Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • So, Football’s Over, Eh?

    You can ask Jen. I told her the Buc’s would win yesterday morning when all the pundits were still calling for the Raiders. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

    My cold is back. I swear this is my fifth cold of the season, and I’m sick and tired of them. Winter, go away, please. I’m done with you. I’m done with it being twelve degrees when I leave the house in the morning, and it taking a good half hour once I get to work for my fingers to warm up.

    And to keep up with the snappy transitions of the last two thoughts – we watched movies this weekend. I rented The Good Girl and Windtalkers for us to watch Friday night. All I can say is one out of two ain’t all that bad.

    • The Good Girl: This was a good film. It’s not great, but it’s very good. Jennifer Aniston gives a very well-done performance as Justine, the trapped at the crappy makeup counter, in a marriage to a pothead slacker, dead-end life, lady. She longs for something more, and grabs at the first person who stirs feelings for escape. Unfortunately, she picks Holden. Jake Gyllenhaal does a good job playing Holden, but he goes a little over the top in a few scenes, that I think give the end away. It’s hard to tell if that was his choice or the director’s. John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson were great, although we see way more of Tim Blake Nelson than I was prepared for. If you haven’t seen this movie, go rent it. It’s definitely worth seeing.

    • Windtalkers: This movie sucked. Ok, wait… no… it sucked. Nicholas Cage phoned this one in. He was a cutout of himself in this film and was just awful. The first scene looked like something out of Pensacola: Wings of Gold or something with Lorenzo Lamas in it, not a big-budget, supposedly heartfelt and full of meaning, Hollywood Film. The movie got a little better, but not much. I think I’m more upset with the fact that this movie could have been so good. The story of the Navajo Codetalkers is amazing, and deserved to be told in an amazing film. Not a cheap excuse to blow stuff up. Unless you need to see Nicholas Cage do his best Rambo impression, skip this gigantic pile of crap.

    And speaking of Jake, if you haven’t seen Donnie Darko yet, go rent it. Why do I like this movie so much? I’m not exactly sure why, but I do. It holds up under repeated viewings as well, which to me is a sign of a great film. The movie has its flaws, but it does other things so well as to make up for anything blemishes it might have.

  • Mmmm, TV and Chinese Food

    This is my middle-of-January-don’t-wanna-talk-about-a-war Entertainment Review. I think this will end up being my favorite TV Shows of the past year or so (since I have an awful time-based memory, Silver Spoons might show up along side Buck Rogers). You may also accidentally get a restaurant review sprinkled in. Here they are in the order I think of them:

    1. The Wire: This has got to be my favorite show of the last year or so. It felt like the first couple seasons of my all-time-favorite cop show, Homicide. Each episode was tight and gripping, and the characters were just the best. I hope it makes a come-back next season, although I would understand if it didn’t.

    2. Boomtown: I hope this show survives. It’s my favorite, and I think the best drama on network television right now. Again, the characters drive the show, and they’re all perfectly played. Donnie Wahlberg has been a big surprise and done a great job playing the honest but tempted husband. The last show where he told Fearless about his wife’s attempted suicide was just heartbreaking. And Neal McDonough (I know I butchered that… sorry) is on fire as McNorris. He was great in Band of Brothers but he’s done a great job of making me forget him in that role and embracing the drunken jackass he plays on the show.

    3. Cheng’s: Accidental restaurant review ahead. We went out to Cheng’s, our local upscale Chinese restaurant last night with a couple from church. We decided to be oh-so Iron Chef and try something new. We started with chicken in lettuce rolls, which were extremely tasty. The chicken was chopped very fine and mixed with a light soy-based sauce, pine nuts, a few pieces of green and red pepper and then rolled in lettuce with scallions. Yum-may. Then, we got four entrees to share: Filet Mignon with Spicy Black Pepper And Macadamia Nuts, Crispy Duck with Ginger Plum Sauce, General Tsao’s Chicken and Beef With Broccoli. Can you tell which ones Jen and I ordered? First, the Filet Mignon was awesome. I expected the traditional little filet with the other stuff around it. Nope, it came out in bite-sized chunks mixed with macadamia nuts, green peppers, onions and scallops in a really tangy pepper sauce. It was awesome. The pepper kick stuck around for a few seconds after each bite, but wasn’t unpleasant, and the meat was extremely tender and cooked to medium on the inside. It was definitely the hit of the night. The crispy duck came in a cube, with what looked a little like (you guessed it) duck sauce around it. There were small pieces of breaded duck at the bottom, then topped with fried duck skin, some melon slices and thin strips of red pepper. The skin was perfectly crispy. It wasn’t tough or chewy at all and was a great complement to the rich and tender duck. Great dish. Their General Tsao’s Chicken isn’t as spicy as some of the other local choices, but it was very good. I think I’ll still go to Oriental Express for my General Tsao’s.

    4. Firefly: Even though Fox short-sightedly cancelled this brilliant show, I’m holding out hope it’ll get picked up somewhere else. By the Buffy guy, it’s a great combination of sci-fi, western and witty dialogue that kept me coming back every Friday night. It had all the humor that Buffy had in its first couple seasons and some spot-on storytelling.

    5. Andy Richter Controls The Universe: Like The Family Guy, this brilliant sitcom just hasn’t found the audience it deserves on Fox. The Zoomanism episode alone was worth renewing the show for. I think it really just needed to chance for people to find it. Unfortunately, I think it’s gone as soon as Fox can find a replacement for it.

    6. The Sopranos: I don’t know what everyone was complaining about. I loved this season. They got away from some of the violence and let the characters move around a bit. The last four episodes where some of the best of the entire series.

    7. Chapelle’s Show: Ok, this one’s new, and I’m not sure they can keep it up, but the first episode was one of the funniest half hours I have ever seen. The black white supremacist sketch was one of the ballsiest things I have ever seen on TV. I almost wet myself laughing. Definitely try to catch the show next week (and knowing Comedy Central, you can probably catch the first episode a couple hundred times between now and next Wednesday).

    8. Smallville: The show is a liii-iiittle on the cheesy side, but it has such a wealth of things to work with, that it’s worth watching every week just to see how they’re going to develop Clark’s character. What’s great is I think the show could continue almost forever. Unlike other teen series that die after High School ends, there’s enough in the Superman story to keep the show going with new supporting characters into college and even the Daily Planet afterwards. Jen got me hooked on this one.

    9. Full Metal Challenge: Max’s faaa-aaaavorite show. He’ll watch each episode over and over again and then go recreate all the games. I love it just to see how these homemade cars do it every week, and to cheer on the little Chilean car. I’m sad the season’s over, but I’m sure next season will be even better.

    Whew… that was fun. Next time, movies?

  • Sexy Sexy… ::BUUU-UUU-UURP::

    You know how I was all eloquent before? Well, this is the second half – what really happened. So, after being stuck at work until after seven (when I was going to take the day off), I get home with a splitting headache and took my lovely and unbelievably understanding wife to Sweetwater Tavern, where my diet took a short vacation while I down half a bowl of spinach and artichoke dip, half a sixteen-ounce prime rib and half a deep-dish apple pie. Yum. Did you realize it’s 15 degrees outside? My fingers are still cold… After all that food creaing an oh-so-comfy lump in my gut, and almost a week of Icelandic weather creating cold-like symptoms… I’m feeling sexy with a capital whoopie, I tell you what. So, I’m sitting here surfing while Jen watches Felicity.

    You know what? All of this is OK because we’re sitting here together on the couch in the basement in our warmest sweats, feet touching and stealing little glances at each other. Our marriage rocks because it’s so unlike those horrible contentious things on TV that seem like so little fun. We have fun just sitting next to each other, cracking little jokes, getting giddy laughing at each others laughs, or the silly stuff Max did that day. My wife is the best.

  • Mmmm, Portable

    Do you use multiple computers? Are they all running different OS’es? Do you use different text editors on each one? Does that piss you off? You’re in luck, my friend!! Go download jEdit today. It’s a full-functioned text editor written in Java and delivered as an executable jar file. So, any platform that can run Java can run jEdit. Problem of the text editor collection – SOLVED!! It also has an impressive array of plug-ins which are awesome. Go get the latest stable build and check it out. You’ll love it.

  • 5 Years Ago

    It sounds like a long time ago now, but it doesn’t feel like it. Five years ago today, I got married to the coolest girl on the planet. She laughed at my jokes then and she still does. She still gives me that look that makes me feel like I can do anything. She makes me feel younger than I am. She makes me want to be a better man.

    Five years has gone by in what feels like a couple months; but, when I look back, there are all these memories of things we’ve done and well, yeah, there are five year’s worth of memories there. Other than a broken knee and a pretty rough birth , things have been blissful, even when they shouldn’t have been. It’s funny how much can change in five years. We’ve gone from really poor to comfortable. We’ve gone from the sunny dustbowl of Tucson to the (now) frigid greenery of Northern Virginia, from a tiny tiny tiny one bedroom apartment to a townhouse we frequently lose each other in. We went from the two of us playing house in our little box apartment to having a kid to mess up a home we own.

    Jen, I would do it all over again in an instant. There are very few things I would change (the whole broken knee thing) and couldn’t imagine my life without you. Happy Anniversary, baby!

  • I’m So Fat

    I need a new belt!! Yes, I’ve said it already, but today I realized I can’t suck in my gut or my pants will fall down with my current belt hiked all the way to its last hole. Yep, Mr. Me, I’m doin’ pretty good.

    I’m taking a Java class this week, which is a little weird since I already built this huge thing in Java without ever having touched it before and NOW I’m taking the class. But, while I was building this thing, there were lots of times I went, “Hey, what the?!” and got really frustrated because I couldn’t figure out why something worked one way and not another. I didn’t have the time to figure it out because I had to move on to the next problem. In the first three hours of class today, a lot of those frustrations melted away. Yeah, Java’s still a little too strict for me, and packages are still a pain, but at least I understand what they are now.

  • Learnin’ Is Phat

    I’m in training aaaa-aaaaall day and then have a meeting that will keep me here past dark. So, you probably won’t hear a lot from me today unless l get inspired during lunch. Go read something else and then come back and tell me about it.

  • A Moving Experience

    The article isn’t scary to me. What scares me is it actually sounds like a good idea.. Warning… intense gastric descriptions await you in that story.

    After a small scare yesterday (went back up to 300.5), I’m back to 299.5, and that’s after going out to breakfast and having chili for dinner. I’m really not getting crazy about this, but I’m seeing results and it makes me extremely happy. I have more energy. I can see my toes. I need to go shopping for a new belt because this one’s on its last hole and not doing a great job of holding things up. I wore pants to church that I haven’t been able to fit into for over a year, and they weren’t the least bit uncomfortable.

  • Let The Wild Rumpus Begin

    299.5 – YES!! Under 300!! Yeah, I know it’s cutting it close and with my first glass of water, I was back over 300… but it still counts. I’ve discovered the trick to this whole weighing myself thing. Only do it once a day at the point when I’ll probably be the lightest: in the morning first thing after waking up (and of course, taking a leak, because water’s really heavy). 20+ pounds down, 99.5 to go.

    In non-fat news, we watched The Mothman Prophecies the other night. I wasn’t expecting much, but Jen and I were both awake and in the mood for a scary movie. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. It was very creepy, and did a great job of setting the mood. It was a little over-stylized, especially in the cut scenes. But, Jen screamed once which is a vote of confidence in a movie. If Jen screams, it is good. It’s better if Jen screams and then jumps into my arms for comfort… that’s a GREAT movie. A scream and a giggle, that’s a good movie. No screams and she falls asleep? That’s a horrible movie. Can you tell we’ve been married almost five years?

  • Here I Go Again

    Here I go again. I used to be a Republican. I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I read his first two books. I thought Bill Clinton was a bad dude (and I still he is in some ways). This was all in high school and for a couple years afterwards, maybe until 1995 or 96. I am no longer a Republican. I think Rush Limbaugh is is a big fat idiot. I think the GOP is morally bankrupt. I think they long ago sold out and are now no more than puppets for Corporate America. They play on the middle class evangelicals and devout by promising to outlaw abortion, get prayer back in school and bring God to the heathens in Washington. They play to those who feel left out by saying they’ll bring jobs to the little people and they’re “compassionate”. They don’t really mean it, obviously. Sure, they’ll create a day, but all they really care about is making money for themselves and their patrons. They want to keep us fat and complacent while they run off with the bank.

    What about the Dems? They’re no better. They may have better positions, but they’re incapable or unwilling of fighting the Republicans at the moment. After decades of being able to articulate their positions and get popular culture on their side, they’ve lost it. The cats (or Elephants) have run off with their eloquence and left them with nothing to say. It’s depressing. At a time when we need a fiery and vociferous opposition party, we get Casper Milquetoast and His Band Of Capitulators. Where’s the fight? Where’s the fire?

    And third parties? Dream on. Ralph Nader turned into Andrew Dice Clay after the election and I’m not sure we’ll ever hear from the Green Party again. The Libertarians, who actually showed some promise in ’92, were nowhere to be seen in 2000 (at least not in DC). Jesse Ventura did more to set his little party back than more it forward and… well, that’s all the ones anyone knows about, isn’t it?

    Where does that leave us? I feel that if I vote Republican, whoever I vote for isn’t really going to do anything for me, and in my district, we don’t really have any Democrats running for anything important (John Warner ran unopposed for the Senate… huh?!). It makes me almost want to give up and stop voting, but I know I won’t. It’s the only way I’ve got to make even a little difference. Man, this was depressing.