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| 3/31/2003 |
| All Hail The Big Stupid |
I am usually immune to the charms of the Big Stupid. At least, I try to be. The siren call of the Big Stupid can be very difficult to resist, but generally I can remain steadfast 'gainst even the most vicious example of the Stupid Tides. Joe Millionaire? Ha! I spit at thee! American Idol? Surely, you jest!
This weekend however, I succumbed to the lastest nefarious example of the Big Stupid to be unleashed upon a mostly willing American populace: I went to and very much enjoyed a matinee showing of The Core.
Believe me, The Core is very, very, VERY stupid. But the best thing about it is, everybody in it is in on the joke.
The basic plot outline is: the Earth's core is made up of two layers (much like a Charm's Blow Pop); the inside layer is solid iron, surrounded by a molten rock layer that "spins" around the central layer. This spinning motion creates the Earth's protective magnetic field. Well, it seems that our government had a Top Secret weapon's program that has had a severe side-effect: it's stopped the spinning of the molten layer of the core. So: no more protective magnetic field. Chaos and death are sure to ensue, Unless Our Heroes Can Jump Start That Molten Layer In Time!
I mean, that is Very Big Stupid.
But it's also a hell of a lot of fun. This movie has the kind of "science" that you'd find in a sci-fi flick in the 50's or 60's. The good guys figure out that a properly placed and timed "nook-yuh-lar" explosion may get the core of the Earth a-spinnin' again, Lord willin' and the creek don't rise. Of course, the delivery of said nukes will require tunneling into impossibly deep reaches of the planet - luckily, there's a mad scientist in the desert (Delroy Lindo) who just so happens to have invented ALL the materials required for just such a mission!
Thank goodness everybody in the movie didn't attempt to play this kind of thing straight (like the actors in say, ID4 did). The entertaining cast all but winks at the audience at all the appropriate times, making their own jokes at some of the more ridiculous plot points. Aaron Eckhardt, who has yet to be bad in any film, gets special mention - he actually starts laughing when he hears the name of the newly discovered indestructable substance that will be used to create the vehicle for the mission: unobtainium. And later, when pilot Hillary Swank warns the crew to get buckled up as she's "dodging diamonds the size of Cape Cod," Eckhardt says, "Diamonds?! I want some!"
For a film as silly as this, it actually holds together pretty well until the very end, once the mission has been successfully completed - though with our heroes stranded hundreds of miles below the surface, with no power in their ship, and no way to get back. The way the good guys make it in the end, and there's never any doubt that they will, pushes even the absurd limits allowed by the Very Big Stupid Rulebook.
But damned if I didn't enjoy the movie. It seems to me that the world is drowning in Big Stupid right now, but The Core reminded me that this isn't always a bad thing. |
| 4:25:32 PM |
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| 3/30/2003 |
| Back To The Drawing Board? |
| Whoopsie daisy! |
| 5:40:56 PM |
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| 3/29/2003 |
| My Only Friend, The End |
Grunge is done.
Of course, you may have thought that around 1995 or so, but no, I refer not to that genre of music, but the cover band that I've been in for the last two years. We played our last show about two and a half hours ago, at the Ballard Firehouse, which interestingly, was the venue where we had our first performance back in aught-one.
It was also, as he announced rather poignantly from the stage, the last live performance for singer Joey Furlan. The guy is giving up on his twenty-year old Rock Star Dream, and calling it a day. It's hard for me to really believe he'll never play live again, but we'll see. His exact words were, "Hey, I found god, what can I say," as he explained why he was "retiring." It was a bit of shock that he was so honest about it - I exchanged a surprised glance with Chris G when he said that. Even though I've been very ready for Grunge to be done, I admit to some sadness tonight. Joe is a fantastic vocalist and frontman, and if he indeed is hanging up his skates, then that's really too bad. He made an album called Voice a few years back, pick it up from him if you can.
As to the show itself, I pretty much played a mistake-free gig, a rare occurrence. We had a hiccup on "Dam That River", because I'm the only one (besides G) in the whole band that knows how to count out of the solo section into the last verse, and we didn't do it right, again. I won't miss the fact that by and large, our band was very under-rehearsed.
After the show, I packed up my bass and grabbed my stuff, and headed off the stage. As I started to point toward the door, a spectacularly tall and beautiful woman introduced herself to me. Her name was Skye, and she had a crushing handshake, for which I complemented her. It was loud in the room, so I'm not sure if I really gathered what she was telling me, but I think she wanted to talk to me about helping her form a Led Zeppelin cover band. She asked if she could give me her number should I wish to assist her in this endeavor. Not one to turn down the phone number of a spectacularly tall and beautiful woman, especially one named Skye (fantastic name!), I accepted her number, and I'm looking at it sitting on my desk in front of me at this moment. Now, I feel bad, because I don't really want to be in a cover band anymore, in fact, I'm pretty sure that I never want to be in a cover band again; but wouldn't it be really rude to have accepted her number, and never call her? Or would it be rude to call her simply to compliment her for her formidable grip, and not to agree to want to cover Led Zeppelin songs? I don't know. Anyway, I think it's neat that she gave me her number. Maybe I can take her to the prom. |
| 12:20:33 AM |
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| Yogi goes blog, blog, blogging along... |
| Hey! A new feature of the site makes it's big debut (pronounced dee-BUTT) today - it's the Wonky.Blog! I've been wanting to do this for a very long time, and only recently whilst I was briefly unemployed, did I finally sit down and start cranking out the code necessary to have a blog around here. Anyway, I think it's going to be fun. Hopefully you'll find it somewhat entertaining. |
|
| 3/28/2003 |
| Welcome to #12,192 |
Hey, I'd like to welcome you to day number 12,192. Make yourself at home, eh?
Actually, this is MY 12,192nd day. As in being alive, on this here earthly plane. I was felled by curiosity this morning while in the shower (no injuries, thanks for asking), and when I emerged I put my Wondertwin Geek powers to good use and wrote a quick SQL query to see how many days I've been alive.
12,192.
Not that many, really. Hmmm. |
| 8:31:33 AM |
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| The Empire Strikes Back |
I've been unable to get myself unglued from the war coverage on television and radio the last week. I've been sitting at work with NPR streaming in the background all day, the soothing sounds of casualty reports buzzing in my ears as I stare vaguely at the code I'm working on.
And I just gotta wonder... is everyone paying attention to what we're getting ourselves into? Does anyone think that when this Iraqi conflict drags to a close, that there won't be another one in the middle east not too far behind?
Hey, I'm looking for the good in this thing, and there are good things to be found: I'm humbled and astounded at the incredible bravery being shown by our service men and women. I have a hard time thinking that removing the yoke of Saddam from the backs of the people in that country can be a bad thing - and while there are plenty of isolationists who retort, "that isn't our fight, they need to rise up on their own," I believe that's something that wasn't going to happen. These people needed SOMEBODY to help them, and now that we're there, it might as well be us.
But I think you'd have to be blind not to see this fight as an opening salvo in the building of a new American empire. This is a scary thing... empires have this ugly tendency to fall, you know. |
| 7:54:51 AM |
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| 3/27/2003 |
| A Blog Is Born |
Oh, now we gonna be havin' some fun 'roun' here! Git over here an' lissen up!
You know, I've been long trying to figure out ways in which I can keep this here website more current. Nobody digs a website that never changes, never updates. Me least of all, and yet Wonky.Net here has often been in the habit of not updating for months on end.
One of my favorite things to do on the site was always writing the news updates. Indeed, the ability to just spout off about anything I felt like and posting it to the world was one of the big attractions to even having my own website back in the early days - man, we're talking late '95 to early '96, now... a permutation of this site has been up for a long time.
Somewhere back there though, I decided that Wonky.Net would morph into a promotional apparatus for the music I was making, and the music-related products I was selling, and anything else in that realm that applied. Since that time, I've felt less and less inclined to use the "news" area as a frivolous platform to talk about things that interested me; if I didn't have anything to talk about in my music career, I didn't post any news updates at the news page.
So yeah, the "long form" updates over at the news page have gotten fewer and farther between, yet my desire to pop in and write little goofy missives has continued to grow. I considered using the message board for this purpose, but again, it didn't really seem to fit the bill.
Leave it to the geeks of the world to solve my problem for me: turns out that all I've really wanted to be all this time is... a blogger!
And so here it is! The Wonky.Blog! I mean, good gravy, if Gary Hart can have a blog (do you think Donna Rice reads it?), then why shouldn't I get to have one? Of course, I've become somewhat of a Geek-In-Training myself these last few years, doing the software development thang to make a living, and I've always insisted in programming any new Wonky.Net functionality myself. And this here blog is no exception. If I may geek out for a moment, this blog and the maintenance thereof is all stored and displayed using the magical power of XML (oooooh, ahhhhh), transformed for your viewing pleasure by XSL stylesheets (ooooooh, ahhhhh). While the rest of the site is hooked up to a SQL backend, there's nary a stored procedure in sight for this blog. Yes, I intentionally did it the hard way. My dad calls that building character.
So yeah, this blog! I've made a commitment to myself that I'll update it at least once a day Monday through Friday, and weekends too if the mood strikes. I have no idea if what will get written here will be entertaining to read, but hey - it'll be new. And that counts for something, goddammit! In any event, I've decided that I want to take back Wonky.Net from the "professional musician" side of me, or at least move the stuff that's all about "documenting and trumpeting my art to the masses" to it's own domain, and return Wonky.Net to its original, less specifically focused raison d'etre. The Wonky Records and Half Zaftig sites, once I actually get them up and running, can be for the music and whatever band I have to play it; Wonky.Net can now return to arcane analysis of Raiders Of The Lost Ark dialog and my musings on little black dachshunds who make old man noises. Oh, and yes, you can reply and leave a comment about any blog entry you like, the comments you enter will be displayed on the message board. See, I like, integrated the functionality between the two things, there. My dad calls that synergy. Oooooh, ahhhh. |
| 7:25:39 PM |
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