Who was the idiot who came up with this idea?  If there's anything I hate more than talking on the phone, its trying to talk to a freakin machine.  "One. ONE!!! No. NO! Yes. YES. YES! GODAMMIT!"  I mean really.  These things don't work.  Just let me push the damn buttons.  Beep beep beep. There I'm done.  Why anyone would think people actually like these stupid systems over just giving a damn menu and letting me just get there just blows my mind.

Rant over.  Carry on.

Keith Moon or John Bonham?

And why?

Discuss.

I SAID DISCUSS!!!!

Technorati Tags: dead drummers, john bonham, keith moon, led zeppelin, the who

Well at least they're not going to tear the thing down.  Man that just ticks me off.  Forget about the whole Bell's incident.  Yeah we'll just screw 50 years of Tulsa's history and part of its identity in favor of a parking lot.  Man.  Funny though that they'd scrap $300 G's worth of work after the Bell's fiasco.  "But its about the money!" Yeah, right.  What's next, tear down the Pavilion, too?  I'm sure that'd be the last straw.

At least the armory will remain.  (See the link.)

I wish the US had the same, I dunno, attitude towards architectural history thats present in say Europe.  Around here anything that's a little old is looked upon as trash in need of destruction to be replaced by some crappy metal building, parking lot, or cookie-cutter franchise store. 

I think people are finally starting to realize that once these monuments are gone, they're never coming back.  Yes it costs more money to maintain and restore them, but dammit that's not the point.

Link: "Armory Restoration Costing More Money" - KOTV.com - The News On 6

And yeah, I haven't been posting.  Busybusybusy.


Technorati Tags: tulsa, national guard, armory, architecture, history, money

God is anyone else getting mildly (or grossly) annoyed by the next latest greatest fad in phishing e-mails?  The 'welcome to my site' ones that want you to click on some link to verify your signup info that you supposedly submitted?  Man, if I could find one of these boneheads and lock myself in a room with them....

...only one of us would be coming out, and you only get one guess as to who it is.  I'm getting dozens if not hundreds of these things, and I guess spamassassin isn't able to flag them... bah.

Bruce Willis returns for the fourth installment of the Die Hard series! Rock!

Or Not.

Man what a let down.  Sure there's lots of hokey gunplay and explosion and dodging flying cars and completely outrageous situations... but its DIE HARD! The franchise invented this sort of film, and for that you have to give them a wide berth to continue this sort of thing...

...but at least act like it matters!  This movie is just, well, uninteresting on so many planes it isn't funny.  And that's the other knife to the gut for this film.  Unlike its predecessors, it just isn't funny.  The humor that is there is just lame and contrived.

The plot can be summarized like this:  A group of cyber terrorists led by a disgruntled ex-government agent cripples the network infrastructure of the US, and thereby cripples most of the country in an attempt to steal billions in electronic assets from the Treasury department.  Our hero, John McClane goes to arrest one of the unknowing accomplices in this global hack, and gets caught up in it all, eventually having to save his daughter from the terrorist leader.

And that's the real problem here.  The plot of the film has little if any personal connection to McClane.  In each of the previous three Die Hards there was an urgent and immediate personal threat to McClane or his family.  Yeah sure eventually his daughter is kidnapped and he has to rescue her, but you spend most of the film wondering WTF any of this has to do with him!!  Until finally she re-appears near the end.

Back to the humor.  Part of the charm of the Die Hard franchise is the wit and humor, most notably in parts one and three, which is sorely lacking here.  Not until near the end does it start to get remotely funny, but by that time you're just tired of watching.

And as for Willis, dude, could you at least pretend to be interested in this role?  I got the feeling he was just there to pay the rent on this one.  A flat performance would be an understatement.  And as for the wayward hacker Matt Farrell (Justin "I'm a Mac" Long) his shtick gets tired equally fast.

And as for the action that made Die Hard famous? Yeah its there, in droves.  Lots of gunplay and bullet-dodging, high-speed car vs. semi vs. delivery truck chases, a bit of helicopter crashing action.  But the death knell for the film comes as McClane jumps on the back of an impossibly maneuverable F-22, and jumps off just before it crashes.  That entire sequence was entirely over the top, even for Die Hard.

I wouldn't recommend dropping the coin to visit a theater for this one.  Save your pennies and go see Transformers or Harry Potter instead.  I was sorely disappointed, and hopefully they either retire the franchise after this or are able to resurrect its former glory!

Links: Live Free or Die Hard at IMDB.  Live Free or Die Hard at Amazon.com

Technorati Tags: live free or die hard, 2007, bruce willis, john mcclane, matt farrell, justin long, movie review

So we went back home to Wisconsin for the 4th to visit family.  Practically all of one side of the family made it back up there from all parts of the country (Florida, Kansas, the Oklahoma gang, Indiana) and we had a great time visiting everybody.  Always fun to get all the kids together and see who looks like who(!)

Picked up about 4.5 cases of Leinie's at good cheep WI prices (hey for $13 a case who can pass it up! Especially considering OK's backwards liquor laws...)

Went to the big (cough) Mineral Point parade on the 4th.  Actually it was bigger than I remember, but then again I only remember marching in the band, so I guess my perspective was a bit skewed!  Point is looking a bit dead these days, lots of vacant fronts on High Street and a lot of property for sale.  These things happen from time to time.

Also brought home a bunch of old newspapers and readers that my folks found in the house, from the late '20s and early '30s.  I will be trying to digitize these and post them up in pieces.  I took some photos of the pages they kept and will try to re-assemble those in the coming days.  I have to figure out a good way to do this though as they're bigger than my scanner and I don't have a good copy-board setup.

(I really need some better categories on this site, too...)

I saw this driving home from work the other day and had to snap a pic. Sorry for the cruddy quality, but thats how the cellphone cameras roll.

I'm wondering at what point this sounds like a good idea as a career. "Hey, I think I'll pick up dogshit for a living!"

I'll bet the guy's making a freaking killing, though. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work?