French Domination, with a side of Netflixing

So, France kicked Brazil's ass during Saturday's World Cup game.
This made up for Space Shuttle Discovery not launching.
Said shuttle should launch tomorrow.
I hope everything goes smoothly.

The sibling and I bicycled to Zambumba, a Brazilian nightclub/restaurant on Venice Blvd, to see how the Brazis would react.
We left while the game was in progress, with the score tied at 0 - 0, and stopped for a good ol' American breakfast, so we
had no clue as to the score when you got to Zambumba. People were walking away from the place in a mostly subdued way.
Some were cheering and waving Brazi flags. We asked a passerby what the score was: "France won, 1 - 0."
That made us grin.
Cars were driving by, honking and waving, some with Brazi flags.
A truck drove by slowly, also honking and waving, except this one had a large French flag flapping in the breeze.
Oh, the Brazis didn't like that. It didn't help that the Frenchies were taunting the Brazis. Some Brazis waded into
traffic and tried to take the flag away. They failed. A couple of water bottles were thrown toward the truck, which
soon made its exit from the scene. A shiny new black Chrysler 300C also drove by, filled with grinning Africans with
smaller French flags. They were smart, they only drove by once. Unlike the Frenchies in truck, who actually came back.
I shot a few pics with the new RAZR phone I was issued at work. I will post them soon.


Most of the bug bites I got at the Fur-B-Q the weekend previous have healed. Two of them had really red areas around
them and might be infected. I have an appointment to meet my new doctor on Wednesday and have these bites looked at.
Hopefully, it's not cellulitis in the making. I hope my doctor is good.
I've been washing the bites with soap thouroughly in the shower, and covering them with Neosporin.
I hope this has minimized potential infection or damage. We shall see Wednesday.



Meanwhile, the Netflix machine is back up and runnning, so that means Netflixing!!

Deadwood : Season 2 - Discs 1 & 2 - More gritty dirty Frontier Psychiatry ("Purely psychosomatic...")
The show seems to be slowing down a little, especially around Episodes 3 & 4. We hope things pick up with Episode 5
and onward. I'm starting to really like Mr. Ellsworth. He's a good man, with an intriguing past.

Ultraviolet - is it "Aeon Flux"? "Underworld"? "The Matrix"? "Equilibrium"? Yes.
I wanted to like this movie. I mean, it's from the guy who did "Equilibrium", a nifty sci-fi thriller about a future
society where people are forced to take emotion-suppressing drugs, and where gun-fu has been taken to an art form
involving the study of gun fight statistics. Christian Bale starred in that as one of the special police officers
(dubbed "Grammaton Clerics") adept in the special gun-fu. Yeah, he looked like a "Matrix" character, but who cares?
The film was quirky and fun and the gun-fu was sooooo cool. I must buy that CD some day.
So anyway, "Ultraviolet" is not "Equilibrium". It's duller. The script is pretty crappy and doesn't tie the action
sequences too well. There are moments when you wish something would happen, but you just get some bizarre pseudo plot
advancement thingy which isn't really plot advancement. They were clearly going for a comicbook feel, but the pacing
is not there. The look is definitely comicbooky and sometimes videogamey. And some of the technology is really neat.
There's a high-tech twist on the old D&D Bag Of Holding: zero-space storage. Violet can carry weapons and ammo in
an alternate dimension and pull stuff out as needed. Hey, what a great way to explain away the never-reloading guns!
It's good eye-candy though. But be prepared for dull stretches of badly-written angst.

The New World - aka "The New Age World" - aka "The Cure For Insomnia" - aka "The New Angst"
In the past, I have talked about "Ambient Movies". These are movies that appear slow-moving to the outside eye, but operate
in a fully-immersive world of their own. You must be willing to surrender to that world to fully appreciate the experience.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is such a film. "The New World" could have been, but it's DULL!!!
"The New World" was directed by Terence Mallik, also responsible for "The Thin Red Line", a film I found pretentious,
annoying and DULL. "The New World" is DULL. It's pretty to look at, and the girl who plays Pocahontas is utterly beautiful,
but the script seems to consist of a single page with the words "stuff happens" scribbled on it. It's pretty directionless.
It put Pascal to sleep fairly quickly, and I nearly succumbed myself.
Recommended for anthropologists and people interested in Indian American Indian Native American culture.

Syriana - Doctor Bashir wants to be Emir, but daddy won't let him. And oh yeah, a suicide-bomber is born!
This sets itself up to be an IMPORTANT movie about RELEVANT ISSUES, and it sort of is, except with whimsical continuity
and average acting (except for Alexander Siddig and George Clooney who are both excellent). Big oil! CIA! Shenanigans!
Big business! Corruption! Terrorism! It's kinda like a less military, more business-oriented Tom Clancy novel.
It's not a bad film really, I guess it's just "good". You want to see a REALLY "good" film???

Munich - THIS is a REALLY GOOD FILM! All you Spielberg haters better check yoselfs before yo wreck yoselfs!
In the wake of the assassination of 9 Isreali athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Black September terrorists,
then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir decides that retaliation is required. The movie follows the team carrying out this
retaliation, and it's not a James Bond film, and they're not Navy SEALS. They're real people, doing a real and nasty job.
This movie kicks ass in so many ways, I don't even know where to start. Considering that this is a movie that takes place
mostly in Europe with sidetrips to New York, the casting makes perfect sense: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig (the new Bond),
Geoffrey Rush (still looking like Peter Sellers), Mathieu Kassovitz (French actor, in "Amélie" and "Fifth Element"),
Michael Lonsdale (bilingual veteran of both French and English cinema, and once a Bond villain), and a supporting cast
of various ethnic backgrounds. I think just about every major language is spoken in this film!
The movie is rated R for a reason, and it's not the Quentin Tarantino reason, not the 5,000 "fucks" in the script.
As a matter of fact, I'm trying to remember if I heard the "F" word even once, and I don't think I have.
This is a mature film, for grown-ups. It makes everything else I've seen this year look like crayon doodlings.
Except possibly "Good Night And Good Luck".
Running time is 2 hours and 45 minutes, and I wouldn't have cut a single second of it.
I'm impressed.

2FAST4U

So I went ahead and reordered a 5-pound bag of Haribo giant gummi coke bottles I saw on amazon two months ago,
figuring that now that it's July, they will ship them faster.
Au contraire, mon frère!
I'm still getting a planned shipping date of July 11th through July 17th.
What, super-extended 4th of July vacation at Amazon?
Anyway, I also ordered the "Prebuild" CD by 808 State. Very early acid house techno from '88.
I hope it's worth it.


I picked a used copy of "Burnout: Revenge" for my PS2 on Saturday. I bought it from Game Surge,
or whatever the name of the Blockbuster game section of the store is. It was relatively cheap,
but failed to come with a manual. A lot of game manuals are pretty useless these days, so I
figured I wouldn't miss it too much. I was slightly wrong.
The crash system has been changed from "Burnout 3" and I'm not sure what to make of the gauge
at the start of the run. It looks like some sort of power meter. I'm gonna have to do some
poking around online to see what's what.
I'm doing pretty good at all the other events though.
This game definitely feeds my need for speed and my addiction to des-truc-tion!!
Speaking of which, I will have to nab a used (or new if it's reasonably-priced) copy of
"Need For Speed: Most Wanted" when I get my next paycheck.


And now, a goofy-ass meme ganked from dv_girl:

Zrath Smiley's Aliases

Your movie star name: Cheese Rrrrifk Your fashion designer name is Zrath Antwerp Your socialite name is Bitey Detroit Your fly girl / guy name is Z Smi Your detective name is Wolf Vauban Your barfly name is Nachos Sake Your soap opera name is Nefud Bastille Your rock star name is Super Lemon Bugatti Veyron Your Star Wars name is Zratou Smilau Your punk rock band name is The Hot Interocitor

The Amazing Meganame Generator

"Awright you small-heads! Let's hear it for The Hot Interocitor!!"