BURNING BRIDGES... I’m not gonna write a long Blog here—well okay, I am—except to say I don’t expect Susie, who I wrote a journal entry about a few months ago, to be friendly the next time I see her at a film screening. The reason why I say this is because I didn’t talk to her at all at a research screening we worked yesterday in Long Beach, Calif. If you want to know one part of the reason, it’s because I tried to be very outgoing and friendly to her in the past, and while we talked a lot before the screenings started, she would be silent by the time they finished up and we went home. So she would say ‘hi’ when she arrived but not really ‘bye’ when we went our separate ways. I understand that we're in a work environment, and that there's usually one person who shows up at the screening to piss staff members off (thus putting us in a foul mood by the time we headed back to ours cars), but still—I got fed up with that. While she was in a good mood last night, I don't want to be around Susie if she's in a foul one and it's hard talking to her. So...I ignored her completely last night. And, of course, if I ever see her at another screening—which I will—she’ll return the favor. What goes around comes around. Two can play at this game. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Just felt like mentioning a couple of clichés that deal with this situation.

I blame the person who does the scheduling for our screening staff for putting me in this mess. I sent him an e-mail more than a month ago specifically requesting that I don’t get placed on a screening with Susie, ‘cause I knew that this was gonna happen, and he calls me on Monday afternoon asking if I could work yesterday. Susie usually gets scheduled along with her brother (since, duh, they can carpool together)...but last night was the first time she showed up at the theater alone. I knew Susie was gonna be there since 1.) Her brother told me at a screening Monday night that she was working in Long Beach, and 2.) Susie attends classes at Cal State Long Beach...so it wasn’t gonna be much of a commute to work. I could've said 'No' when the scheduler called, but being that freakin' Christmas is coming up, I need the money so I said yes. And when I place my schedule for the following week, I always say that I'm unavailable for Saturdays and Sundays since I know Susie would most likely be working those days since it's the weekend. I'm not about to lose additional cash by allowing her to make me avoid weekday screenings as well. WHY the scheduler didn’t call up her brother FIRST to ask HIM if he could work perplexes me. But chances are I would’ve gotten called anyway, since Susie’s brother got in a car accident on his way home from the Monday screening (he’s fine...otherwise his ghost wrote a long-ass MySpace bulletin talking about the incident Monday night, haha). Everything happens for a reason.

I guess I’ll end this Blog now since I don’t want to think about Susie any longer. So how many of you have burned bridges with friends and/or girls (or guys) you liked?

THE DARK KNIGHT Update... Courtesy of Superherohype.com (go here and here), below are two new images of Heath Ledger's The Joker that were released online last week. Compare his gritty, psychotic look to Jack Nicholson's refined, psychotic look (above) as the Clown Prince of Crime in the 1989 Batman film. Freaky.



EDIT: The teaser trailer for The Dark Knight will be released with Will Smith's I Am Legend in regular theaters on December 14, while a 7-minute preview showing the opening scene to the Batman Begins sequel will debut in front of the IMAX version of Legend. Cool. The image to the bottom right is The Dark Knight teaser poster...also courtesy of Superherohype.com.

THE SAD FATE OF SOUNDWAVE... Robotchicken.com posted up this hilarious video showing the popular tape-playing Decepticon as he tries to infiltrate a room housing an ultimate death ray device. Needless to say, his attempt to hide in plain sight fails. And in this age of iPods, Zunes and other MP3 players, Soundwave realizes how obsolete he and his pet cassette tapes have become in the 21st century. Of course, this wasn’t alluded to in the video. I just felt like mentioning those to give the impression that I’m tech-savvy, haha. Here’s hoping he and Rumble (technically, it was Frenzy who was the red tape. But I ain’t complaining) get better treatment by Michael Bay in Transformers 2. Frank Welker reprises his original roles as Megatron and Soundwave here, and Austin Power’s Seth Green provides the voice of one of the two wisecracking scientists.

Donald Miralle / Getty Images

The BCS... The final Bowl Championship Series match-ups were announced on TV around 5:30 PM, Pacific Standard Time today. The Good News: The USC Trojans will once again play in the Rose Bowl...against Illinois on New Year’s Day. The Bad News: The Trojans weren’t able to reach the BCS title game in New Orleans, which will be played by Ohio State versus Louisiana. On the plus side, again, at least it ain’t Missouri versus West Virginia. Can you say... Low TV ratings for FOX on January 7? That would’ve been the equivalent of watching the San Antonio Spurs play against the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals for the umpteenth time. Yawn. Here’s hoping the Trojans win the games they’re suppose to win next season...and don’t get upset by the likes of Stanford. That is all.

RANDOM BABE BLOG #4... Today’s honor goes to sexy R&B artist, Rihanna. I’ve only heard two of her songs before, but it’s all good. If I were to write Blogs about hot music artists based on how many of their songs I actually listened to, then I would’ve already typed entries about Beyonce Knowles and Mary J. Blige. Or even the late Aaliyah. May she rest in peace.



I read online rumors that Rihanna recently dated actor Shia Labeouf (but she denied it). If true... Not only did Labeouf get to make out with Megan Fox on-screen in Transformers, but he also got some jungle fever action as well! Lucky bastard.

TONIGHT, I attended my friend Sonia’s birthday part at the Orchid Lounge in Los Angeles. It was fun... It was mostly drinking and singing karaoke, haha. I sang Sisqo’s "The Thong Song"—which was a bit faster than I expected. I haven’t heard that song for about 7 years, ya know... Should’ve just stuck with Bon Jovi’s "It’s My Life" or Aerosmith’s "Jaded" like I originally intended. Some other dude at the party sang Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise"...which would've been my third choice. It would've KICKED ASS if Warren G's "Regulate" was on the song list! Too bad it wasn't. Oh well.

FOX / NBC Universal

MORE ON RANDOM BABE #2... In this previous Blog, I talked about how I hoped Thirteen (played by Olivia Wilde) would get chosen as the final doctor on House’s team on the hit TV show, um, House. Well, she did (at the end of Tuesday’s episode)...but only after Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) reprimanded House for selecting two other male doctors (Kutner, played by Harold and Kumar's Kal Penn and Taub, played by Transformer's Peter Jacobson) to be on his team. Of course, that was part of House's plan all long. He could only hire two applicants...and by not having a woman on his staff (no pun intended), Dr. Cuddy would take issue with it and make House hire a third medic. Good job House. New episodes premiere on FOX in January.

THE MIST... I saw the horror/sci-fi flick this weekend, and needless to say, I don’t think I’ve EVER felt so much anger or clapped this much for characters in a movie before. In fact, in the case of this film, I could type down two lists in this journal entry... The first one being for CHARACTERS WHO DESERVED TO SURVIVE (but didn’t) and the other for CHARACTERS WHO DESERVED TO DIE (and did). But first, let me point out the fact that the audience (at least the one I saw the movie with) reacted so strongly to the folks on-screen is a testimony to how well the actors and actresses portrayed them (and the script might have something to do with it too, haha). Well done. The characters you were suppose to like you did like, and the characters you were suppose to hate you REALLY hated. Now...onto the lists:

(BELOW: SPOILERS BEWARE!! Don't continue reading if you haven't seen the movie yet. And are planning to.)



CHARACTERS WHO DESERVED TO SURVIVE (but didn’t):
AMANDA DUMBFRIES (played by Laurie Holden)... Amanda had such a sweet personality that you wished she’d REALLY open a can of whup-ass on Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) for treating her like crap—and literally calling Amanda ‘crap’—throughout most of the film. She had to meet her fate with a bullet (won’t tell you by which character...yet).
OLLIE (played by Toby Jones)... The audience I watched the film with cheered whenever he killed a mist creature, and Mrs. Carmody (more on this one later) with his revolver. He met his fate by one of those creatures.
DAN MILLER (played by Jeffrey DeMunn)... He didn’t do anything special, but it sucks that he ate the bullet (by the same character who capped Amanda) as well.

And:

IRENE (played by Frances Sternhagen)... Irene instantly won the audience over after throwing a can of soup at Mrs. Carmody’s head to shut her up, and then using a barbecue lighter and what looked like a can of Raid as a blowtorch to incinerate a giant alien spider that was about to attack her in a drug store. Too bad her fate was the same as Amanda and Dan Miller.

Now, let’s get to the other list...



CHARACTERS WHO DESERVED TO DIE (and did):
NORM (Chris Owen)... The bagboy was such a douchebag that you were glad those giant tentacles that made their way into that loading dock first mauled Norm before taking him out into the mist and chewed him up. Looks like Norm should’ve stuck with being the "Shermanator". Watch the American Pie films if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
BRENT NORTON (Andre Braugher)... It’s actually ambiguous as to what happened to Norton the minute he stubbornly exited the market door...but you wished something bad happened to him after mocking David Drayton (the main character played by The Punisher’s Thomas Jane) after Drayton tried to warn the judge about the dangers that lied out in the mist. That, and failing to cut down the tree that destroyed Drayton’s boathouse during a storm at the beginning of the film. Interestingly, how funny that it was mostly the other African-American customers who followed Norton out of the market...and apparently met their fate at the hands of the alien creatures as well. The token black folks always get killed off in Hollywood movies...

And last, but DEFINITELY NOT LEAST:



MRS. CARMODY (Marcia Gay Harden)... If ever you were looking for a movie that taught you about the dangers of cults, or how extreme religious fanaticism can get, THIS is the movie. Marcia Harden did a bang-up job playing this crazy character, and you end up hating Mrs. Carmody more and more each time you saw her on screen. In fact, I would have to go out on a limb and say that Mrs. Carmody posed a much greater threat to the other customers than the creatures did out in the mist. In fact, she did. You hate Carmody for getting that one Army soldier (Wayne Jessup, played by Sam Witwer) killed by the mob that you want HER to meet The Maker as quickly as possible. And she does...in SPECTACULAR fashion. Almost everyone in the audience (including I) clapped at the moment Carmody eats not one but two bullets by Ollie...one in the stomach and the other right in her forehead. Sorry for sounding so sadistic, but trust me... If you watch this film, you’ll be so fired up over how psychotic Carmody is that you want her to meet her fate as violently as possible. I don’t need to tell you that there are religious fanatics out there in real life who ARE as extreme as this character. 9/11 is a good reminder of that.

I deliberately waited till the end of this Blog to write about Thomas Jane’s character. David Drayton is an artist who does movie posters for Hollywood studios, and throughout much of the movie, you find it ironic that it is the showbiz guy who’s the most level-headed and noblest one among everybody in the market. However, this noble dude ends up doing something crazy at the end of the film that not even Mrs. Carmody would think of (unless she had Kool-Aid in hand). Wanna know how Amanda, Dan and Irene eat the bullet? Let’s just say... Drayton, in possession of the revolver after Ollie bites the dust, was determined NOT to let any of the people he cared about meet their fate at the hands of the mist creatures. KA-BLAM!!

For a mere horror film, The Mist sure does carry a lot of messages. The first one being about the dangers of religious fanaticism. The second one about how people become less civilized the minute "machines stop working and people are left out in the dark". The third one about the U.S. military engaging in secret projects at the expense of the general populace, and the last one being about how you act the minute you're faced with your mortality. Do you sacrifice your own life so you won’t face a painful death? Or do you let things play out as fate intended and wait till the end comes naturally? This last one is what makes the ending to The Mist a surprising one. I won’t necessarily say it’s a good ending, but it IS a lot lot more interesting than the finales you usually see in horror films (and people in this film do stupid things for valid reasons). Frank Darabont and Stephen King... You guys are craaazay.


All images courtesy of Dimension Films / MGM

UPDATE (ANOTHER SPOILER): The reason why this film is science fiction is because the mist has something to do with the U.S. military opening a gateway to another world...causing those alien creatures to get through and wreak havoc on the town (set in Maine but actually filmed in Louisiana) where the movie takes place. Hence that major electrical storm at the beginning of the movie.

According to NASAWatch.com, presidential candidate Barack Obama stated that his education plan—if he is elected—will involve diverting funds from the Vision for Space Exploration and delay NASA’s Constellation program (which involves developing and launching the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle) for five years. Let’s see... There’s already a projected five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 and the first manned mission by Orion in 2015... That means the U.S. will be relying on Russia to send our astronauts into space till 2020 (which is when we would have returned humans to the Moon). Do the math, and that’s a 10-year absence where America isn’t gonna have its own manned spacecraft to send its own astronauts into orbit. As an advocate of the space program (in case you didn’t notice from most of the Blogs on this page), this is totally freakin’ unacceptable.

Overlooking Hilary Clinton's presumably positive stance on human spaceflight, I'm probably not gonna vote Democrat in 2008. Additional reasons would be that I wasted my vote on this losing side in 2000 (to the dull, but Nobel Prize-winning vice president) and 2004 (the bunny suit-wearing flip-flopper from Massachusetts). Obama's plan is hypocritical. And foolish. He wants to motivate kids to get more interested in math and science, and yet he wants to cut funding to the one government agency whose work is the epitome of math and science being used to the fullest. Good one, dude. I was thinking about voting for him until I read about his nonsense. Politics piss me off.



UPDATE: Found this interesting tidbit on a message board:

"Just a note on survivability of a program beyond a President's term...ISS (the International Space Station) started under Reagan in 1984 and has survived—albeit not without change and compromise—through four presidencies, ten Congresses (a "congress" officially lasts two years) and 24 attempts to kill it in the Congress along the way. It's just not as simple as an initiative of a single presidential term...which is why the Congress "adopted" it as "national policy" in the 2005 NASA Authorization Act...so it wouldn't be tied to the president alone.

Obama, if elected, could propose diverting funds from Constellation to education, and the Congress could simply tell him "no." They are the ones that ultimately decide where the money goes; the president, whoever he or she is, only requests a budget."

Hm- That makes me feel a whole lot better. If you overlook the fact Congress is currently controlled by the Democrats.

"MEN AND WOMEN can’t be friends. The only reason why one would get a girlfriend is to eventually make out with her. If one just wanted to talk and hang out he’d chill with his male friends. The reason why a guy hangs out with a girl is because he finds something particularly attractive about her. If he doesn’t find her attractive, then the only reason why he’d talk to her is either because they’re co-workers and they’re working an assignment together...or he’s asking her about another girl she knows that he IS attracted to. Other than that, he’s not gonna pay that much, if any, attention to her. There is no such thing as ‘platonic love’ between a man and a woman. Unless that man, um, bats for the other team. Haha. That’s why one-sided love between a guy and a girl leads to a ruined friendship."

If that ain’t obvious-galore, I don’t know what is.