Don't Drive and Dial

This, to me, is the very definition of justice. Some people shouldn't be allowed to drive and dial.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2...

Shrek the Third

What happened to the movie going experience? There was a time when I worked for Lucas Films THX and I would go to movies on opening night and report back on the experience at the theater. That means I would look at everything from the amount of popcorn on the floor to if there were enough paper towels in the bathroom. The reason for this is that it is all part of the movie going experience. A producer/director/movie studio doesn't want you to hate their movie because the theater sucked. Unfortunately, those days are over for me and the movie going experience.

Tonight Leanne and I went to see Shrek the Third. What can I say about it other than it was a good movie and pretty funny. Leanne liked the second one best and I still prefer the first. Having said that it was a good third movie. There were no Ewoks to ruin it. ;-)

Shrek the Third focuses on Shrek trying to replace the king of Far Far Away with a high school loser Arthur, or Artie as he likes to be called. Shrek goes out to find Artie and bring him back, but the evil Prince Charming has other plans for the kingdom. I won't go into details, and I won't spoil the ending for those of you that may not have seen it yet. Just know that your dollars will be well spent to see the movie.

The question remains, how much should you spend to see the movie? Actually this pertains to my initial question of; What happened to the movie going experience? As I believe they go hand in hand. We paid full price to see this movie tonight, and we even bought out tickets on Fandango so that we wouldn't have to stand in line. There was no line, but I really detest those people that have to work the booth. The theater that we went to was Century 16 at Shoreline in Mountain View. It is the closest to where we live, and they actually got a digital projector and had this movie on in digital.

A word about digital projection. There is no loss in clarity over multiple viewing's. Sometimes a film will deteriorate after being shown numerous times, and there's always the chance that the film wasn't developed properly. All of this goes away with digital projection. The film looked beautiful and the fact that it was digital projection was a factor in deciding to see the movie.

Would I pay that much to see it if I had it to do all over again? Probably not. The theater was filthy. It was as if the cleaning staff took the week off. The main lobby had garbage everywhere, and they only had one concession stand open. There was very little popcorn remaining in the trough, not that we had any, and the hot dogs looked like someone put them out but forgot to turn the heating element on. It was disgusting.

The theater itself had sticky floors and popcorn strewn everywhere. They were playing music when we arrived but they had the volume so low that Leanne was startled when the projector came on at full volume. Also the lighting was overly dim for the pre-movie "find your seat" session.

To sum it up, if I had it to do over I would have waited for this to come out on DVD before seeing it. The movie itself was good and I would have paid the same amount to see it, but the movie going experience was so terrible it made me think twice about seeing anything else in the near future.

Lost: Would you be upset if Charlie dies?

I was watching the preview for Lost again today and I had to stop and ask myself the question: Would I really be upset if Charlie dies?

I asked that question because Desmond, once again, has a premonition that Charlie will die and says in the preview, "you're going to die Charlie and this time I can't stop it." To be honest, I'm not sure I'll miss Charlie.

The first reason I'm not sure I'll miss Charlie is that he's a reformed drug addict. That's it. There is no more character arc in there. He did drugs once, and now he doesn't. They don't even talk about it anymore. To the audience Charlie is as static a character as Nikki and Paulo were. (side note: if you have to ask who Nikki and Paulo are then you already know the point I'm trying to make.)

The second reason is in recent episodes he's just been a babysitter. Taking care of Aaron is only interesting to a certain point. Now it's just, "hey Charlie watch Aaron." What use is that to the story line?

The third reason is that I think that J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof kind of missed the comic relief that the Desmond/Charlie thing could bring to the show. Imaging if you will something really serious is going on with Jack and Charlie, like the cave-in that happened in the first season. Out of nowhere Desmond walks in and slaps Charlie on the back so hard that he doubles over in pain. Just then a big rock nearly smashes his head in. Then without a work Desmond leaves. It's just there in the background. Every episode Desmond will save Charlie's life, but they don't make a big deal out of it. It just becomes a fact of life on the island.

The fourth and final reason I think they should kill Charlie off is Dominic Monaghan's comments that he didn't get enough screen time and he just spends his weeks sitting on the beach waiting for his scenes. Boo-frackin-hoo Dominic. Not all of us can have a job being paid $20,000 a week to just sit on the beach in Hawaii doing nothing. Kill Charlie off so that Dominic can go out and get a real job.

Who knows? What do you think?

New Postal Rates

Today the cost of mailing a first-class letter is going up to $0.41. The USPS is also  introducing a Forever stamp that will allow you to use this stamp even if the cost of stamps increase. Buy them for $0.41 each now and if next year they raise the price to $0.50 you can still use it without the need for $0.09 extra postage. Cool huh?

Changes to Ratings - Smoking Kills

The MPAA added a new criteria that it will look for when rating a movie. They will now look at the amount of smoking in the movie as an indicator to the rating they give it. More information here.

My question/request is this: To all the people responsible for movie and TV ratings, why can't you enforce the use of seatbelts in movies and television? I know that the smoking thing is in an attempt to curb smoking in youngsters, but what good is a bad guy without an evil cigarette or cigar? Now if only everyone in TV and movies wore their seatbelts, you could probably actually save lives.

Everyone, I know this is a lame post, but please wear your seatbelts.

The World's Fastest Indian

Ah, back to what I know best, reviewing movies. This morning Leanne and I watched a true story about a 67 year old man from New Zealand named Burt Munro, played by Anthony Hopkins. The World's Fastest Indian follows our hero from New Zealand to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah where Burt is attempting to find his way into the record books with the fastest motorcycle 1000cc's or smaller.

Some of you know how I feel about true stories. There are the Erin Brockovich stories that basically show you what a horrible person you are and make you feel stupid, small, and weak. Then there are the Apollo 13 stories that make you feel excellent about being alive. I'm happy to report that the World's Fastest Indian is a feel good true story.

Anthony Hopkins delivers a masterful performance, as you'd expect, and the supporting cast did an excellent job as well. The story was a little slow at times, and I'm thinking that I watch too many stories like Lost. I think that because I kept looking for things to repeat. Like when he'd go pee on his lemon tree. I was waiting for the neighbor kid to turn up dead because he ate them, or something like that. You'll be relieved to know that this is just a straight forward story, with no plot twists or turns.

Enjoy this movie for what it is, a feel-good true story with some good acting.

Lost 3.20

Before we begin, this includes spoilers. Don't read if you haven't seen the 9 May Episode of Lost.

Is John Locke dead? I think it's too convenient that Ben just left him in that pit to die. Possibly Jacob would come along and save him. What was with the "Help Me" that John heard? It certainly sounded like Ben, but then all hell broke lose in the cabin and flashing frame by frame clearly shows this man sitting in a chair:
To see more, and for even more crazy ideas, go here.

He doesn't look like anyone I recognize from the island, but perhaps it's that guy from the Dharma initiative video's only aged a bunch of years.

Speaking of aging, how is it that when Ben is what looks like 16 or maybe even 18 he meets Richard Alpert and Richard looks to be the same age as he is in the current time? Many of you know what my theory on the island is: That it is the battle ground between good and evil. There are angels and arch-angels on the island trying to free the souls of the Lost. The island isn't Lost, the people on it are. I'm using the word angels for lack of a better term. Anyway, according to my theory there are good and evil angels. I wouldn't think that angels would age. This would explain why Richard looks the same in the past as he does now.

Enough mythology. Roger Work Man is Ben's father. He is also the man that Hurley and Jin pulled out of the VW Van they found in a previous episode. Many people felt that episode, 3.10 "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead", was a dud. Nothing of value in it. However, maybe now you can see that the van had significance and so did the scene where Sawyer was sitting next to the skeleton drinking a beer with him. Seems that's the way he lived, that's the way he died, and that's the way he is while dead. Fitting, don't you think?

Okay, so back to the Lost camp. Sawyer comes back to the island with proof that Juliet is working with Ben to kidnap the pregnant women of the camp. Everyone is riled up and Jack and Juliet went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. They return and there's a town hall meeting preparing to crucify the poor girl. In her defense she tells them to listen to the part of the tape that describes when the Others are coming. What kind of defense is that? Jack, "oh, yeah, I knew but I didn't tell you all because I'm your father and I know what's best for you all." blah...

Season finale is only 2 weeks away, and it's a Jack flash back episode. A Q&A session with the creators on EW.com shows that the last 10 minutes of that episode will change the way you look at the island. Sounds intriguing, let's find out if it actually is.

I think my hangover has a hangover

Think about this. If you left your company right now, would you still be going to their parties 7 years from now? I'm guessing that you probably would not. 7 years ago I left a company called Latitude Communications. Since that time they've been acquired by Cisco and many of the people that I knew from the company have moved on from job to job. Yet we still have Latitude parties.

When I worked at Latitude every year at the beginning on May they would have a birthday celebration for the company. They'd fly all the field people in and we'd have meetings discussing the new stuff that we'd developed since the kickoff party in January. The highlight, for me, was to have fun and bond with all the people that I work with in a friendly non-work environment. The end result was that it was so much easier to get along with everyone, and I didn't feel like they were all against me.

Last night Marlo coordinated the Latitude Birthday Party in San Jose. It was an amazing experience. Not since I left Latitude have I been in a bar packed full of people that I knew. People flew in from all across the country for it. Dan from Boston, Alex from New York, Sue from Denver (she used to be in Chicago), and even Maureen from LA. It was an excellent time.

It really got me thinking though, what happened to corporate culture? Sure we formed back in the day during the dot-com boom, but Marlo didn't have a budget to coordinate last night? Everyone was really good about buying each other drinks, and we didn't need to get another round of funding to do it. Has the fall of the dot-com's made people scared of having fun at work?

Delmonico's Steak House

I'm in Las Vegas right now for the Mix07 Web Conference. Tonight I finally got the chance to have dinner at Delmonico's thanks to Mark's Stacy's Sister. ;-)

I had a Filet Mignon cooked medium with green beans. The filet was really good. In fact the only way it could have been better is if I'd cooked it myself. Rather than just season it with only salt and pepper, as I do, the chef used what looked like thyme and rosemary. This added a nice flavor to the party and the steak itself was masterfully cooked. Some of you out there would probably prefer your steak either more well done or more rare, but for me, medium is the perfect mix of the two. I say that because medium they sear the outside to the level that I prefer while keeping the inside a nice warm pink.

The green beans (yes mom, Dawn, and Leanne I ate them) were cooked with butter, garlic, and onions. Were very well cooked and tasty.

To drink with this excellent meal I had a 2003 Fontodi Chianti Classico. I'm sure this wouldn't be most people's first choice of wine with a fine slice of meat, but it was really tasty. The Italians really know how to put together a nice wine. You could just taste them out there picking the grapes, but maybe that was just me reminiscing about being there a little over a year ago.

In all it was an excellent meal, and if you are in Las Vegas I recommend getting a reservation, but be prepared to pay for it. I'm just glad they didn't frown on the fact that I was wearing sneakers and blue jeans.

Hey, Hey, Hey! What do you know?

Greetings and salutations everyone! It has been a long time since I've written anything in this blog. For the most part that is because I've been working on it. I know you don't believe me, and that usually what most people say when they are just too lazy to write in their blog. The truth is that what you are seeing is the 5^th version of this site that I wrote in the past 2 years. There are some really cool features that will help me be more productive when it comes to blogging. There are some new categories that you will be seeing. Finally, if you are all really nice, Leanne will start posting too.

Stick around. There will be lots of exciting stuff coming your way. If you're really bored, you can read some of my technical blog at http://www.spatacoli.com