Living in Sin
Now there's a couple who planted corn before the fence was built.
But how glorious was that corn, eh?
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Southern saying of the day
Invitation to dinner
Stay a spell and see how the poor folks live.
In 3 days time, the poor folk = me and you're all invited.
Stay a spell and see how the poor folks live.
In 3 days time, the poor folk = me and you're all invited.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Sorting and packing
I got word late yesterday that the movers will be here today at 9AM to deliver our household goods that have finally made it via ship, truck, pack mule, whatever, from Lima, Peru. This will be the first time I will be forced to completely unpack in less than 24 hours, sort through the pile, identify what's mine, and then put everything I own into either a Ryan HHE (household effects, up to 18,000lbs - as if I ever in my life owned that much crap) or Ryan UAB (unacommpanied air baggage, up to 250lbs) cluster. Because, of course, the movers are coming again tomorrow at 8AM to pack and ship my UAB to my new apartment in DC.
Let the games begin!
Let the games begin!
Southern saying of the day
If you need someone to repeat what he just said, you might say...
Can you lick that calf again?
Can you lick that calf again?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
My thoughts on Grace is Gone
Here's a fun fact for my friends out there: if I am already depressed, don't let me watch sad movies.
As one could easily guess from reading the simple synopsis for Grace is Gone, this film is not exactly uplifting. John Cusack stars as Stanley Phillips, a married father of two daughters whose wife is serving in the military in Iraq. Life is already difficult for the family, as mom's extended absence is strongly felt by all three, but when Stanley receives the news that his wife has been killed in action, things move rapidly downhill.
The film largely documents the emotions of Stanley, as the surviving parent, and how he struggles to tell his girls about their mother's death.
While I personally enjoy the characters that John Cusack brings to the screen and appreciated the honest portrayal of this military family, I did feel that something was lacking. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but the film didn't feel complete. It was compelling, disheartening, sad, redemptive, profound, full of love...but something was off. Of course, there is a good possibility that the weirdness is just me and that everyone else out there will truly enjoy the experience of watching another John Cusack movie.
My final word: 1) No more sad movies for me for at least 2 weeks. This movie dropped me into a weird mire of depression for all of yesterday afternoon, and required lots of shaking of self to dispel the bad mood. 2) If you like John Cusack and are willing to watch a heavy drama piece about a military family, with no real politically motivated argument for or against the war in Iraq (different characters had different points of view about the war, but that felt real and not like the screenwriters/director were pushing an agenda), I would think you would enjoy this film. Go ahead, rent the movie, grab the popcorn and couch it for a few hours.
As one could easily guess from reading the simple synopsis for Grace is Gone, this film is not exactly uplifting. John Cusack stars as Stanley Phillips, a married father of two daughters whose wife is serving in the military in Iraq. Life is already difficult for the family, as mom's extended absence is strongly felt by all three, but when Stanley receives the news that his wife has been killed in action, things move rapidly downhill.
The film largely documents the emotions of Stanley, as the surviving parent, and how he struggles to tell his girls about their mother's death.
While I personally enjoy the characters that John Cusack brings to the screen and appreciated the honest portrayal of this military family, I did feel that something was lacking. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but the film didn't feel complete. It was compelling, disheartening, sad, redemptive, profound, full of love...but something was off. Of course, there is a good possibility that the weirdness is just me and that everyone else out there will truly enjoy the experience of watching another John Cusack movie.
My final word: 1) No more sad movies for me for at least 2 weeks. This movie dropped me into a weird mire of depression for all of yesterday afternoon, and required lots of shaking of self to dispel the bad mood. 2) If you like John Cusack and are willing to watch a heavy drama piece about a military family, with no real politically motivated argument for or against the war in Iraq (different characters had different points of view about the war, but that felt real and not like the screenwriters/director were pushing an agenda), I would think you would enjoy this film. Go ahead, rent the movie, grab the popcorn and couch it for a few hours.
Foreign Service Officer wannabe, day 49
Today I spent many, undeniably depressing hours separating what little I have into "luggage" and "UAB" piles (UAB = unaccompanied air baggage, or the 250lbs of your belongings State is willing to box up and send to you within the next few weeks). The process is, of course, complicated by two factors:
- The fact that the majority of my belongings are still en route from Lima, Peru. The Management Officer at U.S. Consulate Nogales tells me that everything may actually cross the U.S.-Mexico border late today and be delivered tomorrow, but, like everything else when dealing with a large, bureaucratic machine, it depends. The positive side of this is that it is very likely that this shipment will get to the house in Nogales before I depart for DC on Monday. That gives me some time to sort through everything myself and not have to entirely rely on Anthony to go through it all and separate my stuff out. It will be an even more positive experience if we can somehow get that shipment here tomorrow, so I can take some things out of it and put them into my UAB shipment, which is being packed at 8AM on Friday morning.
- The time has now come to officially separate *our* things into smaller Ryan and Anthony piles. It is yet another physical reminder of the painful separation we are both going through, and I am not looking forward to it. There is no real positive spin to put on the game of "this is mine and that is yours."
Southern saying of the day
Stubbornness
Try to change her mind? Heck, I might as well be a rubber-nosed woodpecker in a petrified forest.
Try to change her mind? Heck, I might as well be a rubber-nosed woodpecker in a petrified forest.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Weekend of Morgan
As I mentioned previously, our friend Morgan came to lovely Nogales, Sonora, this past weekend to visit us. His trip was mostly punctuated by overconsumption of food and alcohol (except for yours truly, who was the designated driver) and avoiding anything that would force his fiance to kick his ass when he returned home.
I think he learned that the nicest thing about the Mexico-Arizona border is that you can enjoy 70-degree weather in the midst of winter, and that the worst thing about the Mexico-Arizona border is the automatic machine gun fire that can spice up your Friday night.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the best thing was hanging out with friends and the neverending Trivial Pursuit game (largely continued because of electrical outages). Or eating deep-fried and unidentifiable Mexican breakfast foods to counteract that mild hangover earned from an afternoon into evening drinking binge in Tucson. Or kicking ass and taking names while playing whatever military combat game it was on X-box, thereby testosterone-izing the game room. Or spending hours trying to figure out if the snow in DC really was going to force him to stay here in Mexico an extra week.
I'm not sure what it was, but Morgan left a happy man (perhaps it was because he was going home and Erin would be waiting for him at the airport?). We are always so eager to comply. And, as Morgan said in his voicemail message to us from the airport, we should totally make a habit out of this.
I think he learned that the nicest thing about the Mexico-Arizona border is that you can enjoy 70-degree weather in the midst of winter, and that the worst thing about the Mexico-Arizona border is the automatic machine gun fire that can spice up your Friday night.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the best thing was hanging out with friends and the neverending Trivial Pursuit game (largely continued because of electrical outages). Or eating deep-fried and unidentifiable Mexican breakfast foods to counteract that mild hangover earned from an afternoon into evening drinking binge in Tucson. Or kicking ass and taking names while playing whatever military combat game it was on X-box, thereby testosterone-izing the game room. Or spending hours trying to figure out if the snow in DC really was going to force him to stay here in Mexico an extra week.
I'm not sure what it was, but Morgan left a happy man (perhaps it was because he was going home and Erin would be waiting for him at the airport?). We are always so eager to comply. And, as Morgan said in his voicemail message to us from the airport, we should totally make a habit out of this.
If Morgan were a bat, his ears would be this awesome.
We took Morgan to the Desert Museum, which is a combination zoo, botanical garden and museum. This is just an example of the flora and fauna in the mostly outdoor "museum."
Some impressive cacti.
Anthony and Morgan swelter in the 70-degree heat.
We saw snakes, hummingbirds, scorpions, lizards, and butterflies. We also saw a sign that instructed us not to feed the coyotes.
My thoughts on The Dead Zone
Raise your hand if you love Christopher Walken. That's right, I'm raising my hand in the air and pumping my fist like nobody's business.
In this 1983 vision of Stephen King's book of the same name, Walken plays Johnny Smith, a man who wakes up from a coma after 5 years to find that he has second vision, or the ability to see a person's future by touching their hand.
Much of the movie revolves around the difficulty Johnny has in adjusting to his new life. The woman he was going to marry before the accident that put him in a coma has long since married another man and had a son. He also becomes the focus of many journalists and desperate people, who either view his second vision with unconcealed skepticism or hound him to help them solve their ills. Johnny becomes emotionally withdrawn and views his second sight as an act of vengeance from an unjust god. He attempts to seclude himself.
It isn't until he shakes the hand of a rising politician, played by Martin Sheen, whose future reveals a decision to start a nuclear war, that Johnny realizes the power his gift grants him to change the future for the good of mankind.
While the movie is obviously dated and limited by the technology of its time, it is easy to see what a gripping story King originally told. The film has held up reasonably well over time and is a decent watch. However, if you want to truly experience the depth and profundity of the story, I would recommend that you instead read the book.
My final word: The movie is pretty solid and I rated it 3 out of 5 stars on Netflix. It is fun to see Walken in a role so far outside of what he normally does now, particularly to see how often he smiles, and the story is strong. The real downside to the film is how much it has aged and how it suffers in comparison to the pacing, cinematography, and visual effects so common in movies today.
In this 1983 vision of Stephen King's book of the same name, Walken plays Johnny Smith, a man who wakes up from a coma after 5 years to find that he has second vision, or the ability to see a person's future by touching their hand.
Much of the movie revolves around the difficulty Johnny has in adjusting to his new life. The woman he was going to marry before the accident that put him in a coma has long since married another man and had a son. He also becomes the focus of many journalists and desperate people, who either view his second vision with unconcealed skepticism or hound him to help them solve their ills. Johnny becomes emotionally withdrawn and views his second sight as an act of vengeance from an unjust god. He attempts to seclude himself.
It isn't until he shakes the hand of a rising politician, played by Martin Sheen, whose future reveals a decision to start a nuclear war, that Johnny realizes the power his gift grants him to change the future for the good of mankind.
While the movie is obviously dated and limited by the technology of its time, it is easy to see what a gripping story King originally told. The film has held up reasonably well over time and is a decent watch. However, if you want to truly experience the depth and profundity of the story, I would recommend that you instead read the book.
My final word: The movie is pretty solid and I rated it 3 out of 5 stars on Netflix. It is fun to see Walken in a role so far outside of what he normally does now, particularly to see how often he smiles, and the story is strong. The real downside to the film is how much it has aged and how it suffers in comparison to the pacing, cinematography, and visual effects so common in movies today.
My thoughts on From Paris With Love
The fact that I want to see Sean Connery as James Bond every time I think of this film is perhaps the most exciting thing about this movie. While pairing Jonathan Rhys Meyers with John Travolta is a strange move to say the least, it is not entirely awful. What is awful, however, is the story.
The main premise of the film is that Rhys Meyers, as assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France James Reece, wants to break into work for the CIA's black ops. He responds to some mysteriously unknown man who calls his cell at odd moments, and mostly does work purchasing guns and switching license plates. He finally gets called up when the agency is short a man for a Paris operation.
Rhys Meyers plays the straight-and-narrow to Travolta's unorthodox Charlie Wax. The initial official line is that the unlikely duo are driving around Paris to take out some notorious drug traffickers because their product killed the daughter of the Secretary of Defense. This soon devolves into some Pakistani plot to assasinate the U.S. mission to an African Summit being held in France. It just so happens, of course, that the would-be suicide bomber turns out to be the woman Reece just enfianced. Clearly.
While Travolta is given a wonderful character to play, with a lot of well-written lines and ultra bad-ass action sequences, Rhys Meyers is playing against type and, unfortunately, his own good looks. He just doesn't fit the straight-and-narrow, wanna-be spook character and his performance comes across as wooden.
There are also a number of issues with the script in general. Coming from a background in diplomatic protection, the fact that the leader of the protection detail for the U.S. mission not only asks the members of the mission to weigh in on security decisions, but doesn't request details on the threat to his protectees, I find the whole scenario to be ridiculous. It makes security professionals look stupid and portrays a situation that never happens in real life. If there is a valid threat on a protectee's life, security professionals do not ask their protectee's advice - they alter course and get the protectee to safety. There are no if's, and's, or but's.
There also would have been so much security on the mission's route, insomuch that no one would have been able to start driving against the flow of traffic on a path to crash into the motorcade. And Charlie Wax would never have been able to use a grenade launcher from an overpass looking over the motorcade's route.
Moreover, if Reece was actually able to convince the U.S. Ambassador that there was a suicide bomber at the Africa Summit, no one, and I mean NO ONE, would have allowed Reece to enter with his stupid little handgun to go handle the situation or "talk it out." The proper security professionals would have tracked the woman down and her head would have been riddled with at least 10 bullets from 10 different guns. We wouldn't have had to sit through the last ten minutes of practically nonsensical monologue from Rhys Meyers about the all-importance of love because his fiance would have been dead at least 15 minutes prior.
Of course, my man friend Morgan also pointed out that if the movie had followed any sort of logic, the security threat would have been neutralized about halfway through the movie and you wouldn't have had all the bang-up action in the meantime. You wouldn't get to see Travolta play with a grenade launcher or any of the fun car chase scenes.
My final word: To watch this movie you really have to suspend your disbelief. In fact, you may want to anesthetize it. That means at least a six-pack or a few rounds of shots. Some of the action sequences are fun, as is the character of Charlie Wax, but I really wish that the screenwriters put a bit more thought into making it more realistic. I prefer being wowed by both the action AND the story in my action movies.
The main premise of the film is that Rhys Meyers, as assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France James Reece, wants to break into work for the CIA's black ops. He responds to some mysteriously unknown man who calls his cell at odd moments, and mostly does work purchasing guns and switching license plates. He finally gets called up when the agency is short a man for a Paris operation.
Rhys Meyers plays the straight-and-narrow to Travolta's unorthodox Charlie Wax. The initial official line is that the unlikely duo are driving around Paris to take out some notorious drug traffickers because their product killed the daughter of the Secretary of Defense. This soon devolves into some Pakistani plot to assasinate the U.S. mission to an African Summit being held in France. It just so happens, of course, that the would-be suicide bomber turns out to be the woman Reece just enfianced. Clearly.
While Travolta is given a wonderful character to play, with a lot of well-written lines and ultra bad-ass action sequences, Rhys Meyers is playing against type and, unfortunately, his own good looks. He just doesn't fit the straight-and-narrow, wanna-be spook character and his performance comes across as wooden.
There are also a number of issues with the script in general. Coming from a background in diplomatic protection, the fact that the leader of the protection detail for the U.S. mission not only asks the members of the mission to weigh in on security decisions, but doesn't request details on the threat to his protectees, I find the whole scenario to be ridiculous. It makes security professionals look stupid and portrays a situation that never happens in real life. If there is a valid threat on a protectee's life, security professionals do not ask their protectee's advice - they alter course and get the protectee to safety. There are no if's, and's, or but's.
There also would have been so much security on the mission's route, insomuch that no one would have been able to start driving against the flow of traffic on a path to crash into the motorcade. And Charlie Wax would never have been able to use a grenade launcher from an overpass looking over the motorcade's route.
Moreover, if Reece was actually able to convince the U.S. Ambassador that there was a suicide bomber at the Africa Summit, no one, and I mean NO ONE, would have allowed Reece to enter with his stupid little handgun to go handle the situation or "talk it out." The proper security professionals would have tracked the woman down and her head would have been riddled with at least 10 bullets from 10 different guns. We wouldn't have had to sit through the last ten minutes of practically nonsensical monologue from Rhys Meyers about the all-importance of love because his fiance would have been dead at least 15 minutes prior.
Of course, my man friend Morgan also pointed out that if the movie had followed any sort of logic, the security threat would have been neutralized about halfway through the movie and you wouldn't have had all the bang-up action in the meantime. You wouldn't get to see Travolta play with a grenade launcher or any of the fun car chase scenes.
My final word: To watch this movie you really have to suspend your disbelief. In fact, you may want to anesthetize it. That means at least a six-pack or a few rounds of shots. Some of the action sequences are fun, as is the character of Charlie Wax, but I really wish that the screenwriters put a bit more thought into making it more realistic. I prefer being wowed by both the action AND the story in my action movies.
Southern saying of the day
When it's time to eat, you might say...
Let's get greasy 'round the mouth.
Which is exactly what I'm doing as I type this. Mmmmm, leftovers...
Let's get greasy 'round the mouth.
Which is exactly what I'm doing as I type this. Mmmmm, leftovers...
My thoughts on Good Luck Chuck
I can't even pretend to be nice about this movie. I don't understand what made studio execs even bother to put their names on this film, let alone grant it the funding needed to make it. While I have undoubtedly seen a number of Hollywood flops in my time (and many recently, might I add), this one takes the cake. This is a piece of shit packaged to appeal to those men who think Jessica Alba is their soul mate and to those women who think Dane Cook is a comedic genius and want to bed him because he's basically one of the only comic successes who actually works out on a regular basis.
There is no redeeming quality of this movie - from poor casting (we are seriously supposed to believe that Dane Cook's character has a heart of gold, even while Cook smugly smirks through all the good-guy lines, as if he, too, finds it hard to believe that he's uttering them), to bad writing, to characterizations about as deep as a puddle after a light spring rain, to lack of originality, to...to...everything sucked. I just have nothing nice to say.
My final word: please, I beg you, don't even rent this movie. By such action, you'll lead Lionsgate into thinking that it should make more movies like this, which seriously isn't the case. This movie should never have made it into production and I cringe at the thought of ever hearing that it's video sales prompted a sequel.
There is no redeeming quality of this movie - from poor casting (we are seriously supposed to believe that Dane Cook's character has a heart of gold, even while Cook smugly smirks through all the good-guy lines, as if he, too, finds it hard to believe that he's uttering them), to bad writing, to characterizations about as deep as a puddle after a light spring rain, to lack of originality, to...to...everything sucked. I just have nothing nice to say.
My final word: please, I beg you, don't even rent this movie. By such action, you'll lead Lionsgate into thinking that it should make more movies like this, which seriously isn't the case. This movie should never have made it into production and I cringe at the thought of ever hearing that it's video sales prompted a sequel.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Southern saying of the day
New Father
A new daddy is as proud as a dog with two tails.
You shoulda' seen Anthony when we picked Grace up from HART. Couldna' been any prouder.
A new daddy is as proud as a dog with two tails.
You shoulda' seen Anthony when we picked Grace up from HART. Couldna' been any prouder.
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