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The Da Vinci Code: The Movie!

That’s what I felt like while watching this flick last Friday night. And I don’t want to get into too much of a movie review mode about it. I enjoyed the experience, but I left that theatre feeling really dissapointed. It didn’t help that I just read the book. I mean literally, I just finished reading the book that same day.

What didn’t I like about it? That’s hard to say without giving too much of the story away. I think a lot of people understand the premise of the book, but the story that is built around it is the only thing the media hasn’t given away. Regardless, they did change some things, as Hollywood always does. They sliced some elements up, took some out completely, and then made the characters fit the movie rather than the ones that you got from the book.

I’ll have to watch it again to understand, for myself, how it was as an actual movie. Paying so much attention to the storyline, I didn’t really take in the film as it was presented. However, I recently heard that the makers of 24[fox] tried to get the rights from Dan Brown to do a season based on his book. That got me thinking that either a television mini-series or even the 24 idea would have succeeded in bringing the book to life better rather than a simple, box office smash.

Opie, you let me down.

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The State

Taco Mail on YouTubeYouTube can be dangerous if you are someone with a short attention span and are easily distracted, much like myself. So when I discovered that episodes and skits of The State[wiki] are on there, I had to really restrain myself from watching them all in one sitting. Regardless, I still freaked out and got really excited. I even watched “Taco Mail”[youtube] since it was short, but I stopped there before I got completely lost in my excitement.

It was my friend, Isaac, in high school that was the other huge fan of this show. In fact, it was the humor in The State that I blame for my warped sense of humor, even to this day. Combine this with the hours spent watching Monty Python[wiki], and I admit this is incredibly geeky, we were apart of a pretty good improv group for our high school speech competition team. We took the group all the way to state competition, but we tanked there when we failed to do well with our draw of “canned food isle in the grocery store comes to life.”

I still make references to this show only to have very few people know what I’m talking about. What I really want is the episode with the little kid that has everyone at the dinner table saying grace before dinner only to pray for God to strike down one of the little kids at the table. I think his name was Billy, or Timmy? Bobby? And then the prayer is over only to have the little kid run outside, look at the camera, and he says, “What they don’t know is that God and I… are like this.” He shows his index and middle fingers crossed just as God pulls up on a motorcycle. Little kid hops on, and off they ride.

At least it goes something like that. All I really know for sure is that The State was hilarious. It was sad to have it fade away like it did, but a large portion of the cast has moved on to other things. It pains me to say that MTV created probably one of the funniest programs in my lifetime, but they haven’t done anything to match it since.

“My name is Doug, and I’m outta… heeeeeeerrre.”

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10 Things I Hate About Commandments

I love the trend of remixing movie trailers to be completely different from what they were originally intended to be.  “10 Things I Hate About Commandments”[youtube] is just that.

“Ten Things I Hate About Commandments” is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments. It’s masterfully done, and milk-out-the-nose funny. [boingboing]

Priceless.

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I Just Finished Reading “The Da Vinci Code”

My plan for months was to read The Da Vinci Code[amazon] prior to the movie coming out.  I actually wanted to read it long before Opie, aka Ron Howard[wiki], said he was going to do the movie[imdb].  It’s one of those things that you stick on a list of things you want to do.  Of course, it was until a few weeks ago that I actually picked it up so I could get through it before we saw the movie.

If you are wondering why I haven’t been keeping up with the blog or the podcast for the past week or so, now you know.  We’ve been looking forward to this film for quite some time, but the reviews[slate] are less than stellar.  At the same time, I hate critics.  It doesn’t help that everyone is a critic, and I can be just as staunch as the next person.  I hold hope that I’ll enjoy the film, no matter how good or bad it might seem, but we’ll see.

I liked the book a lot.  It’s one of those things that will really pick you brain, and I’ve heard a lot of these historical facts in the numerous documentaries I’ve watched on TV during my lifetime.  Anything that makes me want to just keep reading until the end is a good thing.  This falls back on the premise that I tend to find things to enjoy out of anything I read, watch, or listen to.  Adventure, geekiness, and religious discussion?  What isn’t there for me to like in this story?

We’re actually on a mission to see the film tonight, hence my desire to finish reading the last 150+ pages this afternoon.  Being opening day, it might be difficult to find a theatre that isn’t sold out until the late, late shows.

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Yes, I Love Technology

My laptop via my new cell phoneWe got new cell phones! And they’re neat and cool and lots of fun to play with. Rebecca hooked us up through Rogers with a couple of sweet Motorolas, obviously with cameras. Click on the picture to see my evidence of completely geeking out with these lovely new toys for pretty much all of today.

The even better deal is that they came with bluetooth. And even better, they work with my Powerbook. I can upload and download movies, pictures, audio, ringtones, and so on. This made me get all excited and I spent most of today sampling various things, applying different effects, and making my own ringtones.

I spit out about ten different rings. And they’re rings. Not samples or clips of songs. Straight up rings that alert you that a phone call is coming in. All done in mp3, so I’m debating about keeping them for ourselves or perhaps posting them for all to download. Curious? Let me know.

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So I Maybe Off the Wall

Over the past few days, I’ve been calling a lot of folks that I haven’t talked to in quite some time. This whole, free calls to the U.S. and Canada through Skype has allowed me to throw away a fair amount of time to catching up with friends and family south of the border. I have a lot more people that I need to catch up with, but I do have other various projects going on that I need to keep working on.

I’ve also had a few people say that I don’t blog the way that I use to. The entries are shorter or that they’ve changed. I posted that was going to change after the last overhaul to the site itself. How I write here allows me to not only do something a tad more personal, but also explore other ways to expand on topics that I find noteworthy. Plus, this is my site. Not yours. I can do what I want.

I was sick a fair portion of last week. I had some sort of chest cold that got into my lungs and took away my voice. That translated into a dry cough which eventually loosened up a bunch of crap in my throat. I still have an ever so slight cough, but I’m getting back on track with things. I did go running last Sunday, thinking I felt good enough to do that. Of course, I ran the whole Seawall and over did it. The area around my left achilles has been sore, but I’ve been busy with errands over the last few days and haven’t experienced any problems with inclines as I was.

We have a lot of interesting things going on, and I’m getting myself settled into the B.C. lifestyle more and more. I’ll post more in the next few days with some of the cool things that’s happened this week. With the weather being as outstanding as it has been these past few days and my health coming back around, it’s tough to get myself to focus on doing “work”.

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Don’t You Want To Be an Immigrant, Too?

Border line in the road.One thing Rebecca has been asking me lately is about the southern border of the U.S. She asked, kind of laughing in doubt, if there are just these holes in the fences where people walk through from Mexico into the southern states. I tell her yes, that’s exactly it. The holes are not huge, but it’s not unusual to have people just wandering into, and out of, the U.S. It’s probably gotten tougher over the past few years, but these things happen.

It’s so strange to think about this issue being where I am now. I’m currently an immigrant to Canada. And let me tell you, even being an American, getting into this country to legally stay is not an easy task. You might think so, but as I was told many times, it’s easier to get a permanent resident status if you are a refugee from a third world country than it is for an American.

It might be easy to get to Canada and stay here without making yourself legal, but you wouldn’t be able to apply for provincial programs or a social insurance number. I do hear that there is some money to be made in the business of illegal drugs, but there seems to be a high risk factor in that industry for some reason. If you’re lucky enough to not be deported after that, then you have a ticket to reside in the crown’s wonderful prison system with no chance of getting any residential status here. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Continue reading “Don’t You Want To Be an Immigrant, Too?”

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CBC: The End of Radio

Tod Maffin posted this on his website sometime ago, but I just had the chance to sit down and watch this recently. The End of Radio is one segment of a three part series on CBC Newsworld that tackles the idea of the way media is changing in the not so distant future, and you can watch this 22 minute program on their website.

The experts have spoken. Mass media is reported to be on its last legs. A handful of new media entities with remarkably silly names: Blogs, Vlogs, YouTube, Podcasts, and Yahoo! are leading the charge, leaving traditional forms of communications to play catch-up or get left behind.

The CBC’s pop culture specialist Jian Ghomeshi ponders the fate of mass media and asks whether we are nearing a world without television, radio or print in THE END, a three-part series airing on CBC Newsworld. [cbc.ca/theend]

I wanted to provide a link on my site as well because it’s a really interesting program. Of course I take intrest in the radio and podcasting portion of this report, but the other segments about TV and print make me curious as well. I should have watched them last week while being down with some sort of chest cold thing.

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Skype Gives You Free Calls To the U.S. & Canada

As I type this, I am talking to my sister-in-law, Wendy, back in Iowa. Skype is my hero today. They are offering free calls to the U.S. and Canada until the end of 2006. It’s pretty simple and works very well. I’ve only had some slight problems, but I called not only my brother’s house, but Rebecca at work, my mom, Paul back at the radio station, and my buddy Heath.

Heath was the only one not on a landline, but the cellphone conversation worked out really well. I used my podcast setup for a mic and headphones for the conversations. Mom said I sounded slightly tinny. Matt said that he could tell it was digital, but the overall quality was good. Paul is excited to use it for broadcast and personal uses.

You have to pay extra to get the ability to have people phone into your computer, but I think this is a great feature. I haven’t talked to Heath and Qi Qi since I left Iowa. However, the only draw back is what comes up on the caller I.D.; my mom and Heath almost didn’t answer the phone because the display came up as “unknown”.

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RadioZoom Episode #92

Recorded and published today, episode #92 is ready for your downloading needs.

British Columbia is the focus of this six song episode. Keeping up with my promise of putting out a music filled edition of RadioZoom around the 15th of every month, I did my best to bring you artists from the Vancouver, B.C. area. Suggestions and submissions for future episodes are always welcome.

radiozoom.net