Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

I figured Red Dragon would be an appropriate movie to watch on Valentines Day. Well, maybe not, but it does have Red in the title...

Movies like this are strange. The people involved are so far beyond reasonable humans that it's hard to even comprehend them. You can't even look at what the characters do and decide if it's something that is consistent with their character because there's no basis for what consistency means for these people - they are legitimately and truly insane.

The biggest thing I like about this series of movies (for thos that don't know, this is another in the story of Hannibal Lecter - along with Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal) is the way they structure the mystery. For the first half of the movie the audience is in the dark along with the characters. We're all trying to figure out what's going on. But then they do a reveal (which is universally creepy) about midway through so we can actually explore the villian a bit. Then for the second half it's the movie where we know whats going on but the characters don't, and we're watching to see them connect the dots and figure it all out.

I don't remember Hannibal all that well, but remember it being just completely over the top with it's silliness and disturbingness. I think this movie has a better balance (along with the fabulous Silence of the Lambs.) Sure, it's psychotic and creepy and could certainly give you nightmares if you're the type, but I didn't think it was gratuitously so.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently.

I've been a bit behind on writing here, but last weekend I finally got around to seeing Chicago (around Oscar time I trypically make some kind of effort to see this year's nominated movies and winners from the past.) I'm a little conflicted about Chicago. I thought it was extremely clever, and a great achievement in filmmaking. The camera angles and lighting were fantastic and showed huge amounts of talent (mostly in their subtlety - lesser talent in this space would have made these things much more ostentatious.) The effect is the movie seamlessly translated between watching an actual movie, and watching a stage production.

All that said the whole thing didn't really grip me. That's not surprising, I'm traditionally not a big fan of musicals. I think I'm just too much of a dialog guy. So I guess my final verdict is I recognize the remarkable talent that went into this, and it was clearly well done, but just not my thing.

ARGGGGH!

Wednesday night is a big TV night for me. There's lots of good shows on, way too many to watch. But thankfully I have all kinds of cool technology to help me. I just happily record things and watch them throughout the week. I've been doing this with my TiVo for years. It's grace and reliability have completely changed the way I watch TV. But since I'm an audio/video nerd I've wanted to take advantage of HDTV. I recently got an HDTV digital video recorder from my cable company which has allowed me to do cool things like watch shows in HD (like the Superbowl) and record those shows just like I do with the TiVo.

This is all great when it works. But now for the second time in two months it's screwed up and not recorded things it's supposed to. Tonight my digital cable was screwed up across the board and my recordings of Lost and Alias didn't happen. Grrrr. But what's going on with my TiVo? It's totally unaffected, happily whirring away recording what it's supposed to...

New technology is great, but in the consumer electronics space stuff just has to work, all the time, no matter what. It's times like this that I don't mind sending TiVo some money each month, their service is just so much better then anything else in it's class from a reliability standpoint - and new features (like HDTV) are totally cancelled out by any reliability issues, it's like Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs - just put reliability on the bottom of that pyramid.

I guess now I get to go figure out how to download TV shows on the internet...

Tomorrow? What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't today!

Groundhog Day is one of my favorite comedies, and really deserves more consideration when people as me what my favorite movie is (they ask for a single choice, but always get a list of 3-5, which varies depending on how I'm feeling when you ask it - too many good movies to just pick one!) If you haven't seen Groundhog Day go watch it now.

Since yesterday was Groundhog Day I watched about half the movie before I got too tired and had to give it up. The premise here is just so great. What do you do if you have one day to live over and over again, with no consequences? Phil starts off like most of us would, living it up, being irresponsible. But he soon becomes bored since his life has no substance. Think about it, the only thing you can take from day to day is your own experiences. You can't accomplish anything that takes longer then a day, and you can't share any experiences with others past a day. The whole concept it just wonderful.

It's funny and heartwarming, and is clever with it's pacing and how much of each day it shows. All in all, one of my favorite movies.

I will send you a budget that ... stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009

Did he really just say that?!? Seriously? This is the party of fiscal responsibility and restraint. You have the largest deficits in the history of the country and your goal is only to reduce them by half in four years? Ug.

Even though I felt physical pain several times (that could have been from eating too much) I thought it would be good of me as a politically minded guy to watch the State of the Union tonight.

I don't even want to get into social security (I guess I will anyway.) The voodoo math just doesn't make sense. Sure, social security will pay out more then it takes in starting in 2018. Of course, it's been taking in more then it's given out since the payroll tax was raised in the 80's. Theoretically, it has a pretty big "personal savings account" of it's own. But we're not talking about taking that away are we? While I'm at it, where does that 4% come from? Aren't we using all the money right now? Doesn't that mean we have to come up with 4% of the payroll tax from somewhere? Sure, personal savings accounts have a nice flair - but the numbers have to add up in end and I haven't seen anyone explain how they can add up in any credible way.

Then we moved on to fun social stuff. Right after he railed on gay marriage (and my least favorite right wing euphemism - "activist judges") the President said:

Because one of the deepest values of our country is compassion, we must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America... Now we need to focus on giving young people, especially young men in our cities, better options than apathy, or gangs, or jail.

My immediate thought: Let them get married! I mean, I know lots of gay guys who live near me in the city who feel isolated from the opportunities of America. I know, silly me. But I actually said it out loud to the TV. This is such a good example of how rhetoric can go all kinds of ways, words are funny like that.

As is typical I'm stirred up by the domestic stuff. The foreign policy stuff just doesn't get me going in the same way. I'm not sure why this is. I think part of it is foreign policy is a much squishier area. Domestic policy is so much more guided by core values and morals. I have serious disagreements with Bush's core values and morals when it comes to Domestic policy. But the reality is we mostly agree on core foreign policy values and morals. I'd love to see peace in the Middle East, a reduction in terrorism, brutal dictators unseated and people's freedoms increased. Sure, I disagree with how the President has chosen to reach some of those goals, but I don't feel I know enough about it to be sure I'm right and he's wrong. I probably would have gone a different route, but I can see the theory behind his plan - I get where he's coming from.

But with the domestic policy we're operating off of different foundations, so everything just grates on me. His whole approach to fiscal policy just makes no sense to me, I can't even comprehend it. I can comprehend some of the domestic values involved (abortion, gay marriage, medical research) but I can't understand why they're important enough to legislate against them and to restrict other people's rights to do such things? I can't reconcile those views with the rest of the rhetoric about reducing government's restrictions on our freedoms. It seems like they don't mean reducing restrictions on freedoms, just reducing restrictions on things we want to be able to do (while increasing restrictions on things we don't like.) That doesn't jive with me.

Unfortunately the Democrats didn't do much better with their response. Senator Reid did some hand waving about social policy without saying anything. Then he pulled out a couple of scary numbers about social security and called the President's plan some names. That's not going to get it done for me. I know Perot caught a lot of crap in '92 for all his charts and dry explanations. But sometimes you just gotta break out some real figures and be boring. I wonder if anyone will actually spend to time to break it all down. I've read some good articles about it, but haven't heard anyone in the polical realm talk about social security with any substance. I think it's sad that the politcal debate in our country can't dig into these complex issues - how can we hope to make the right choices when we don't trust our people to even understand the problem space?

Ug, enough of that. I'm going to go watch Groundhog Day (Bill Murray is a comic genius) and try to be more cheerful...

Starbucks is a daytime singles bar. Instead of paying twelve bucks for a cocktail you pay four-fifty for a coffee and try to get someone's phone number. And yes, I'm a regular.

Spectacular quote from Jeff Probst on the 1995 episode of I Love The 90's: Part Deux. I'm telling you, shows like this were designed for sick days - some humor mixed with nostalgia and no brain power required. Genius.

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