing new; nothing original, nothing we care about.

The only thing I want to know is what kind of camera the guy was using. Not only did it have an awesome battery life, but it was the most rugged camcorder I've ever heard of.

Spoilers below.

After watching this movie, I'm thinking that the folks in Sweeney's chair were grateful when he slit their throats so they wouldn't have to listen to anymore of Depp's singing.

OK, cheap shot, I admit it. Besides, as one of the folks I went to see the movie with remarked, do you really want a maniacal barber to have a lovely singing voice?

A few things you need to understand before going to see Sweeney:

First,he's not a nice man. In fact, there's not really a nice man in the movie. For some reason, it's become popular to write plays, musicals,and movies without a protagonist. As a simple minded sort, I like to have somebody in the movie I care about; otherwise I don't care about what happens to them at all. I'm not engaged.

Second, it's more an operetta than a musical. When you think of a musical,you think of a story moved along by the occasional song. Sweeney Todd is the opposite, a long musical number interrupted by bits of dialog. This isn't a bad thing, just something to be aware of.

Third, it's dark, which fits a movie about obsession and revenge. The colors are all washed out, with the exception of blood, and the yellow hair of Johanna. It reminded me of an earlier Johnny Depp, movie,From Hell in it's relentlessly accurate portrayal of the quality of life in London at the turn of the century. Most folks take clean modern cities for granted; it would be nice if they realized the level of technology it takes to support hundreds of thousands of people in a few square miles and not have them wallowing in their own filth. Unfortunately, that light takes a long time to dawn.

Fourth, for those of you unhappy with the fate of the dog in I am Legend I just want to point out that the shepherd in Mrs. Lovett's shepherd pies is purely of the human variety, so rest easy on that score.

With the above out of the way, Sweeney Todd is an excellently crafted, well presented tale of revenge leading to madness and tragedy. I hesitate to call it entertaining, just as I would hesitate to call a public execution entertaining, but both hold that same squeamish fascination. However, unlike Saw and Hostel where the exploitation of our own sick voyeurism is it's only reward, Sweeney Todd uses it to force us to look at ourselves. While none of us, I hope, has resorted to the measures Mr. Todd chose, we have all harbored a grudge far longer and with more intensity than the offense actually warranted. In that way,we can all identify to a certain extent with Mr. Todd. While we never like or admire him, we might just recognize a bit of him in our own hearts.

Johnny Depp does a wonderful job with Sweeney, including singing the part. I do admit that there were times I expected to see him drop into Captain Jack Sparrow a few times, he never did, maintaining the malevolent madness of Sweeney throughout. I was bothered by his hairdo, however. Would you let a guy who looked like that anywhere near your hair? Sasha Baron Cohen was a jarring note in an otherwise well cast movie. Yes, he's talented. He's also annoying. Helena Bonham Carter was effective as Mrs. Lovett, baker of the worst meat pies in London, and would be lover of Sweeney Todd. It was interesting to see her, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall all together again. I kept waiting for Ron Weasley to sit down in Sweeney's chair or for Harry to stop by for a meat pie.

The main reason I liked this movie is it stayed faithful to the source material. There was no happy ending grafted on to make Hollywood happy. Sweeney didn't go off into the sunset with Mrs. Lovett to raise the little boy as their own son. He dies, she dies, everybody dies.

Which fits this story to a T.

First the movie. It would have been nice if director Francis Lawrence and screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman had paid more attention to Richard Matheson's novel. Then I wouldn't feel like I just wasted an hour and a half and $25.00.

I Am Legend the novel is a study of what is normal and abnormal in society; I am Legend the movie is about Will Smith proving he can handle extended monologues just as well as Tom Hanks.

He can't.

But that may not be entirely fair, since Hanks was given better material to work with. Protosevich and Goldsman thoroughly scrubbed the story of all intelligence, grafted on a happy ending,and totally missed the point of the novel.

The CGI special effects weren't all that special either. The zombies were unbelievable, and I mean that literally. I've seen more convincing CGI animation in a video game.

And what was with the dog? 6 billion human beings are wiped off the face of the planet, and we're supposed to get choked up over a dog? Please.

Other than that, the movie was ok.

Now,about the IMAX. In order to see the movie in IMAX, you have to pay an extra $4. I remember seeing my first IMAX movie in Gatlinburg. The screen wrapped around us almost 180 degrees, and curved over our heads as well, immersing us in the experience. That's the IMAX I remember.

This IMAX is just a bigger screen. I knew I was going to be let down when, shortly before the movie started, an audio recording came on, telling us how wonderful the IMAX experience was going to be.

Yeah, an audio recording.

Listen, if you want to impress me with a video medium, don't just talk about it over a darkened screen; light that baby up! If you want to show me something, don't talk me to death before hand, show me!

Adding to my disappointment was the lack of care shown by the Regal Pinnacle staff. The upper left corner of the screen showed obvious staining. It looks like maybe some water damage or something. As the movie started, you could clearly see that insects were caught either on the projector lens, or the window in front of the lens. Watching them crawl over Will Smith's face did sort of give the whole thing a drive-in kind of feel, but at $12.50 per ticket, I'm not looking for a drive-in atmosphere.

Clean it up, Regal.

If you haven't read the novel, and don't mind a tacked on happy ending, the movie is worth seeing at a matinee, or when it comes out on cable. But skip the IMAX Experience. It's not worth the $12.50.

Rhymes with "I'm Pissed."

Why take an excellent short novel, one with some excellent characterization and a compelling storyline, then tack on a completely superfluous ending that has nothing to do with any of the above?

The movie did a great job of conveying the fear and claustrophobia of the novel,right up until the last 3 minutes, when writer/director Frank Darabont stole an ending from a bad episode of The Twilight Zone.

I'm not going to spoil the ending here, but for any of you that have read the story, think of the most trite, implausible, hackneyed and manipulative ending you could come up with to tack on the end of that story,and you'll know exactly what to expect.

Spoilers below the fold

"My thirst has been quenched." Alex Fardon, 1980

Twenty seven years ago the assignment in my senior English class was to write a tall tale. On the day the assignment was due, we all turned in our papers, then the teacher decided that since tall tales were an oral tradition, he was going to read them out loud and get the class to critique them. As the teacher went through the stories, Alex would voice his opinion by saying, "I'm still thirsty. I want more."

Then came the last tale, a story of an Irishman who fell into a bottomless pit. He fell all the way through the entire earth,plunging through Hell and wrassling the devil himself before rocketing up into the sky on the other side of the earth and plunging into the sun. He fell back to earth in China, and they've called themselves the Celestial people ever since.

When the tale was done, the class was silent, waiting for Alex to weigh in.

"My thirst," he said, "has been quenched."

Tonight, I know just how Alex felt. I've been to several concerts this year, and I've been disappointed with most of them. I went into the Blue Man Group show with high expectations. I'd seen the concert video of their previous tour, and I was eager to see what was billed as a brand new show. Unfortunately, it wasn't a brand new show, just a rehash of the original tour. That wasn't altogether bad, because the show was great; I was just expecting something new. I also went to see Mannheim Steamroller at the Tennessee Theatre. I love the Fresh Aire CDs so I was really looking forward to seeing them performed live, but so much of the performance was electronically augmented and canned that it was very difficult to determine which performances were live and which were the product or pre-production, and that took something away from it for me.

But tonight was different. Tonight, I went to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra and my thirst was quenched. The group's website says that founder Paul O'Neill wanted to create music that impacted on all of the senses, and brother, let me tell you that he has succeeded. The show features a cast of 18 (my best guess as they were constantly moving, entering and exiting the stage as they performed their parts) extraordinary musicians and vocalists along with enough lasers, pyrotechnics, lights, and amps to keep the most jaded arena rock fan happy. The light show was dazzling, which helps explain the 7 or 8 semi trucks I saw parked outside when we drove up. As extensive as the light show was, it all served the music, instead of distracted from it,as is common with other concerts. Every movement of every light was timed to the music and played to the mood or the lyrics of the song.

At one point, they even made it snow in Thompson Boling Arena!

Real, frozen water, snow, falling from the rafters.

Awesome!

As was the music itself. The first portion of the concert was a rendition of the Christmas Eve story from their first CD. In about an hour and fifteen minutes, they told a story centered around two visitors to two bars on two different Christmas Eves. The music ranged from classical to bluesy, from raucous rock and roll to powerful ballads, but the pieces and themes all came together to tell a single story of love, hope, and the redemptive power of God. It was wonderfully refreshing to hear a Christmas concert that actually celebrated the birth of Christ and what that event meant to the world, and one that did so in an entertaining and uplifting way. The band's musicianship is simply incredible, as is their passion for the material, and their love of performing. Our seats were close to the front, and I could see both the effort and the joy of the performers as the show went on.

The second half of the concert is more akin to a standard concert set, with the band tearing through several of their more popular songs, including Christmas Canon Rock, Queen of the Winter Night, and Wizards in Winter (the song those people in Ohio used to program their Christmas lights), as well as some non Christmas related songs, influenced by everyone from Metallica to Queen. Again, the musicianship was incredible, but this section lacked some of the intensity of the Christmas Eve story since it wasn't as thematically focussed. This may actually be a good thing since it gives the audience as well as the band a chance to let their hair down so to speak, and just have a good time. And a good time was exactly what we all had.

The band played a solid two and a half hours without an intermission, and that was just enough. Obviously they've never heard the adage,"Leave 'em wanting more" because they gave us everything we wanted, and then they gave more. After the show, the band came out to meet with their fans and sign autographs.

All in all, it was by far the best show I've been to this year. It surpassed all of my expectations, and I will be going to see them next year, if not sooner. They will be coming back to Tennessee twice more. They'll be in Memphis on Dec 20th, and Nashville on Dec 30th. This concert is well worth the drive to either location, and I'm strongly considering going to the Nashville show.

Yeah, it's that good.

Yes, I wrote the tall tale that quenched Alex's thirst. It was the first time I realized that I had the ability to entertain people through my writing. So Alex, wherever you are, thanks. I'm glad you liked my story 27 years ago, and I hope that your thirst, as well as that of everyone who reads these words, remains quenched.

French fries hand cut when you order them. Hamburgers made with fresh ground beef, cooked on a griddle and nestled between to butter grilled buns. Hand dipped milk shakes with real ice cream and milk. All served hot and quick at Gus's Restaurant and Affordable Catering on the Market Square.

Since I had an hour or so to kill between the trial and the Commission meeting, I decided to take the rare opportunity to eat on the Market Square. I chose Gus's because I was in the mood for a good burger, and that's exactly what I got. What I didn't expect was for Charlie to grab a potato and start cutting up my fries right then and there. No bags of frozen, batter dipped fries here; just good old potato fries that only need a hint of salt, and a splash of ketchup.

The burger was hot, and fried up just right. Now normally, I like my burgers grilled, but if you're going to fry it, it is essential to do it right. If your griddle isn't hot enough, you end up with a flaccid beef slug that just sits on the bun, oozing grease. A properly fried burger has a slightly crunchy outer layer that seals in the juices, and helps it stand up to the mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato. Gus's place gets it right.

I finished off the meal with a real chocolate milkshake that finished me off.

Now I need a nap, which is perfect timing, because the county commission meeting is about to start.

8 out of 10

When I was stationed in Orlando going through Nuclear Power School, just off base there was a drive in, called the Colonial I think, that used to show triple features every weekend. Three movies, one B-grade and two D or worse grade movies (Anyone see Star Crash, starring David Hasselhoff, mercifully hiding his face in a gold mask for 90% of the movie? I have. ), all for $8 a carload. At the time, I was driving a 1970 Cadillac DeVille convertible, and we would load up 4 couples and spend the evening at the movies. $8 to get in, and $20 or so for concessions made for a very inexpensive evening out, which worked out well for us, since we sure weren't getting paid much during training. I remember one particular evening, the three movies all featured the same scene, and I don't mean that they were written similarly, I mean the exact same footage was used in all three movies. We were surprised when we saw the scene the second time, in a completely different movie, but not as surprised as when it came up a third time.

Then again, we only paid $8 for three movies.

You also have to remember that when you went to a drive in, you didn't always see much of the movie. Drive ins were social places, where you went to see and be seen, or not seen for the lucky ones who actually had dates. (Don't worry, I'll get to Grindhouse in a minute. Just setting the stage, so to speak.) Movies tailored for the drive-in/grindhouse crowd had to be short on plot and long on action so distracted viewers could pick up the threads of the story whenever an explosion or particularly gruesome mutilation interrupted their, err, social activities.

When I was stationed in Great Lakes for boot camp and 'A' School, a bunch of us would take the train in to Chicago on the weekends, and hang out downtown, checking things out. One particular evening, we went to see a movie and saw Avenging Angel. (Law student by day, hooker by night.) The theater was somewhere near downtown, and was the first and only true grindhouse I'd ever been in. The crowd was in to the movie in a big way, yelling at the screen, talking to the characters, and swallowing the most unbelievable plot contrivances because it was fun. Nobody cared if it made sense or not.

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have brought that sensibility back to the movies with Grindhouse, a big, dumb, loud movie with no socially redeeming graces, and it is about time somebody did it! For anyone who has missed the $30 million dollar marketing blitz from the Weinstein brothers, Grindhouse is an homage to those cheaply produced drive in movies of the 70s and 80s where production values and plot continuity were considered secondary to explosions, blood, gore, and of course, bare breasts. They're the kind of movies Joe Bob Briggs would love, and in Grindhouse, we get two of them crammed into just over three hours of entertainment, along with some phony trailers of movies that are just begging to be made.

The first and best of the two features is Planet Terror, an over the top zombie flick that manages to include nearly every B-movie cliche from the hero loner with the secret past to the psychotic doctor to the stripper, pardon me, go go dancer, with the heart of gold.

Oh yeah, and some damn good barbecue.

The second feature, Death Proof, about a psycho stuntman who kills pretty ladies with his car, isn't quite as good, and tends to drag in spots. For a splatter flick, there's an awful lot of scenes of people sitting around and talking. I have a feeling Tarantino did this on purpose though, because B movies often had to pad the movie to get to an acceptable length for the distributer and it's a heck of a lot cheaper to film dialog than action sequences. If a movie was running short on time, and the budget was gone, the director could write a talky scene or two to get to the magic 90 minutes or so.

Both films are artificially aged, with scratches, smudges, and so on, which can be distracting for the new viewer who isn't used to how bad old movie theaters used to be. I have a feeling this may be off putting for many audiences, and I'm certain it will negatively impact DVD sales. After all, who wants to buy a crappy looking movie after spending a couple of grand on an HDTV? It's the visual equivalent of playing a vinyl LP to an audience who've only heard CDs.

I haven't said much about the plots, mainly because there's not that much to say. Movies like this aren't about plot, or character, or CGI effects, or anything like what we've become used to seeing. Instead, they are about provoking a visceral reaction in the audience. I'm not talking about an emotional reaction, but almost a pre-emotional reaction. We're not invested in the characters; they barely exist except as a vehicle for mayhem and maulings. In most movies, this would be a flaw; in these movies, it's a feature. We're not rooting for the humans to win out over the sickos because the humans are the good guys, we just want to see a pretty lady with a gun for a leg lay waste to the zombie horde.

If you go into Grindouse with the attitude that you're going to see a triple feature at a drive in, you'll have a blast. If you're looking for Pulp Fiction, or Sin City, you'll hate it.

I liked it.

It was the scene during the council meeting where Theron rapes Queen Gorgo for the second time. A voice rang out in the theater, "He must be a Democrat."

OK, it was my voice.

The comparisons between Greece during the Battle of Thermopylae and today's society are inescapable, and friends and neighbors, we don't come off so well. Can you name any national leader that would not have knelt to Xerxes? Any at all? And I'm not limiting this to American leaders. Is there any leader in the world today that would have had the guts to stand against overwhelming odds, knowing that they would go down in defeat, but doing it anyway simply because it was the right thing to do?

Anyone?

And for the sake of argument, should such a person exist, could he be elected to any position of authority?

The answer, my friends, is no.

Compromise is the name of the game today. Bipartisanship is the way to go. Forget principles; the only principle that really matters anymore is "Go along to get along." The only time our "leaders" stand on principles is when they want to raise the asking price for selling out those principles.

Fanboys in the audience may clap and cheer at Leonidas' courageous stand with his 300, but as for emulating him, forget about it. They're too busy being XBox heroes to be bothered doing it for real. It's much safer that way. If you look to 300 to see a reflection of ourselves, check out Ephialtes the traitor. Ugly, useless, and weak, his is the face we would see reflected in that mirror.

Can you imagine what would happen if that battle took place today? The Greeks were encouraged by the brave men who died at Thermopylae. We'd see the same thing and cry for mercy. Think of the headlines:

"Our troops routed at the gates!!!"
"President's policy leads to disaster!!!"
"Foreign juggernaut is unstoppable!!!"
"Give peace a chance!!!"

The talking heads on TV would go on and on about how we should be trying diplomacy, and that the enemies who slaughtered nations weren't really bad guys, and that we should try to understand them instead of killing them. The minority party in Congress would be busy opposing the plans of the majority, whether for good or ill, because being in charge is much more important than petty concerns like defending the nation against an enemy.

It's depressing, the depths to which we've fallen, and sickening to realize how much farther we can fall. Despite my crack at the beginning of this post, it isn't just the Democrats at fault. It's all of us. We allow it to happen. We watch as our schools are corrupted and do nothing. We watch as our politicians steal the country blind and do nothing. We watch as faceless nameless unelected bureaucrats defile everything this country was founded upon and we do nothing. We live in a country where the police can break into your home and shoot you dead for no reason, and get away with it because they were following proper procedure.

Now think about that for a minute. The police have a procedure that allows them to kill you in your home for no reason, and the penalty they face is suspension, or maybe the loss of their job. And we do nothing about it.

So what will we do when the war comes to our gates of fire? Nothing. And if any among us try to do something, we'll label them as "racists" and "nativists" and revile their names, then pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves on how very civilized we are. But we aren't really civilized; we're decadent, and the root of that word is decay. We are less than we once were, and sadly, greater than we will ever be again.

This rambling rant is just my way of circling around a very personal question as my son prepares to ship out to Iraq later this year. It's not a question of whether we are fighting the right opponent; we are. Islamofascism isn't limited to the Taliban in Afghanistan; it exists in Iraq, and Syria, and Iran as well. They are all fronts in the war against terrorism. The real question is this: "Is my son fighting to defend a country that is no longer worthy of defense?"

I just don't know anymore.

Short version: It's a great show, but I've seen it before.

For the long version, click for

Short version: I bought a Zune.

I like it.

Longer version:

I've been wanting to get a music player for over a year now, but couldn't find one a really liked. During my days of dreaming about winning the World Series of Poker, I thought about getting a pair of Oakley Thumps, but I could never bring myself to pay $250 for sunglasses, and the limited capabilities and memory of the mp3 player didn't do much for me either. I also didn't want to get an iPod because, well, it's an apple. I was leaning towards a Creative zen, similar to the one I got for my son this Christmas when I saw the Zune.

I liked the 30G of memory, and the larger screen, and yielding to a long delayed impulse, I got it.

Installation was smooth on my laptop, taking about 20 minutes in total, including searching my computer for all its media files and ading them to my library, then automatically syncing the library to the Zune, which leads to my first quibble.

What if there are files on my computer that I don't want synced? What if I have those kind of files? You know, the ones I wouldn't want just anybody seeing? Not that I do, mind you, I'm just asking is all. How do I get them off my Zune once they're there? Deleting files from the Zune is not a very intuitive process; there's no DELETE function on the Zune itself. Instead, you have to delete the file from your library and resync. Of course, that doesn't help you with the files the come preinstalled on the Zune. Since they aren't part of my library, I have no idea how to remove them from the Zune.

Moving on, once the Zune is synced and charged, you're ready to listen and play your files. This couldn't be easier. The interface is very easy to navigate, and the large screen keeps everything clear. I could easily move through and pick out what I wanted to hear. For me, the only problem is that there is no STOP button. Once a song starts, you can pause it, but you can't stop it except by choosing another song, or a video, or by shutting off the Zune. This may be a common feature of MP3 players, or a simple function of my ignorance due to the total lack of documentation that comes with the Zune. In either case, a plainly accessible stop button would be nice.

The Zune software installed on my laptop takes care of all ripping chores and moves very quickly. I can rip a CD to my library in a couple of minutes or so, and then the next time I sync or charge my Zune, I'm good to go with my newly ripped music. Downloading is also a breeze. The Zune comes with a free 14 day trial subscription to Zune Pass, the Microsoft version of NetFlix. For $15 a month, about the cost of a CD, you can download all the music you want from their website, and it will play on your Zune or your computer for as long as you keep up your subscription. These downloads do not include burning rights, so you can't make a CD copy unless you actually purchase the song. You have the option of either using the subscription service, or purchasing entire albums or individual tracks. A full album in most cases will cost you about $11 bucks, with individual songs going for just under a buck.

And that brings us to the nitty gritty; DRM. The Zune has implemented a DRM mechanism that some folks don't like at all. First, the Zune is not compatible with earlier Microsoft DRM schemes, so songs purchased using those schemes will not play on the Zune. To a new adopter like me, this is no big deal, but to somebody who has already invested a few hundred bucks in music, this could be a deal breaker. In order to play their paid-for songs, they'll have to convert them to the mp3 format, or burn them to a CD and re-rip them.

On the other hand, Microsoft did make provisions for some file sharing. Zunes have built in Wi-Fi, and can share files back and forth with other Zunes within about 30'. DRM protected files can be shared with other users, who have three days, or three plays of the tune before they have to purchase it for themselves.

Now, I don't have a problem with any of this. I believe in paying a fair price for what I get, and I don't see any reason why people think they should be able to get music for free.Using the Zune Pass, I can listen to hundreds of songs a month, and if I like them, I can buy them and burn them to a CD cheaper than I could buy the CD without knowing what's on it.

This is a win-win; I get more music cheaply, and the artist and the record company still make money.

Now, there is a small fly in the DRM scheme. If I load content that is not copyrighted on my Zune, and share it with other Zunes in a protected, ie wma format, the three day three play limit is still in effect, and there's no key to turn it off. Of course, the quick fix to that is to load non protected material in a non protected format, like mp3.

Pretty simple.

As it should be clear to almost anybody, the DRM scheme in use on the Zune can be easily bypassed by virtually anybody with a computer and an internet connection, but it makes it very easy for those of us who want to be honest to do so, without extorting ungodly amounts of money from us.

Now, you may have noticed that I haven't talked much about the video side of the Zune. There's a good reason for that. AS far as I can tell, the Zune is very limited in the number of video formats and codecs it will support. None of the videos on my laptop, no, not even those made the jump. Included in the Zune help is a link to a webpage with instructions on how to download Windows Media Encoder, and use it to convert your video files to the appropriate format and codec. I ran through a couple of videos I got from You Tube and the process worked fine, and the resulting videos played very nicely on the Zune screen. I would be happier if the Zune supported more video formats, but that's going to be a simple fix for Microsoft to make.

I'm in the process of taking my Firefly DVDs and converting them for my Zune. Now technically, this is a copyright violation, since I have to defeat the copy protection on the discs to do this, but I'm pretty sure that copyright laws exist to protect the content, not the format, and I bought the content fair and square. Fair use has always allowed for people to make archival copies, and that's what I'm doing. By the way, the Zune software makes it very easy to disable video file sharing, and I did so.

All in all, I'm very happy with the Zune. The most glaring deficiency is the lack of support for more video formats, and that's one that I hope will be addressed by a firmware upgrade in the near future. It's a shame to have that nice big screen with little to show on it. The integration of the Zune with it's PC software and the Zune Marketplace, especially with Zune Pass, is excellent. Every album I've looked for was available, from early Bill Cosby to the Kingston Trio, to John Mellencamp's latest.

Buff up the video, and I'll be totally satisfied.