infinite improbability

Orange Mocha Frappuccino!

In the movie Zoolander, there's a scene that I like to quote, where, after Derek is depressed about losing male model of the year to Hansel, and one of his roommates says about how what would cheer him up is "an Orange Mocha Frappuccino!" I sort of thought that would taste nasty, but last night I decided to order one, and they're actually really good. They don't call them "Orange Mocha Frappuccinos" though, they're "Frappuccino Valencia."

Batman trailer

Seems that there's going to be a new Batman movie coming out next summer. From the looks of the trailer, it just might end up being halfway decent instead of lame like the last few.

UPN's reality show Amish in the City is a big joke

Here's the deal, the premise of UPN's reality series Amish in the City is that they're taking five sheltered Amish young adults from the middle of nowhere in the midwest and sticking them in a house with hip young "city dwellers," and watching them react to their new and very different surroundings. Sounds all well and good, but since when was Sarasota, Florida part of the rural midwest?

Among the Amish cast members is 24 year old Randy Stoll, who is described in his UPN bio as "one of seven children raised on an 80-acre corn farm in Indiana," which is true, but what they don't tell you in his bio is that the guy's from Sarasota now, and doesn't appear to be living a particularly traditional Amish lifestyle, if he's got friends like the one quoted in the Herald Tribune article who is only interested in finding out from him "Who hooked up with who?" Yeah, LA is really going to be a culture shock moment for him.

When two of the five Amish cast members have lived in Sarasota (Miriam reportedly spent about a year living in Sarasota), it's not exactly a representative sample of small town Amish youth. We're talking about people who are from an international tourism destination, not some sleepy little town that nobody's heard of in the middle of Indiana or something. I mean, people like Dick Vitale call the Sarasota/Bradenton area home, as does recent Wimbledon champ Maria Sharapova, and a bunch of other pro athletes have homes here, so despite the fact that I tend to complain about it being not a particularly interesting place to live, it really is a fairly happening place, and certainly not an area that is sheltered from the outside world.

One more thing about George Lucas

Every time I watch Episodes One and Two, I realize even more just how racially stereotyped the characters are. The trade federation guys are some of the worst stereotypes of Asians since the early days of cinema (and how did he come up with such racist stereotypes when Akira Kurosawa is practically his idol?), and Jar Jar, well he seems to have been taken right out of a minstrel show. He's the stereotypical minstrel show character of the "good negro" who has the IQ of a brick and is slavishly subservient to his "massah." How in the heck Lucas got away with such blatantly racist characters is beyond me. Where's the outrage? If I wanted to see such racist portrayals of minorities, I'd go rent Disney's Song of the South or find a copy of Birth of a Nation.

Yet another example of Lucas ruining my childhood memories. Do I sound angry? I am. Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater, at the ripe old age of three, and I can still remember how excited I was on the way to see it, and collectively, the Star Wars trilogy were the defining films of my childhood, but now all those memories have been polluted by the trash that is the prequels. A pox on all your houses, George Lucas.

And, one more post for the night, and it's about movies not politics

Here's my super short reviews of the movies I've seen in the last few weeks.

The Notebook: Overly predictably, emotionally manipulative, sacharin sentamentalist tripe that lacks authentic emotion. If I were giving out stars for the movies I review, this wouldn't get any.

Dodgeball: Hilarious, if not somewhat crude, comedy. If there was such an award, this movie would have to get the award for best use of Lance Armstrong in a cameo.

Anchorman: This is a film that's worth seeing if only for the street brawl in the middle of the movie.

I, Robot: Fairly entertaining as a summer popcorn action flick, but not particularly original, and best described as "Phantom Menace droids meets 2001: A Space Odyssey." This movie is proof that Hollywood hasn't gotten over it's paranoia about computers, and as such, it's antithetical to Asimov's vision. If you see it, forget that it's even supposed to be "inspired" by the book, you'll be much happier if you do.

The Bourne Supremacy: For fans of the books, be aware that the only similarity to the book of the same name is the title, not that it really matters because for what it is, it's a great movie. My only real beef is that they had Jason Bourne wearing the same all black outfit through most of the movie, and he stuck out from his surroundings like a sore thumb. Someone as good as Jason Bourne would have at least made some effort to blend in. Even with that complaint, I still highly recommend it. One note of caution though. If you're squeamish, be aware that the level of blood and violence pushes the envelope of the PG 13 rating.

Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention

There are a lot of things that can be said about Bill Clinton's speech to the Democratic convention, but I want to touch on just one thing. At several points in his speech, Clinton criticized Bush for starting wars and occupying countries without international support, which is pretty hypocritical coming from the guy who started a war with Serbia without even bothering to take it to the UN first because he knew that the UN would vote the action down. Clinton is criticizing Bush for having troops spread out around the world, when part of the reason that the troops are spread out around the world is because we still have troops in the former Yugoslavia as a result of Clinton's questionally legitimate actions in that country.

Why am I bringing up what Clinton did when it's Kerry who's running for president? Quite simple. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton talked about how the eight years of Democratic control were superior to the previous twelve years under the Republicans or the past four years under Republican leadership. We're supposed to vote Democratic based on the Democrats' past record, and we are supposed to not like the Republicans because of the wars that Bush has started, but it seems to me that in those eight years that we are supposed to want to emulate, Clinton sure initiated a lot of military action without international sanction. It's mighty hypocritical to criticize a guy for doing what you've done to an even greater extent during your years in office, when you didn't even have the excuse of trying to stop the spread of terrorism.

John Kerry--Captions anyone?

This picture of Kerry at Kennedy Space Center really needs a caption.

Or, maybe you'll like this lovely photoshopped version from blogsforbush.com.

I'm sick of George Lucas

First, he's doing a new release of THX 1138 with new digital effects added, proving once again that he is compulsively incapable of leaving his movies alone once he's finished them. Has the guy forgotten what made his movies good in the first place?

And, the title for Star Wars Ep. 3 is just bad. Revenge of the Sith? Did he just have to have one of his movies with a "Revenge of the...." title or something? (recall, Return of the Jedi was originally supposed to be Revenge of the Jedi until too many people complained that Jedi aren't supposed to take revenge).

Maybe George wasn't so great to begin with, he just got lucky, but whatever the case, the only reason I'm probably going to end up seeing Ep. 3 opening day is because of childhood nostalgia.

I don't trust cell phone companies

So, last week I sign up for a cell phone with Cingular. I decided to go with Cingular because that's what the rest of my family has, which saves minutes because with certain plans, you get free calls to other Cingular customers. I signed up for the cheapest plan that gave free mobile to mobile calling, which was apparently an internet special because that plan doesn't normally give those minutes for free. Well, I get my phone yesterday and everything seems to be going without a hitch, it activates itself automatically, and I don't have to worry about dealing with any real humans. Until, I hit glitch numero uno. I try to set up my voicemail and when I enter my phone number to access my mailbox, I get the "mailbox not recognized" error message. I'm like, ok, fine, it should be an easy call, it's probably something minor. When I called up Cingular today (after navigating half a dozen menus before getting to a real person), the lady on the other end tells me that they "forgot to include voice mail when they set up the phone," and goes ahead and activates it for me. That's when I start worrying because if they forgot that, what else did they forget? So, I ask the customer service rep what features are activated, just to make sure they didn't miss anything, and sure enough, they forgot to include unlimited mobile to mobile calling. When I told her, "wait, I'm supposed to have mobile to mobile calling" she acted dumb like she hadn't heard of the concept and then told me that my plan didn't include it. I replied that no, I was supposed to have it, my order confirmation said it was included, but she just repeated back to me the number of minutes on my plan and said that it wasn't included. This went on, back and forth, for another minute or so, with me insisting that yes, it was on my order confirmation that I was getting it, and her insisting that no, that was impossible. By that point, I had dug through my papers and had found my confirmation print out and told her I had the order confirmation right in front of me and that it said "unlimited mobile to mobile" and did she want the confirmation number. Immediately after I said that, she miraculously discovered that I was supposed to have it and activated it.

I'm convinced that Cingular leaves things off people's bills or adds things to them, to make the customer pay more, in hopes that the person doesn't notice, doesn't bother to call, or if they do call, they buy the claim that the customer service person feeds them and doesn't bother to argue.

John Kerry

Ok, let me just say it. I think that John Kerry is one of the least interesting presidential candidates in a while. All of his support must come from his supporters' intense dislike of Bush, because I just don't see why anbody would willingly support the guy otherwise. This isn't just my Republican partisanship coming out either, if Kerry was a Republican, I'd be saying the same thing. And what's up with Kerry changing his mind on almost every issue? Once upon a time, Republicans called Clinton a waffler, but Kerry makes Clinton look like a rank amature. Come on John, take a position and stick to it for once.

Oh yeah, and here's the newest thing. Kerry is now trying to have it both ways on the abortion issue. Instead of taking the traditional hedging "personally opposed to abortion but believe in a woman's right to chose" position, Kerry is trying to make the Catholic voters happy by saying that he believes that life begins at conception. Come on John, that only makes your continued support for abortion seem worse, because now you're admitting that abortion takes lives and that you support the taking of lives. And, it makes Kerry's support for embryonic stem cell research worse than it already is, because if life begins at conception, then he's supporting killing humans for medical research, which is just sick.

Work, baseball, and other random unconnected stuff

Well, I decided to stop being a slacker and get employment, seeing as my credit card balance has been expanding, especially due to things like spending $200 to get a ticket to the Stanley Cup finals (it was so worth it, though). So anyway, I'm now working as a sales associate at Burdines-Macy's, in the Home Store, which means that if you want advice about what sort of cooking implements, china, sheets, towels, etc you should buy, I'm your person. I worked there before, while I was home on break from college, and whenever I come shopping, my old managers have been begging me to come back, so I'm there part time.

In other news, I went to a Devil Rays game Wednesday night, because they had tickets for $5 in honor of making it back to .500, and it was pretty cool, even though there were only 10,560 people there. See, that's something I really don't get, because ever since I was little, as far back as I can remember, this area has been obsessed with getting a baseball team, and now we have one and they've started winning and nobody bothers to go. People whine about the stadium being lousy, and while it isn't cushy, it's not bad, and they whine about the location of the stadium, which is silly because it's ridiculously easy to get to. I dunno, maybe it's because a funny thing happened on the way to trying to get a baseball team. We built a stadium because, if you build it, they will come, and all that, but we kept not getting a franchise, and instead we got what nobody was expecting, a hockey team playing in that building, and somewhere along the way, everybody forgot about baseball and fell in love with hockey, and now we have our baseball team and it's started to win but it's July and everybody is still talking about hockey.

Saw Spiderman 2 at the midnight showing on opening day. I wasn't planning on going, my brother and sister had tickets, and at about 11:30 they called and said they there were still tickets available if I wanted to go, so I ended up going, and I'm glad I did because it was a majorly cool movie. About half the audience looked like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, which is to be expected at the midnight showing of a comic book movie, I suppose. The plot was utterly predictable, but the way that the movie was done was excellent and made up for the plot predictability.