Author Archives: Jean-Paul

Movie Review: Homefront

Jean-Paul’s Rating 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A sub-par cliché ridden Jason Statham action movie.  The action is decent, but nothing special.  Everything else was pretty bad.

What happens when you cross Jason Statham with James Franco?  Not a whole lot if “Homefront” is the best they can do.  This is going to be very spoilerific because I just have to rant.

The movie starts out with Phil Broker (Jason Statham) undercover in a meth dealing biker gang.  He’s from Interpol because…the British accent?  I have no idea, but he sure can’t pull off a convincing American one.  While in the production room in the back of a bar, his DEA friends decide to raid the building with full knowledge that he is in there.  Picture how a raid would go if you and your friends were in charge of it.  Now make it more idiotic.  You have full battle gear agents storming the bar and then they just happen to march in one by one to get blown away by the bikers.  Despite all the agents starting with assault weapons, one happens to turn the corner with just a pistol in his hand only to get blow away.

The head biker , Danny T, and his son get away in a car because apparently none of the DEA agents considered that there may be a back door to the bar and Broker gives chase after about a million repetitions of “don’t shoot, I’m a cop”.  And what does he choose as his mode of transport?  A motorcycle, of course.  The police soon have the car boxed in, but that doesn’t stop the silliest game of chicken from occurring between the car and the motorcycle.  Statham wipes out causing the motorcycle to hit the car and make it crash.  Soon, Danny T is in Statham’s custody but his son gets gunned down by not Statham which causes Danny T to hate Statham forever because…well, because.

Fast forward two years because…well, because.  Broker and his daughter, Maddy, have moved to Hicksville, Louisiana because…well, because.  There is actually some explanation for it; his wife has died.  And that’s it.  I have no idea how she died.  There’s no explanation for leaving the DEA or why he would choose this small little backwater.  It would have been interesting if he had to go underground because a hit was put on him as a result of the undercover work but they only ended up killing his wife.  But no.

And now we come to one of the only good parts of the movie.  Maddy is being picked on at school by a bigger kid and she totally kicks his ass.  I don’t know what it says about me that I get such a thrill at seeing a girl beating the crap out of a boy that has it coming, but it’s like chicken soup for my soul.

Maddy’s fight causes the bully’s bat-shit crazy mother, Cassie (played convincingly by Kate Bosworth), to sick first her husband and then her meth dealing brother, Gator (James Franco) against Booker after Booker makes a fool of her husband.  Gator starts to intimidate Booker in various petty backwater ways and breaks into Booker’s house at one point and discovers what I can only describe as a dimensional portal into the complete police archive.  Booker apparently keeps all the records of every case he ever worked on in his attic.  Because…well, because.  Gator discovers that Booker was an undercover DEA agent and that Booker was responsible for the fall of kingpin Danny T from way back in Act I.  Gator thinks he can use this leverage to convince Danny T to make him the meth distributor for the area.

Gator sets up the hit on Booker through a woman who worked with Danny T and it works out about how you’d expect when a group of people go up against Jason Statham.  As the hit goes south, the woman kidnaps Maddy and brings her to Gator who is really upset with this turn of events.  Booker is clued in on where Maddy is because she had a cell phone and called him and soon it’s Booker to the rescue!

In the meantime, though, Cassie confronts Gator about what’s going on and discovers that he has Maddy hostage.  She goes to rescue Maddy and turns on the power to the boat house they are in which causes the booby trap that Booker set earlier to explode completely destroying Gator’s meth lab.  Why does there need to be an explosion?  Because EXPLOSION!, that’s why!  Cassie and Gator struggle over Maddy and Gator accidentally shoots Cassie in the struggle.

Gator then takes Maddy and drives away with her just as Booker arrives.  This leads to a fairly dull chase scene that ends up on one of those weird bridges that opens by twisting 90 degrees in the middle.  Booker and Gator have a fairly boring showdown that ends in Booker only sparing Gator’s life because his daughter is looking on.  The end.

Oh, wait.  There’s still a drug kingpin controlling stuff from jail that could just send more people to kill Booker, isn’t there?  I know!  Let’s send Booker to visit Danny T in jail and threaten him a little.  Certainly that will stop him from sending more people!  Loose end tied off!  The end!

And then there’s all the stupid little things thrown in that had absolutely no impact to the story at all.  Like the school counselor agreeing to throw a 10th birthday party for Maddy because Booker “isn’t good at that kind of thing”.  And Maddy wanting to set her up with Booker despite still being really sad about her mom just dying a year ago.  And the scene with the bully kid crying in bed while his mom argues with Gator and asks for more meth.  And…nah, never mind, I’m done.

If you’ve read this far, you get to read about the things I liked about the movie.  I really liked the small town criminal feel portrayed by Gator and Cassie and her husband.  It was the perfect mix of small town prejudice and bruised honor and stupidity and delusions of grandeur that you would expect from two-bit criminals.  Ok, thing.  You get to read about the thing I liked about the movie.  No, it’s still not worth watching the movie, but it’s there.  So there’s that, I guess.

Oh, and why is the movie called “Homefront”?  It’s a mystery to me.  I would humbly suggest “Don’t Ever Eff With Jason Statham”.

I Dislike The Term African-American

Language is a strange animal.  String a few words together and they can evoke emotion and meaning far beyond what face value would imply.

A lot of people hate the term “African-American”.  Mostly, the people you hear railing against the term complain of political correctness run amok or some other such nonsense.  Despite their gross wrongness, I do share the anti-pc group’s distaste for the term “African-American”.  It took me a long time to be able to communicate why I dislike it so much.  I came to realize that, to me,  “African-American” has an Otherness to it.  Meaning a way to set a group of people apart from normal.  I am an “American”, you are an “African-American”.  Even the way it’s spoken implies Otherness.  It’s a very hard “African” followed by a slight pause then a soft “American” that kind of slips quietly off the tongue.  The implication is that when identifying a Black person, you know all you need to know from the first word and the second is just an additional identifier.

Another reason why I dislike the term “African-Americans” are the implications of the identities that our country (and Europeans) stole from the human beings who were brought over here as slaves.  Think about it, we have Indian-Americans and Japanese-Americans and Mexican-Americans.  And then there are African-Americans.  We so screwed up the continent of Africa that millions of people have lost their origin stories.  It is absolutely galling.  But it is done and nothing can change it.

My dislike for the term “African-American” has caused me to use the term “Black”.  I’m White, you’re Black, he’s Brown, she’s Yellow.  The problem is, there is certainly still an Otherness quality to it, though less so than “African-American” in my opinion.  But it’s still problematic.  It is still taking a large group of people (and a traditionally repressed people) and strips them of their individuality by reducing them to a color.

So what’s a person to do?

Well, first off, I would say that it’s almost never ok to describe an individual as African-American.  If you want to identify their nationality, they are American.  Period.  Full stop.  If you want to describe an individual, they can be a small letter color, but we really should be able to get beyond the black/white descriptions since the spectrum is so incredibly varied.  Not to mention the world is much more interesting with alabaster and ebony goddesses and creamy and mocha skin and burnt sienna Speakers of the House.

As a grouping of people, I’d propose a bit of word reversal.  Use “American-African” instead of “African-American”.  Being aware of your roots is very important, but most important is being able to recognize that you are an American citizen deserving of equal protection and equal rights and where you came from originally is of secondary importance.  The most important reason for the reversal, though, is the subtle reminder to others that use the word “American-African” that first and foremost, this person is in the same boat and not a different one.  The same would hold for American-Pakistanis or American-Indians, etc.  It may seem a little silly, but I believe word order matters.  If you’re describing anything, you tend to put the adjectives in the order of most important to least important and the listener pays greater attention to the first adjective than the second.

Yes, this is some real pie-in-the-sky thinking and yes, I fully recognized that I am an incredibly over-privileged white boy waxing philosophically about topics that I have zero practical experience with.  These are just my thoughts which may or may not be stupid.  Likely the former.  I’d be interested in what you think.

Ah, Pierogi Day!

It’s the weekend after Thanksgiving and Christmas is right around the corner.  That means Saturday was Pierogi Day!  It’s the day that my family gets together and makes pierogi for Christmas.  For you heathens out there who don’t know what pierogi are, they’re the Polish version of dumplings.  Take some filling of some sort, wrap it in dough, boil and there you have it, pierogi!

We specialize in two types of pierogi.  By far, the best is our kapusta pierogi.  And boy, is it good!  We also make a cheese pierogi.  We used to do dry curd cottage cheese, but that’s become impossible to find so my ever inventive brother came up with a cheese concoction of his own with alfredo sauce, pepper jack and mozzarella.  His version is much better than the cottage cheese version.  We usually end up making somewhere between 100 and 150 a year and we have become quite the well oiled machine.  This year we made about 130 in three hours.

But of course, the best part about Pierogi Day is taking the extras home with you.  I was ever so proud of myself that I refrained from eating a single one on Saturday.  This is a new record for me.  Today, I didn’t fare so well.  I may or may not have eaten 12 for dinner.  I strongly suspect that my cat ate some on my plate when I wasn’t looking.  I’m just going to say that she ate 10 of them.  I asked her and she didn’t deny it.  If history is any experience, the remaining 10 or so pierogi will be done by Wednesday.  And then I have to wait all the way to Christmas Eve to have any more.  Oh, the humanity!

How To Find An Exoplanet

An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun.  Even the largest exoplanets are invisible to our mightiest telescopes.  So how do we find them?  Watch and find out:

[youtube http://youtu.be/CcUhVCMAhAI]

I’ve known about the solar transit trick for finding exoplanets for some time, but the ability to identify atmospheres had always left me a little perplexed.  After watching the video, I was like,well, duh.  That doesn’t make it any less amazing, though.  Think about it, we have the ability to not only find exoplanets but get a fairly good idea as to what the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere and physical makeup are.  And all of it by simply measuring the change in light patterns as the exoplanet traverses its star.

It turns out that exoplanets are much more abundant than ever thought.  It was thought that the norm would be a star without a planetary system, but we’ve discovered the exact opposite.  We’ve found gas giants orbiting their star closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.  We’ve found planets that are almost all water with a solid ice core and a vast ocean and a steam atmosphere.  We’ve even found a few exoplanets that are tantalizing Earth-like.  In fact, around 20% of stars are now thought to contain Earth-sized planets in the Goldilocks zone of its star where it may support life.  That doesn’t mean they’re all habitable, but it’s an enticing promise that there could be a habitable planet circling a star fairly close by.

Of course, there’s a big fat asterisk on the Goldilocks planets.  A lot of this data is extrapolation from what we’ve found so far.  Exoplanets that orbit quickly close to their star are much easier to detect than exoplanets the size of Earth as far away from their star as the Goldilocks zone.  From what I understand, we’ve only found a few actual exoplanets from direct (or I guess indirect) observation.  Regardless, we’re still in the infancy of exoplanetary exploration and detection methods are bound to get better if we can devote more time and resources to this exciting field.

It’s The Most Horrible Time Of The Year 

It's the most horrible time of the year
With shoppers all yelling
You'll all hear me telling you "Get me a beer!"
It's the most horrible time of the year
It's the crap- crappiest season of all
The daytime is fleeting and why is it sleeting?
I feel I might bawl
It's the crap- crappiest season of all

This fake cheer's exhausting
These presents are costing me
Mountains and mountains of dough
And look, yet more stories
of sad Christian worries
That Christmas will soon be no mo'

It's the most horrible time of the year
The carols are blaring
My tolerance wearing
Insanity's near
It's the most horrible time of the year
This fake cheer's exhausting
These presents are costing me
Mountains and mountains of dough
And look, yet more stories
of sad Christian worries
That Christmas will soon be no mo'

It's the most horrible time of the year
The carols are blaring
My tolerance wearing
Insanity's near
It's the most horrible time
It's the most horrible time
It's the most horrible time of the year

Book Review: Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 Stars

“Mercury Rises” is book two of the Mercury trilogy by Robert Kroese.  The first book, “Mercury Falls”, was a fun book that kept me smiling and chuckling to myself from start to finish.  Unfortunately, the second book fell pretty flat.  It is still an enjoyable read, but it is lacking the pacing and comedic timing of the first.  This may be an expectations thing since I had none going into the first and was pleasantly surprised and so had higher expectations for the second as a result, but the wit just didn’t seem nearly as witty.

I think the biggest problem may be pacing.  The first two-thirds of the book spends time bouncing back and forth between 2,000 BC and present day.  While the 2,000 BC events are amusing and debatably necessary, I think it would have been a better idea for Kroese to just go in chronological order.  Things would likely have flowed much better than they do with the time tripping.

The last third of the book does have some of the magic that the first book had.  The climatic scene had me guffawing in delight.  It’s just a shame that it took so long to get there.  As Kroese is wrapping up the book, there are hints that he is somewhat aware of the lack of awesomeness that occurred in the first book. Kroese, through one of the characters, gives a little exposition about being asked to write a trilogy when the first book which was supposed to be a stand-alone takes off.  It’s much appreciated self-deprecating humor.

Book three is next for me and I hope Kroese finds his voice again.  If “Mercury Rises” were the first book in the series, I don’t think I’d have gone on to book two, but the power of book one gives me all the impetus I need to give Kroese a mulligan.

Movie Review: Catching Fire

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bottom Line: A surprisingly enjoyable movie, much more so than the first.  Time went by quick for a 2+ hours movie.  There are still a few laughable but forgivable moments.

“Catching Fire” is the second movie in the “Hunger Games” series and it is far superior to the first.  Alas, the first movie came out before I started writing these reviews so I don’t recall exactly what was lacking, but what has stuck with me was a sense of “meh” with some admiration for the set designs and costuming.  “Catching Fire” does not disappoint in the latter.  Once again, the costuming is very interesting and the set design does not disappoint.

In a lot of ways, this is just a setup movie for the revolution that we all know is coming.  It’s the story of how Katniss goes from adored winner of the Hunger Games to revolutionary leader.  It’s a chess game between President Snow and Katniss but it’s also a game Katniss is not always entirely aware she’s playing or willing to play.  Jennifer Lawrence is highly effective at playing Katniss and Donald Sutherland gets the Machiavellian creepiness of Snow just right.

I don’t remember Jennifer Lawrence being nearly as captivating in the first movie.  Perhaps she’s grown that much as an actor in the ensuing years.  Donald Sutherland is Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson gives the most memorable character from the first film, Haymitch, another good go.  A surprise and welcome addition to the cast was Phillip Seymore Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, the games master who you are not quite sure what he’s up to.

Everything else in “Catching Fire” is just very effective filler.  The Games themselves are interesting but kind of dull, filled with silly plans and alliances that I’m sure make more sense in the books than when translated to the movie.  The end was a little confusing as the real alliances are revealed, but it was a great setup to the next two part movie “Mockingjay”.  I am actually looking forward to it.

Chris Farley Died Too Soon

If I were inclined to waste my life even more than I already do, I would have totally made this mashup:

[youtube http://youtu.be/RUY6lDja-DE]

Compare and contrast:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGEOolwE03M]

It is funny.  But it’s also sad.  We’ve seen Rob Ford’s story before and his ending is likely the same as Chris Farley’s if he doesn’t get any help soon.

The Day Before Thanksgiving Is The Worst Friday Ever

You know how Friday afternoons at work always seem to drag on and on like a sentence that doesn’t quite want to end even though it should have ended long ago but the sheer weight of it seems to make it continue ever more slowly as the words tick by until you just wish that it would all just end already and release you from this never-ending torment?

Yeah, take that and multiply it by infinity and that’s how the Wednesday before Thanksgiving feels.  First off, four day weekend!  Am I right?  Then there’s the fact that work is like a ghost town only it would be more interesting if there were ghosts somewhere.  And since much of my job is interacting with those non-existent clients and answering their non-existent questions, it translates to even less to keep me occupied than usual.  Not to mention that the whole interwebs is also already in Thanksgiving mode and the most interesting thing to read is a post about whether cranberries are better fresh or in a can.  Answer? Cranberries are evil and should be burned.

There’s also the anticipation of seeing family and stuffing myself full of delectable dishes and Dionysian delights.  And don’t forget Second Thanksgiving.  If you do not celebrate Second Thanksgiving, you really should.  What you do is take First Thanksgiving and do it again only bigger and with a lot more strangers.

So yeah, all in all, today is full of ugh.

Warmongers Are Weeping This Week

The big world news this week is a temporary nuclear non-proliferation deal between Iran and the world.  For six months, Iran agrees to halt its nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for a moderate lifting of crippling economic sanctions.  After the six months of compliance elapse and trust has been established, a longer agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions could come to fruition.

The whole thing almost didn’t happen because of France of all nations.  They issued a series of last minute demands that caused Iran to walk away from the negotiating table.  And if that weren’t weird enough, it also caused Republicans to praise France.  That’s got to be a first.  It’s hard to believe that Freedom Fries was only a decade ago.

This agreement obviously proves that Obama is an appeaser and we are falling right into the hands of the evil Iranians.  Or at least it does if you’re John “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” McCain.  After all, Iran is just six months from getting a nuclear bomb and they have been for over ten years.  Clearly, a deal to stop them from pursuing it that doesn’t involve pounding them back into the stone age can only end in failure.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also come out vociferously against the temporary agreement saying that it was an “historic mistake”.   I swear I can’t tell the difference between him and Dick Cheney these days.  All either of them does is sell visions of mushroom clouds dancing in childrens heads with zero evidence.  He also proclaimed the boilerplate “Israel will defend itself” blah blah blah.  Fear is so easy to sell.

That isn’t to say that skepticality isn’t called for.  Iran is not exactly the most trustworthy of governments to work with and they do sponsor terrorist groups with regularity.  And with so many players wanting so many different things, getting even a six month agreement is fairly low on the probability charts, let alone getting them all to come up with an agreement that extends past six month.  But if the six month agreement fails, we’ll just be six months later and Iran will still be just six months from getting a nuclear bomb.  This seems like a win-win agreement to me.