Letters to Holly

Friday, May 5

Bonjour, nouveau fille

We host the French visitor starting Sunday. We have been given no idea how fluent she is in English, and I know enough about my French to know that no French person will understand it. The guy organizing the travel group’s Brevard stop has given us very little to go on. Valerie’s email from about two months’ back showed an ability to write English alright, but that’s a far cry from being able to speak or hear it properly. I fear we’ll make this part of her very long trip a bad experience. We’ll spruce up the house a bit Saturday and work on the yard, but my French isn’t going to get any better than it is right now.

I finally finished the new mix CD for Your Sister. Moody Boys is filled with emo and hard rock – Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Velvet Underground, James, Metallica, and one horrible rap song she fell in love with a couple of years back.

If you’re bored and want a variety of reading material, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. Publishers provide free issues of their wares, specially marked for the occasion, to any and all while supplies last. But here’s the catch: You have to go to a participating comic store to get them. I know Comicopia is a few blocks up from Fenway, and Newbury Comics at Harvard might offer them too. Not all comics will be worth the trip, but you should find one or two that are eye-opening. The notion is only a few years old and was crated and scheduled to coincide with movie adaptations of comics. I think the first was the same weekend as when Spider-Man opened. The first big comic movie this year, X-Men 3: Last Stand, is a few weeks away.

Picture of the Day
Stay cool, baby.

In the news
During WII, the U.S. offered Britain a deal to supply them with $21 billion worth of material. Britain also agreed to give up rights to radar and jet aircraft technology. This week, the last payment to the U.S. was scheduled, and Britain’s war debt will be history.

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According to a new AP-Ipsos poll, conservatives are driving down Bush’s approval numbers. The new news catchphrase is November Massacre, the fear that the midterm elections could heavily favor the Democrats in a nationwide no-confidence vote.

Wednesday, May 3

Ahoy, matey!


I didn’t mention it yesterday, but the full trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is also online now. We didn’t see the first film until it was on DVD, and I think we rented it out of passive curiosity. We were shocked by hog big a movie it is. It’s long and it covers a lot of territory, but it’s also an old-fashioned kind of film. I can easily see this playing as one of the old network affiliate Saturday afternoon films. If it was black and white with Eli Wallach and David Niven, it would fit right beside Tarantula or The Car.

We saw a lot of Jack Sparrow wannabes at comic conventions before we saw the film. We just bought the DVD last week and haven’t watched it, but I think we’ll see this new film in the theatre. This will make I think the ninth film involving Orlando Bloom and swords. Those films make money. Orlando Bloom should make buddy movies with a sassy, sword sidekick. Maybe one voiced by Chris Tucker. Hard to believe that of all the roles he’s played, Johnny Depp will almost surely be remembered best for playing a pirate modeled after Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew. And Keira Knightley is one of those gals I catch myself staring at. Yeah, we’ll see this not long after it opens.

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I got home yesterday and inexplicably felt a compulsion to do yardwork. I raked out a corner of the yard that never gets sunlight and hauled the leaves to the treeline. I thought about raking up the dead leaves inside the treeline, but I’m fighting a forest. So I’ll only concentrate on the lawn area and let the bugs and critters have the ground cover. It didn’t take long at all to rake the corner, and as soon as I finished I wanted to go inside. I made teriyaki chicken and mashed potatoes. I hadn’t made those in ages, and it was one of my top three foods growing up. I need to ask my mom how she made some dishes from my childhood ‘cause I’ve been craving Mom Cooking for awhile now.

In the news
Moussaoui’s jury gave him life in jail instead of the death penalty. My understanding of the case suggests he was tried for not telling anyone about the 9/ 11 plot. But that would run counter to the first Miranda right of remaining silent. If he had any ties to the hijackers, then I think he should die, but it seems the jury wasn’t convinced he was anything more than a lackey desperate for attention.

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Lucas announced that the original versions of the first three Star Wars films are coming to DVD. Han shoots first and the Ewoks have their original suck-ass “jub jub” song. I have this trilogy in three forms: the originals on VHS, the special editions on VHS, and the special edition on DVD. Unless something astounding is on the new DVD set, I ain’t getting it.

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You can find almost anything online. Today, I saw a link to Jim Jones’s final sermon before the Jonestown camp committed suicide in 1978. It’s an audio file about 45 minutes long. The group debates the suicide pact and then begins poisoning themselves. Long story short: He convinced his people that any effort to escape Jonestown alive would end in death so they might as well go out the way they choose. We get to hear his messiah complex in full flower and his followers’ desperate loyalty.

Tuesday, May 2

Look! Up in the sky!


The full Superman Returns trailer went online yesterday, and it looks brilliant. Action, humor, romance, the duality of Clark and Supes, the raw evil of Luthor. They wisely used the John Williams theme and hired Kevin Spacey to replace Gene Hackman. Now I love Hackman. Hackman can do very little wrong and he was dead solid perfect as Luthor, but that was thirty years ago. To restart the franchise, they had to get new blood. I'd love to see cameos by the surviving 1970s cast – Hackman, Kidder, Perine – but this new cast ain’t bad. As with Reeve, they went with a virtual unknown to wear the cape. They again confound me with a Lois that isn't immediately lovely; I have yet to see a Lois on TV or film that was anything other than "eh." Kate Bosworth is supposed to be a decent actress but I could have sworn Hugh Laurie ("House") was going to be Perry White. Not that Langella is a bad pic, but Laurie would have been yet another bit of brilliance. The guy who has to carry the film as the movie star is Spacey, and he'd clearly got the chops for it. I haven't seen him this openly malevolent since Seven. But, truly all a Superman movie needs is the recognizable elements and great special effects. I don't see anything here to complain about so far, and only the most bitter of asexual, nitwit comic nerd trolls would bitch about the film at this point.

Long story short, I cannot wait to see this film.

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A snippet of the new X-men movie was played on “The Tonight Show” last week. I missed it because I don’t watch Jay Leno. Nor should anyone with a working forebrain. The clip revealed something not well known about the film: It includes Sentinels. These are the evil giant purple robots that target our heroes. They’ve been around since the mid-1960s, and X-Men fans have been clamoring for them to appear in the films. But no official word mentioned them at all. The clip also included the fan-favorite maneuver called a Fastball Special, wherein the strong guy picks up the short guy with hand claws and throws him at bad guys. These two things within one thirty-second clip officially make me go nuts to see the film.

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The teaser trailer for Casino Royale is online. What little we see looks pretty good and nicely low-key compared to the production excess of the last few Brosnan films. I like the direction they’re going here in restarting the franchise, but Brosnan deserved a shot at this new take. I spy some parkour, the French urban extreme sport of running and jumping from building to building. I thought it had peaked about three years ago, but here it is.

Thank God, Hendersonville got a stadium-seating theatre so we don’t have to drive all the way to Greenville for these movies.

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Your Sister left work lat last night, and we ate at Juan’s place. With the days remaining before Valerie arrives, I need to work on the lawn a bit so we don’t look like hicks. Juan closed his restaurant Monday to attend the May Day immigrant march. My new favorite theory demonizing illegal immigration: the Vatican won’t denounce it because Mexicans spread evil Catholicism into the States.

In the news
Virtually all soda sales to schools will stop following an agreement made between the American Heart Association, the largest national distributors, and The Bill Clinton Foundation. While I can understand the good intentions, the free-market side of my brain flinches a little. I needed that soda to get through class some days. If health matters are such a concern, mandate sport activity. Everyone gets to pick three sports they want to try, and team size dictates who gets on what team.

Kibbles

Kathy and Travis couldn’t make it for the wrestling night, and they missed almost two full hours of Spirit Squad joy. I recorded some of it for them for when they come back.

We’re thinking of asking Dan to look at our back deck and recommend a good treatment for it. He’s a handyman by trade and could do it for us if we hired him outright. I’ve treated a deck before, and it’s a mess. I think we’d save ourselves a mess if he does it, schedule allowing.

We’re five days away from our French house guest. I’ve tried to bone up on the language, and I can easily see his relying on charades and sketches to converse. Who knows, maybe we can offer her viewings of DVDs and TV shows she’s missed while traveling.

Your Sister is shockingly interested in Poseidon, the remake of the 1970s Poseidon Adventure. She didn’t know until last night that the original film (itself based on a book) was a theatrical release; she thought it was TV film. How Kurt Russell expects to better Gene Hackman is beyond me. It’s not possible. Not possible.

The fourth Harry Potter book continues the trend of each installment bettering the previous ones. Goblet of Fire is darker and the kids are acting their ages, meaning they’re bratty and snippy. I’m already about 450 pages into it.


Picture of the Day
New and approved Muslim sports outfits for women. This is no joke.





In the news
A report says the Vatican may allow the use of condoms, but only for married couples with an HIV-infected partner. This would make sense for the Vatican since the initial prohibition of birth control was so the old Holy Roman Empire wouldn’t lose taxation on the populace. Less people = less income.

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An MSNBC story says that when the administration outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in order to get back at her husband (whose federal report denounced the Africa-Iraq nuclear supply story) they undercut their ability to track Iran’s nuclear program. She was working on that as she quit after becoming a public figure. In other words, we could have a much better notion of what Iran is really capable of had they not ruined her professional ability out of spite.

Monday, May 1

They Are Definitely Giants

Much to my surprise, that was the most rocking concert I've been too. Yes, Nine Inch Nails was the loudest, angriest, and most body-mangling sonic assault one could find outside a soccer stadium. But They Might Be Giants were jamming. They wielded rock guitars the way I work a custom-made character in a PlayStation 2 wrestling game: We cannot be defeated. They ran through some songs off Flood, their biggest CD, and tore out some new songs that also got the crowd into a frenzy. Asheville's The Orange Peel proved to be a standout venue. It's set up to be nothing more than a performing club as they have no chairs, a long bar, and fantastic bathrooms. This was easily the best $20 I've spent in a long time. Your Sister could not make it, and Travis accompanied me. He was a bit more reserved in the concert while I was bouncing around and singing at the top of my lungs. And at 33, I awoke the next morning to find myself in agony. Unlike the slew of younger, smaller folk, I may be unsuited for such activity. At least on a flat wooden floor for two hours. TMBG only stopped to breathe before their two encores, and they commanded the audience form a conga line to end the show. Most of us did. Those who chose to be unfun sticks were run over. I shocked the bartender by ordering an apple juice. I already had a beer at dinner, and I wanted something with lots of sugar. Travis, who was buying, tried to laugh it off, and I eventually asked for a CapriSun and a bib. No, not really.

Your Sister and I managed to burn most of Saturday in Brevard's antique and salvage stores. I found a place that featured an old rotating comic rack. The books inside it were of mixed quality, but I was more interested in the rack itself. I've been dying to own one for years. Not just any rotating rack, but an actual store-used rotating comic rack. Before the days of comic stores, kids had to find that rack in convenience stores or grocery stores. Now you'll probably find a comic or two there on a bookshelf next to muscle and car magazines. The owner wouldn't part with it though, and now I have a new object to obsess over. We wound up the night with The 40 Year Old Virgin (a surprisingly substantial comedy) and Requiem For A Dream (90 minutes of pure despair).

The NFL draft was this weekend, and it featured some surprises. The first pick was a defensive end out of N.C. State, and the Heisman-winner, running back Reggie Bush, went to New Orleans as the second pick. The current NFL commish is leaving after 17 years of running the league, and if I were him, I'd leave on a high note: I'd force a New Orleans and Green Bay trade. New Orleans sends Bush to the Packers. He'll become the focal point of a new offense and play in front of perpetually sold-out crowds. In return, Green Bay sends Brett Farve to New Orleans. He plays his last season in front of a hometown crowd, he gets to play indoors, and his presence sells tickets in an area needing economic support. Plus, his competitive presence inspires a perennially stinky team. Green Bay traded away their best receiver to Denver for another draft spot, and Farve lost his best target. With the trade, they escape the dilemma of potentially benching its star player to give their second-string QB some needed game time. No one loses, and the commish goes out as a hero to New Orleans and Green Bay. No reason why this shouldn't happen.


Sketch Day
The Holly Solo picture is going along well. The scan is made up of three individual scans. The feet look a little small.



In the news
Colin Powell asserted this weekend that he pushed for more troops when we went into Iraq three years ago. This brings another former military voice against Rumsfeld.