The Host

Is it less than three hours driving time to the only theater playing The Host?

Drive it.

People were screaming. Some people backed up so fast in their seats from the monster charging the screen they nearly came over the top of their chairs. People cried. People cheered. For the final thirty minutes, all critical faculties of my brain shut down and I was, Lord bless it, just an audience member for the first time in a very, very long while. After seeing this, there are very famous directors in Hollywood who claim to be able to direct action who should snap their own necks in shame at even coming within ten feet of a lens.

I will buy it. I may make finger puppets and form little clubs wherein we re-enact crucial moments of the film.

I trust I've made myself clear. This thing is pure movie. Plot development and character that would never escape intact from the Hollywood development process. Go.

Go go go go.

Jargon in Action

For those of you looking for a concrete example of "the idiot ball", please see Locke comma John on this week's Lost.

And yet somehow the Hurley/Jin/Sawyer triumvirate becomes even MORE entertaining, and I thought the bus bit was the topper. (Weren't there documents on that bus WASN'T THERE A MAP? For the luvva...) More of them doing cool stuff, please.

Moving moving moving

You see , the thing is, I don't like linkslutting around too much. And I hardly think I can just drop a sentence or two like "Dick Cheney may well prove to be the most ineptly dangerous/dangerously inept man in American political history" without some supporting arguments. Which he is. Was. Whatever.

Also. my editor will also kill me if she sees another 1000 word blog post before she gets BB #14 in. I'm pinned.

So in short, some quick observations:

1.) Don't lie to grand juries or the FBI. That's a crime, whether you like it or not.

2.) "Government" is not a problem. The "government" is the focused will of the people. Specific Administrations within governments are the problem.

3.) The Taliban and Al-qaida are building training camps and fielding battalion-sized forces. New rule -- one land war in Asia at a time.

4.) Please remember -- when you bomb people for their own good, they rarely take the point in the way you hoped. Empathy is our friend. When America was attacked, its population became incredibly nationalistic, and rallied wildly behind a leader who was of mediocre popularity beforehand. Assume other countries are also populated by human beings. (EDIT: Ezra also reminds us that President Ahmadinejad is not Hitler, primarily because unlike Hitler, he doesn't actually run anything. If you're going to argue that Iran s dangerous, then you have to start with the idea that you're talking about the Islamic Supreme Council going batshit nuts and signing their own death warrants, and move on from there. At least that will be a factually accurate discussion.)

5.) What Guliani's popularity proves is that the right wing of this country doesn't really care about so much are religious principles, but a big Daddy figure, the more authoritarian and Daddy-ish the better. Trading Bush in for Guliani is like going from strong-talking but secretly not very competent Daddy to mean smart Daddy who knows how to balance a checkbook.

Maybe we need to stop looking to the President to be our Daddy. Just saying.

6.)When wounded soldiers lay in their own urine at Walter Reed, we're sending units to Iraq without appropriate training or appropriate equipment (AGAIN or STILL, depending on my rage levels) --

Guard Units Short on Vital Equipment. Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.” Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the state’s 39th Brigade Combat Team was 600 rifles short for it’s 3,500 soldiers and also lacked its full arsenal of mortars and howitzers. [New York Times, 2/22/07]

-- and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff say the Army is close to breaking -- then I can no longer remind you that "supporting the troops" is not the same as "agreeing with absolutely everything certain bastards in suits say." They are two distinct phrases with two distinct meanings. If you cannot see the difference between the job of soldiers and the job of sending soldiers to do things that have not been properly thought out -- I can no longer even attempt to engage. I am exhausted, sir. I will merely file your name in a tiny notebook, which sits in my desk, waiting until the day the Puke Gun is finally perfected. Then, my friends, then you had best bib the fuck up. Lobster bibs, improvised napkin bibs, whatever, and you scrabble on over to the linoleum because I will not leave until you have Krauthammered all over yourself and your loved ones.

7.) The Ask a Ninja DVD is out today. That is a good thing.

8.) And this was what I was working on last year

Brosnan takes the job while preparing a sequel to "The Thomas Crown Affair," which John Rogers scripted and Brosnan is producing under his Irish DreamTime banner. A director will be set shortly and production will begin before year's end.

The producers on it are filthily cool, and I hope they'll let me talk about the process a bit for your illumination. All this, of course, assuming somebody doesn't come along and rewrite the script after me. Which does happen, you know. Or so I've heard.