Analog-Theater 2.0

Sometimes I’m amazed by what I find without even trying.  I have been playing a new computer game called Journey to the Center of the Earth, based loosely on Jules Vernes novel.  So I decided to see the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth.  I went on Netflix and found a bunch of versions.  I selected the 2008 version since it was the newest.  It wasn’t the Brendon Frasier version, it was the Asylum Productions version.  Never heard of them?  Neither had I until I found this movie.  It appears that they do a lot of direct to video stuff.  I have War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave by them in my Netflix queue.

Greg Evigan plays Joseph Harnet, the head of a military teleportation project.  Captain Kristen Radford (Jenifer Renee) and her squad of female soldiers, who for some reason decide they need to carry machine guns, but don’t need to wear proper uniforms, use the teleporter to go from California to Germany, however they never arrive.  They end up appearing in the Center of the Earth, but instead of finding a big mass of molten iron, they find a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex who is invulnerable to bullets, even though two of the soldiers with heavy machine guns both fire at him.  After discusing the scene with Robert, who knows a few things about machine guns, we determined that even a M-16 would seriously hurt a T. Rex.

Gretchen (Caroline Attwood), the squad’s communications officer who is also a palentology and geology nut, manages to get a radio signal through to headquarters just before the T. Rex starts chasing them and she drops the radio.

Joseph Harnet organizes a rescue mission to go down to the center of the Earth and bring back Kristen and her squad.  Joseph goes to Emily Radford (Dedee Pfeiffer) who has built a giant drill called the Deep Digger which “uses 12 high power lasers to create a field in front of it that freezes everything and then shatters it with a sonic pulse”.  I won’t even get into the fact that lasers don’t freeze things, they burn through them and they don’t create a field, lasers are a beam.  Emily at first refuses to let the military use the Deep Digger, but eventually agrees when she find out that Kristen is trapped down there.  It turns out that Kristen is Joseph’s and Emily’s daughter.

Out of all the cast, Dedee Pfeiffer did the worst performancy.  I think she was trying to be a sexy scientist, but she did not pull it off.  It was almost painful to watch her.

Meanwhile, back in the hole where the core of the Earth should be, the girls ran into a six foot wide spider.  They run away from the spider for a while Emily and Joseph make their way through six hundred miles of Earth in a few hours.  The spider laid eggs inside one of the soldier (I can’t remember which), and as they were running to Emily and Joseph who had set up a beacon to teleport back to the surface, the eggs hatched and her stomach exploded.

As a general rule of thumb in biology, the larger a creature is the longer the gestation time.  Humans take 9 months to develop.  Elephants take 22 months.  A black widow spider on the other hand takes 20 to 30 days.  Maybe the spiders in the Center of the Earth has a miracle grow gene?

Joseph, Emily, and the three surviving soldiers teleport back to the surface and decide to go get drunk.  The end.

While the plot and the acting were weak, I will give the movie some credit for the T. Rex.  It was no where near as bad as Sid Meyer’s dinosaur.  This was a lot closer to Jurassic Park.  I think I will give them 1 banana just for that.  Overall, the movie gets a total of 3 bananas.

I’ve been watching USA’s series Burn Notice.  It’s an awesome show, I highly recommend it.  Well, they decided to air half of the season now and the other half in January.  The problem is that they had a cliff hanger ending and I don’t want to wait until January to see what happens next.  I’m sure that Mike will survive the explosion, but what is he going to do the Carla afterwards.  And why did they kill the sniper?  And who was the target?  And will Mike ever tell Fiona what he really thinks about her new boyfriend?

I have done further research on running for office.  It is a little more difficult than I first thought, but not impossible.  My first step is to petition my name for the ballot.  I need to call the Board of Elections next week and find out how many names I actually need, but I will need to file the petition the same time I file my Declaration of Candidacy. 

The worst thing that I learned during my recent research is that the delegate currently in office is on his fourth term and in the previous election he spent $280,000 on his compaign even though he was running unopposed.  If he decides to run for reelection again, I might have a fight on my hand.  Now I just need to find out where to raise my own money.  Once my paperwork is filed, I’ll put a donation link on here for anyone that wants to help me out.

I have decided to declare my candidacy for President of the United States of America.  Of course, its not for the upcoming election.  I was thinking more like 2016.  I realize that I’m lacking a few things like money and experience.  And no one knows who I am.  To get to that point, I’m planning on running for the Virginia House of Delegates next year.  I figure that the State legislature is a good place to start.  I’m still working on my platform and trying to find out where to get the money I need for the campaign.  Well, that’s the reason for starting this over a year before the elections.  It gives me plenty of time to work out the details.

I just saw this, Governor Sarah Palin action figures! Why on Earth or anywhere else for that matter, would anyone want one of those? “Hey Tommy, want to play with my vice president candident action figures?” “Sure, Johnny, that’s much more fun they playing with G.I. Joes.”

A while back I heard about this movie called Wristcutters - A Love Story  It’s an independent film and I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I finally got around to watching it last night and was rather impressed.

The movie stars Patrick Fugit as Zia, Shea Wingham as Eugene, and Shannon Sossaman as Mikal. At the beginning of the movie, Zia commits suicide and finds out that the after life is a lot like life, just a little worse. He is in a world just like the regular world, except it is filled with other suicide victims. Zia befriends Eugene, a Russian rock and roll singer/guitarist and they spend most of their death in bars. One day, Zia learns that his girlfriend commited suicide, but she is not in the same city he’s in, so he and Eugene go looking for her. Along the way, they meet Mikal, a hitchhiker who is looking for the People In Charge because she does not belong there.

Overall, the movie was very well done. The story was intriguing, the acting was decent, there were not a lot of special effects, and the make up was pretty good. I’ve decided to give this movie 75 bananas.

It took some time work out the far end of my banana scale, but I have decided that Iron Man was 100 bananas and The Dark Knight was 99.

I just saw the season premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.  First, let me say that I am happy that FOX did not cancel the series.  Second, it was awesome.  As much as I want to spoil things by going in depth about the show, I won’t.  However, after the car bombing at the end of last season, Cameron survives, but reverts back to her previous programing, ie terminate John Conner.  And a new character gets introduced, Catherine Weaver. However, they haven’t said what she’s after, but she gets her hands on the Turk.

You can watch the show for yourself here.

Well, since Robert posted, now I have to post ten times to get him off of the front page again so that he’ll post again.

Tabula Rasa just had their 1 year anniversary.  All the veteren players got some nice rewards for sticking around.  They get drop ship beacons, resupply beacons, a special emote, and the title Special Forces next to their name.  They talk more about it here.

It appears that Mccain gave a speech with a very interesting backdrop and no one knows what it was about. Apparently he used a photo of some school as a backdrop, however the school didn’t give him permission to use their image. You can read the full article here.

For those of you trying to lose weight, here are 9 foods to help burn fat.

So far in the weight lose club, we have dropped 1 pound. I know that’s not much, but there’s only three people and one of them hasn’t given me an update.

Wow, the level of anguish that must be unleashed upon our people before I will post something is astounding.

So, where to start?

I guess we’ll start with the heavy and work over to the lighter side of things.

It would appear the Ms. Palin is making a bid for the small house next door to the White House, and is asking to be your next Dick Cheney.  Well, have I got some words about that.  For all that we accept that Dick is the epitome of pure evil, and lacks the social grace of rabid moose, and well, he has shot his friend, abused the powers of his office, refused to discolse the records of his meetings with oil industry executives while plotting our nations energy plan.  Well, and a lot more, he never tried to pretend to be anything or anyone other then who he was, and I sort of have to respect that.  He is evil, he knows he is evil, and he expects us to accept him for who he is.  Govenor Palin on the other hand, is more the manipulitive, hides behind a pretty face, evil.

I heard about some of the stuff she has done, like supporting drilling in the Wildlife Refuge up there, and oh, over the last few years I kept hearing how she supported aerial wolf hunting.  Well, that just meant I wouldn’t visit Alaska anytime soon, even if I could afford to do so.  But now she wants to put a bounty on the little critters.  Now the logic behind this action is that the Moose and Caribou herds aren’t large enough for private hunters.  In other news she believes that Polar Bears are a liability to oil companies, and should maybe be gotten rid of.

Now, onto the lighter side, and the place from which my title comes.  Many years ago, in the before time, the long, long, ago, there was an episode of the Simpsons where the TV executives, trying to find a new show, remarked about having to be really creative, and all pulled out small televisions.

So it would appear that in accordance with this prophacy, 90210 has been rehashed.  The only way I can accuratly describe this show is Saved by Bell with better production values and poorer acting.

Also MTV has finally gone so far over to the dark side that I really have no idea why they don’t rename themselves something like Scripted Reality TV, on their new show “My Sweet 16 - Exile” spoiled rich children are shipped to third world countries and made to watch where their food comes from.  I especially liked when the old guy in Thailand killed the chicken on screen.  That didn’t send thousands of tweens straight into therapy.  All though it was fun to watch the young lady plant corn and explain how chicken only came in shrink wrap.  All in all, I really do have to say this is an improvement over the one where she would whine and complain because daddy didn’t buy her the right color Lexus SUV.

I think that is enough for now.  Good Night All, and Happy Birthday Analog-Theater.com!

I was in the book store today looking for a few things. I’m almost done reading Reaper’s Gale and it appears that I’ll have to wait for Robert to finish the next book, Toll the Hounds, in the series before I can borrow it from him, so I wanted to get something to tide me over. I’ve become a big fan of the Rogue Angel series, so I decided to find another one of that series. Even though the author’s name is Alex Archer, they had the series in the S’s. Well, as I was looking at The Soul Stealer, I noticed another book on the shelf next to it. Callahan’s Con. Spider Robinson is one of my favorite authors, right up there with Orson Scott Card, Micheal Critton, and Robert Jordon. I was torn between the two books, then I noticed on the back of Callahan’s Con it takes place in Key West (when I used to live), so I decided to take that one. I’ll get Soul Stealer next time.

So, about Reaper’s Gale. This is the seventh book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Steven Erikson continues to weave his epic tale of armies, political intrigue, magic, and gods. This book takes place on the continent of Letheris (the same place book 5 took place). Rhulad Sengar has become the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths. His fleet has returned with champions from distant lands to face him in the arena. Among the champions are Karsa Orlong and Icarium. Meanwhile the Malazan’s 14th Army, the Bonehunters, have landed on the coast and are invading. Like with all of Erikson’s books, old characters are explored in more detail, new characters are introduced, and some beloved characters die. And of course, there are several unexpected twists and turns.

Lastly, I’ve been doing some revisions to the story I’ve been posting in the fiction section. Chapter five is now up and there have been some changes made to the previous stuff, mostly an extension to the prologue and some grammatical and spelling corrections.