Stay Golden Pony Boy

In the world of Hollywood, this just might be the year of the re-make.

Well, we really can't count The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, because it wasn't originally made by Hollywood. The first on screen adaptation of this perennially favorite C.S. Lewis story was filmed by the BBC. although it is mildly entertaining if you are under ten, it is really hard for anyone older than that to watch.

But then again, the originals that these remakes are remaking are not always easy to sit still for.

The Clash of the Titans was first made in 1981 and based on effects and the hairdos of it's stars, that is no surprise. Highlights include watching Medusa turn people to stone and the Kraken, a big plastic sea monster thing, splashing around at Poseidon's behest. The remake throws in some major stars, including Sam Worthington that just starred in Avatar, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes (pronounced "Rafe"). Hopefully it will be better than the first. Well, it couldn't be worse, so hopefully it will be a good movie, if you decide you need to shell out your hard earned cash to go take it in.

The next one I see they have remade is Red Dawn. When I was younger, I really liked this movie. Russians invading, high schoolers rising up as a resistance force, Powers Booth as the downed pilot that teaches them how to fight. And, with Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell, it seemed like The Outsiders go to war with the Russians.

The remake looks like it might be even more cool, with more guns, more wild teens and another invasion, this time by the Chinese instead of the Russians.

Finally, Ridley Scott felt the need to remake the Robin Hood story, starring Russell Crowe. Sort of a Gladiator of not so merry old England.

I am sure I will end up going to see all of these. How can I resist? Although it would be nice if we could see some different stories depicted on the big screen from time to time.

A Prequel

I am about to head out the door to do some more celebrating of Ethan's Birthday, but I wanted to start out your journey with me to the down and dirty world of small town police work in the 80's by pointing put a couple of incidents. It will continue later with a glimpse at a totally random incident that happened during this time frame. This post is designed to merely give you a taste of the department as my Dad found it.

Although Chief Brunswick was the Chief of Police during most of this time period, when we first moved to town, the chief was a Crook. Literally, Chief Crook was the Chief of Police. The Town Doctor was Batty, The Mayor was Blank, the Sheriff was Short, Sheriff Short. Doctor Batty even did our school physicals and Mayor Blanks son was a year ahead of me in school. I wonder what happened to that guy?

My Dad shared with me numerous incidents that helped set the stage for what it was like in this town, from the suicides of consecutive owners of the house that was a converted funeral parlor to the murder of a couple of homeless guys with road signs and many incidents that garnered less notoriety. Here are a couple of those incidents. I think they will give you insight into how the department operated.

One poor old gal was found beaten, tied to a chair and burned to death. Obviously, the police decided, this was a suicide where the subject tied herself up, bruised herself while she was doing it and followed it up by lighting herself on fire.

Another suicide victim was found with the implement of his demise, a 22 caliber rifle, about one hundred yards from his body. As any good investigator would deduce from the evidence available, this person shot themselves in the head (conspicuously figuring out how to avoid powder burns, and flung the rifle in a reflex driven toss.

A little later:
A story of the woman, the hunting rifle and the donut shop.

Warriors Everywhere, Raise Your Hands Up in the Air

I don't usually put any cop stories on here because I don't want to put down anything that would compromise my job or cases or whatever. But, a little later today, I will have some cop stories from my hometown of McCook Nebraska.

Yes, some of the files have been recently declassified and I can share some sordid details of police work in a small town, where my Dad was a cop after he left the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for greener....and stranger...pastures.

Check my blog this afternoon to find out more.

A Rainbow in the Clouds

Last night, Diane and I went to see the movie 2012. As you have heard, the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. A more accurate interpretation of that would be that the Mayan calendar only goes through 2012. I guess you can only fit so many days on stone tablets. But who am I to judge. The calendar I am currently using only goes through December of this year.

In the movie, the sun does it's usual disaster-movie-thing and heats up the earth's core, causing the crust to crack up and start moving around. This triggers the whole of the crust to shift and all of humanity to get flooded out by massive tsunamis.

In the movie, you get to see realistic looking depictions of all sorts of cool stuff, like California cracking up and falling into the sea, Las Vegas disappearing into the earth's core, Yellowstone turning into a massive volcano and massive cruise liners and aircraft carriers tossed about by enormous waves. You also get to see the heroes escape time after time in cars, rv's, airplanes, etc. from collapsing buildings, huge fissures, volcano bombs (if you think volcano bombs are fanciful, try to remember the movie Dante's Peak where Remington Steele's, I mean Pierce Brosnan's, wife is killed by a volcano bomb in the beginning of the movie), and oceans (literally, Oceans) of water while most everyone else, including the Dali Lama-like character (massive amounts of water rushing over his mountain hideout) and Danny Glover (as the President getting a carrier washed onto him in Washington D.C.), are wiped right out.

This movie is very exciting visually, but it gets a bit silly after a while. Too many narrow escapes for the main characters. Kudos to them for working so hard to survive, but how much of that can we watch. Especially considering that the movie runs well over two hours. I think it is closer to two and a half. I think they were trying a little too hard to make an epic.

Besides, I have it on good authority that the world will not again be destroyed by worldwide flooding. Even if it is precipitated by a shifting of the crust of the earth.

Next I want to see the Book Of Eli, so I can find out what happens after the destruction of civilization as we know it.

Dead Animals

I think their is some connection, but I am not sure what it is. - Oh, that sentence should have been my title -

I recently read a story about a doctor at a nursing home that was told by his staff about a cat they kept on the premises. The doctor was not a fan of cats, but a few were kept at this facility because it helped make the place feel more homey for the patients, many of whom were suffering from advanced Alzheimer's disease.

The nurses began to tell him about one of the cats that would good to the bedside of the patients who were about to die and spend the final hours with them. The doctor, at first very sceptical, then began to notice that this really was a trend with this particular cat. He didn't know why the cat did it, but it seemed to be a comfort to both the family and the to the deceased as they left this life.

When my Grandfather passed away, two deer were running around in the yard. Yes, we lived in a town that had deer in the area, but they rarely ran into town. And no-one had ever seen them running around in Uncle Cliff's yard.

I went to a funeral this summer of a young girl that had been murdered. Sitting on a fence post watching the gathering mourners were two small birds. Were they there for the funeral too, or just wondering about the passing crowd.

Anyways, it could all be coincidence. Or......

Surprising......

The Supreme Court today overturned parts of the McCain-Feingold legislation which made it a crime for a corporation to pay for political ads near an election. This was brought to the Supreme Court via a Wisconsin Right To Life Organization that was shut down from paying for a movie because some of the movie was financed by corporations.

The President, along with others, expressed his displeasure with this ruling, concerned about how corporations will now throw money into the political arena. In his view, you can only exercise free speech if no corporation has agreed to back your play. The majority argument for the ruling was basically this: They didn't think we were constitutionally allowed to limit speech based on who financed it.

In related news, the President today has declared he will fight Wall Street, intending on punishing all the banks in the country because some of them were bailed out by our finances. President Obama stated that the industry would be responsible for the bailout funds given to the industry. No, the businesses that actually received the funds are not going to be responsible for repaying them, but the industry itself.

It appears that the administrations zeitgeist is against corporations. Maybe the banks should call themselves something other than corporations, so they could be safe.

Oh, and what of the auto industry. Shouldn't Toyota have to pitch in and help pay for our bailout of GM. If banks that didn't get bailout funds and banks that have already repaid what was loaned to them have to pay, why shouldn't auto makers that didn't get any funds have to pay for those that did.

Oy Vay.

Oh, and if you are still reading, what will change with campaign financing? Absolutely nothing. Corporations have been giving large contributions to attempt to influence elections all during the era of McCain-Fiengold, including donations from huge donors, unions and *gasp* corporations giving to both McCain and Obama, all they way up to election day. They merely did it through alternative (527) organizations.

In over my head

When I was going to school, I spent two semesters participating in a V.A. work study program at the Dallas V.A hospital. The first semester I spent mainly filing documents and learning why government run health care really is a mess. But, the second semester I was assigned to the Recreational Therapy Department of the Nursing Home Care Unit (NHCU) at the hospital.

The N.H.C.U. was where patients were sent for long term care and included people with a variety of conditions, from having terminal cancer to working on recovering from old age related fractures. It really was a good experience. I got to take field trips to art museums with Smithsonian level security, meet characters that dropped A-bombs on Japan, fought Japanese (and other service members) in hand to hand combat, commanded tanks against the Germans and had numerous other exploits. One of my coworkers who was doing an internship was married to the lady who was the first female to be ordained by Southwestern Theological Seminary. We even got to attend her ordination ceremony.

In spite of all the fun, I think I was in over my head. They had me attend joint care meetings with other department heads and give my recommendation for the patients care. They didn't like it when I recommended the terminally ill come play dominoes with the rest of us, or we bring the dominoes to them. And speaking of that, some of the patients went to regional dominoes tournaments whilst I was still learning that dominoes weren't just for lining up and knocking over.

And maybe it wasn't the best idea to design a soccer-like game where you can use your hands, but all the play is done from wheelchairs with a kick ball. Some of those old guys were pretty aggressive. No wonder they had broken bones. None, thankfully, were from the game.

After the first year of school, I figured out that the money from the work study wasn't adequate to pay all the bills and what not, so I had to take another job But, I still have some good memories of those guys at the Dallas V.A. N.H.C.U.