Morning Walk

As I was walking to work today I thought about a couple of things I've been meaning to write about...

I tried to come up with something intelligent to say about "Sex in the City" and how the opening of the movie is seen from the male perspective... All I could come up with were 3 basic questions probably running through the minds of guys as the opening night approaches:

1. Will my significant other force me to see it?

2. Will she sleep with me if I go?

3. Will I at least get to see Kim Cattrall's boobs?
3a. Do I still want to see them? Lets be honest, she was in her mid forties during the peek of that show and now it's been like five years since they probably filmed the last episode... You do the math.

I know that's not exactly the intelligent discourse I was aiming for... The reviews so far have been pretty straight forward: If you liked the show, you'll love the movie. If you didn't, you won't... No shit. Not much I can add to that.

Traditionally the perception is that shows made into movies haven't been very good. But I have no idea if that's true, and honestly, I don't have the energy to research it. I'm sure CAD and Chanclita will let us all know since they're both planning on seeing it. Hopefully they won't drag any unwilling men to see the film, but if they do, at least have the decency to put out at the end of the night. Regardless, I sincerely hope it goes better for them than Indiana Jones went for me...


...I've once again come to the conclusion that I'm simply not ready to be a father. At least not one with a daughter.

Yesterday on the Metro two teenage girls were sitting behind me. I had my headphones on but my iPod was turned off because I was reading a book*. Because I had my headphones on I assume the girls felt it was safe to talk about personal subjects, or maybe they would have spoken freely regardless... I don't know.

The point is, they proceeded to have the most graphic and frank sexual conversation I've ever heard in my life. It was so graphic that I don't dare even type some of the things they said for fear that I'll be immediately arrested.

I could tell from their voices and vocabulary that they were from well to do, upper middle class families... In addition to sex they spoke about graduation rehearsal (where they had just spent the day) and colleges they were planning to attend (Howard University and Georgia Tech).

When we arrived at their stop they got off the train and I finally got a look at them... They were normal girls... A little on the conservative side actually. They looked like the kind of girls the neighbors might ask to house sit.

I immediately called Moe Greene who has two daughters... I wanted him to reassure me that there was some kind of wisdom or secret that you inherit once you have kids that will allow you to steer them in the right direction.

But guess what? There's no such thing! He has no more insight than I do... Steer them in the right direction? You'd have to actually know what the right direction is!


...I'm a blanket thief... I didn't know that until 2003 when I started living with Morena. When we'd get in bed at night we'd start out cuddled together under one blanket, warm and content.

But once we fell asleep, I would steal the blanket. It was completely unintentional. I'd wake up and realize that I had somehow gained sole possession of the blanket and wonder "how did that happen?"

After about two weeks of living together we compromised and began sleeping with separate blankets. Problem solved... On occasion I wake up to find that I've thrown my own blanket into the floor and stolen hers, but those are rare occasions, and for the most part our two blanket system has worked flawlessly for years.

But, every few months I'll crawl into the bed and find only one solitary blanket for the two of us. Morena will explain that she's decided we're only going to use one blanket and that I have to learn to share.

This makes no sense to me.

I've proven that I'm incapable of sharing a blanket and yet she insists on continuing this charade as if I'm a child or a puppy that can be trained or broken of a bad habit.

Last night was one of those "you have to learn to share" nights... I woke up around 1am to find that I'd been trying to cover myself with one corner of the blanket. Morena had the rest.

Frustrated and cold I took hold of my little piece and rolled over, stealing as much back as I could. We now both had an equal half of the blanket, but I wasn't satisfied. I sleep with my own blanket damn it!

I took hold of the blanket again, gripping it tightly with my fingers and knees. I rolled over once more wrapping my entire body in the entirety of the blanket.

Morena made a disapproving groan but she didn't wake up. The blanket was mine. I feel back to sleep... warm and content.


* I'm not capable of listening to headphones and reading a book at the same time. If I'm at home I can read with music playing on the stereo, but once headphones are thrown into the equation it throws me off. Is this normal?

In the Wake of "Indy" (Spoiler Alert)

This past Friday several of my friends and I ventured out from our comfortable homes in our respective towns to congregate for an opening night screening of "Stephen Spielberg and the Dissection of George Lucas's Turd." It has motivated me to write my inaugural post for FartingInTheShower. I'm going to try and not get carried away with my Indy review. The goal of this post is to look to the horizon for new movie prospects in the upcoming future. Dark Knight... Dark Knight... Dark Knight... Dark Knight...

The phrase "I don't know where to begin" has never been more appropriate than right now. As I described to my friends immediately following the movie, watching "Indy 4" felt like being repeatedly punched in the face; I couldn't feel a thing until it was all over, and then I had too many bruises to identify. Therefore, I'm only going to summarize some highlights of the highlights:

- Indy's days of doing cool stunts are basically gone. Shia's character swings through the jungle on vines and swordfights while standing between two speeding army jeeps. The iconic whip makes a less-than-cameo appearance.

- They get married!!!!

- Shia's character ends up being Indy's illegitimate child. Real original, George!

- There's gunpowder that flies through the air because of alien magnetism.

- Karen Allen can drive a jeep off a cliff knowing some unseen giant branch will gracefully catch and lower them into the river below.

- All you need to survive a nuclear blast is a refrigerator. You won't even be injured. And you'll get a free sponge bath from several men in suits immediately after. Expect a large order from North Korea any day now.

- When the FBI say they're going to watch you, they don't really mean it.

- My brother pointed this out to me: There are no traps! Seriously, think of one classic trap. All you get is native Aztecs jumping out of walls that they've seemingly lived behind for thousands of years.

I need to stop.

I looked up upcoming movies on Movies.com this morning, thinking it had to get better. It kind of does. Here's what we have to possibly or possibly not look forward to, with my impressions:

May 30 - "Stuck" -- I hadn't heard of this at all until just now. Apparently, well-to-do Mena Suvari drives drunk, hits a homeless man, and decides to carry him home on her windshield and wait until he dies in her garage and then dispose of the body. The movies.com description sums it up with: "So, [homeless guy] must gather up his strength to get out before he dies." Sounds exciting. I hope he at least poops in her recycling bin on his way out.

June 6 - "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" -- Adam Sandler delivers his best Adam Sandler impression... again.

June 13 - "The Incredible Hulk" -- Didn't I just see this 2 years ago? Not since "The Crow" has a remake come so quickly after the original. I've read somewhere that the script actually presents this as a sequel, while retroactively changing some things from the first movie to make it fit the new one. Whatever. Even though it's got our boy Ed Norton, the CGI is still center stage here, and the green guy still looks like a giant action figure.

June 20 - "Get Smart" -- Steve Carrell is probably the perfect person for this role, but other than that this movie is a total crapshoot. Having seen the old show a few times, I'm not sure how well they can adapt it to the modern silver screen.

June 20 - "The Love Guru" -- Mike Myers vehicle + Jessica Alba + Justin Timberlake = moving on...

June 27 - "Wall-E" -- I must admit, after watching an extended preview for this at "Indy", it actually looks kinda good. I've been known to really enjoy an animated kids movie from time to time (see The Incredibles). I doubt I'll actively seek this out, but if the situation presents itself I wouldn't mind seeing it.

June 27 - "Wanted" -- The first on this list that falls under genuine anticipation. This is clearly this summer's contender for the "Equilibrium" crown of most incredibly awful movie ever. The plot, while extremely terrible, is unfortunately nothing remarkable. But they can curve the trajectories of bullets by swinging and twisting their arms around during a shootout! Really! The other special effects seen in the previews look equally as ridiculous. It's only fitting that Angelina Jolie is involved in such a flaming pile. That's how you know it's a serious bid for the title.

July 2 - "Hancock" -- Will Smith delivers his best Will Smith impression... again.

July 11 - "Meet Dave" -- Eddie Murphy is an alien spaceship piloted by a crew of tiny aliens. They travel to Earth on some mission to save their home planet, but things go wrong when the "ship" takes on a mind of its own and begins romancing a "hot female", as movies.com so eloquently puts it.

July 18 - "The Dark Knight" -- If you haven't yet watched "Batman Begins", July 18 is your deadline. This movie is going to be HUGE. Not only is this Heath Ledger's final completed performance, but also judging from the previews it could very well be his best. His preparation for this role was remarkable (I'll get to this another time), and he will unquestionably steal the viewer's attention in every single scene in which he appears. Thankfully, it doesn't look like we'll be short on the Joker in this one; Batman/Bruce Wayne reportedly does not even appear for the first 6 minutes of the film. Aside from the Joker, we've still got the excellent Christian Bale as Batman, the excellent Gary Oldman as Officer Gordon, the excellent Michael Caine as Alfred, and the excellent Christopher Nolan directing. Cillian Murphy (also awesome) apparently reprises his role from the first film in a cameo, and even Katie Holmes gets upgraded into Maggie Gyllenhaal. Aaron Eckhart looks to play a capable pre-Two Face Harvey Dent, and Morgan Freeman will hopefully continue to be a benign garnish in what really isn't his show. It's going to be a long summer until July 18.

I'm going to stop here. For me, there's no reason to look further yet. Let me know what you're looking forward to.

Gloved and Crazy

Sometimes you read bizarre stories about reclusive or eccentric celebrity behavior and find yourself asking, “How does someone who was at one time a relatively normal and functional human being get that crazy?”

Whether it’s Brittney Spears shaving her head and vandalizing cars with an umbrella, Michael Jackson forcing his kids to wear a mask in public, or Mike Tyson spending days at a time tending to pigeon coups with a bizarre African symbol tattooed on the side of his face, the question you always find yourself asking is, “How did it come to this?”

Well I’m here to tell you, I know how it happens. And I think I’m on my way there…

You see I have this little sleeping issue that I can’t quite figure out… What happens is, at night as I lay down in bed, I have a habit of resting my head against the palm of my hand. It started a few years back when I saw a commercial on TV for an orthopedic pillow. The commercial featured a graphic showing that if your head wasn’t resting in just the right position when you lay down to sleep, your spine would somehow be bent in an a very awkward. This would of course cause you a lifetime of permanent pain and discomfort.

Whether or not that graphic was accurate, I thought about it that night when I went to bed. I tossed and turned for hours, obsessed with finding the perfect position to rest my head. I finally settled on a sleeping position using the heel of my hand to prop my head up just slight off my pillow… the “perfect position” to align my spine.

This went on for a couple of weeks, and although I had since realized that the graphic was just some BS sales tool, I had grown accustomed to that position, and I’ve slept that way ever since. It was has to be perfect… On my left side… Two pillows… My left hand resting beneath my left temple… I can’t sleep any other way.

But the problem with sleeping like this is, when I wake up in the morning I have a big red spot on the side of head, right where I had rested my hand all night… It used to go away within 10 or 15 minutes, but over time it seems to stay longer and longer… Sometimes it will stay with me until mid morning.

There have even been a few occasions where coworkers have asked me “what happened to you? Your temple is all red, did you get into a fight or something?”

I’m starting to worry that the spot may become permanent.

I’ve tried many times to simply change the way I sleep, but nothing works. If I sleep on my right side or on my back I can only sleep for a couple of hours before waking up. I’ve tried wrapping a blanket or sheet around my hand to provide some cushion for my head, but it always slips out once I fall asleep.

The closest I’ve been able to come to an actual solution is put my hand inside the pillow cover and use the pillow cover as the barrier between my hand and face… But even when I do that I always wake up in the middle of the night to find that I have at some point ditched the pillow cover and returned to my normal, harmful position.

The one idea that I’m sure will work (but have thus far been reluctant to try) is a glove…

But this morning I woke up and stumbled into the bathroom only to see that the spot on my face was much larger than normal, and darker than it’s ever been… Even right now, as I type, FIVE hours after I woke up this morning, the spot is still slightly visible. Its light brown, about the size of a penny… And indeed, it looks like I might have been punched in the temple at some bar fight last weekend.

So fuck it, I’m going to the glove… I don’t care how crazy or irrational it sounds, but I’m going to bed tonight with a latex glove on my left hand… Go ahead… Get a good mental picture… a six foot tall, pasty white fat guy, with a shaved head, half naked, lying in bed, and wearing one latex glove...

I just wanted to let everyone know about it right now, so that in five years when you're reading a blog post from Moe Greene telling everyone that I’ve locked myself in my bedroom, shaved off every hair on my body, and refuse to touch anything without wearing my glove… you’ll know where it started.

You won’t have to ask “How did it come to this?”

On Second Thought...

This may not come as a surprise to some of you but I’m what some people might call “an opinionated guy”. I tend to take strong stances on an issue and then make a lifetime commitment to stand by that decision no matter what the circumstances.

The reason I do that of course is because I’m almost always right. Seriously, maybe Id be a little less reluctant to change my mind and listen to counterargument if my opinions didn’t turn out to be fact on so many occasions.

If I had to honestly assess the accuracy of my opinions I’d say I’m somewhere between 80 and 85% correct.

Now you could possibly make an argument against the accuracy of my accuracy statistic, (after all 92.8% of all statistics are in fact total fabrications), but you’d be arguing semantics at that point… because again, I’m almost always right.

And it’s for that reason (me being right all the time) that I feel compelled to share with others the few instances when in fact it appears that I may have been wrong about something… Or like in the case I’m about to share with you, I at least might have to rethink my position.

There are actually two positions I’ve decided to rethink right now, but they’re both related to one single issue, and that is, Weather.

You see, I made a decision about 15 years ago that I would never pay attention to weather forecasts. Or at least, I would never actively seek them out.

I came to this conclusion when my father began to obsessively watch the Weather Channel. And despite all his hours listening to “expert” opinion he was no better at predicting the weather than any random idiot stranger on the street that passes by and says things like, “looks like rain!”

My dad usually dropped me off at school in the mornings and as we were leaving the house he always seemed to have some sort of advice about what I should or should not have been wearing that day… “It’s going to be warm today, might wanna leave the jacket behind,” or “are you sure you don’t want to wear something with a hood, it’s supposed to rain this afternoon…” And he was always wrong. Inevitably, I’d be walking home from school in the afternoon carrying an unnecessary rain jacket because he had assured me that I’d need it.

So like I said, my position has always been that I’ll never find myself watching TV and thinking, “Oh I better get to NBC, I don’t want to miss the local weather report.”

And you’ll never catch me checking updates on the internet, or flipping through pages of the newspaper to find out if it’s going to be “partially sunny”, or “partially cloudy”, or whatever it is they say.

I figure that anything big (i.e. snow storm, or a hurricane, or a tornado) is going to be big enough that news of its impending arrival will somehow find its way back to me… Especially with snow… If there is even the slight possibility that we might get some snow and suddenly it’s the only topic for discussion around here… “I heard three inches!”, “Yeah well I heard it only going to be a dusting”, “That’s not true, we’re going to get freezing rain all night and then it’s going to turn to snow just before dawn!”

The other weather related opinion I may need to rethink is the umbrella… I never carry one. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure if I own one. In my 28 years I can only think of a handful of times where I was totally drenched in rain and wished I’d had an umbrella.

Unfortunately, and this is why I’m suddenly rethinking my position, most of those handful of instances seem to have come within in the past 30 days... I don’t know what’s going on here in our Nation’s Capital but over these past few weeks we’ve been getting some serious rain… I’m talking biblical, drenching rain that doesn’t stop for days… I think the next step is actually frogs… I may even build an arc.

This morning I awoke to water pouring down the drain outside my bedroom window and this has actually become such a familiar sound to my mornings that I didn’t even completely connect that sound with pouring rain until I opened my front door and attempted to step outside. That’s when I got nailed with swollen globs of sideways rain pelting me in the face.

Within seconds I had stepped back into my living room and began reviewing my options.

My hoodie jacket that I normally wear in the rain was sitting at the office because on a similar morning last week I had worn it to work and then left it in the afternoon when things had cleared up… Maybe had I checked the weather yesterday I could have known this was coming and carried the jacket home! Now all I had left to get me through the morning was either a heavy winter coat with no hood or a lighter jacket, also sans hood… and of course, no umbrella.

By the time I got to my office I was completely soaked, and I’m now convinced that my head my head ache may be an early sign of pneumonia from the cold rain pelting my shaved head on my long walk from the metro.

And worse yet, I’m admitting that 2 long standing policies I’ve had may be wrong.

In short, it’s been a shitty morning. I think my position is going to be that I need to start keeping an umbrella in my car and proceed normally with my stance on weather reports… but this position too may change if any frogs land on my head on my walk back to the metro this afternoon.

Solve the Mystery

Last week I went on an epic wikipedia journey that took up the better part of my Thursday afternoon... I'm not sure how or why I started my journey exactly but I do know that I spent somewhere between 2 and 3 hours reading about obscure unsolved disappearances.

This happens to me a lot, and I suspect it's a fairly common occurrence; you go to wikipedia to try and figure out exactly why Wesley Snipes thought he could refuse to pay taxes for a decade under guise of being a "tax protester", you click on a link that leads you to another link, and before you know why or how it happened you've spent half the day reading about Charles Manson, (who I personally think was railroaded, but that's a story for another day).

But getting back to my point, while I was reading up on mysterious cases of disappearance I decided it might be a good idea to post the facts of a case here on FITS so we could kick around theories and play amateur detective for a bit.. Depending on how it works out I may put up some more mysteries in the future... There is no shortage of weird shit unexplained shit to find on wikipedia.

Anyway, the inaugural mystery to be explored was an easy pick for me... When I was in middle school I checked out an "unsolved mysteries" book from the library for a paper I was writing on Amelia Earhart... And while her disappearance is fascinating, it was another story in the book that grabbed my attention and became a bit of an obsession for me. It was the case of a missing judge from NY named Joseph Crater.

This is the link to his wikipedia page, but to make things easier I'll summarize the facts right here:

Joseph Force Crater (January 5, 1889 – ???) was an associate judge on the New York State Supreme Court who suddenly disappeared on the night of August 6, 1930.

He was last seen leaving a restaurant and entering a taxi. He had just been appointed to the bench four months earlier.

The strange details of the case start earlier that summer when he and his wife were vacationing at their summer cabin in Maine. The vacation was going fine until the Judge received a phone call. When he got off the phone he told his wife that he had to return to NYC right away "to straighten those fellows out."

His wife didn't press him for any details because those were the good days when women knew their place! (I'm kidding, just wanted to make sure you were paying attention)

So Crater goes back to the city but instead of going into the office or dealing with anything urgent, he decides to head to Atlantic City with a showgirl... this gives us the first glimpse at what kind of man the Judge was... (the kind of guy I'd like to hang with!)

Without ever attending to any business or checking in at the office, the Judge heads back to Maine on August 1st, but he only stayed there two days before leaving on the 3rd to return to the city once again... The Crater's generally spent their summers in Maine, and because the Judge was a busy guy it was not all that uncommon for him to head back to the city on business when needed throughout the summer. Lets remember that there was internet back in 1930.

Before making this final trip back into the city Crater promised his wife he'd be back in time for her birthday which was on August 9th... He never made it back.

Once back in the city the Judge took some time out of his busy 'showgirl banging' schedule to head into the office for a few hours on August 6th. While he was there he had his assistant, Joseph Mara, cash two checks for him that amounted to $5,150... According to wikipedia, this would be the equivalent of something around $60,000 today.

At noon, he and Mara then when back to his apartment carrying two locked briefcases. After dropping them off Crater told the assistant to go ahead and take the rest of the day off.

Later that day he bought one single ticket for a Broadway comedy that night with a 9 pm show time... Then he went to dinner and ate lobster with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz (also a showgirl but NOT the same showgirl he went to Atlantic City with a week earlier!), and a lawyer friend who may or may not have also been sleeping with Sally Lou.

They finished up their dinner at a little after 9 (keep in mind the show he bought the ticket for had started at 9, so he was already late) and got into a cab, alone, and was never seen or heard from again.

When Crater didn't return for his wife's birthday on the 16th she started phoning friends asking if anyone had heard from him or perhaps seen him. Nobody had.

Of course it wouldn't have been completely out of character for him to disappear for a few days, but when he didn't show up for work when courts reopened on Aug 25th his friends, family, and colleagues started a private search.

When that search came up empty the police were finally notified on September 3rd, 28 days after he had disappeared!

It was around this time that Miss Sally Lou Ritz also disappeared. Although the exact date and details of her departure remain sketchy, she was never seen or heard from again either.

The news of the missing judge quickly became the leading story in the country and stayed that way for months. A grand jury was convened in October and although they interviewed 95 witnesses and ammassed a mountain of information, they never came across any substantial leads.

They did however uncover some slimy details about NYC politics in general, and Judge Crater in particular. Aside from his adulterous ways it also became apparent that the Judge knew some shady characters and was involved in a suspicious real estate deal right around the time he was appointed to his seat on the court.

Six months after his disappearance, Crater's wife found a hidden trunk in their house that contained $6000 in cash, 3 life insurance policies, a list of people who owed him money, and a note that read, "I am very weary. Love Joe"

In 2005 authorities came across a letter written 50's years prior by the wife of a former NYC police officer. In it, the letter claimed that her husband the cop, along with another cop and a pair of mob associates had murdered the judge and buried him under the boardwalk in Coney Island. That location was later renovated and became what is today the New York Aquarium.

It has been confirmed that skeletal remains were in fact found at that spot in the 1950's, but the bones were buried in a Potter's field along with thousands of other unidentified bodies... So there is no way to check the remains for DNA and verify if the account in the woman's letter was true.

The main theories are this:

-He ran off with the show girl
-He fled to avoid some imminent discovery of his shady dealings
-He was murdered for his shady dealings
-He was the victim of some random murder
-He killed himself

Personally, this is the way I see it:

The judge was indeed involved in dirty politics with shady characters. Naturally, he had a long list of enemies and people he'd pissed off over the years. Now that he had obtained such a high profile position, some of those people began making life uncomfortable for him.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he was either exposed or knocked off so he decided to skip town with his mistress. But he didn't want to totally leave his wife out in the cold so he left her the cash, life insurance policies, and the list as a sort of consolation prize to help ease his own personal guilt.

Even though his case was so famous it was 1930 and he could have disappeared and started a new life fairly easily. His shady real estate deal by most accounts left him with a rather large sum of money that is still unaccounted for. He could have lived off that and used it to start a new somewhere in Europe, Canada, or anywhere really.

My explanation for the letter discovered in '05 goes something like this: That lady's husband and his associates probably did murder somebody and bury him under the boardwalk, and because it happened around the time of the Crater case she assumed it was him.

Had those four men really robbed and murdered the judge I fail to see how they could have kept a secret like that for so long. Especially in a case so high profile. Those guys would have wanted to brag about what they had done, not to mention they would have been spending that small fortune of money he had like crazy. It only takes one guy to get liquored up and run his mouth a bit too much to ruin a secret, and yet we're supposed to believe that four men of questionable character were able to keep a lid on something that big for all that time? No way.

But again, that's just my theory. What's yours?

Film Vault Tuesday - The Indiana Jones Preview

Well we're finally here... a little over one week away from the fourth and long awaited installment of the iconic Indiana Jones series. I must admit that I do have some misgivings about the plot... Russians villains and not Nazis, no Sean Connery, the Shia LaBeouf addition as new young heart throb, and of course the return of the near mummified corpse of Karen Allen, etc... But honestly, as long as we've waited for it, how could I possibly be anything less than enthusiastic about the return of Indy into my life!

When I first wrote about the return of Indy it was way back in February of 2006 and the details were very sketchy. The secrecy involved with the movie continued over the last two years and only recently have some of the juicier plot details really been revealed. Here is what we know so far:

Years have passed since Indy's last adventure and he's been leading the comfortable life of academia as the professor of a small college in Connecticut .

He's pulled back into adventure by a rebellious student (Shia LaBeouf) who has a lead on the "Crystal Skull of Akator".

According to the legend surrounding the Skull, it was stolen from a mysterious 'City of Gold ' deep in the Amazon, and whoever can return the Skull to the city's temple will, allegedly, become the master of the Skull's powers.

Somehow evil Russians will enter the frey (it's 1957 so we're talking full on Cold War era), which is where we'll meet Kate Blanchet. Hopefully, she'll be playing the classic love-hate romantic interest for Indy... I say "hopefully" because I'm deathly afraid that she may somehow be meant for LeBeouf and we might be forced into seeing Indy hook up with decrepit Karen Allen... That would of course immediately change the movie genre from 'Action-Adventure' to 'Tragedy' and I don't know if I'd be able to cope with that.

The setting will jump from New Mexico, to New England, to Mexico City, and finally to Peru.

In case you've been living under a rock, here is what the new movie poster looks like:


To say I'm a little excited about it would be the understatement of the decade. As I type this I'm getting dizzy with the image of Harrison Ford racing through caves with his shirt unbuttoned and the Indy theme music blaring in the background.*

I don't have any set plans yet but nothing short of amputation and/or gonorrhea will keep me from seeing this movie next weekend... I'm also going to try and review the previous 3 flicks sometime between now and then.

When I originally made Indiana Jones the subject of Film Vault Tuesday, I included this list of Rules for Watching Indy movies, lets hope it will still apply after this next sequel:

THE INDIANA JONES RULES

1. Indiana can sense a booby-trap coming… If you’re ever in a dark cave with him and he holds you back and says “Don’t move,” he means it. Don’t fucking move!

2. Indiana can do some crazy shit with a whip… If you’re a hot chick and somebody is about to shoot you, don’t worry, Indiana will appear and knock the gun from the bad guy's hand with his trusty whip… you can also stop worrying about bottomless pits. That's right, if you need to jump across a bottomless pit, Indiana can use the whip to swing himself across the hole as you clutch his manly chest… but only if you’re a hot chick. If you’re a dude, he’ll swing across first and then let you go second. There will be no Dude-on-Indiana chest clutching…

3. Speaking of hot chicks- Indiana bangs hot chicks… No matter what side you’re on- Good or Evil, Indiana will bang the bejesus out of you if you’re hot. Don’t even try to resist his powers.

4. When Indiana discovers a room or vault that hasn’t been opened for Two-Thousand Years, there will always be 800 snakes just hanging around guarding the rooms contents… Forget the fact that most snakes like to be alone- Indiana Jones' movie snakes love to hang out in large groups and protect hidden archaeological treasures.

(note- snakes can sometimes be replaced by tarantulas or rats)

5. Indiana can figure out how to operate anything on the fly... a big truck, a speed boat, a small engine airplane, a horse, a camel, a motorcycle, anything!

6. When a large group of angry blood thirsty Muslims charges Indiana, they must charge one at a time. Sure they could probably take him easily if the whole group jumped on him at once, but that wouldn’t be fair.

7. Never, EVER, fight Indiana Jones near a moving plane or boat propeller that can chop you to bits… it won’t go well for you, just take my word for it.

8. If you're a Nazi, Indiana will kick your ass!

(note- if you're a sexy female Nazi, please refer to rule #3.)

9. At some point during the movie, Indiana’s shirt needs to be torn, exposing his bare chest.
(Man crush alert)

10. And finally, if and when the villain has captured Indiana he can never, EVER, just shoot him in the head… He is contractually obligated to leave Indy for dead in some locked room, vault, or hole assuming he won’t figure out how to escape.








*My man crush for Indy/Harrison is starting to reach creepy levels. Frankly, I may be one Jack Ryan sequel away having "gender reassignment surgery", leaving my wife, and making it my full time job to pursue him until he either [a] agrees to "deflower me" or [b] has me arrested.

Grand Theft Sunday

I’m tired, I’m hungry, my back is sore, and my eyes are bloodshot.

My weekend involved drinking and driving, stolen cars, injured pedestrians, a police chase, and several dead hookers.

Of course I’m talking about the forth edition of the new Grand Theft Auto which hit stores across the country on Tuesday of last week.

I got the game the day it came out but because of work I couldn’t quite devote the proper amount of time until yesterday… and by proper amount I mean 12 or more hours of non-stop play… I was glued to my Xbox 360 from about 9am to 10pm, and if that sounds boring to you, well then, you obviously don’t know anything about Grand Theft Auto.

In case you’ve never played, or have never seen some play, let me describe it for you:

Basically you’re in the middle of a large city with access to every type of weapon known to man, and there are no rules… You can steal cars, run red lights, shoot people, run over pedestrians, and more or less commit every type of illegal act you’ve ever fantasized about doing in reality but were prevented from doing so by laws, common sense, a healthy fear of death, and basic principles of morality.

The beauty of the game…aside form all the wonderful things I just mentioned… is that you can either follow a very compelling and in depth story line, or you can just go on a rampage and get answers to questions that have been bugging you for years, like: “I wonder what would happen if I stole a garbage truck, got it up to top speed, and then rammed it head on into the front of a police station?”

Here is a brief list of some of the things I did yesterday:

-stole two or three dozen cars

-broke a couple thousand traffic laws

-stole 2 boats

-spent a couple thousand dollars in a strip club

-beat 3 strip club bouncers to death or near death (didn’t stick around to see how that turned out)

-hijacked a delivery truck

-robbed a motorcycle gang of a very large suitcase full of cocaine

-shot a couple dozen cops

-committed many dirty and deplorable acts with hookers

-robbed said hookers to get my money back after committing the previously mentioned dirty and deplorable acts

-and finally, robbed (or attempted to rob) a bank.

Have you ever been walking down the street in a bad mood and saw someone you just wanted to punch in the face? Well in GTA you can not only punch them in the face, but you can beat them with a bat while frightened onlookers run away screaming.

Ever wondered what would happen at a toll booth if you decided to nail the gas and drive right through that stupid little gate? I did that twice yesterday!

Now critics of the game say that it’s unhealthy and may cause children to go out and commit horrible acts, and blah blah blah… You know what I say to those critics? I say:

“Umm… I don’t know… maybe… you might have a point…”

I don’t know if kids should have access to this game. When I first heard about it back in 2001 and was told that I could commit car jackings, run over pedestrians, shoot cops, and pick up hookers, I thought two things: [1] I can’t wait to play it! And [2] is that legal?

It’s now seven years later and I’ve spent many hours of “research” playing the various versions of GTA and my conclusion is still: I don’t know…

For me, I play the game and release a lot of pent up frustration that might not have gotten out other wise. It’s kind of like therapy and it actually relaxes me. I’d say I’m probably less likely to commit a crime that I committed in the game then I would have been had I never played the game… The temptation to steal a police car is less now, because I already know what it feels like to an extent.

Now, should an immature 12 year boy who’s already a little confused, isolated from his peers, and battling anger issues play this game? Probably not…

But is that going to stop me from spending another 3 or 4 hours in front of my Xbox when I get home from work tonight? Not likely…