Flying Still Sucks

I am forever amazed at the lack of service and all around 'Happy to serve you!' vibe that infests the airlines today.

I decided to ditch the usual Delta, and try with American and Continental this time. American Airlines took me to Raleigh, North Carolina via Chicago. The seating was still as cramped as Delta, but at least the seats themselves were made of cloth.

Delta not only shoehorns your ass into a teeny,tiny seat. The also make sure that seat is covered with plastic upholstery. Treating you like shit isn't good enough for them, so they add a puddle of butt sweat to your indignity. Can you say "Uncomfortable"?

The return trip was provided by Continental Airlines, via Houston. Full disclosure: my family has an ugly history with Continental, going back to the strikes of 1983-84 when my dad lost his job when a 35% pay cut was being forced on him. Basically, it was union busting move of making them an offer they had to refuse.

Not only were the seats just as tiny (but cloth), the service staff was the rudest I've have ever come across... anywhere.
It was clear from the moment you arrived at the ticket counter that you were not welcome there. But at least they dropped all pretense that a passenger had any dignity to begin with.
Knowing where you stand from the get-go makes the assault easier to accept.

I was wishing Northwest flew to North Carolina. I took Northwest last year to Minneapolis. It was quite nice by comparison. The seats were roomier. Big plus there. And for me, that's about 90% of the whole experience.

Whatever happened to "Fly The Friendly Skies", "The Proud Bird" or "The Only Way To Fly"... company mottos/ad slogans from the good old days when the airlines used to compete for your business?
(Need blanket,sir? How bout a pillow?)

Now it's just "Get in, sit down, and shut the fuck up".

I hate flying.

Last year I enjoyed a five-day, worldwind tour of the Twin Cities region, along with a great time shared with many of the local blog community.
The main occasion, as most remember, was the wedding of Ben and Faith. I was seriously hoping to keep a promise to return this year, but resources kinda prevent that.

Instead, circumstances will take me to North Carolina this week for another wedding. This time it's my brother putting on the ball and chain, and I get to laugh at him in person. Sucker!

I'll be out for a few, will back soon enough, but with a little luck I may be posting before then if I'm bored and within arm's reach of a keyboard.

I'll Drink To That

While most of Washington was focused on Tuesday's election results, the House was busy doing something else: Passing a resolution about beer.

House Resolution 1297, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Markey, supports "the goals and ideals of American Craft Beer Week."

"We've got quite a number of microbreweries and entrepreneurs that are creating jobs, and we wanted to celebrate that this is a craft," Markey told POLITICO.

"I think beer has been a tradition since this country was founded," said Markey. "We wanted to celebrate entrepreneurship — and good beer!"

Markey is obviously partial to brews from her home state of Colorado, but she won't claim a favorite.

"You can't just have one," said Markey. "It really depends on what mood you're in. Sometimes, I like a light beer — I might want a Skinny Dip — or otherwise prefer a heavier brew."

The real question is: Why would anyone vote against this?

"It does seem like a no brainer," said Markey.

Indeed.

Link

And No Bacon,Either

“I’m not a real religious person, but I’m somewhat religious. And I’m just wondering if God is telling us he doesn’t want us to drill offshore,” he said. “And right before that we had that coal mine disaster in West Virginia where we lost 29 miners,” as well as repeated mining disasters – “seems like there’s one over there every week” – in China.

“Maybe the Lord’s tired of having the mountains of West Virginia, the tops knocked off of them so they can get more coal. I think maybe we ought to just leave the coal in the ground and go with solar and wind power and geo-thermals where it’s applicable."

Link


And maybe God really wants us to live like the Bible way: in tents, without indoor plumbing, baby back ribs, television or internets.

But that would kinda suck.

Robin Hood 2010

In this latest retelling of the legend of Robin Hood, we have Russel Crowe as Robin Longstride who finds his way back home to England after ten years fighting in the Crusades.

Upon his arrival he assumes the identity of a fellow soldier who was killed, and sets about doing Robin Hood type things while wooing the Lady Marian, the widow of the man he's masquerading as.

All is not well in the kingdom as the people, and nobles, suffer under the King's cruel and confiscatory taxation policies. This is where the Robin Longstride becomes the eventual Robin of the Hood. He steals from the King, battles a French invasion, impresses The Lady, and becomes a hero of the people... all within two hours.
Not a bad list of accomplishments if you stop to think about it.

A little warning: this is not the jaunty, feather hatted Robin Hood of previous legend. This is more of the gritty, leather and chain mailed, mud soaked Robin we never heard about about. Sort of a prequel to the installments. He doesn't become Robin 'Hood' til the end.

The battle scenes are epically filmed, violent, very much along the lines of Gladiator and other such movies. Many scenes seem borrowed. I was reminded at various times of Excaliber, Gladiator, Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, Rob Roy, Flesh and Blood... the list goes on to the point that I can't remember them all.

And that is part of the problem. Though every scene in the movie is well done and gritty in it's realism, I was never able to immerse my thoughts into what was happening on the screen before me. I couldn't 'lose' myself in it.
Instead, all it did was remind me of other stuff I had already seen. Something about the flow not quite flowing. Maybe it's hard to get swept away in stagnant waters?
All I can say is that the sense of fantasy and romance that you'd expect from a medieval epic just didn't spark the fires of my imagination.

Another bitch: I understand the need to have medieval Englishmen speak in a fucked up manner of accented, poetic English. But that shit don't work when you can't hear them clearly. Too much cryptic mumbling of fucked up English made some dialogue hard to understand.
I'd say it killed much of the movie. Maybe that's where the magic and imagination went? Too much effort spent trying to decipher the code of fucked up English?
I don't know. I just know that I was wishing there were some subtitles along the bottom so I could keep up what they were saying.
I see plenty of subtitled stuff, so I'm used to gazing along the bottom, and I found myself looking for it several times, and then had to remind myself that I wasn't in one of 'those' movies. But it felt like it. What's that tell ya?

Overall, it's decently average, but a welcomed diversion from the current discharge of comic book/super hero crap that's been haunting the silver screen the last couple of years.

Pet Peeve

If all the cars bearing N.O.T.W. were N.O.T.W. my commute time would be reduced by 25%.

Acts Of Violence

It seems a little off to review, and hopefully share, a film with a bunch of readers who will never see it. But then again, how many of you have seen anything based upon something I had to say about it anyway. (Except maybe... Brian?)

I've wondered this a few times.

A half-hearted attempt to discover what others had to say have left a goose egg. Seems nobody has seen it, or was bothered to write about it.
Imagine that...
A film that has won awards at three festivals... and nobody has anything???

Flyn (Il Lim) is an Asian-American doctor married to the brutally raped Olivia (Leelee Sobiesky).
One by one, he hunts down those responsible, kidnaps them to his secret warehouse place, and brutally kills them using his martial arts expertise. After brutalizing them, of course. It's a beautiful thing. It really is.

In between the acts of violence, the movie takes you on a journey through his relationship with Olivia. Olivia doesn't know what he's up to. He lies, he hides it, he always leaving the home and not coming back for several hours, making up some bullshit excuse about getting lost or something.
She's not totally buying it, but is at a loss to help him.
She urges him to seek help. Things haven't been the same between them since 'the incident', but their love, sweetness and devotion is obvious.
Seemingly, she's managed to put it behind her. She's moved on.
He can not.

And so it goes.
Another killing.
Another trip home.
Another tortuous dialogue between the lovers.

And this is the most aggravating part of the film: the dialogue. It's distant. It's connecting, but not connecting, at the same time.

I'm wondering: who the hell wrote this damn thing?

The fight scenes are cool; all wrapped around a topic I can get behind: blood vengeance. Alone, this would have been a typical fight flick. Mediocre, yeah, but who sees fight flicks for the superb dialogue anyway?
Instead, it runs deeper than that.
Something is off. Flyn is too emotionally removed from his actions. There isn't that snarling anger in the face of the enemy. Instead, he's cool. Calculated. Matter of fact.
He chats briefly with his victim, and then calmly says "I'm going to kill you now".
He's almost not there.

There are a few plot holes. Like, how did he get a surveillance tape copy of his wife's kidnapping, yet the cops weren't able to identify anybody involved?
Other than that, it all comes together in the last 10 minutes, in a way that I didn't expect.

This is Il Lim's first film, co-written and co-produced with Leelee Sobiesky. He also directs.
I've never heard of him before. I'm assuming he's some sort of super extreme martial arts type dude. He's got great moves.

This is a good movie. Not a great one, but very good. I'd place it next to 'A Girl In A Swing' from way back in the mid-80's. It was similar in the way much of what you saw didn't make sense til you got to the end.(Sorry, I know damn well none of you have seen that one.)