I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: Adventure is worthwhile - Aesop
The counter says that 2415988 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
I think it’s time that the TV gods establish a new channel for all of us - Michael Jackson TV (MJTV) which will give us 24/7 coverage of his life, his times, his drug use and his death. We’ll be able to watch every breaking story, conflicting accounts which detail every move, moment by moment of all the non-experts out there. We’ll hear from everyone who ran into MJ during his 50 years and we’ll know about every non-event that happened to him during that same period leaving us plenty of time to talk to all of our friends, neighbors, relatives and enemies about where his funeral will be held, or not, what super drugs he used and his various aliases. All.the.time!
Wait...we have that now and on every channel!
Apparently two-thirds of us think it’s too much: SF Gate
Surprise! The second half sucked too - maybe even more than the first half!
Just to save you all the time it will take to read another lengthy review, let me just say that the earth was saved.
You know that I can’t just leave it at that don’t you?
I’d like to state clearly here that science had no part in the writing of this “sci-fi” slop. The writing made no sense. It has basis in reality. It was fully nonsensical. It was stupid. And....even knowing this, I watched part II. I’m bad and I deserve the head shaking that abounded during the viewing and the finger shaking in my general direction after it was over.
Go ahead. Shake and point.
As predicted, the neurotic-grandparent-who-just-happens-to-be-a-man-this-time died. Dropped dead but not until he delivered a heart-rending I’ll keep an eye on you from heaven speech to those two-grieving-kids who were obviously hired because they have mastered the look-pathetic-and-cry act.
I wanted to smack both of them...and I don’t mean with my lips.
The rest of it I got wrong but only because I chose instead to indulge in highly speculative sarcasm.
Anyway, there just happened to be an asshole-seeking-redemption on site with the two-grieving-kids who some how figured out where the two-grieving-kids were supposed to go to meet their astrophysicist/dad. But alas, he delivered them too late to say good-by because...yes, the astrophysicist/dad had been blasted into space because he was the only person on earth who could figure out how to construct a lego-mobile on the moon.
Along for the ride to the moon, which somehow only took about 15 minutes (I’m guessing that the writers didn’t get a chance to see Apollo 13), was a Russian-cosmonaut-space-jockey who was there because he alone could read the pictures on all the rocket buttons and a woman who served as the NASA-connection-astronaut...you know just to make it all that more believable. And...are you ready for this? The Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist! And...just for extra drama, this rocket to the moon was considered a suicide mission! If only.
Knowing that, just before the rocket to the moon took off, the Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist married his needy-and-newly-pregnant-fiancé which in this movie was sure to spell his certain doom and it did.
But before the Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist died, the astrophysicist/dad built his lego-mobile, hooked up the Christmas lights and got into the rocket taxi home with the Russian-cosmonaut-space-jockey-who-knows-the-buttons-guy and watched the Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist and the NASA-connection from some sort of remote already set up in the moonish abyss where that big chunk of brown dwarf was lodged.
Long story short...too late for that…
The Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist and the NASA-connection-astronaut (who knew she was on a suicide mission) flew into that abyss to set up a gps tracking station. While there she she fell off of some ledge and screamed like a fat lady on the Tower of Terror. Big baby.
The Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist played big hero and saved the earth by plugging in an eveready battery to the gps navigation system which ended up blowing the moon in two. But first he wrote his name in the lunar dust and the Russian-cosmonaut-space-jockey and astrophysicist/dad blast off in their rocket taxi and headed for home.
Oh and one more thing about that stupid on-the-moon sequence....the little rocket they sent to blow up the chunk of brown dwarf....had a long extension cord on it...just like our outside Christmas lights when I was a little girl. It looked just like one of those remote control on a wire planes you can buy from a mall kiosk at Christmas time.
I’m sorry I keep using the word stupid but my motto is that when you find a word that works well...go for it.
Anyway...the moon cracks up and moves into a new elliptical orbit and the earth is saved and new moonlit nights feature a cracked up view.
Like I said. Really really stupid.
If you haven’t had enough...in two weeks a new disaster movie is promised, this time called Meteor: Path to Destruction (NBC July 12). I am certain that I’ll be watching.
Gotta love summer programming!!
or not
In my lifetime, so far, I’ve purchased no fewer than six mp3 players and made not one of them my own. Three have been gifts to the children and the other three, picked up on a whim for a fabulously low cost and given away to friends and family.
Lately I have been lusting for a portable way to carry my tunes around with me. I’ve scoured our collection and created a play list to add to the as yet unknown music player and from what I can tell, I “need” a machine that can hold about 8 gigs. I think I may need to pare down my list but until then I’ll keep an eye on Woot and maybe a great little player will show up there, again.
Which brings me to a moment of sharing....the weather in these here parts has been so wonderful...so beautiful that it brings happy little tears to my eyes just in the beholding. Here is a happy little collection of happy little summer songs:
Want more? Check out this list: The 100 Greatest Summer Songs of All Time!
Can you believe it? Michael Jackson was 50 years old! 50! OMG...that news alone gave me shivers yesterday.
Aside from that ... I do have somewhat ambivalent feelings about this man/child. I was a fan when he was still black, bopping along to all those J5 classics...always picking that group over the smarmy sweet Osmonds. MTV will forever be branded and paired in my mind with Thriller because when the video first came out it seems like it was played continuously on MTV or at least promoted and played and promoted and played. It is a great video and I’m secretly glad that it seems to have become the wedding reception dance of choice over YMCA.
I liked almost all of Jackson’s pop hits (see this funny Billy Jean fan effort).
The man though...he just kept getting weirder and weirder as time marched on. Even as he is now deified by the masses, it is hard to ignore that oddness and the truth is that I’d never let him do my makeup, balance my budget or baby sit my kids.
To loss of his talent, I mourn him. The rest....not so much.
No Karan...how do you really feel?
Impact is a new TV mini-series on ABC which started its first episode last Sunday. During the first two hours, we meet a not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist just before a big-old-brown-dwarf-remnant-carrying-asteroid kabooms into the moon and knocks it into some crazy sort of orbit and then nobody is worried for five minutes, then the moon goes into an elongated elliptical orbit, a descriptive term that stumps the dumber-than-dirt-president of the United States.
Slight break away here....Leonard and were stunned that the writers, after showing the dumber-than-dirt-president a graphic of this new elliptical orbit thought it necessary to have him ask the not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde just what is an elliptical orbit, and say something like hey not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist, I’m no scientist, (obviously he’s only a stupid politician), explain to me just what is an elliptical orbit. And she tells him when she could have just said look at the picture stupid boy.
Now that is spot on high-tech writing. Not really - but give me a break. At first I was shocked that they’d dumb down the president so much - but the truth is that we just lived through 8 years with the biggest idiot in history sitting in the Oval Office swivel chair so the stupid act seems believable.
OK...so back to the first two hours of this mini-series. The moon starts moving toward the earth and trouble starts...the tides go whack and there are baseball stopping electrical discharges. Oh no! Then everybody calms down and the world gets used to seeing that big old moon sitting in their backyards.
Then it happens again but the tidal flooding gets worse and the electrical discharging discharges more and the moon seems even closer. And again, the scientists are stumped, the president remains stupid, a Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist-who-is-always-doing-his-job finds a big-old-brown-dwarf-remnant that matches a hunk of the same stuff embedded in the moon. Whoa! They’re magnetically attracted to each other! Things lighten up and everybody calms down and enjoys a closer view of the moon.
Then, electrical service gets disconnected in great big bands of disconnected electrical zones around the earth, the tides wipe out coastlines and gravity seems to be making people lighter and floatier. Everybody gets warned that this might be dangerous, yet German trains and French bistros remain in service and the dumber-than-dirt-president has yet to grow a brain cell.
OH....I forgot to tell you, there is the standard, astrophysicist-widower-with-two-grieving-kids-and-a-neurotic-grandparent-who-just-happens-to-be-a-man-this-time storyline that connects neatly into some faux sexual tension between the astrophysicist/dad and not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist. OH and there’s a Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist-who-is-always-doing-his-job-instead-of-paying-attention-to-his needy-and-newly-pregnant-fiance-never-mind-that-he’s-busy-trying-to-save-the-world-while-working-with-the-astrophysicist/dad-and-not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist subplot.
What would a disaster story without a couple of sloppily connected “human elements” be? There’s also a boorish-American-tourist-with-a-wad-of-cash thrown in there that I suspect is somehow going to be redeemed by using his last breath to save the needy-and-newly-pregnant-fiance. That’s just a guess.
Who cares?
OK...in a last ditch attempt to build concern and tension, the moon is getting closer so much so that JW’s are now going to start knocking on its door to deliver Watch Tower magazines. Life is getting tougher for earthlings. Stuff crashes, people float and oh my gosh...the smarties discover that the moon is actually going to hit the earth. The President and the not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist look like they’re going to cry. Cue credits.
If you missed it, watch it Impact Me HERE. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
A cliff hanger my friends...one that doesn’t make me care if I need to book a flight to Mars or not. All of this review from the same person who reviewed some of the recent best movies in 140 characters or less.
I suspect that the earth and moon don’t even get close enough to kiss and that the neurotic-grandparent-who-just-happens-to-be-a-man-this-time meets a heroic death saving the two-grieving-kids. The Nobel-Prize-ready-German-scientist will finally give up his lifelong love of space for his his needy-and-newly-pregnant-fiance and they’ll move to Luxemborg try to learn the sort of German sounding Luxembourgish. Oh...and the astrophysicist/dad doesn’t hook up with the not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist but instead with his hotty graduate student instead. Let’s just assume that the not-really-so-smart-sounding-blonde-scientist dies in deep space as she accompanies the spare big-old-brown-dwarf-remnant into deep space where the magnetic love between it and the big-old-brown-dwarf-remnant embedded in the moon pull the moon back into it’s standard orbit and all is saved....except that the dumber-than-dirt-president has absolutely no hope of getting smarter.
Again, who cares?
When it was over, I turned off the TV and woke Leonard up from his 90 minute nap and set the DVR to record the final episode because I am a lover of poorly-written-disaster-movies-lacking-in-basic-scientifc-principle and even though I know the earth isn’t going to be destroyed, I want to see how it ends.
You didn’t expect that last sentence did you?
