Divergent Paths

After viewing Zombieland recently, I was reading up about its star, Woody Harrelson, who has to be one of the...more unique actors in Hollywood. The most fascinating thing I read about him from his Wikipedia article is the fact that his father, Charles Harrelson, was a freelance hitman who went to jail for the murder of a federal judge.

Wha-wha-what....?! Wait, it gets better. He also hinted at one point that he might have been involved in the JFK assassination. Wait, it gets even better as he once also attempted to escape from prison at the age of 58.

Wow. I mean, WOW. Find me any other parent / child combination in Hollywood (or anywhere else) with such divergent paths.

Tweet

This is one of the many reasons I hate Twitter. I follow a few people (via Google Reader, so thankfully I don't have to have a Twitter account). One of them is the bass player of my favorite band who posted this:

RT @Tomdrummond leave @fudgerecording. Does this happen??? RT @RobertLeBlanc @gabagavi *not lately*(cont) http://tl.gd/sp1ii (via @gabagavi)

W. T. F. What is that even supposed to mean? It's a bunch of nonsense. My best guess is it translates to 'Does Tom Drummond ever leave Fudge Recording (Studios)? Robert LeBlanc and Gaba Gavi don't think so - click this link to read an additional twenty letters. The fact that there is a completely different website just to publish longer messages means that Twitter itself is a TOTAL FAILURE.

Please die, Twitter. Pretty, pretty please.

Home Sweet Home

If all goes well, by the time this post is published, The Wife and I will be homeowners. After three months of looking, we found a condo we liked and put a bid in on it last month. We've been going through the whole process of home inspections, escrow, finalization of loan documents and such. I think the most frustrating part of the thing was the amount of paperwork you have to fill out. I kind of understand, since the paperwork for owning property shouldn't be on the same level as a job application at McDonald's, but it's still fairly annoying.

I really have to say, thank goodness we have iPhones. Yahoo! Mail is blocked at my work, so we were able to stay on top of emails much faster - I think there was one day last week where we got 8 emails in a matter of 20 minutes for something escrow needed "ASAP." The thing they needed, though - I had already sent them a month ago. So lame. Not to rave too much about iPhones but being able to merge phone calls into a conference call was also a big help on many a lunch break.

So...the new place is a 2+2 with an awesomely huge park within walking distance. We have 1 parking spot in a shared garage, and 1 assigned outdoor spot. It's also within walking distance of a Catholic church. Everyone we talked to in this condo complex was really nice and they all said, without fail, that they really enjoyed living there. It's a very exciting time in our lives. It needs a few things done to it which we will hopefully have taken care of in the first week and a half, and then we can start moving in after that. I will take pictures at some point and post them -- perhaps in a more restricted setting like Facebook.

Chainsaw Chick

So that The Runaways movie came out and I was reading up on the band since I knew practically nothing about them. I knew that Joan Jett and Lita Ford had gone on to their own careers but I had never really heard anything about Cheri Currie, the singer. I did some digging around for information and it turns out she now does chainsaw sculptures. WARNING - That website is very hideous - you'll probably need to scrub your eyes after viewing it. The crazy part is I found a studio where they displayed some of her work in Chatsworth - a location which I've driven past several dozen times in my life. I always saw these huge wood carvings of bears or totem poles and just recently found out those were done by the singer of The Runaways. Crazy!

Captain America

So, they announced the casting of Chris Evans in the role of Captain America for his upcoming movie. I know that my loyal blog readers (both of you) are just dying to know my thoughts, so let's discuss.

Overall, I'm okay with it. Ideally, my first choice to play Cap would be Bruce Willis, or perhaps Kiefer Sutherland. But both of those actors are probably too old for the part. This is going to be a period film, set during World War II and they need someone on the younger side. Chris Evans has played serious roles before - even though I didn't like the movie, he did a really good job in Sunshine.

What I'm more irritated by has been the backlash from the fans who are complaining that because he played Human Torch in the Fantastic Four films, he can't also be Captain America. I have been reading some outrage on Marvel's Facebook page who say this casting crushes the hopes of a Fantastic Four / Avengers movie...which was never going to happen in all honesty. 20th Century Fox owns the film rights to FF, Marvel Studios is producing Avengers and Captain America. The only way their could be a crossover is if Fox lets the film rights expire and Marvel picks them back up, at which point, they would maybe consider a crossover 10-15 years from now when the actors would be too old and they would probably re-cast anyway. So who cares.

And as far as him playing another comic book character, Ryan Reynolds did it first when he played Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity and then Deadpool in the Wolverine movie. Did people complain about this killing the chances of a Blade / X-Men crossover? No. Halle Berry has been both Storm and Catwoman. Ray Stevenson was the Punisher and now he's in the Thor movie. Rebecca Rojmin was in The Punisher and X-Men. Again, so who cares.

I honestly didn't know if Robert Downey Jr. was the right choice to play Iron Man, but once I saw the trailers and the finished product, there's no doubt they did an awesome casting job. I'm cool with Chris Evans for now and will wait to reserve judgment until I see the final product, which is very un-fanboy like of me.

Cracked / The Bloop

One of my favorite websites I've gotten back into is Cracked. I don't really know what the entire website offers but I mostly read the articles with titles like '7 People Who Cheated Death - Then Kicked It in the Balls.'

I think my favorite article is '6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain' and especially the #1 item in that article - the bloop. The bloop was this underwater sound they detected in 1997 and it was heard simultaneously from 5,000 km away. Pretty much nothing on Earth is capable of making a sound that would be heard simultaneously from such a distance and they also think it could have been made by a living creature. Holyyyyyyy crap. Get on that, science!

Anyway, the articles are a great time waster so check it out. Here are some of my faves:

- 6 Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened
- The 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain
- The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth
- 7 People Who Cheated Death (Then Kicked It In The Balls)

Enjoy!

Messed Up iTunes Artwork - Christina Aguilera

Artwork it gave me for Christina Aguilera - Back to Basics:

Song Meanings

Even though I consider myself a big fan of music, I have little to no idea what most songs are about. In fact, whenever I read a quote from the songwriter, my frequent reaction is "What? Really?"

I guess I don't even think about the meaning behind the lyrics. Sometimes the meaning is kind of cool and makes the song better - like finding out Sister Hazel's "Champagne High" is about the singer attending his ex-girlfriend's wedding and being okay with it.* And sometimes it makes the song weird, like finding out Sarah McLachlan's "Posession" is actually about crazed stalker fans.

Do you try to figure out the meaning behind songs? Does it add anything to a song when you know its intending meaning?

* - the meaning is pretty clear from the music video, which I had never seen until I looked for it while writing this blog post. Also, I'm not sure why, but the singer in the video looks like an UltraDouche.

Messed Up iTunes Artwork - The Lemonheads

I have been experiencing problems with my iPod (Doris) so I tried resetting it to no avail. I also tried deleting my iTunes library and reimporting it which caused all sorts of annoyances for me. One of the things that did was reset a majority of album artwork I had downloaded and put in there. iTunes automatically grabbed some artwork it thinks is correct for some artists, so I'll be sharing the funny ones with you.

First up, this is what it gave me for The Lemonheads - The Best of The Lemonheads:



Survey says...INCORRECT!

Zombieland

I finally had a chance to watch Zombieland over the weekend and I really liked most of it. I think there's one point in the movie where the characters do something so stupid that the movie jumps the shark. I'll go ahead and throw in a SPOILER ALERT for those who haven't seen it yet, but basically what happens is these two girls travel to an amusement park they loved as kids. They have heard the park is zombie-free, and they arrive at nighttime. At this point, the movie gets ridiculous as they decide it's a great time to turn on the power to the whole place to go on the rides. Rather than wait for daylight just in case there are zombies around, they turn on a shitload of lights and power which attracts every single zombie in 10-mile radius.

From a movie-making standpoint, I'm guessing they did this because it's easier to film an amusement park when it's nighttime. No one is there, you have all night, etc. But from a story-telling standpoint, these girls have been very crafty and careful to stay alive in a world overrun by frickin' zombies that their decision makes zero sense.

Ji Yeon

I don't think I've ever really blogged about LOST on this thing but this crazy theory occurred to me last night, and I have nowhere else to share it. So, last night's episode was titled The Package. Since the episode focused on Jin and Sun, I was almost certain that "the package" was referring to their daughter, Ji Yeon.

She was the first child conceived on the island, so I was thinking that could have some sort of power against The Man in Black. This would have neatly brought Jin and Sun back together on the island, with their daughter. It also would have been possible since they are still trying to figure out who the "Kwon" on the list is. I was even thinking that perhaps it could be Jin and Sun that end up as the skeletons. I was really excited I whipped up this theory in my head in about 20 seconds, and then they showed the package was in fact -SPOILER ALERT!- Desmond.

I still think it's possible that Ji Yeon has a purpose on the show, but I could be wrong. With as much as they talked about fertility issues, and the fact that she was the first person conceived on the island, it's possible. I was also thinking if, in fact, the "Kwon" on the list of candidates, then that would be mean that Jacob has some sort of God-like "I knew you before you were born" powers, since he touched Sun and Jin way back at their wedding.

Anyway.

Apologies if you don't watch LOST as this post probably makes zero f'ing sense.