Am I the only one who is flat out amazed at the changes the earthquake in Chile caused?

The magnitude-8.8 earthquake that rocked the west coast of Chile last month was violent enough to move the city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west and the capital, Santiago, about 11 inches to the west-southwest, researchers said.

As if that wasn’t amazing enough

NASA scientists have also credited the quake with shifting the Earth’s axis enough to create shorter days. The change is negligible, but still worth noting: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

Holy WOW Batman! I know a microsecond isn’t anything to worry about.. but sweet Jesus, that earthquake was so large it changed time!

It was so violent it moved an entire city 10 ft to the west.

That’s just crazy to think of. It’s something you think of happening during the Permian Period when the world was the super continent of ‘Pangea‘, not in our time.

I’ll tell you something else.. the 2012 predictions don’t look so crazy when you read about the effect of Chilean earthquake do they..?

ok, well maybe they do a little. But it does make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

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Christmas Day found my mother in law insisting that we all go to the movies to see Avatar; specifically the IMAX 3D version, but the IMAX Theater was all the way across town… whahh….  I was not averse to seeing the movie, far from it.  It was a movie I was waiting for.  But I would have been happy to see just the regular movie version much closer to where I live.

But… I would have been wrong.  Seeing that movie, in IMAX and 3D, is the only way to see it.  The movie’s raison d’etre is after all, visuals.  That’s the big selling point; something that looks fantastic on screen that you’ve never seen before.  On that basis, the movie fulfilled the hype.  The visuals are lush, fantastic, and certainly something much beyond what I’m used to seeing on the screen. It provides the perfect beauty of a painting with the realism of … well real life.  The visuals of the movie are art, in and of itself.

As for the story… well if you’ve already seen the movie, you know it.  In fact, if you haven’t seen the movie, you still know it.  It’s pulled intact from Hollywood’s grab bag of twenty or thirty standard movie plots.  If you’ve seen any Hollywood movies in your life time, then you’ve already seen this one.  Dances with Aliens is a pretty succinct description.  But good story telling is good story telling.  I enjoyed the movie immensely even knowing how the story would play out.  Knowing the formula doesn’t necessarily ruin a movie for me.  The fun is the journey.

But I didn’t see much more than that.  Good popcorn type fun, but others saw much more into the movie than I did.  Science Fiction author Steven Barnes, who wrote about the movie at the author’s website, had a more unique view of the movie, If Spike Lee had directed Avatar?  Although that seems to be a subject ripe for a Mad Magazine satire, to Barnes it brought up issues of light skinned Na’vi lording over the darker blue skinned ones.  I didn’t even notice if there were various shades of blue among the alien Na’vi.  My view of a Spike Lee directed Avatar would have included the Na’vi calling each other “motherfucker” a lot and including an ending that would be totally incomprehensible to me.

But what really struck me was a finally throw away line at the end of the piece:

Oh…and if Spike had directed Avatar, there would have been at least one black male character to identify with. Say…the other Avatar scientist? Maybe one of the support staff?

What made me marvel a bit at this line is that after watching the movie, I never realized nor had it occurred to me that there were no black characters in the film.  True Zoe Saldana was one of the major characters of the film, but she was in blueface for the entire film so her film character was that of the alien Neytiri.  Anyway, she’s Dominican so it’s unclear to me if she regards herself as Hispanic or as Black.  That’s a whole nuther kettle of fish.

But Barnes comment was a reminder to me of how on a day to day basis that white people are isolated from race.  In America, we live in a white world.  If you’re white in the US, you just don’t have to think about race that much.  If I turn on the TV, I don’t worry about finding someone on the screen to identify with.  Firstly, because there is no one like me, and secondly, being able to live so removed from race and racial issues, the odds are against me not finding a “character to identify with.”  For Barnes, the issue is probably in his face on an almost daily basis.

Thanks to the television of Norman Lear, I grew up watching shows with predominately black casts, such as The Jefferson’s, Sanford and Son, and Good Times.  At least as a child, I had no problem identifying with the characters.  But television, like me, grew up.  Television expanded from 4 or 5 channels in a metropolitan area to 30, 40, then 70 or more channels on cable television, not counting digital channels.  Thirty or forty years ago, everyone, black and white, watched the same shows.  Now both the television and movie audience is much more segregated.  There is a channel for every taste, and ethnic and racial group.  We are gaining in choice, but we are clearly losing something else.  Perhaps a common popular culture?

But maybe, just maybe, there was more to James Cameron’s vision than a casting oversight.  Among the “human” cast, actors Dileep Rao (Dr. Max Patel), Sigourney Weaver (Grace Augustine), and Michelle Rodriguez (Judy Chacon) were the only “good guys” in the film.  Other than Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, all of the “white” males were bad guys.  Women and Asians were the good guys.  Given Cameron’s politics, that was probably intentional.  It rather fits into the story and Cameron’s worldview.  Maybe Barnes should be glad that black males were left off this list, although in a broader sense, he may have brought up a good point.  One that I would never have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to me.

Most stories, but particularly in science fiction, require a sympathetic character that we need to identify with in order to be drawn into the story and to introduce whatever strange world we are being introduced to.  But how much does that sympathetic character need to be like us in order for us to really empathize with him or her?  Do they have to have the same skin tone, the same sex?  And if the movie doesn’t provide that, is it a slap in the face to the viewers who don’t look like our protagonist? 

But I didn’t notice those things watching the film, but I’m pretty sure that if I had walked into that theater and every character had been black, I would have noticed.  The question I can’t answer is, would I have felt as excluded by that theoretical movie as Steven Barnes did from Avatar?

Maybe Spike Lee should take a crack at a remake…

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As a longtime fan of the Stargate franchise, I was looking forward to the new entry in to the Stargate television family, Stargate Universe.  Although I have to admit I was a bit cautious in my expectations.  The Stargate shows, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, have been in my opinion damn near perfect science fiction TV.  The premise, that aliens thousands of years ago had kidnapped humans from Earth and settled them all over the galaxy as slaves via a Stargate, a massive ring that allows instantaneous travel between solar systems, allows just about any type of potential science fiction plot device.  In one episode the heroes could be halfway across the galaxy liberating humans from an evil alien overlord; in the next they could be downtown in Colorado Springs, getting a pizza.  Or sometimes in the same episode.  Humor and current pop culture references kept the show anchored in the here and now, while at the same time allowing the traditional action adventure in the stars.  Earth and the US Air Force manage to beat technologically superior aliens time and again.  Go us!

But when I first heard the premise of the show; humans trapped on an Ancient spaceship halfway across the universe, my first instinct was, “Uh oh, this is going to be Stargate’s Voyager.  Voyager was the second to last in the Star Trek shows, which has a starship from the Star Trek Federation… halfway across the galaxy.  The purpose was to take advantage of the Star Trek franchise but at the same time pull away from the usual cast of situations and aliens, which had started to grow stale.  It was a concept that had only meager success, and showed the franchise was on life support, finally flat lining during Star Trek Enterprise.

But the producers had promised an “edgier” Stargate than the previous incarnations.  Edgier?  Full frontual, or a FX-like use of profanity?  But setting down to watch the premiere episode I was afraid edgier would merely mean the same thing as it meant to the makers of Heroes; cut the lights off and film in the dark.  Note to TV producers: noir doesn’t mean filming without klieg lights.  At this point, the brightness level on my TV is all the way up and I still can’t see what’s going on in Heroes.  If I decide to finish the season for that show, I may just finish it as podcasts and listen to them since I can’t see what’s happening on the screen anyway.

And in the premiere episode Air, that started to look like what they meant.  The quick premise of the show, is that a planet that has unique properties and Stargate, has a secret military base.  The  Earth base personnel, who were on the planet to discover the mysteries of the “Ninth Chevron” figure out how to use the unique gate just as the planet comes under the attack of perfectly timed aliens.  Beating a hasty retreat through the Stargate, the base survivors discover themselves on board an Ancient (a humanlike highly technological race that disappeared tens of thousands of years ago in the Stargate mythology) starship, with no means to power the ship’s stargate to get back to Earth.

Naturally the ship is in total darkness when they board.  Edgy.

The first couple of episodes of the show revolve around the crew trying to wrap themselves around solving the most basic survival needs, as the episode names indicate, Air, Light, Water… Episodes filled with the grimness and stress of their situation, but little humor or action to break the ice.  Frankly, not bad episodes, but not great either.   However I’m embarrassed to say it took me until the most recent episode, Justice, to figure out what “edgy” was supposed to mean.

The producers were not doing the Stargate version of Voyager; they were doing the Stargate version of Battlestar Galactica.

Galactica (the updated version, not the 1970’s feathered hair version) was almost revolutionary in it’s approach.  It stripped out the aliens, weird spatial phenomena, time travel, technobabble, and other props of the SF genre and just left the people; highly imperfect people.  Heroes were not always heroic, or truthful, villains were not always villainous, or lying.  Galactica raised the bar on TV science fiction, making it an adult drama, and the Emmy’s that Galactica won during its 5 season run bear that out.

So I consider myself fully on board with Stargate Universe now, and feel free to recommend the show, although with caveats.  While Galactica had me hooked with the first miniseries that launched the show, I’ve been mulling over Stargate Universe.  I was not hooked until recently.  It may be that just my expectations of what a Stargate show should be made me blind to what the producers were trying to do with this version of Stargate.  This isn’t your geeky father’s Stargate.  It definitely has a different feel to the show, dare I say edgier?

Why bring this up now?  The show has been on for months.

True, but the show is on a brief hiatus until the spring and tomorrow the Syfy channel is running all nine of the previously aired episodes back to back all day.  So if you are out of work, nerdy, and somehow missed the previous showings, now is a good opportunity to catch up.

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BRA–FUCKING–VO

I haven’t been to a movie that suspenseful/creepy/’what the fuck’ scary since Blair Witch..

and yes, Blair Witch, when it came out it creeped the hell out of you people and you know it… Paranormal Activity is 10 times the creep,tension, and bone-chilling scare..

This movie is on par with seeing the Exorcist the 1st time…the original Amityville Horror the 1st time.. reading your 1st truly scary Stephen King and then turning the lights on to sleep… I never knew ‘foot steps’ could scare/creep the utter fuck out you..

It’s a true ’scary’ movie, not a ‘horror’ movie… it’s old school walking in the cemetery on Halloween at midnight with your friends or being home at night and you hear a sound and the worst part of all, the dog heard it too so you pull the covers over your head a pray..

Crowd-reaction-wise…I have never been to a ‘horror’ movie like this one before. The previews they show of the audience hiding their faces,cringing and screaming it dead-on.. we cringed,we held our breath, we screamed, we laughed out loud.. we said.. “OH shit!” Oh Fuck” and one black dude down in front during an extremely suspenseful,utterly cringe worthy and quiet part said “OH hell no!” and the whole place laughed because the tension-release demanded it, only to be immediately built back up when your attention was on the movie again.

I seriously recommend this to anyone looking for a great suspense/tension filled scary movie.. and go see it at night, in a theater at a time when there will be others there.This movie won’t be as good at home or at a matinee.It will still be awesome, but like a comedy show is better when you’re a part of the actual audience, this would be just that much better seeing at the theater.

I won’t talk about the parts in the movie because I really don’t want to give anything away but, it’s ‘involved’… meaning there’s a slow story line that builds up tension to such a extent and it does it so often that you are just exhausted from it, your muscles are actually sore from being so tensed up for so long…  and after each tension release you can’t help but let out a nervous guffaw, you know that laughter when you’re scared/tense beyond control and you just can’t help but laugh to release some of it?

There were parts when I said “if this happens I’m walking out”!!   HA! It produces a total ‘fight or flight‘ response in you because if you’re like me, you’ve seen all the scary/horror movies ever made so you’re just agonizingly waiting for that one part, the “If  he finds her in the corner I’m getting the hell out of here!” …“If something comes through that TV you have to leave with me”, part where  you can’t look.. but even worse, you can’t NOT look!

I hate hate hate building up movies like this..  But even after reading TIME’s review.. It didn’t matter, I was still creeped me right the hell out..

…Oh, sweet Jesus, that nice couple Katie and Micah are about to go to sleep again! They already suspect that their house is haunted. Micah has propped up his video camera in their bedroom to record any unusual phenomena, so they’ll know what awful thing happened the previous night, while they were sleeping. The bedroom door moved a couple of inches and then … moved back

Big hairy deal, say cynics who were bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity in Times Square this past week didn’t need gore effects to be scared witless. Yes, they knew it was only a movie — one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used “found footage” to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events that were dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and are endured by actors Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (using their real names). But when that door moved, the crowd’s collective gasp just about sucked all the oxygen out of the theater.…

yes, Oh sweet Jesus is the perfect description… HA!

…A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy. He knows that waiting for the big scary jolt does more damage to the nervous system than getting it. The tension builds slowly, as the apprehensive Katie, a student, and the skeptical Micah, a day trader, feel the first emotional tremors. The movie keeps us in its grip because we never leave the couple’s haunted property and because all we see is what the camera has recorded when held by Micah or Katie, or when left on at night to monitor their bedroom. That claustrophobia creates a bond between the couple and the audience; they can’t escape, and neither can we.

Peli downplays shock and emphasizes suspense: a shadow creeping across a wall or the ripple of an unseen form under the bedsheets. The gore scenes in splatter movies carry a sadistic punch, but those are outside most moviegoers’ experience. What Peli is interested in is dread, a feeling everyone is familiar with. (Will I lose my job? Has she found someone else? Why hasn’t our kid come home yet? What’s that strange rash?) Movies take that anxiety, crystallize it…

and finally

A thousand people sit as one in the dark, as fretful and enthralled as a child hearing a bedtime story and wondering, What happens next? No, I can’t bear it! No, I have to see!

If you do anything for Halloween.. go see this movie..

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Forgive me Kiefer, For  I have sinned…

Lestat, I… am ashamed.

Louis,Armand and even Bill and Erik…. I apologize.

“Maggots, Michael. You’re eating maggots.

How do they taste?”

After months of pressure from a conniving 13 year old… I caved! In a weak moment she got me to do that which was unthinkable… She tricked me with some kind of sorcery that only the baby of the family possesses over the mother.. That’s right children, the dedicated disciple and believer of the motto… ‘Those vampires are pussies and I will not sully the memory of real vampires, of my vampires.. by watching or reading that filth’.. The lion, as it was, fell to the lamb and watched Twilight…

and it didn’t suck.

Before watching, the girls and I.. ok the oldest girl and I, were trying to explain to the youngest that we didn’t really want to see the movie because these vampires were pussies..Sorry, but it was true… they were goody-sissy boys who couldn’t compete with their predecessors. I finally told the young child…“Look, these are not my vampires.. these are not your sister’s vampires.. these are your vampires and yours alone… and you can’t make us give up our vamps and like yours because yours, break the number one rule of being a vampire!!!”

Oh how naive I was..

Everyone has that moment in their life when, for the first time they find themselves saying “Oh yeah, I’d be a vampire for him”.. and while my moment didn’t totally come until Lestat… Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys had me unconditionally and irrevocably in love and glamored for life ..My oldest daughter explained to her sister that her moment was with Spike and it was rekindled when she saw Henry Fitzroy. Finally, my youngest  understood what we were saying when we said, “your girly-boy vampires will ruin the memory of our bad-boy ones”, but that didn’t stop her from forcing us to watch these… new, ’shimmering’ ,day walkers.

BUT! credit given where credit is due. They weren’t as horribly dishonoring as I expected.  No, Edward isn’t Monsieur De Lioncourt or even his beloved Louis.. and James could have learned a few things from Kiefer, but in the end or more specifically the middle(of the movie), I had fallen for them anyway. Edward’s brooding was too seductive to overcome, his resistance to Bella and final capitulation was too sweet to deny…and his protectiveness over her was just too honorable..

No, Edward will not replace the bad boy vampire I am truly in love with.. he is no match for Lestat, David, and most recently Eric Northman but,he is good enough to be given a second peek.. even if that peek completes my fall from grace..

That’s right baseball fans, I’m heading out today to buy that which I have mocked for over a year now… the fucking “Twilight Saga” book series. Before last night this mission would have had to be done covertly, under the cover of the midday Florida sun so as not too alert those who I truly adore, to my seedy affair..but after last night I am admittedly… Team Edward and not (too) embarrassed to admit it…

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