'Cause I guess when you're stoned, you'll forget to buy more during the day...

I don't have significant chronic pain that would warrant a prescription for marijuana and I've never smoked weed, but I guess when you need it, you need it quickly. This was the oddest thing I read all day:

Vending Machines Dispense Pot in LA

By DAISY NGUYEN
Associated Press Writer

The city that popularized the fast food drive-thru has a new innovation: 24-hour medical marijuana vending machines.

Patients suffering from chronic pain, loss of appetite and other ailments that marijuana is said to alleviate can get their pot with a dose of convenience at the Herbal Nutrition Center, where a large machine will dole out the drug around the clock.

"Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity," inventor and owner Vincent Mehdizadeh said, extolling the benefits of the machine.

The rest of the article is here. I was especially tickled by this guy, or rather his indication for needing pot:

A man who said he has been authorized to use medical marijuana as part of his anger management therapy said the vending machine's security measures would at least protect against illicit use of the drug.

Anger management therapy? Oh, c'mon! I'll bet his nickname is "Drama," too.

I don't know what's been in your mouth...

Considering I eat bunch in communal Chinese settings where dishes are shared rather than hoarded to oneself, I don't get too worked up about the "double dipper." However, some people do, and inspired by George (Costanza, not Firecracker) and that classic episode of Seinfeld, a group from Clemson University studied whether such practices truly are bad for you. From The New York Times:

The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.

There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.

On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.

The kind of dip made a difference in a couple of ways. The more acidic water samples had somewhat fewer bacteria, and the numbers of bacteria declined with time. But the acidic salsa picked up higher initial numbers of bacteria than the cheese or chocolate, because it was runny. The thicker the dip, the more stuck to the chip, and so the fewer bacteria were left behind in the bowl.

I'm still not convinced that the transfer of bacteria is an adequate end point to study. They admit that you probably should be studying whether those are harmful bacteria that are going from one mouth to the next, or just normal flora. Don't worry, though--I don't double dip.

Legos + Star Wars + a pinch of British humor = video gold...

I can't believe I forgot to post something about the 50th anniversary of Legos, which was Monday. To make up for that, here's a Lego-based animation and an Eddie Izzard skit about Star Wars:

Wooooohooooooooooooo!!!

Any Van Halen fans out there? Here's why Van Halen isn't Van Halen without Van Halen. "Running With the Devil" and David Lee Roth's vocal track with the rest of the band taken out:

Cut...foot...loose...

Yacht Rock! It's back! And check out who's playing Kevin Bacon. "Care for a Me-L-T?"

Stop looking at me!

I think this will give me nightmares for the next three weeks:

glumbert - THX for the Eyes

I think this is how MacGyvers are made...

This kid is either the most popular guy in his class or the most picked on. Me? I'd be at his house EVERYDAY!

Rubbin' is racin'...

I'd apologize for the excessive posting of Lotus videos today, but then I remembered there's no such thing as too many Lotus videos! Anwyho, a Lotus Elise race? How awesome is that? I'm not sure I'd have the guts to drive like this:

I should have been a car magazine journalist...

The Tesla Roadster is finally set to be released for sale to the public (or I guess that's sold to the public, since the first batch was already reserved a long time ago), so drivers from various mainstream automobile magazines were invited to test it out. The three second 0 to 60 mph times have been slowed down to somewhere around 5.3 seconds due to some cutbacks to the electric engine, but otherwise this car sounds just as impressive as when it was announced a couple of years ago. The chassis and handling was based on the Lotus Elise, yet somehow the test drivers say it's a bit more refined than the ride in the Lotus. Needless to say, I like this car.

Here's a preview from Automobile magazine. Especially listen to it take off around the :50 second mark--it sounds like something out of a science fiction movie:



And for a slightly more in depth review from Motor Trend:

Skateboards go BOOM!

Have some patience and watch through the 1:00 mark--the cool stuff happens after that.

Giving up oil is one thing, but give up my beef? Oh, man...

The word for the day is "vegetable."

At times, I kind of understand all those PETA fanatics.  I'm not sure I could truly look into the eyes of an animal and then kill it myself for my dinner. We tend to feel such remorse with the death of dogs, cats, and horses, yet somehow the plight of cattle, pigs, and chickens misses our sympathy.

It turns out, though, that not only is the meat industry questionably bad for your conscious, it's bad for the environment, too:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

The article in The New York Times goes on to explain the other negative effects of increased demand for meat:

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.

The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes. The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t harmful, it’s way more than enough.

I'm not sure I'm willing to give up my meat consumption just yet, but this might make me think twice about whether I should order that ribeye the next time I'm out eating.  Maybe I'll just go with the salad once in awhile.

Vegetables are good for you...

I'm not exactly known for my conversation skills, as I'm sure the Kool-Aid Gang could easily attest to. Perhaps this is why I spend so much time on this blog. Thoughts and words I could just as easily speak are sometimes easier to let out in writing or typed out on a computer. I don't know if this is a product of my personal insecurities, my obsessive-compulsiveness, or a combination of both. The fear that my spontaneous words will somehow come off as dumb, ignorant, or insulting sometimes get the best of me, and I feel more comfortable with the ability to think about my thoughts and to use a medium that's easily edited before I release it to people around me. But the power of the spoken word is something I probably take for granted, as I realized while watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The film tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle magazine in the 90's after he suffers an acute stroke that leaves him "locked-in, " unable to speak or move except for the residual ability to blink his left eye. Much of the film is told in a sort of voice-over from the perspective of Bauby himself. We can hear (and at times, see) his thoughts as he reacts to his predicament and observations. Used to the high life of fashion, art, and beautiful women, he's now left somewhat disfigured and initially without any means to communicate except for a simple yes or no with one or two blinks of his functioning eye. Eventually, Bauby learns to accept his condition. With the help of a caring speech therapist, he learns to convey his thoughts via a tedious method of someone going through a rearranged alphabet with the most used letters coming first until hitting on the letters he needs to spell out a word. This method allows him not only to "talk" to his friends and family, but also to write a book about what he's learned.

Rather than creating a predictable journey in which the glamorous playboy learns the error of his ways and makes amends for his sins by the end of the movie, The Diving Bell and Butterfly avoids such canonization. Via flashbacks and visitations from people from his life, we learn that Bauby had a pretty full life before his event.  For the most part, he has no regrets, and still retains some of the flaws that plagued his love life even before his life-altering stroke.  Celine, the mother of his children, continues to stay with Jean-Do until his death despite the fact that he still yearns for the lover he left her for to come and visit him.   By the end of the movie, you get a sense that life is precious and imagination is powerful. Jean-Do, in his physical state, is like a man trapped in a diving bell being dragged down into the depths of the sea. Yet his love of life allows him to flutter outside of himself to escape and truly experience the joys still around him.

This is not a conventional "feel-good" kind of movie, but I think you'll come out of it appreciating life a bit more.

Food for the masses...

I don't eat at fancy high dollar restaurants all that often.  It's not that I don't appreciate the food or the ambience of such places. It's just that sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable.  Will my attire pass as acceptable to the fashion police hostess greeting me at the front?  Will I commit some major faux pas by ordering a Cabernet when everyone knows Pinot Noir would have paired so much better with the dish I'm eating?  Is it OK to come if I don't have a reservation or will they sneer at me for not knowing that seats are reserved a good three months in advance?  Do I really have to drive up in my beat up old Honda and use the valet that's accustomed to parking Bentleys, and if so, what is an acceptable tip?

I was thinking about this as I was reading this article in a GQ from a couple of months back that was still lying on my floor about Momofuku, a small chain of restaurants in New York City run by David Chang, a young culinary artist who's making headlines as one of the most innovative chefs in the United States strictly for the creativeness and quality of his food:

Each ungarnished, undecorated plate holds just a few items, none carefully arranged. The food seems individualistic, yet it’s created by committee—Chang and his inner circle of chefs. It’s a mix of Asian ingredients, fastidious preparations, condiments shaken from jars, and sauces poured from bottles. Other chefs might attempt to interpret their food lyrically, adding to the aura, but not Chang: “It’s American food, man. That’s all there is to explain.”

And as far as all those pretensions I worry about when visiting some highly-hyped restaurant such as his?

His clientele consists mostly of regulars at Noodle Bar, adventurers at Ssäm Bar. Some might not know what they are eating, but Chang knows exactly whom he wants in the seats. “I want to cook for real people who want to eat,” he says. “When I worked at Café Boulud, I hated making food for East Siders. I hate their air of superiority. I hate investment bankers. I don’t want Momofuku Ko to come off as elitist or snobbish. I don’t want shithead bankers and the friends of dickhead traders who spend thousands.” One more thing: “My partner gets to kick me in the balls if he catches me wearing those reflective silvered sun- glasses that asshole Europeans wear indoors. I can do the same to him.”

And if you're a vegetarian, don't bother:

Worth noting is that an entire category of diners who might easily have become devotees have been deliberately excluded. Momofukus are houses of pork, an ingredient in about 60 percent of the dishes, and the dinner menu at Ssäm Bar reads, “We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items.” Just to rub a little suet in the wound, Chang says, “Vegetarians are a pain in the ass as customers. It’s always ‘I want this’ or ‘I don’t want that.’ Jesus Christ, go cook at home.

You gotta love this guy's attitude.  Yup, whenever I actually do make it to New York City for a visit, I'm heading straight to Momofuku.

Ha ha, fooled you Axel Foley! There's a reason why I've got a banana peel in my tailpipe...

I vaguely recall hearing about this sort of stuff before. If you remember the end of Back to the Future, Doc Brown throws all sorts of trash from Marty's garbage into the DeLorean to provide energy for the flux capacitor. Seemed crazy that you could use waste as a source of fuel, but I guess it isn't so far fetched. From Wired:

Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process yields 99.7 percent pure ethanol.

Gasification and bacterial conversion are common methods of producing ethanol, but biofuel experts said Coskata is the first to combine them. Doing so, they said, merges the feedstock flexibility of gasification with the relatively low cost of bacterial conversion.

Tobey said Coskata's method generates more ethanol per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say, two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to produce, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

That organic material could be just about anything, which makes making ethanol quite flexible, depending on your geography:

Making ethanol is one thing, but there's almost no infrastructure in place for distributing it. But the company's method solves that problem because ethanol could be made locally from whatever feedstock is available, Tobey said.

"You're not bound by location," he said. "If you're in Orange County, you can use municipal waste. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can use wood waste. Florida has sugar. The Midwest has corn. Each region has been blessed with the ability to grow its own biomass."

And here I thought it was just a simple piece of glass...

Why do some camera lenses cost more than one of my kidneys is worth on the black market? Watch this video and find out:

Will the taint ever be clean?

We were laughing about this clip at work today. It's an older one, so I really can't believe I've never posted it before. But here it is and you can all thank me for posting it now.

This would go down nicely with some bacon vodka...

Who knew they had such a nicely set up blog devoted solely to pizza? And who knew there were so many kinds of pizza in the U.S.? Personally, I'm kind of partial to the true New York-style and the Deep Dish pies from Chicago, which I think is some sort of oxymoron to like both. Kind of like saying you like Yoda and Darth Vader at the same time. All I know, though, is I hate St. Louis-style pizza--provel cheese blends taste like rubber.

No spontaneous sing-a-long sequences either...

I'm not quite sure if I'll be catching Rambo this weekend, but here's a nice chart from the Los Angeles Times showing you why this is truly a pure action movie franchise.  And here I thought they didn't make high body count movies like they used to.  Silly me.  Anywho, I don't know, does this count as a spoiler?  From FirstShowing.net:

Mmmmmmm...hiccup!...mmmmmm...bacon...

Bacon.  Vodka.  Mix.

They just don't make Bond titles like "Octopussy" anymore...

The new title for the 22nd installment of the James Bond franchise was announced today: Quantum of Solace.

Uh.

Yeah.  Sure.  Mmm...'kay.

This was taken from the title of a short story about Bond at a dinner party in one of Ian Fleming's books.  Nothing else really happens in the story.  Just dinner and some conversation. The good news, though, is that the writers of Bond 22 have apparently taken a page out of The Bourne Ultimatum playbook, i.e. the original literature source has absolutely nothing to do with what ends up on the screen.  Therefore, we can look forward to the usual action elements we're accustomed to from a 007 movie and not just an extended scene from some British romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant (because he's always going to a dinner party in his movies--think about it).  

Maybe money really does grow on trees...

Not that I'm complaining if I happen to get a rebate check, but I don't quite understand how this new economic stimulus package is good for the United States in the long run.  It seems like the economy is in a rut because too many people are living on credit and spending money they don't have.  So the answer is for the government to essentially give us money they don't have?  Shouldn't everyone be paying down their debt?  It's not like I would take my $600 to pay off my credit cards.  Why do that when I've got all this "free" money to buy an iPhone?  

All this seems to do is perpetuate a sense of calm in this country that all this credit debt is OK and a little shopping therapy will do you good.  

Coffee makes a comeback...

Starbucks stock hasn't been doing so hot lately. According to a story on NPR, it's share price has been cut in half over the past year because of growing competition from the McDonalds experiment in the gourmet coffee realm and some overall cutbacks in household budgets due to the state of the economy. People just seem to be shying away from the four dollar venti lattes and frappucinos it seems. To get more people in the store and compete with Mickey D's, Starbucks will be introducing one dollar cups of coffee served up in those 8 ounce short-sized cups that used to be reserved by people in the know ordering off the menu.

This seems like a good idea from a profit perspective, but I can't help but think Starbucks is kind of deglamorizing it's own product.  It seems if they're truly going to lower their product to the level of a fast food chain standard by going the dollar menu route, why wouldn't I just go to McDonalds for my cup of joe?  Not that espresso and coffee was really that much of an art form at Starbucks to begin with, but at least they sort of gave you the impression that they were at least trying their hardest to pose as a serious coffee purveyor.  

The real deal is at these independent places where they treat coffee like fine wine with complexities that have to be cherished and appreciated from the time the bean is roasted and ground up to the moment it hits your mouth.  And this goes far beyond a fancy coffee press.  Specialized instruments that make coffee by the cup and tailored to your exact specifications are cropping up including this $20,000 gizmo as mentioned in The New York Times:

Called a siphon bar, it was imported from Japan at a total cost of more than $20,000. The cafe has the only halogen-powered model in the United States, and getting it here required years of elliptical discussions with its importer, Jay Egami of the Ueshima Coffee Company.

“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,” Mr. Egami said in an interview.

The siphon bar actually sounds pretty cool, and it almost seems like it would be fun just to watch one of these things in action.  The technique they employ to make coffee with these things is pretty obsessive though:

A siphon pot has two stacked glass globes, and works a little like a macchinetta, that stove-top gadget wrongly called an espresso maker by generations of graduate students. As water vapor forces water into the upper globe the coffee grounds are stirred by hand with a bamboo paddle. (In Japan, siphon coffee masters carve their own paddles to fit the shape of their palms.)

The goal is to create a deep whirlpool in no more than four turns without touching the glass. Posture is important. So is timing: siphon coffee has a brewing cycle of 45 to 90 seconds.

“The whirlpool, it messes with your mind,” said Mr. Freeman, the owner of the Blue Bottle. “There’s no way to rush it.”

Mr. Freeman said he practiced stirring plain water for months to develop muscle memory before he brewed his first cup of siphon coffee. Even now he starts every day with a five-minute warm-up. The evidence of good technique is in the sediment: the grounds should form a tight dome dotted with small bubbles, the sign of proper extraction.

I've heard about people being passionate about their caffeine, but this is nuts!

Touched by the hand of Bono...

The word for the day is "3D."


Back during our freshman year of college, Wild Willie, Fandango, and I drove down to Houston to see U2 in concert at the Astrodome.  The seats were of the nosebleed variety and I think there was even a support column somewhat blocking our sightline to the stage.  Needless to say, our tickets kind of sucked (although I still have Wankmaster Scratch's unused one in a scrapbook somewhere).  U2, though, didn't disappoint, and even though we couldn't see much, the concert itself was awesome.

I've never had the chance to see U2 live again.  I was mighty disappointed that I couldn't snag tickets to their latest Vertigo tour last year, but U2 3D may be the next best thing.  Seeing anything on an IMAX screen in traditional two dimensions is always a treat and usually breathtaking.  IMAX in 3D?  Wow.  In some ways, U2 3D is better than being at a live concert.  Shots of Adam Clayton almost stabbing you in the heart with the tip of his bass, feeling like you're sitting right next to the Edge as if you could help him strum that guitar, watching Larry Mullen tear it up on the drums, Bono literally trying to reach out and wipe the tears from your eyes.  Spotlights seem to to bathe you in light, smoke literally moves out of the screen and surrounds you--it's pretty amazing stuff.

Interspersed throughout the movie are shots from the vantage point of the audience, complete with the occasional screaming fan that come into your view.  At times, it really does feel like you're a part of the crowd.  The experience is so lively, in fact, that you almost can't help but feel the urge to wave your hands around, clap, scream, jump around--maybe you're supposed to, but it feels kind of strange to do such things in a movie theater.

At times the 3D effects aren't perfect.  There's a rare moment when things still look flat, appear like those silhouetted audience members from Mystery Science Theater 3000, or look like those old school 3D panorama toys we all used to have with the little lever on the side to advance the circular film wheel.  The majority of the time, though, it's just plain awesome!   U2 performing classics like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" will always get the adrenaline pumping, and in the lively atmosphere of the Buenos Aires stadium where this movie was filmed, it's even more of a rush.

I don't know when I'll ever get the chance to see the greatest band of our time live in concert again.  My wife never has, and it's still on her "things to do before [she] dies" list, so I'm sure we'll figure out someway to see them, even if Bono is rolling out onto stage rather than jumping.  Until then, U2 3D will do.  It will do nicely.

Simply 'WoW!'

This sucks.

I just read that Heath Ledger died today, from what looks like an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 28.

I was writing up a list of favorite actors for the blog a few days ago, and he was near the top. Man, I don't know what to say right now, other than this really sucks. He was so young, and so talented. I just think this is a shame.

The word for the day is "cow"...

I'm not really trying to make a theme out of today's blog posts, but kottke.org had this link about wagyu cattle from which Kobe beef comes from. As most of you know, I have this mild fascination with Kobe beef, with the glamorized stories of pampered cows imbibing on high quality beer or sake and getting massaged all day long. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I'm an ox myself (by the Chinese Zodiac).

I've actually only had Kobe beef a couple of times. The first was during a last minute Christmas dinner at a Korean BBQ place in Chicago in 2006, but those few morsels of meat were succulent and melted like heavenly butter in my mouth. More recently, I've been enjoying some tasty Kobe beef burgers at a local Dallas spot called Who's Who Burgers. The sign on the wall even proclaimed the health benefits of Kobe beef. Being high in linoleic acids (i.e. good fat), could the meat from the wagyu cow even lower your cholesterol and help you LOSE weight? Think about it. Burgers that are GOOD for you. And because these animals are pampered so well, I don't even have to feel guilty from the animal cruelty side of things.

Alas, it's probably not true. In fact, the wagyu cow may not be much different than eating baby cows and veal. From Gourmet:

While touring Japan in 1993, Blanc visited several major cities. As soon as he arrived in Kobe, he asked to see a beef farm. His request brought a surprisingly cool response from his hitherto accommodating Japanese hosts. “Yes, yes, yes,” they said, but it never happened. So Blanc organized his own trip to the countryside—and was shocked by what he saw.

“The animals were kept in some kind of crate, so there could be very little movement. They were very dirty from their own manure—and I know a dirty cow from a clean cow. It was disgusting, such a contradiction from what I’d read.”

Blanc’s observations were confirmed for me by knowledgeable experts. David Blackmore, an Australian cattle rancher who has visited Japanese farms and agricultural centers a dozen times over the four decades he’s been in the business, raises an internationally renowned herd of 2,000 full-blood Wagyu (pronounced “wah-gyu” or “way-gyu”) cattle north of Melbourne. Wagyu, he explained, is the breed from which Kobe meat comes, but the meat can only properly be called Kobe if it comes from a pure strain of Wagyu raised in the Hyogo prefecture, which includes the city of Kobe.

Traditional Japanese producers, Blackmore said, raise their 1,600-pound cattle in highly confined areas. “From the time they are a week old until they are three and a half years old, these steers are commonly kept in a lean-to behind someone’s house,” said Blackmore, “where they get bored and go off their feed. Their gut stops working. The best way to start their gut working again is to give them a bottle of beer.

“The steers have been lying in their own manure,” he continued. “The farmers are proud of their cattle, and the first thing they do is grab a bit of straw and rub the manure off. That could be seen as be-ing massaged. Wagyu can also get a lot of joint swelling. I can imagine that the farmers would be massaging joints so they could get the animals off to market.”

Actually, I think a study looking at how much methane Wild Willie releases when he burps would be better...

I guess methane from cow farts isn't the problem. I think they should outfit a little flame that extends from the collar on these cattle--firebreathing cows!

Sweden to Study Belching Cows

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A Swedish university has received $590,000 in research funds to measure the greenhouse gases released when cows belch.

About 20 cows will participate in the project run by the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, about 40 miles north of Stockholm, officials said Monday.

Cattle release methane, a greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming, when they digest their food. Researchers believe the level of methane released depends on the type of food the eat.

Project leader Jan Bertilsson said that the cows involved in the study will have different diets and wear a collar device measuring the methane level in the air around them.

He said 95 percent of the methane released by cows comes out through the mouth.

"This type of research is already being conducted in Canada so we will be in contact with Canadian agricultural researchers in the near future," he said.

The research will be funded by a grant from the government's Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning.

He's kind of freaky today, but you've got to admit this was an awesome album back in the day...

Hard to believe that Michael Jackson's Thriller is 25 years old. This was the first album I ever owned, so it will forever hold a special place in my life. A 25th anniversary edition of this hallowed album is set to release next month which will also include covers by modern artists like Kanye West since he can't actually come up with stuff on his own. As much as I like "Stronger," it's really just a remixed version of Daft Punk with some extra lyrics thrown in. Why Kanye seems so upset he never gets a Grammy every year is beyond me--come up with some actual original MUSIC, and not just some slick rhymes, dude.

Anywho, here's Akon's version of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." I don't mind covers, as long as they can stand up to the original and bring something unique to the table. This one just doesn't hit that benchmark (in my opinion). MA MA SE MA MA SA MA MA COO SA...

At least I didn't buy a T.O. jersey...

I've gotten over the disappointment of the Cowboys loss from last week, and can laugh at videos such as this. Who knew Hitler was such a diehard fan?

DRAAAAAAAAAINAAAAGE!!!

If you haven't seen There Will Be Blood, you may or may not want to watch this clip of a line that comes towards the end of the film that will become a classic simply because of the over-the-top delivery of Daniel Day Lewis.  

"I drink your milkshake!  Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrp!"

Excuse me for a second. I need to throw up first before I write this review...

Back when The Blair Witch Project came out, I wasn't able to join it's cult fan base because I could never get through the entire movie without having to run out of the theater to vomit.  I'm sure it was good and scary, but the shaky handycam work made my eyes water, my head hurt, and my stomach really queazy.  Now with Cloverfield, the stylistic approach of the portable video camera is back.  I should have known better when I entered the theater with signs prominently warning that "Cloverfield may induce dizziness similar to that experienced on a roller coaster."  But then, I'm also lactose intolerant and that never stopped me from binging on a large scoop of Ben and Jerry's or a big bag of cheesy Cheetos.  I'll take a Lactaid pill for my milk indulgences and I'll take an Advil for this movie.  I followed the viral internet ad campaign, and coming from the creator of Lost and Alias, I'll be damned if I was going to let a little migraine get in the way of learning what in the world the puzzle was all about.  

Word from producer J.J. Abrams himself was that this was going to be a simple monster movie, a sort of Godzilla for the modern age.  And guess what?  That's exactly what it was.  No Lost-like puzzle.  No intricate Alias-sized plot.  For almost 90 minutes, we essentially watch a video tape found in Central Park in the aftermath of a disasterous event codenamed "Cloverfield" by the Department of Defense.  The tape begins with Rob and Beth during their post-coital day after their first night together.  We jump ahead since the cameraman forgot to change out the tape, and now we're at a farewell party for Rob, who's off to Japan for a new job.  In the midst of the party, all hell breaks loose in New York City, and the rest of the movie follows Rob and his friends running through the streets as a creature destroys the city.

In Japan, Godzilla was regarded as this allegorical representation of the fear of nuclear holocaust and destruction in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Cloverfield seems to be approaching those same fears, although instead of atomic bombs, New York City and the American public try to figure out how to live in a world after 9/11.  Buildings crumble and crowds of people run from the resulting dust cloud--it's as if the World Trade Center towers are falling again.  It's an interesting idea, and even though it's been six years since that dreadful day, I'm sure there will be debate as to whether this movie was made too early.

None of the people in this movie are known actors.  Although this relationship between Rob and Beth has a somewhat central role, it's the sense that they have a strong love for each other that's important in exploring our own feelings in the backdrop of a world falling apart around us rather than truly diving into what makes their relationship and characters tick.  The movie doesn't focus too much on the monster itself.  You only get glimpses and the occasional roar that echoes through the streets, which makes it all the more terrifying.   

And then there's the shaky homemade camera technique.  I think it's effective, keeping the movie feeling very real and moving along at a good pace.  But I just couldn't watch it.  I tried, but I couldn't.  I think it probably deserves to be "Cheesy."  In my current dizzy state and because I spent most of the movie with my eyes closed, unfortunately, I have to give it a "Bland." 

I wonder if Leo DiCaprio will finally ditch that ugly car of his for this...

I heard the other day that the Toyota Prius is now outselling the Ford Explorer. I guess this is a good sign that the car-buying public is ready to scrap all that extra cargo room in favor of a more environmentally friendly vehicle. Still, I don't know about you guys, but I find the Prius to be kind of an ugly looking car. Why does a eco-conscious car have to look so goofy? The Tesla Roadster proved you could build a kick-ass electric car that looked sexy. Now, Fisker Automotive is introducing their hybrid called Karma. You can plug it in overnight and go 50 miles strictly on electric charge alone, or rev up the diesel engine and get 100 miles/gallon. 0-60 in 5.8 seconds. Top speed of 125 mph. And if it sort of looks like an Aston Martin DB9 to you, that's because it was designed by the same guy. The downside? Pricetag: $80,000. I guess us normal folk will be stuck with the clown car for awhile.

That wasn't a UFO, it was the new MacBook Air...

First, wackos boiling up their girlfriends for dinner, and now this?  It's the first signs of an alien invasion, I tell ya'!

I especially like the comment in this video about the guy who decided not to shoot at the UFO for fear he might start an interstellar war.  Journalism at its finest.

I, for one, have never seen a UFO, but I think Wander and Firecracker George have a couple of sightings they can share.

You might want to think twice about having that extra beer when you're out with the guys...

I know drinking a bit too much can result in "beer goggles," but who knew such inebriation could potentially have you saying sweet nothings into the ear of the guy sitting next to you at the bar?

Among the team's discoveries is that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of ethanol. "We identified three molecules that are crucial for "ethanol-induced courtship disinhibition," Han said. In one of the team's experiments, Han and her students generated transgenic flies whose brain activities regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine could be turned off temporarily by changing the temperature to 32-degrees C. "Without a temperature change, the transgenic males showed conspicuous inter-male courtship under the influence of ethanol; however, they exhibited negligible inter-male courtship when we changed the temperature to block the transmission of dopamine neurons in the brain," Han said. "This result suggests that dopamine is a key mediator of ethanol-induced inter-male courtship."

A second discovery is that repeated exposure to ethanol causes male flies to engage in more inter-male courtship, a phenomenon known as "behavioral sensitization." "If a behavior like alcohol consumption becomes more pleasurable the more often you do it, you are more likely to keep doing it," Han explained. Because the researchers suspect that behavioral sensitization results from adaptive changes in the brain's cells and molecules induced by chronic alcohol consumption, they plan to use behavioral sensitization as a model for further physiological studies of alcohol-associated behavior and addiction. "This part of our study demonstrates that sexual behavior is not determined only during an organism's development, but it also can be influenced by a post-developmental environmental factor; in this case, recurring exposure to ethanol," Han said. "These findings represent the first demonstration of enduring behavioral changes induced by recurring ethanol exposure in a fly model."

Read more at Science Daily.

If she had been wearing a pair of those adidas sneakers, I'll bet they would have let her in...

I found this audition for American Idol rather humorous, but then felt rather sad for this young girl.  Why must we all judge each other by outer appearances? Why must we all be hip and cool to be accepted in this world? Why can't we all just run around as our favorite Star Wars character? Is it jealousy that I empathize with her so much?  Is it my inner Star Wars dorkness yearning to be let out just as she has let her own spring free for the entire world to see? 

Who am I kidding?  She was just GOOFY! Ten bucks says she makes a cameo appearance at some MTV awards show later in the year.

Just understated enough to not make you look like a geek...

I was a bit appalled by those Reebok Kool-Aid flavored shoes, but I think these kicks are a bit more worthy of the Kool-Aid Gang uniform.  Check out these Star Wars-inspired Superstar sneakers from adidas.  Hemp uppers for the Yoda in you or black patent leather if you're a bit on the Dark side of the Force.

I could almost floss my teeth with that thing...

In response to Wild Willie's comment on my Macworld Keynote Speech reminder yesterday, THAT IS THIN!  Sweeeeeeeet, indeed!

Not exactly the Earth shattering news that the introduction of the iPhone was last year, but this new MacBook Air is still pretty jaw-droppingly skinny. 

I'm curious to see how movie rentals on iTunes works out.  I've kind of gotten used to the low-pressure Netflix system where I can have a DVD sitting around for months, and not feel any rush to watch it.  And considering the sloooooooooow DSL connection in my current residence right now, it just isn't practical for me to take advantage of this new Apple service.  

I don't know--I still haven't gotten into this whole online music/movie store thing.  The wife and I spent many a date night heading over to the local video store and perusing the aisles for some obscure movie we'd never heard of, but sounded good based on the descriptions on the box.  I think there's a romance to that sort of thing that gets lost if you're sitting on your couch, flipping through iTunes on your Apple TV, and picking a flick.  Same goes for music.  Something about heading to a great independent music store like Waterloo Records in Austin or Ear X-tacy in Louisville, perusing through the listening stations and getting that warm fuzzy feeling when you discover a new artist you'd never heard about before?  All lost when you try and do the same thing online.  CD's seem to be slowly going the way of the record LP and the cassette tape.  And even though the battle for high definition video may be won by Blu-Ray in the next year or so, it might be a moot point as the world moves to downloaded content instead.  

I love the innovations that Apple has made for us in the past few years, but at times, I miss the world before them.

A viewing you won't need sunglasses or SPF to watch...

Sometime today, NASA's Messenger spacecraft, which left the Earth over two years ago, shot right past Mercury to give us a glimpse of the innermost planet for the first time in 30 years.  This is only part of Messenger's journey, as it has to make a few more swings around the universe to slow down enough to be able to park itself into orbit around Mercury in 2011.  Imagine the planning it must take to figure out how to accurately position a satellite that won't get to it's destination for another six years from when it initially lifted off.  Get just the most minute angle wrong, and instead of a great opportunity for scientific discovery, you've got space junk.  It's a formidable task to put the shear immensity of our solar system into a scale we can comprehend.  Sunshine, a film directed by Danny Boyle that's out on DVD now, takes advantage of this as it's focal plot point.  

Wander posted a trailer for this film back in the summer, but I never got the chance to see it in the theaters.  To refresh your memories about the basic premise, fifty years in the future, the human race discovers that the Sun is literally burning out, and has sent a last ditch effort in the form of Icarus II and it's crew to our life-giving star in hopes of delivering a fissile payload "the size of the island of Manhattan" to reignite it.  Of course, the Sun is a long way from home, and the crew doesn't have the luxury of calling home for directions when problems arise along the way.  A distress beacon from Icarus I, the original mission to the Sun that was presumed to have failed, creates a fork in the road that can lead to a better chance for success or a recipe for disaster.  

I find that there are two types of science fiction.  The first is the preposterous movies that defy any logic or sense of the laws of physics to present an over-the-top action flick.  These popcorn flicks are all well and good, but I tend to enjoy the second kind of sci-fi movie instead--the "what if?" scenarios grounded in actual science that create a backdrop for explorations of the deeper issues of the human condition.  Sunshine falls into this second category.  What do you do when the survival of humanity is literally on the line?  How will you react when you have no hope of returning home?  If God's creation is literally flaming out, is it truly the place for mere mortals to interfere?  These are some of the questions posed in the film that I think Danny Boyle does a good job of presenting in the form of conflicts between the crew of Icarus II. 

 

The cast does a pretty good job of creating a realistic environment of a crew out on their own with no one to depend on but each other, but perhaps the greatest quality of this movie is the utilization of the Sun as a vehicle for tension and action.  Sitting out in the Arizona desert seems like a dip in the cold plunge in comparison to getting stuck out in space fully exposed to the Sun's rays in the proximity the Icarus II must get to in the film.  

All in all, Sunshine is an excellent movie that's worth a viewing in the comfort of your own home.  

Firecracker George vs. the really annoying yippy lap dog...

And it ain't just the aroma of my farts...

A quick reminder to the converted: Steve Jobs makes his annual keynote address at Macworld tomorrow!

Watch where you put that thing...

I saw this trailer for a new movie called Teeth.  I think Firecracker George told us once of this ancient Native American legend/cautionary tale:

Suddenly, living in this part of the country doesn't seem like such a great idea anymore...

From CNN:

Man kills, cooks, and possibly eats girlfriend, police say

TYLER, Texas (AP) -- A man killed his girlfriend, then filleted and cooked parts of her body before calling police to tell them what he was doing, authorities said Sunday.

Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, called 911 on Saturday and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Jana Shearer, 21, and was boiling her body parts at his mother's home, said Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith.

When authorities arrived at the home, they found Shearer's mutilated body, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a fork sticking out of some human flesh sitting on a plate on the kitchen table.

Authorities said it was unclear whether McCuin consumed any part of Shearer's body.

That's some sick stuff, guys.  Sick!

I guess there's always next year...

Dallas is winless in the playoffs for the 12th year in a row?  Has it really been that long?

I shouldn't be so disappointed.  It's not like I had any high expectations for the Dallas Cowboys at the beginning of the season.  I figured it would be another transitional year, maybe with a chance to get back to the playoffs, but nothing more.  Of course, I got on the bandwagon like everyone else thinking the Super Bowl was a realistic possibility.  Darn.

It's not like the Giants looked THAT good today--they Cowboys offense and special teams just stunk it up for a little over a half of football.  Just makes it all the more disappointing.  And a couple of key plays bungled up by Patrick Crayton--I guess that's the karma working back to you when you run your mouth off all week.

Anywho, here's hoping the New England Patriots go all the way.  If the Cowboys can't get to the Super Bowl, I guess it would be kind of neat to witness history in the making.

CBS still looks like the geriatric channel to me...

I haven't watched enough high definition TV to notice if this phenomenon still exists, but have you ever noticed that the big networks always seem to look just a little different than each other? CBS always looks kind of pale. ABC looks a bit different. NBC kind of has this brighter quality to it. Leave it to Chuck Klosterman in his monthly Esquire column to get to the bottom of this:

I have always wondered this: Why am I able to see any random television program, often for less than ten seconds, and immediately recognize which network the show is airing on? To me, the differences seem obvious and undeniable: On ABC, colors are always darker and the definition is softer. NBC programs look more like traditional videotape (brighter, sharper, more aggressively modern). Everything on CBS has a slightly grainy, understated appearance. Fox looks like the middle ground between CBS and NBC. When the show Cavemen premiered last fall and I came across the first episode by accident, I did not know what channel I was watching, but I did know this: Aesthetically, Cavemen looked like an ABC show. It looked like Head of the Class, which had looked like Barney Miller. I had a similar experience when I first saw 30 Rock, a sitcom that visually resembles Friends (which visually resembled Silver Spoons). These relationships have nothing to do with content; they refer only to the technical, non-narrative aspects of how the shows are broadcast. For reasons I don’t understand, I can identify the look of any major network instantaneously. So can a lot of other people. We can do it without even trying.

Except that we can’t.

Read the rest of the article here if you're intrigued, although I still don't think he quite answers the question.  Each network's broadcast does look different, as you can always tell when they air the State of the Union Address or some other common live feed.

That sounds kind of familiar...

I never took Barack Obama for a plagiarist. Perhaps he's just a huge movie fan like most of us here in the Kool-Aid Gang:

Sweet!

Star Wars has real life lessons for everything...

So I guess the candidate field for the U.S. Presidential Election of 2008 is beginning to thin out. Somehow, I've been somewhat oblivious to what anyone's specific views are, and only seem to care about who seems intelligent and less prone to pandering to what the public just wants to hear. I've been leaning towards Barack Obama, but wonder if John McCain is the proven real deal.  How is one to decide?

Well, use the Force and consult "Mighty Rex Star Wars Guide to the Candidates."  Here's their take on McCain:

Darth McCain

I had to get this one out of the way right from the top, because I know some of you were thinking "Hey, Vader being a powerful black man..." but NO! You need to drop those stereotypes, mister! Obama isn't remotely like Vader, and besides, as we learned in Episode VI, Vader was a cracker! Heavily scarred by traumatic experiences, torture, manipulation, the 2000 Republican primaries... he has the reputation of a "maverick"... remember the arbitrary slaughter of Imperial officers? the offer to Luke to join him?

...but Darth McCain ultimately serves the Emperor, voting with him almost every time. McCain could be redeemed someday, but only by succumbing to Force Lightning and tossing the Emperor into a pit... something he has thus far refused to do. Let's stay in Iraq... err... Tatooine... forever!

I drink YOUR milkshake! I DRINK IT UP!

Watch There Will Be Blood and you'll understand. It'll be the new catchphrase of the season, so says the Vulture blog from New York Magazine.

No wonder they think the Hoff is so cool in Germany...

The voiceover for the German version of Knight Rider makes it sound so much more menacing. What is it about the German language? You can throw the worst insults at me in French, and I'd think you were trying to make love to me. Say the same things in German, and I'm liable to cry on the spot from fear.

I think I'll pass on this one next week...

$20 bucks says the obligatory "chick flick feel good moment sing-a-long scene" will take place in this movie.  Perhaps with a stack of cash in hand as the faux-microphone as they break out in spontaneous song singing the words to Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money."  I can imagine the grand finale of their performance will end with them throwing up piles of cash in the air like confetti as Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes laugh and giggle hysterically.

Actually, I had to think long and hard about songs with the word "money" prominently in them.  Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" and Pink Floyd's "Money" just didn't seem right for these ladies.  Then again, if they worked those two songs in, I might just be tempted to break out my own faux-microphone and sing-a-long myself.  

Where's Tom Hanks when you need him?

Did anyone happen to catch the links on Pop Candy to this play on DaVinci's The Last Supper that appears in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly?  Ronald D. Moore clues correlating to the numbers telling us what we might expect next season on Battlestar Galactica are below.  Click on the pictures so you can actually read it.  

Exciting stuff, guys.  Exciting stuff.  I can't believe we've got to wait till April.  Damn Sci-Fi Channel big-wigs.

'Horns, meet your new defensive coordinator...

"BOOM!"



From Burnt Orange Nation

Oil flows through his veins, and his heart is as black as crude...

Daniel Day-Lewis has a reputation for being one of the most intense method actors in the business, often completely turning himself into his character on and off the set for months until filming is complete.  The end result is typically a chameleon-like performance that's completely unique from his previous work. With most actors, you find yourself seeing the same mannerisms and dramatic crutches being used over and over throughout any of their roles (Tom Cruise comes to mind), but not so with Day-Lewis. You won't find any remnants of Christy Brown (My Left Foot) mixed in with Hawkeye (The Last of the Mohicans). Danny Flynn (The Boxer) is nothing like the Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York).  It's amazing he's only got one Oscar to his name, but I think his performance in There Will Be Blood has a good shot of earning him a second one. 

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and loosely based on a novel by Upton Sinclair, There Will Be Blood follows the rise of Daniel Plainview, who takes a humble sum of money earned from mining gold and silver, and turns it into a fortune during the hey-day of U.S. oil prospecting in the early twentieth century.  A fortuitous (or perhaps ominous) lead moves Plainview further west to take advantage of the sea of oil underneath yet untapped parcels of land in California.  The poor inhabitants of the area, who can't even make bread because the arid conditions prevent them from raising viable crops, are more than happy to sell their properties to Plainview.  The only resistance comes from Eli Sunday, an evangelist looking to get more money out of Plainview for his church.  And that's the basics of the plot.  

I'm not sure what most of you think of P.T. Anderson's previous works, but I happen to be a fan.  He's never formulaic, and always original.  You might even catch a little of his previous films in this movie.  A exuberant sermon by Sunday almost seems a mirror image of Tom Cruise's "respect the cock" diatribe in Magnolia.  Kind of humorous to think how these two scenes were so different, yet so similar.

There Will Be Blood, isn't so much driven by the story, though.  It's more about character development, as we watch how Daniel Plainview struggles with his greed.  An orphan child named H.W., whom Plainview adopts early on in the film, seems to be the force trying to pull him to a more righteous way of thought.  Ironically, Eli Sunday pulls him in the opposite direction, almost goading him to give in to his base instincts.  The preacher as the devil isn't such a new concept, but the subtle way that this develops is genius.  

The orchestral arrangements are chilling, reminiscent of something you'd find in a horror movie rather than a drama about oil.  Somehow, though, in the context of the film, it works.  Daniel Plainview seems to be slowly devolving and overwhelmed by his own personal demons until the very end when he succumbs to the ultimate act of greed.  It's a horrific journey, and makes sense that the musical accompaniment would convey this.

Finally, I have to end by saying Daniel Day-Lewis truly gives the performance of the year.  It's worth catching this movie purely for the enjoyment of watching a true master at work.  He's a pretty choosy actor that seems to make a movie about as often as Haley's Comet comes around, so you should always check him out when you can.  If he doesn't get the Oscar for Best Actor this year, you'll have been a witness to one of the greatest robberies in recent history.

Not quite as horrifying as Crocs, but...

Reebok is set to release these Kool-Aid themed sneakers in all sorts of different colors.  Each flavor supposedly has it's own scented soles, too.  I'm actually serious about that--scented soles.  I wonder if it's strong enough to overpower my natural foot aroma.

And not to worry.  These will not be the official footwear of the Kool-Aid Gang.  

It makes The Omega Man look like some crappy old Chuck Heston movie.

I saw I Am Legend Friday night, and I was surprised at how good it was. Honestly, I was expecting something more along the lines of I, Robot, which was a moderately entertaining, two-hour long advertisement. I think this picture from The Best Page in The Universe sums up the gist of that movie.



Anywho, back to the good movie. I've seen The Omega Man (1971), which is a good lying-on-the-couch-watching-old-sci-fi-after-I-mowed-the-lawn movie. I didn't see The Last Man on Earth (1964), which was the first of the three movies made from the 1954 Richard Matheson novel, I Am Legend. I don't plan on seeing it, either. It stars Vincent Price, who although is famous for his horror work, I don't think was a particularly good actor. That and Matheson wrote the script for the movie, but then insisting he be credited as Logan Swanson because they rewrote the script in his absence and butchered it. He didn't want that stinker attributed to him, hence the nom de plume.

Apparently this latest incarnation with Smith is closer to the original story than the previous films, and even if it isn't, it's certainly much better. It's somewhat plot, but much more performance driven, and it takes an actor of Smith's caliber to make this movie as good as it is. His acting (which is probably 90% or more of the screen time) is convincing yet subtle, and probably lost on many laypeople (including myself, somewhat.) Like DeNiro, his facial expressions and body language are what really sell it, although his spoken parts are fantastic as well. He plays the military mind-set (won't leave his post), the loneliness, the fear, the despair, and the rage (I won't say why) all equally well.

I thought the telling of the story was well-paced, although that could have been because I knew the story in a nut-shell already. The friend I saw it with actually said half-way through, "Dood, this is boring." As I said though, the strength of the movie was the performance. I think if you don't get sucked in by that, and are expecting a faster pace, you might not dig it. Luckily, however, that wasn't me.

Another facet I really enjoyed about this movie was the message. It doesn't really show up until the end, but it's a good one. It reminds us why it's important to keep fighting the good fight, even if you look sure to lose. It really beats the pants of the allegory in The Omega, which was just a hammy Passion Play, with Heston playing the allegorical Christ. I tells ya, first Moses, then Jesus. Chucky baby had to be eating that up.

*** A little digression here. I rip on Charleton Heston quite a bit, yet I watch The Omega Man, Soylent Green, and the first two Planet of The Apes movies whenever they're on TV. I have even rented most of them from Netflicks. It's funny that he's done so much classic sci-fi - I wonder if he laments not getting to be in Logan's Run. (DAMN MICHAEL YORK! DAMN HIM ALL TO HELL!) I swear that cat smiles upside down. It's creepy. Anyway, I like all these movies, but I think I can say with confidence that Charleton Heston being in them had nothing to do with my enjoyment. You could have cast many other actors and gotten movies just as good if not better. The same can't be said for I Am Legend. ***

The only criticisms I have are the CGI bad guys, and the main character's reaction to seeing real people again. As for the later, I wasn't 100% sold on his reaction, but honestly there are a couple of good reasons why he might act the way he did (but I won't go into them for spoiler sake). I personally can't fathom being completely alone in the world, save for vampiric monster people trying to kill me, and then running into other real people, so maybe that reaction was completely appropriate.

As for the CGI critters, their movement was actually superb, but up close they didn't look opaque and three dimensional enough, and their physiology was too skewed to look real (possibly to make them look scarier, but if that's the case I think it backfired). Ten years ago they would have been the bomb-diggity, but in comparison to Spider-Man and other fantastic CGI work nowadays, it was lacking.

The last negative on this movie was that Smith has a female German Shepard as his only companion, and Samantha looked awfully like my Gretel. It was a strange experience mourning my pooch again while watching the movie, but actually may be a small part of why I got so deep into it.

Hopefully with this movie and Ali, Smith will leave stuff like Bad Boys and Independence Day for his early career. In keeping with the Kool-Aid Gang's metrics, I rate this movie Very Cheesy, bearing in mind that I would reserve Dangerously Cheesy for life-changing movies, such as Forrest Gump, American Beauty, and The Green Mile.

Holding out for sex...

Note:  Sorry, I just couldn't get myself to post hot monkey porn for the accompanying picture.

A new study suggests female macaque monkeys may deny potential male partners sex until they dote on them a while:

Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.

And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity.

I suppose those male monkeys aren't any more immune to blue balls than us higher evolved male Homo sapiens.

Swany's Top 10 Movies of 2007...

Back when I did my Top 10 list for 2006, I was a bit disappointed by the quality of cinema that year. I think 2007 was just as mediocre, if not worse. Still there were a few movies I enjoyed this year. Feel free to comment about my choices, or anything you think I overlooked:

1. Juno - What threatened to be too hip for it's own good, ended up being a really sweet movie, and lived up to all the buzz leading up to its release in theaters.
   
2. No Country For Old Men - This was probably the most solidly made film of the year, and I almost put this number one. I don't know how the Coen Brothers are going to top this--they introduced us to perhaps the scariest villain...EVER!
3. Into the Wild - You might think Christopher McCandless was just plain nuts, but you can't tell me you didn't think about selling all your worldly possessions and going on walk-a-bout for a split second while watching this movie. The epiphany he has at the end is simple, yet powerful.
   
4. 3:10 to Yuma - Westerns are always great for exploring the moral ambiguities of life. I'm glad this film has brought the genre back.
   
5. Atonement - I took a class called "Film as Literature" in college, and I think this is the best example of such a movie this year. I kind of want to see it a couple more times just to absorb all the nuances.
   
6. Transformers - I'm still in disbelief that Michael Bay succeeded in bringing these toy robots to the big screen and making it so believably realistic looking.
   
7. The Bourne Ultimatum - This was just a pure adrenaline rush from start to finish. All action movies should be like this.
   
8. Control - Every frame of this movie seems like a well composed photograph that almost seems like a character itself.
   
9. Paris Je T'aime - Perhaps the next best thing to visiting the city itself.
   
10. Knocked Up - I don't have kids, so the fact that I found this movie to be so hilarious leads me to believe that I might just die from laughter once I can more truly empathize with some of the pregnancy-related jokes when my wife does get "knocked up."
    

Potential movies I missed that might have cracked the Top 10:

Charlie Wilson's War

Rescue Dawn

Lust, Caution

Biggest surprise: Bridge to Terabithia
I accidentally caught this on a flight on Frontier Airlines since it was showing for free. The lady sitting in the row behind me was bawling her eyes out by the end--I almost did, too. Because my eyes were a bit dry. It's dry in those airplane cabins. And I got lint in them. Yeah, yeah. Lint.

Biggest disappointment: Spider-Man 3

More isn't necessarily better, as this third installment proved. I ended up laughing at Venom more than I trembled in his presence. What a waste of an awesome villain.

Biggest "I should have known better than to believe the hype": Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I'm not that much of a Broadway musical fan, but I enjoy an occasional Stephen Sondheim tune or two. Unfortunately, Sweeney Todd isn't remembered as his most memorable work, and Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter just can't belt out the tunes with enough presence to make this music any more memorable. Probably didn't help that I don't really like Tim Burton movies that much, either.

What I'm looking forward to in 2008: I say this alot every year, but this time I think my head is really going to explode. This is a comic-book geek's dream of a line-up!

1. Iron Man (May 2)
   
2. Speed Racer (May 9)
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22)
4. The Incredible Hulk (June 13)
5. The Dark Knight (July 18)
6. Where the Wild Things Are (October 3)
7. Bond 22 (November 7)
   
8. Star Trek (December 25)
   

That's just the fanboy stuff. I don't even know much about the real high-falutin' drama stuff, like Righteous Kill which reteams Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro for only the second time in history. And believe it or not, there's actually a movie called Synecdoche, New York coming out this year, too. Synecdoche, not synechdochy--I guess we've been spelling the word wrong this whole time. No wonder this blog is the first hit on a Google search. Thanks, Firecracker George. ;-)