Subject to Change

Go ahead and delay the digital television transition.

I can’t wait to roll out the “Obama lied. DTV Died!” bumper stickers.

We finally saw The Dark Knight on New Year’s Eve. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but there was one thing I just couldn’t get past: they filmed in Chicago. That would be ok, except that Chicago is not Gotham. If I understand my comic book lore Metropolis is L.A. and Gotham is New York City.

Lots of movies are being filmed in Chicago lately. So, I thought I’d give some tips to anyone who wants to go and film a movie in the windy city when the script takes place in “Not Chicago.”

• Avoid filming any signage that says “Chicago” on it. Also, look out for street names.
• Shy away from filming the “L” trains and railways.
• Revising “CTA” on a city bus to read “GTA” is hardly convincing.
• Don’t film the lake shore! Stay away from Navy Pier in particular.
• Avoid shooting on lower Wacker Drive.
• Avoid filming on any streets featured in The Blues Brothers.

The Dark Night was filmed mostly outdoors, but they stuck to filming on a handful of streets. That also became a bit redundant, because some of the landmarks are easy to spot even at different angles.

1991 – Apple released Quicktime Version 1. They’ve been pestering me to go Pro ever since.

2001 – Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Look how far we’ve come.

On one of my recent trips along the Indiana Toll Road a biker stopped to check his GPS. “Go one… hundred… thirty… four… miles, then keep left,” it shouted.

OK, GPS lady.

I’m not quite sure whether to insult the driver, the GPS, or the Tollway.

You thought I was joking, right? Sadly, the end of the world really has arrived early:

“It’s a miracle!” McKinney repeatedly shouted Tuesday when she saw the cloned Boogers for which she paid $50,000.

Ok, so Booger was her pet. She still payed $50,000 to get a batch of puppies which will only resemble her dead dog.

In case you’re considering spending the $150K to give your pet eternal life, the best way of cloning your dog is still to let him bang the bitch down the block. Oh, and it gets worse:

Ra said his firm eventually aims to clone about 300 dogs per year and is also interested in duplicating camels for customers in the Middle East.

END… OF… THE… WORLD…

P.S. I wrote this post because it was the only way to legitimately use “booger” and “bitch” in the same blog.

Kelly took me to see the new Indiana Jones movie yesterday. I enjoyed it, but I can see how its going to disappoint die hard fans. My advice: don’t go to this movie expecting it to be the best one of the series. I had a feeling that Indy 4 wasn’t likely to be as good as the third movie. How could they out do “Junior?”

I miss the nazis, but I’m fully behind advancing the timeline of the series. Harrison Ford is OLD! It’s just that the nazis were so much easier to hate. The clumsy KGB agent stereotype just isn’t as strong an anti-hero.  The Russians in this film could’ve been more threatening.

After seeing the first fifteen minutes of Indy 4, I decided to note all the preposterous action scenes. I was going to make up a bunch of scenes from the movie and have you guess which one actually occured. About halfway through the movie I gave up. There’s no way I could invent scenarios more over the top than ones which were actually presented. I didn’t notice any dinosaurs, unicorns, or killer robots. Everything else is in this movie. If the inflatable raft scene in Temple of Doom had you saying “get real,” stay home.

The other Indiana Jones movies dealt heavily with the supernatural. This one leans more toward science fiction and it’s and odd mix. It definately doesn’t feel like an Indy movie. Everything has changed: CGI animals (with personalities), fifties timeline, Indy seems to be some sort of retired national hero, Russians, and FBI. Even Indiana Jones suffers some culture shock. The opening scenes are intended to help us and Indy get used to this brave new world. At the end of the introduction he finds himself in a very awkward position, and you do feel for him. Indy is standing in an empty town, having a serious out of his element moment. I couldn’t help chuckling because it played so perfectly.

All in all, if your expectations are reasonable I think you’ll enjoy the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones saga. There’s good humor and good action.  You could do far worse with your movie dollar. 

A co-worker tipped me off to this show. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but there’s always YouTube!

There are some fitness types out there who might be able to explain this:

Halfway through carrying sod rolls to my lawn on Saturday I noticed that my left arm was overworked. The muscles had that hungry/tired feeling and they hurt, bad. When I got started again on Sunday I noticed that I couldn’t lift that arm without feeling a very sharp pain. I chalked it up to strain or even deep bruising.

Here’s the weird part. Later on the pain was gone, just like that. I had expected that arm to throb for days, because that’s what usually happens. Yet, without pain killers my whole body suddenly felt great. That was it. The pain never came back.

Was that a second wind kicking in? It was so sudden and effective that I said something out loud. 

Milwaukee felt it.

Some people reported feeling it here in Columbus, too.

No worries. It was just me laying the smack-down.