Surreal Phone Call

We live in the DC metro area.  My fiancee is in LA right now for work.  We’ve talked every day since I came home and she stayed out there for work, but we don’t usually talk in the middle of the day much because we’re both working.  So when she calls in the middle of the day and I see her number on the caller ID I took pause for a second.

And the way she opened up the call didn’t exactly help. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but I’m okay.”  I don’t know a better way to start off a conversation about being fine in an earthquake, but I don’t like this one.  Now I could be remembering this totally wrong, but that’s what I remember her saying; I could be way off.  Obviously my first reaction is concern, and “what the hell are you talking about?”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was talking about the earthquake, which I hadn’t heard about yet.  Once she clued me in on what happened, my head was all confused.  If I had heard about the quake before I talked to her, I’m sure I would have freaked.  But since she told me she was okay before I knew about it, part of my head was thinking, “freak out, she was in an earthquake,” and the other part of my brain was thinking, “dude, chill out.  She said she was fine and everything was okay.”

Part of the strangeness of the conversation was that earthquakes were always something that happened on TV, usually described by a news anchor.  Living on the east coast all my life, I’ve never really been confronted with earthquake issues.  My sister and her family lived in the Bay area for a while, but I don’t remember there being an earthquake of significance there while she was there.

Having my fiancee go through her first, is really, really messed up to think about, and yet it still doesn’t feel completely real…and I’m not sure why.  I’m still really having trouble getting my head around it.

Bottom line is that I’m excedingly happy that she’s okay, and that it seems that there wasn’t any real damage of note to the city and no reports of people hurt last time I heard.

A Couple of Interesting Articles re: the Presidential Campaign

Lately, I’ve been wondering why Obama hasn’t been doing better in the polls given all the positive press he’s been getting over his trip abroad, the general bad taste of the Republican Party in the mouths of the American people, and some reasonably significant missteps by John McCain over the last couple of weeks.  The International Herald Tribune provided some pretty simple, and good reasons for what I considered an unexpected lack of success.

I have to keep in mind that many people aren’t interested in the campaign like I am and really don’t care that much about it yet.  People either haven’t taken the time to get to know what Obama is about and he doesn’t really have a history to go on.  A simple “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” situation.  Not to say that people will automatically favor him when/if they do get to know him.  Just saying that some independents who would naturally gravitate towards him may not favor him at this point because they don’t know enough about him.  You also have to consider that there are independents who will break the other way.  They are caught up in the hype machine of him right now, but when they get to know what he’s about, they may end up supporting John McCain.  There’s still a long way to go before that plays out.

I also thought it was really interesting that Obama is going to be getting advice from two former members of the Bush administration.  I think this is a bit of a gamble by Obama.  From one perspective, he can tout his willingness to reach across the political isle to get a different perspective on the issues.  Though a deeper look suggests that these two guys weren’t exactly “company men.”

There’s no real way to know how something like this would be received by the voting public, if it even ends up on anyone’s radar.  (back to that whole paying attention and caring thing)  Some could hear that Obama is being advised by former “Bushies” and be immediately turned off because of how much they dislike the current administration.  It would be a bit difficult to clearly explain the nuance of the situation to a voting public that still don’t believe or aren’t sure that Obama is a Christian, even after all the coverage of aspects of his religious life in the press.  Given the early timing during the election season and what looks like it will be a relatively low key environment, its probably pretty safe.

Random Thought Today

So I come off the elevator at my office today and the janitor had taken two trash cans that he would normally use to come around and collect our trash with and put them into a rather large trashbin, I would assume to make them easier to move. On seeing this I think, “if you wanted to throw away trash cans, how would you do it?” Keep in mind that I’m talking about the larger trash cans that you would normally put out next to the street. I don’t really know why you would want to throw one away, but if you take it out to the curb with the rest of the trash, the trash guy is just going to think you didn’t have any trash this week or that you never took it back up from last trash day. You probably also couldn’t put a sign on the can that said “throw me away” beacause he’s likely to just grab the sign and toss it.

Most likely you would have to tear up the can to get the trash guy to take it with him. Seems like a lot of effort to go through for somethong that you don’t want anymore, but what are you goung to do.

Just thought I’d share some of my mental randomness for today.

Support for vs Excitement about John McCain

Reading election new today I came across this article at Talking Points Memo.  For anyone that doesn’t know about TPM, its a liberal blog that gained notoriety when their investigation into the firing of US attorneys, aided heavily through active participation of readers across the country, brought to light the indications of political motivations.  They won journalistic awards for their coverage, but realize its a blog that both reports news and provides a great deal of opinion at the same time.  I appreciated their thorough coverage of the Dem primary and their reporting on government scandal that doesn’t get as much play in the main stream media, even though I do have to pull back a bit from the liberal bias at times.

While the bulk of the article isn’t terribly interesting, the below quoted excerpt made me think for a minute or two.

Let’s be honest. Hardly anyone cares about McCain or his campaign. No one’s excited about it in any way. I don’t think that’s an overstatement. Caring or being excited about isn’t the same as supporting. Lots of people support McCain — but as the anti-Obama, the alternative. This isn’t to say he can’t win; he definitely can. But very little of this campaign is about him. Virtually all of it is about Barack Obama.

This is a very interesting thought to me, and I think there might be some validity to it, even if I’m not sure I agree with some of how it was worded.  There’s no secret that the Republican brand is looked at less favorably than the Democratic brand at the moment, though I’m not sure that’s saying a whole lot.  Nevertheless, McCain is having to fight through some pretty negative ratings for his party and he really hasn’t been able to excite voters for him.  Even after he became the presumptive nominee people were still voting for other candidates in more than negligible numbers.  Its not a good sign when you’re running against no one and you can’t get near 100% of the vote.

On the other hand, Obama has cultivated much more than support and has fostered a feeling of excitement bordering on frenzy at times in his voting cohort.  I think its fair to say Hillary Clinton did the same thing during the primary.  Obama is changing the shape of the campaigning game through the so far successful “50 state strategy” and his use of the Internet to raise an insane amount of money from thousands and thousands of small dollar contributors.  Obama has stumped to crowds much larger than you would typically see for a political event, and if I remember correctly, his planned acceptance speech in a stadium will be the first since JFK.

What is still unanswered for me is where does all of this excitement get us.  One of my friends suggested that this campaign is Obama’s to win or lose.  Obama definitely doesn’t have it locked and McCain definitely has a shot at winning the election, but the sense is that a win for McCain will likely be the result of missteps by Obama, as opposed to him gaining a wave of support.  A question I have is how much of the excitement is for Obama himself, and how much of the excitement is for Obama because he represents something significantly different than what we’ve had in Washington for the last two decades?  One way or the other, I’m going to enjoy watching the whole thing unfold.

Jeff Dunham and Ahmed the Dead Terrorist

Jeff Dunham is one of my favorite comedians.  Ventriloquists can be hit or miss, but Dunham’s characters and his skill hit it out of the park for me.  Below are two clips of one of my favorite characters of his, Ahmed the dead terrorist.

He always adds great personality to his characters and his combination of the vocal content and the physical movements of the characters is just awesome.  I love it when the characters he’s not using on stage yell at the one that’s one stage from inside the suitcase.  Cracks me up.

I won’t say more.  Hope you enjoy.

Seriously People, Let Hypercolor R.I.P.

According to the L.A. Times, one of the cringe inducing fads from my middle school years is making a comeback.  Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to bring back Hypercolor clothes.  For any that have no idea what I’m talking about, hypercolor clothes would change color in reaction to the application of heat.  So for example, if your shirt was blue when you put it on, it would react to your body heat and turn a different color, possibly green, in the hotter places and stay blue in the cooler places.

It had its entertainment value for a short time, and probably served as an annoyance to teachers at my school.  I also know of one instance where a hypercolor t-shirt led to relationship strain and disciplinary action when a girl at my school thought it was a good idea to try to make her boyfriend jealous with strategically placed handprints applied in the ladies’ room.  Yeah, that didn’t turn out like she had planned.

Now there have been some clothes that have successfully made their way back in to retail stores that I thought were dead forever.  Some of the resurrected offenders I’ve seen in malls lately are tights under skirts, flats, and the side pony tail.  I can’t help but look for Cindy Lauper or the GoGos whenever I see a bunch of highschoolers running around like that.  It kind of freaks me out.  I recognize that I likely looked like an idiot in some of the stuff that I thought was “the coolest” when I was growing up, but there has to be a line somewhere.

My list of clothing trends from my middle school years that should never be allowed to be sold in any store ever again; not even Goodwill:

• Hypercolor – Novelty clothing is not supposed to stand the test of time.  Its just not.  Hypercolor falls into the same category as the beer helmet.  Its good for a laugh and you break it out when you’re drinking with friends as a gag, but it should never be considered appropriate attire for anything.  I could see having a hypercolor shirt for sentimental value so you could show your kids the kind of goofiness we had growing up, but that’s it.
• Tight Rolling pant legs – I’d really like to be able to explain what the hell we were thinking, but I can’t.  I sat here for five minutes trying to figure it out and I have no idea.  All I can think about is my parents telling me that I looked like I was waiting for a flood.  If that comes back, I know the end is nigh.
• Hammer pants – Another sign of the impending apocalypse if they make a comeback.  Any pair of pants that looks like you pooped yourself shouldn’t be allowed out in public.  MC Hammer requested the pants be made extra baggy so he could get his dance on during concerts so I can’t begrudge him that, but all the people that wore those in middle school (I can happily say I never owned a pair) just looked like they should have asked for a hall pass sooner.

I could probably go on, but I’ll leave it at that.  I’ll conclude by seriously pleading with any and everyone out there to not buy one of these things.

Wait, now that I think of it, I may have just come up with my Halloween costume for this year.  Tight rolled Hammer pants with a hypercolor t-shirt and braided friendship bracelet.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Before I get into it, let’s all be clear.  Iron Man is not supposed to be a high minded film about life.  Its a CG eye-candy action flick.  Now that I have that out of the way, this movie was great.  Its one I wanted to see in the theater, and I was finally able to go see it with some friends last night.

There isn’t a great deal to say about the plot, because, for the most part, that’s not what these kinds of movies are about.  I’m also not familiar with the Iron Man comics, so I can’t speak to how closely it stayed true to the story line or tone of the comic.  I’ll say that the plot line and character development was sufficient enough for me to really enjoy the movie.

I thought the special effects and action sequences were pretty sweet.  The special/visual effects artists did a great job with the suit and some of the detail they went in to to making the suit look cool while also bringing in some realism, which usually isn’t needed for comic book based movies.  As far as I could tell, it was a good representation of the original and they did some really cool stuff with how the suit worked and how the suit operated during flight to help him stabilize himself in the air.

The music for the movie was excellent.  The score is very guitar heavy in most cases with AC/DC’s Back in Black and Black Sabbath’s Iron Man being prominent.  One little funny thing is that I have Back in Black as the ringer on my cell phone and in a very Pavlovian way, when the song came on the movie I started to reach for my cell phone.  Yeah, I’m a dork.  There was also some input from Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.  I initially thought the Rage music was one of their tracks, but trying to figure out which one today, it appears it may have been an original contribution from Morello.

I thought Robert Downey, Jr. did a good job in the lead role.  He’s a pseudo-lovable, arrogant playboy selling arms to start the movie.  After his mindset changing moment, he realizes that his efforts to make the world safer by producing weapons has backfired because his weapons are ending up in the hands of the bad guys.  He decides to change the direction of his life, but he doesn’t lose all of his reckless cockiness.  He has softened a little bit, but he still prefers a little bit of a “ready, shoot, aim” mentality that I think makes him a little more believable.

Really only two negatives from the movie.  Gwyneth Paltrow seemed a bit awkward in her role.  I think the character was supposed to be a little awkward, but it looked like she was trying to be awkward at times, which made her awkwardly awkward.  Not terrible, but not her best performance.  And my only real “I call BS” moment from the movie came after he pieced together his first suit.  He builds this suit from a bunch of scraps that he has in a cave out in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan, and somehow he find enough flamethrower fuel to burn down the entire extremist camp during his escape.  Having a hard time believing that.

If you like action flicks or comic book based movies, this one is definitely a watch.  I’d rank this as better than the last two Spiderman movies (can’t remember the first well enough to compare), but not as good as Batman Begins.  If you haven’t seen it and can find it in the theater, I would definitely recommend trying to catch it on the big screen.  If you can’t find it, definitely rent it when it comes out.