A Changing World

The world is changing. And sometimes, it changes in leaps and bounds rather than incremental ticks and tocks.

A prime example is that of our mutual friend "Ichabod." Well, let's call him Ichabod anyway.

There are certain thresholds that many of the male gender promise to themselves never to cross. But then either curiosity or a woman beguiles them to eschew their otherwise rock-hard principles.

Such was the case with Ichabod the other night. His first foray into this unknown world was when he was reassured and even beguiled by attractive women to buy "skinny" jeans. Sure, they were labeled "slim" jeans, but he knew what this was all about. He entered the fitting room a curious man, and left a redefined beast of modernity. Some might just call him a metro.

The skinny jeans fit by the way and didn't even look skinny. Or maybe he was just equivocating to make himself feel better about his dwindling masculinity. But the jeans were just the beginning.

Later that evening while flipping through the channels he saw a title he had sworn to never read, watch, or even do anything to except ridicule as often as possible: Twilight. He flipped to Twilight and then quickly back to some show called "The World's Most Haunted Places," so that he could click the 'recall' button, promising himself an avenue of escape if the movie turned out to suck as much as he had been led to believe.

He watched the whole thing. And while it was at times mind-numbing, and terribly absurd, the stinging rebuke that stayed with him was that he didn't hate it. What had happened to this man Ichabod? Was he still a man? Or had he morphed into a self-loathing, shiny vampire promoting, ball of sexual ambiguity?

Who knows?

But what thing we can be certain of is that he purchased skinny jeans, watched Twilight, and then didn't hate it.Step 1 - Ichabod wears questionable "skinny jeans."

Step 2 - Jeans become leggings. Jeaggings.

Step 547 - What happened to step 3?

Step 548 - You've gone and done it now.

Pepsuber

This was by far my favorite Superbowl commercial. Oh, and no, I did not watch the Superbowl, I just sifted through the commercials on hulu. The actor in this commercial is hilarious. He was in the show How I Met Your Mother, and probably some other stuff (Word has it that actors usually do more than one movie/show/commercial, but not necessarily).

Tribute to Hook

I'm going to share with you one of my favorite movies to quote. Hook. It starred Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hoskins, Robin Williams, Julia Roberts, and Maggie Smith. Here are some good quotes:

Peter Pan: Thank you for believing! (whispering creepily as he flies away from Neverland)

Before descending the stairs from his ship's galley to the poop deck to accuse one of his crew of betting against him:

Captain Hook: Where's the carpet, Smee?

Rufio and Peter have a classic verbal sparring duel at the Lost Boy's imaginary dinner:

Rufio: Boil-dripping, beef, fart-sniffing bubble butt!
Kids: Bangarang, Rufio!
Peter Banning: Someone has a severe ca-ca mouth, you know that?
Rufio: You are fart factory, Slug-slimed, sack-of-rat-guts-in-cat-vomit, cheesy, scab-picked, pimple-squeezing finger bandage. A week old maggot burger with everything on it and flies on the side!
Kids: [in unison] Ugh!
Peter Banning: Substitute chemistry teacher.
Lost Boy: Come on, Rufio, hit him back.
Rufio: Mung tongue.
Peter Banning: Math tutor. 

Rufio: Pinhead.
Peter Banning: Prison barber.
Rufio: Mother lover.
Peter Banning: Nearsighted gynecologist.
Rufio: In your face, camel cake!
Peter Banning: In your rear, cow derrière.
Rufio: Lying, crying, spying, prying ultra-pig.
Peter Banning: You lewd, crude, rude, bag of pre-chewed food dude.
Thud Butt: [with the rest of the Lost Boys] Bangarang, Peter!
Rufio: You... you man! Stupid, stupid man! Peter Banning: Rufio, if I'm a maggot burger why don't you eat me! You two-toned zebra-headed, slime-coated, pimple-farmin' paramecium brain, munchin' on your own mucus, suffering from Peter Pan envy!
Don't Ask: What's a paramecium brain?
Peter Banning: I'll tell you what a paramecium is! That's the paramecium! It's a one-celled critter with no brain, that can't fly! Don't mess with me man, I'm a lawyer!
Kids: [chanting] Banning, Banning, Banning is bangerang.
Rufio: Rufio! Rufio!
Peter Banning: Oh, Rufio, why don't you just go suck on a dead dog's nose.
While Peter and his family is visiting Grandma Wendy in London:

[Toodles is searching for something on the floor]
Toodles: Lost, lost, lost.
Peter Banning: Lost what?
Toodles: I've lost my marbles.

Held captive by Hook, Maggie, (Peter's youngest daughter who refuses to be indoctrinated by Hook) decides to sing one night:

Maggie: [singing] The stars are all my friends / Till the nighttime ends / So I know I'm not alone / When I'm here, on my own. / Isn't that a wonder? / When you're alone / You're not alone / Not really alone

As Captain Hook and Smee settle down for the evening (Smee stuffing his face with food), they brood over their options:

Smee: I've just had an apostrophe.
Captain Hook: I think you mean an epiphany.
Smee: [gestures his fingers to his head] Lightning has just struck my brain.
Captain Hook: Well, that must hurt.

After hearing a ringing sound and finding his cell phone that the dog had buried outside of Wendy's home, Peter answers:

Peter Banning: [unearthing his cell phone] Wow. Brad, hi! You been holding this long? Uh huh. I'm incredible. Yeah, Neverland. Uh-huh. Lost Boys. Jim Hook, duel to the death. I'll fill you in later. Listen, I'd love to chat, but I gotta climb a drain pipe right now. Why? Because I ran out of fairy dust, if not I would've flown up.
[surprised he asks]
Peter Banning: Why?

Peter, sitting next to his son Jack on the plane on route to England:

Peter Banning: Jack, my word is my bond.
Jack: Yeah, junk bonds!
[he hits the ceiling door in the plane with his ball, and causes the oxygen masks to drop down and scare Peter half to death]
Peter Banning: What in the hell's the matter with you? When are you gonna stop acting like a child?
Jack: [laughs] I am a child.
Peter Banning: Grow up.

Peter, while in his room on a long distance business:

Peter Banning: [while the children are running around making a noise, shouting into the phone] Wait a minute. You're telling me a 10-inch owl has a 50-mile mating radius? Why don't they just fornicate someplace else? What, a five billion dollar deal falling apart because of this? Why doesn't somebody just shoot me in the head?
Jack: [making a gun gesture with his hands] Bang, bang!
Peter Banning: [abandoning call, shouts] Will everybody just shut up!
Jack: [backing away in fright] I'm sorry.
Peter Banning: And leave me alone for one moment! Moira, get 'em outta here, will you? I'm on the phone call of my life!
Moira Banning: [exits Maggie and Jack] Come on, Jack, come on. Out, out out.

At Jack's contrived baseball game in Neverland:

[holding up a sign reading "Run Home Jack"]
Pirates: Run home, Jack! Run home, Jack!
Jack: "Run home, Jack."
Captain Hook: Smee, no, no, no! They've got it backwards! Tell them to turn it around!
Jack: Maggie?
Smee: Switch!
[the pirates fix the sign to read "Home Run Jack." They read it]
Pirates: Home run, Jack! Home run, Jack! Home run, Jack!

Captain Hook and Smee try to re-educate Jack and Maggie while they hold them captive:

Captain Hook: You, the cute little urchin in the front row, won't you share your thoughts with the whole class?
Maggie: Yes, I said mommy reads to us every night, because she loves us very much.
Captain Hook: Loves you? Isn't that the, uh, the...
Smee: The L word, Captain.
Captain Hook: Ooh, yes. No, child, mother wants to read to you every night in order to stupefy to sleep, so that she and daddy could sit down for three measly minutes without you. And you mindless, inexhaustible, unstoppable, repetitive, and nagging demands: He took my toy! She hit my bear! I want a potty! I want a cookie! I want to stay up! I want, I want, I want, me, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, mine, now, now, now!
[inhales deeply]

Peter speaking to his wife on the plane:

Peter Banning: [flying to England on a plane in turbulence] I'm not gonna make it to my next birthday.
Moira Banning: You're not gonna die without a phone and fax machine.
Peter Banning: I'm halfway there. I got the phone in my briefcase.
Captain Hook: Can't you understand, child? They tell you stories to shut you up.
Smee: And conk you out.
Maggie: That's not true, Jack!
[to Hook]
Maggie: You're a liar!
Captain Hook: [laughs] Lie? Me? Never.
[inhales deeply again]
Captain Hook: The truth is far too much fun.

First Snow: And brainwashing little kids

Well, I'm pleased to announce Provo's first substantial snowfall. We've got about an inch or two covering the ground and there are still some flurries shaking things up a bit as I write. The snow makes me happy, and reminds me that all of those Christmas movies with snow in them are still accurate even with the horrible Armageddon-like global warming that is sure to destroy humanity as we know it. 

But there's another thing that made me smile. I was watching a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson called 'In the Name of the Father' which tells the story of the Guilford Four, a group of Irishmen who were accused of an IRA bombing that they did not commit. I highly recommend the movie. But the movie is not what I want to talk about. I was watching the film on hulu (an online aggregator of TV shows and movies made available legally online), and as I watched it, all of the commercials on it were sponsored by the Ad Council.

The Ad Council has some good messages, and some brain-washing ones. The one that struck me most powerfully was on global warming (Remember I was watching it as the snow was cascading down outside, as it still is). The ad had a bunch of little kids between the ages of probaby 5-9 who say the word 'tick' and 'tock' with cuts between the kids to make it all add up to this crescendo as if they're part of a time bomb. Then they ask the current generation to save them from "massive heat waves," "severe drought," "devastating hurricanes," saying, "Our future is up to you, go to fightglobalwarming.com, while there's still time." I was nauseated.

Once again little children are used as pawns in an effort to brainwash people into thinking the world is coming to an end. And it's all because of that evil, insidious gas called CO2. Yeah, that's right, the stuff you exhale every time you breathe is going to destroy the world for your grandchildren.

Here's the ad.

Here's my two cents: Fight the hysteria! Fight the real battles of AIDs, malaria, extreme poverty, water pollution, illiteracy, and malnutrition. Fight against problems that are proven, and that we can most surely fix. Global warming is not even directly correlated to man's CO2 production. How can you fight a problem that may not even be causally linked to man? Well, quite simply you can't. You cannot fight anything if you do not know what causes it. Do we know what causes water pollution? Do we know what causes illiteracy? Do we know what causes malaria? Yes. Yes. And Yes. Would it stifle innovation and cost an unforeseeable amount to attack these known problems? No. Can the fight against global warming say the same? No. Bjorn Lomborg gets the priorities right in this video.

So what is the solution? Better research. Level-headed research that doesn't politicize science. Saying that man-made CO2 will bring about the end of the world is as valid as me saying having a glass of wine a day will make you explode in 30 years.

The Painted Veil

Last night, as I sat down to watch 'The Departed,' I came across a trailer that intrigued me. And, I wondered about it. I wondered because I heard little said about it. The movie stars Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. Both actors are terrific, and the plot seemed very well thought out. I won't bother you with the details (of which I know little), but it takes place in rural China (which is a splendidly gorgeous backdrop for any movie I might add), and it involves both Norton and Watts as a married couple. However, only Norton's character married for love. The other does not love him, and in fact, cheats on him. But then he tells her he's taking them to China to face the cholera epidemic. Of course, as you might imagine they must rediscover each other, and she learns to love him. I haven't seen it, but I was intrigued, and curious as to what other people might have heard about it. Here's the site that talks about it. It's out on DVD.