I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.

And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years :)

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I’ve been meaning to post some pictures to the Growing Up Star Wars Flickr Group for a while now, so this as good a time as any to start going through the boxes and boxes of completely disorganized photos and see what else I can find to embarrass myself with each week.

Washington Irving Elementary – Durant, Oklahoma – October 1978

I think I had maybe a dozen Star Wars. I would wear them until the plastic iron-on picture would start cracking.

Halloween in Durant, Oklahoma 1978

Note that I was clever enough to use sunglasses with the Darth Vader mask, but not clever enough to wear a black long-sleeved shirt. Man, these costumes were just awful back then, but we loved them! I’m pretty sure the one-fist-on-the-hip thing was probably my grandma’s idea. Sassy.

My Birthday – Germany – 1980

I remember that this was the puzzle I wanted because basically I liked anything that had Han Solo. Chewbacca, or the Millennium Falcon on it. I don’t think I ever put it together.

Halloween in Germany 1980

I love that I’ve been demoted to a storm trooper, but I’m still taller than Darth Vader.

Christmas – Altus, Oklahoma – 1976

Of course, with a haircut like mine at that age, not everything was Star Wars. I wish I could find a better picture with the insignia showing. If I do, I’ll post it. It would be the logical thing to do.

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We’ve been in the process of moving, and things are just piled and stacked everywhere. I haven’t had a chance to get much of anything sorted yet. I thought I would be able to get something done last night, but I was on-call for Traci and had to go watch the beast for a few hours. Most likely, I’ll be doing that again tonight.

On the upside, I now have every fight scene from Spider-Man 2 and 3 committed to memory. Quinn, who will be three in a few months, loooves Spider-Man. He’ll watch it, and just pick some random line to repeat. The other day, he climbed into the chair with me and said, “Avenge me. Avenge me, Uncle Chris. Uncle Chris, avenge me, okay?”

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I just used a Redbox DVD rental kiosk at the Albertson’s down the street from us. We have Netflix, which we love, but sometimes I don’t get the movie back in the mail soon enough for the weekend (and the mail doesn’t run on Sundays anyway), so when I see an opportunity to get watch a new movie for $1 a night without having to talk anybody, I’m all for it.

If you want to try it, Redbox will email you a promo code for a free rental to use at one of the kiosks (I don’t think you can use it to rent online). So, the price is definitely right. I haven’t used my promo code yet, but I suspect you’ll still need to swipe a card at the kiosk in case you decide to keep the movie more than one day.

You can check for Redbox locations on their website.

Just so you know, I’m not getting paid anything for pushing Redbox. I just think it’s neat, and makes a good DVD rental back-up to whatever service you’re using now : )

BTW, The Departed was pretty damn good.

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A couple of weeks ago, Cindy and I saw The Da Vinci Code. Like the book, the movie is making oodles of money, and upsetting a lot of people of faith, including religiosity salesman Ted Baehr who calls it “Dan Brown’s hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history” (because, you know, it’s not like the Church has ever meddled with history for its own ends or anything). Just do a Google search and you’ll see that a lot of people are protesting The Da Vinci Code. If people really, truly wanted to do some good in the world, they should have been out there protesting Big Mamma’s House 2.

On a side note, the phrase “fictitious attack on Jesus Christ” seems a little odd to me. Isn’t a “fictitious attack” an attack that never happened? Then again, it’s the right phrase in the sense that Crispies are imagining that Dan Brown is attacking them.

I’m with Bob Higgins, who has a nice little piece about Baehr and The Da Vinci Code over at Political Cortex. He says, “What is so frightening to these folks about a work of fiction is a mystery to me unless they fear fiction because they have always been afraid that they have based their entire lives on a work of fiction. I just don’t know.”

Well, neither do I, Bob. Neither do I.

Or so I thought.

Then I realized that The Da Vinci Code is not just a bunch of made up stuff, but filled with many factual details. For example, did you know there really was a Council of Nicea? Okay, maybe you did. But what about Templar Knights? Yeah, I know, too easy. But did you know there really is a place called Paris, France? Or that there is an actual painting called the Mona Lisa by a guy named Leonardo da Vinci?

I began looking through some other books I have on the shelf, trying to find other instances where writers have used real places and events in a not-real way. Using the Internets, I finally found something. Through extensive research, I discovered that dinosaurs did, at one point in time, rule the earth. I also learned that both DNA and Costa Rica do exist. However, I was very disappointed (and disillusioned) when I found out that Jurassic Park was just a made-up place, even though Costa Rica is real.

Dammit! How can it be legal for writers — especially fiction writers — to fuck with our minds like that? Mixing fact and fiction? What the hell’s up with that?

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“What’s it about?”

“This guy is a gymnast who has everything, and then he gets hits by a car, and they tell him that he’ll never compete again…and then Nick Notle teaches him how to overcome his injuries and compete again.”

“Wow, Nick Notle does that?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Who plays Nick Notle in the movie?”

“I think it’s that crazy guy from Celebrity Fit Club, Gary Busey.”

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A couple of weeks ago, Todd pointed me to a site run by a guy who does reviews of movie trailers or something (I wish I could remember where it was because the credit for this find goes to that guy). Anyway, the guy was scrolling frame-by-frame through the first teaser for the new Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto, and looking for screenshots to use for his teaser write-up, when he found a frame that didn’t seem like it belonged. See if you can spot it.

I saved the teaser to the desktop, and used Quicktime to see that it takes place at 1:46 (it’s actually Frame 6 of 24). Just pause the teaser and use your keyboard’s Left- and Right-Arrow keys to scroll back and forth. You can also just pause it as it’s playing in the browser, but you won’t have a time counter.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always a little ticked when they use a shot in a movie trailer but then that scene is nowhere to be found in the movie. I certainly hope that is not the case here.

I think Apocalypto will be a return for Mel Gibson to the standard popcorn-munching, shoot-’em-up, bad-guys-versus-good-guys, mind-numbing, action-packed Saturday matinee that we all love.

From what I can piece together from the just the first teaser, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover reprise their roles as Detectives Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, who must travel back in time to save an ancient Mayan civilization caught in the middle of a war of Aliens versus Predators. Also starring Joe Pesci as Leo Getz (“Whatever you want, Leo gets.” Get it?)

Anyway, I have to confess that I haven’t actually seen Danny Glover or Joe Pesci in the trailer, but I haven’t watched it all the way through frame-by-frame either, so I’m just guessing here.

Whoob whoob whoob whoob whoob whoob!

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Word.

[UPDATE 1.12.2006 / 08:14 AM] -

Get a higher quality version of Lazy Sunday by Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg from the iTunes Music Store for $1.99.

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Best: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Worst: Dutch

Overlooked (Good, but painful to watch):

• Pieces of April
• Home for the Holidays

That’s my list.

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Yep, I have to admit it. I will be standing in line with a bunch of other geeks, nerds, dorks, and dweebs for the midnight showing of Star Wars: Episode III. It just can’t be helped. I’ve been seduced by the dork side.

But while we’re all waiting for 12:01 AM, Thursday, May 19, 2005, how ’bout we enjoy some Star Wars dorkness together?

• University of Arizona Astronomy students turn the Steward Observatory into a giant R2-D2 (be sure to click the pic for a bigger one)
• A shirt for those of us who know better (credit to Scott)
• Scene from A New Hope, re-imagined
• H-Wing carfighter
• Star Wars creatures take over Animal Planet

Okay, that’s enough dorkness for now, I think. Feel free to add your own links in the comments.

[END TRANSMISSION]

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