$$$ Down The Drain

Did you really like the TV show Homicide: Life on the Street? When A&E began releasing the boxed season sets, did you shell out $100 per? If you did, well, you probably don’t want to click here, because A&E is releasing, this fall, a master collection of every episode from all seven seasons (that’d be 122 episodes), as well as the three Law & Order crossover episodes, as well as the Homicide Movie, all in an attractive filing-cabinet like case, and MSRP at half of what the individual box sets would retail for (and Amazon’ll probably have it for $200).

Apparently, this is the new trend in TV DVD releases — HBO released a single box set collecting all of Sex & The City, Fox released a set with every episode of Buffy, and now with this, I think we can see the coming trend — get raped on individual season sets, or wait a few years, and save a ton of cash on one gia-muh-gantic set!

… it’s just that I’ve got diahrea of the fingertips.

“I bet I could fit a pizza up my pussy.”

“Well, it’s certainly loose enough.”

Tell ya’ what, it’s hard standing around somewhere pretending you didn’t hear something like that. I was laughing all the way back to the store.

And since I always get harped on … there will be spoilers for this movie which came out two or three years ago, so read on or don’t, your call!

I read the book a few years ago, but didn’t remember much about it. So I saw the movie. I think the book was about a cigarette company on trial, but here we’ve got a gun company, which is being sued on the grounds that it violated laws in failing to properly maintain internal checks on the illegal sales of its firearms by its network of dealers. The gun lobby, afraid that a defeat will means millions in future lawsuits against them, hire Gene Hackman’s “jury consultancy” firm — in short, they’re quite certain they’ve bought themselves a verdict (Hackman’s team puts together profiles on jurors likely to be sympathetic to their cause, while preparing to use muscle and intimidation to coerce other jurors towards the verdict they want).

Of course, things go for a hitch when one of the jurors — John Cusack — suddenly reveals that he’s got the jury under his sway, and he’ll deliver the verdict for a price: $10 million, to whichever side wants to pony up the dinero. Begin the fun: break-ins, assaults, intimidation ensues. Blada-blada-blada.

Ok, so quick break from the review — if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I tend to be a state’s rights, liberal, gun owner. Left leaning libertarian is probably the best descriptive term, so let’s stick with that.

The movie doesn’t stick it with the anti-gun stuff until the end. That’s not true — when Jeremy Piven is trying to get hired, he tells Dustin Hoffman he believes in a world without gun. If my memory remembers right, Hoffman tells him to stop being naive. Later, when offered to buy the verdict if he’ll just match Hackman’s price, Hoffman refuses — unlike Hackman and Cusack & Weisz, he won’t make a mockery of the legal system. It’s the only time one of the film’s characters becomes sympathetic, and of course, Hoffman gets a lot less screen time than any of the others, so it’s sort of pointless to see his moral grandstanding.

At the end of the film, one of Hackman’s investigators learns that the couple offering to sell the verdict have ties to a small town where a high school shooting killed several children, including Cusack’s girlfriend’s (Rachel Weisz) sister. It’s been a setup all along! My really big problem with this film is the ending, where it’s suddenly revealed that Cusack and Weisz had every intention — all along! — of throwing the verdict to the plantiff. Except, as they explain to Fitch — who payed $15 million for it — they didn’t do shit, the jury would’ve voted for the plantiff without any pushing at all. Okay … all this buildup, for this? But of course, even this is bullshit, because if the jury had been leaning towards the defense, Cusack would’ve given it the heave-ho and gotten it around the other way. And what good is their cause if they aren’t willing to make such a moral stand? Why get involved in the first place?! What a fucking crock.

At the end, they stand in front of a playground smiling and Dustin Hoffman gives them an appreciative look. I don’t get that look. Did they go explain to Dustin Hoffman that they’d set Fitch up from the beginning? If I was Hoffman, I’d've thought that they never had the opportunity to throw the verdict in the first case, or that Fitch didn’t cough up the dough.

What a shit movie.

Ken Lay is dead, of a heart attack. What a gyp. I’d rather he spent the rest of his life in jail for the Enron debacle, but he slipped that hook. Fucker.

Is on YouTube.

HT: Mel’s meaningless
ramblings

(Link Fixed! I = Moron!)

MSNBC is reporting on its online site that a CIA office devoted to hunting down Osama Bin Laden has been closed.

The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, The New York Times reported in its Tuesday edition.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the CIA Counterterrorist Center, the officials told the paper.

Intelligence officials said the realignment reflects a view that al-Qaida is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, as well as a growing concern about al-Qaida-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

You know how unusual it is for me to agree with the President’s policies (assuming that this order came from the White House, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt), but I gotta say I think this makes sense. I mean, sure, I’d like to see Bin Laden thrown into a lake with a boulder tied to his ankle as much as the next guy, but that’s just the vengeful side of me showing its cute side.

Here’s the deal: assuming Bin Laden is still alive, he’s got no more say. He’s out of power, hiding in a cave somewhere, and his existance is no longer relevent to the world — terrorist organizations have new leaders, and he’s not the David Bowie of the Axis-of-Evil anymore. Why waste resources on the fucker? I mean, sure, you stumble across him, put a bullet in his skull, but if he couldn’t be found for ten years, he’s probably not going to be found anytime soon. It’s sort of like Saddam Hussein — once Iraq got invaded, who really cared if Saddam was found and brought to trial? Sure, it’d be really super to know that we’ve actually locked up or buried an evil man, but it’s like those stories you’d hear about people thinking Hitler had escaped Germany on a U-Boat and was living in South America — the only benefit to finding and killing or imprisoning Bin Laden is the satisfaction of knowing where he is, instead of listening to rumors twenty years from now about how he’s actually living in Wisconsin milking cows.

Fuck you, Bin Laden. Once, every American wanted you dead. Now, we’re all like, “Bin Laden who?” From Public Enemy Number One to irrelevent. Sucks to be you, bitch, particularly since you know the latest generation of terrorists hears your name, rolls their eyes, and calls you a “has been” under their dying breaths.

So, I’ve been bad the last month or so. I’ve ignored my diet. I’ve eaten ice cream by the carton load. I’ve stuffed pizza into my mouth by the box full. I walked two miles, once, and didn’t do it again. I haven’t just fallen off the wagon, I took a running start and jumped. I’m back up to 226 lbs, which means I’ve stopped “holding ground” and begun retreating.

So.

I’ve been careless about this, and it’s time I stop slacking and get back on game. Eat in moderation. Exercise daily (even if I only do fifty jumping jacks). I’m going to get this schwinn in working order so I can get it onto the NCR trail, even without it, I’ll be going there anyway, but for walks. I’m going to be back to weekly weight-update posts.

I’m back on my game, baby. I’m back on the wagon.

At Best Buy, I saw a DVD collection of the fan-picked ten best episodes of the original 1980’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, which, if I recall, I loved.

Now I’m quite curious and questioning of my childhood taste in televised entertainment. There is a certain nostalgic charm that overcomes the ridiculous and formulaic stories, flat voice acting, and stupid “moral lessons” at episode’s end. Orko just had a spot lecturing the viewing audience, “when was the last time you told someone ‘I love you’?”

Good question. Well, you there, I love you.

However, the special features — notably, the cut lesbian love scene between Teela and Evil-Lyn from the episode “Evilseed” — justify the cost of the box set.

(Cringer really is a fuckin’ pussy!)

Oh yeah. This, below, is the standard stock image of Castle Grayskull. Doesn’t it look like the Castle should be saying “FEED MEEEE”?

So it turns out that in the “Bond” films, each “Bond” is, indeed, despite his double-oh and name, a unique character — a top of the line assassin groomed with certain characteristics and promoted when the previous double-oh retires, thus providing the British secret service with the illusion of employing unkillable hitmen. In the new Bond film coming this November, Daniel Craig plays a special forces soldier promoted to fill the shoes of Pierce Brosnan’s Bond, who has left the service (with a chip on his shoulder) following his treatment in Die Another Day.

But I’m not actually posting about the new Bond film, but the lowly-promoted tie-in film that came out to DVD recently. Brosnan reprises his role as a former Double-Oh Seven agent once known as “James Bond.” He’s found work as a freelance “fatalaties facilitator”, and flies across the world performing hits in Denver, Budapest, Mexico, and Manila. He drinks (he’s still getting his martinis shaken, but he’s been forced to pay for love). Lately, he’s been suffering from the workaholic’s nightmare: burn-out! In Mexico, he meets up with an American businessman and forms an odd friendship.

This film, Matador, is great. It’s quirky, amusing, and it’s got heart. It’s well written, well produced, and it has that sort of off beat charm that makes you wonder how it ever came out of cookie-cutter Hollywood. It isn’t really a Bond film — but, y’know, if you put your imagination to it, it could be the story of a washed up double-oh trying to find purpose in killing for money, as opposed to for the Queen.

It’s a flick worth checking out.