Somewhere, A Village is Missing It's Idiot

Linda Ronstadt found herself escorted out of a casino recently after making remarks about Fahrenheit 9/11. Apparently, the audience didn't take well to her political advertising. Imagine that, they came to hear her sing and instead got a political rant so she was asked to leave. This could only mean one thing, of course. And leave it to our favorite victim to point it out. Here's Moore's open letter to the casino.



You have to give the guy credit, he sure has heart and a sense of humor even if he is bothered by an unfortunate lack of understanding concerning the Constitution. Free speech has nothing to do with this incident. She was hired to do a job and she failed to perform her duties, deciding instead (using a level of freedom that you would be hard pressed to find in most countries) to beat her audience with politics. So, she was asked to leave. No one says she can't say whatever she chooses to. She should just wait until she is at the right place to say it. It's not censorship, it's business. And Michael Moore seems to understand business just fine, based on the millions of dollars he's making currently.

A New Reason to Stuff Your Pants

And no, this time it's not about impressing anyone. Can you imagine what the lunatic left would be saying if someone in the Bush White House had done something like what Sandy Berger has pulled off? There would be no end to the insults and conspiracy theories. Maybe Cheney should have stuffed his energy commission papers down his pants and then the liberals wouldn't have minded so much. The double standard continues.

Duke University Gives Out iPods to Freshman!

If you are still wondering what college to go to next fall (and choose not to attend the official college of Mod-BLog) then you might want to consider Duke University as they are distributing Apple iPods to all incoming Freshman! The iPods will be used to store standard school content (academic calendar, etc.), provide audio/video supplements for classes (i.e. recorded Spanish songs for foreign language classes, etc.), and provide a simple way to record lectures for later replay. This is a very cool idea, and a way to bring the digital age to the classroom. I anticipate there being a lot of unforeseen advantages to this approach, including the easy sharing of notes and lecture info for absent/sick students, and a definite culture change for Duke University.



Not to mention the boost this may give to the stock I bought in Apple computer!

Futurama Nominated from the Dead

Amazingly, a full year after Fox cancelled the brilliant prime-time cartoon, Futurama has been nominated for two Emmys! Futurama was easily my favorite show on television for its 3 seasons worth of episodes, and it is nice to see it is finally being recognized with some awards. It would just have been nice if this had come before it was cancelled. Sigh. Oh, well. At least there are rumors of the Cartoon network reviving it with new episodes one of these days. Hope springs eternal!

Systems Analysis and Romance?

While I am a Business Systems Analyst, I am not a believer that Systems Engineering can be applied to everything in life. But apparently, some people feel differently. I tend to think that this may be overdoing it, but it is certainly interesting. And in light of recent events here at Mod-Blog, maybe it is time for more of us to be thinking of alternate ways to look at the dating game.

Airline Movie Quicky Reviews

On the trip out to the West Coast for Sean's wedding, I had the chance to see two movies on the Delta jet that I rode on. Both films were the airline versions, so I have no idea what got cut or added "for time or appropriateness". But I thought it was worth writing a couple of mini-reviews.



The first movie was HIDALGO, Viggo Mortensen's first film since the LOTR trilogy ended, and his first attempt to step away from the Aragorn character. The basic story is that Viggo's character, Frank Hopkins, was a courier who carried the orders that initiated a Native American massacre. Being half-Indian himself, Hopkins is wracked by guilt, but he assuages it with drink, performing in a travelling wild west show, and winning cross-country horse races. One day Hopkins is contacted by a sheik who proposes he take part in the "Lake of Fire" race across the Arabian desert to prove whether or not he and his horse Hidalgo are the best cross-country horse racers on earth. Aside from the unfortunate choice of naming Viggo's sorta-kinda-love interest something that sounds like "Al-Jazeera", the movie is a nice, innocent adventure in the tradition of the golden age epic. There is no real romance to speak of, no real characters to speak of, and no real doubt about the ending of the movie. But it is still a nice film to watch while trying to not think about the reality that somehow humans have figured out how to trick gravity into letting a thousand-ton bus fly.



The second movie was LAWS OF ATTRACTION starring Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore. The plot is simple: two divorce lawyers, opposite genders, one is a slob, the other is a control freak, they hate each other... so naturally they are meant for each other. Hilarity ensues, somehow they get from New York to Ireland whenever a romantic foggy setting is needed, and alcohol jumps in whenever a character conveniently needs to act out of character. Obviously, I was not impressed with this film, but it is mostly harmless. Brosnan is brilliant as always, and Moore does a great job playing Meg Ryan. Basically, I got the feeling this film was written for another Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan pairing, but when they couldn't sign the pair, the studio just asked the lawyers who else was under contract at the time. Not a great film, but not a bad one. Moore is cute, and Brosnan is hunky, the script has a few good lines, and what more can you really ask from a romantic comedy like this?



As for me, I am looking forward to seeing my next few movies on the ground.

Mmmmm... Transformers Movie...

AICN is reporting that Dreamworks (Steven Spielberg's company) is in talks to produce a live action movie based on the old Transformers toy line and cartoon series. Woo-hoo! I grew up on Transformers and met my best friend because he was the first guy I knew who owned a real live SoundWave figure. (Okay, real but not alive. You know what I mean!)



Here's hoping they actually manage to capture the magic of the original series for us elder kids, while maintaining the cool to bring in a whole new generation. One simple tip: do not base it on the current Armada series.