The Neighbors

Waking up every morning, I always marvel at where I live.  I live in a nice suburban street in a cozy neighborhood (cue "Little Boxes" from the "Weeds" soundtrack).  I am surrounded by nice people from a similar background.  We are all normal Americans.  However, what if you lived in a neighborhood and you were somehow different from all of the people who live near you?  Would you fit in?

This is the question that my new favorite comedy (aside from "Modern Family") tackles, ABC's "The Neighbors." At first, I'd seen bits and pieces of this show on Wednesday nights when I came home from a long day at school.  The promo picture for this show, as seen above, seemed weird to me. I wasn't sure what it was about, and the creepy guy with the British accent to the right seemed, well, weird.

But I decided to give it a shot when I was flipping through the channels and saw that it starred Jami Gertz ("Twister," "Entourage"), whom I've been watching since she starred as the uber-chipper Muffy Tepperman (top right) on the short-lived series "Square Pegs" with Sarah Jessica Parker years ago.

"Square Pegs"-----------------------^

Debbie (Gertz) and Marty Weaver (Lenny Venito, "The Sopranos," "NYPD Blue") are a normal New Jersey family who move into a gated community named "Hidden Hills."   They meet the other people living in their community on the very first day, and something seems off about them.  They speak with British accents.  They bring several cherry pies to greet the Weavers, "as is your humans' custom," they are told by the head of the community, Larry Bird.

Larry's wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, is also very welcoming and introduces their two children to the Weavers: Dick Butkus and Reggie Jackson.

As is custom, Larry and Jackie invite the Weavers over for dinner where it is shown that the Weavers are the only ones who are eating.  When they question Larry and Jackie about this, they respond that they receive nourishment by reading.  Weird? Weird.  They brush it off and continue eating their barely cooked pasta and baked potatoes.

After the children go upstairs to play, the awkward pauses and conversation continue with the adults downstairs.  The children run downstairs suddenly and out of the house.  They later tell their parents that Dick Butkus transformed into an alien, which is why they fled.  However, their parents do not believe them, and awkwardly bid the Kersee-Birds good night.

Larry and Jackie realize what has happened: "It appears our Dick has exposed himself again."  As the Weaver children cower in their parents' bedroom, Larry and Jackie appear, and reveal themselves to the Weavers, eliciting screams and freak-outs.

It seems the Weavers have moved into a community where aliens roam free, waiting for further instructions from their leaders through the use of a communications device called a Pupar.  However, after exposing themselves to the Weavers they agree that they can learn much from each other.  It's a quirky show and I didn't describe it as well as I would have liked, but if you browse reedit.com, here's the skinny.

TL; DR: A normal family from New Jersey moves into a gated community where aliens with athletes' names and British accents reside.  Hilarity ensues.  Give it a shot.  You'll be glad you did.

N.B. "TL DR" means too long, didn't read.  It is a technique redditors use when they feel they have gone on at great length about something, as I may have.  It's on Wednesday nights at 9 on ABC, and serves as the lead-in to "Modern Family." Try it.

American Horror Story

I am new to this show, but I bought it on iTunes while coming back from Las Vegas for something to watch on the plane and I was not disappointed.  I knew it aired on FX, but my schedule never allowed me to watch it, and I always forgot to DVR it.  I just finished the first season and all I have to say is, what an awesome concept! I am currently watching "American Horror Story: Asylum," which is the follow-up to the first season.

Before I get into the first season, let's discuss exactly what the format of the show is.   Each season, a set 12 or 13 episode arc is created that follows converging story lines.  At the close of the season, that arc is over and a new story begins as the new seasons premiere.  The unique part? In Season 2, almost all of the actors are the same, but they play different characters.  By my count, the only actress who was not asked back was Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights," "Nashville"), who played Vivien Harmon in the first run.

The show is produced and directed by Ryan Murphy, and season one chronicles a couple named Ben (Dylan McDermott, not to be confused with Dermott Mulrooney) and Vivien (Britton) who move into a house in Los Angeles to begin life anew after Ben had an affair.  They bring their daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera from "Up in the Air," "The Departed," and "Running Scared") who is entranced by the house.  The house is the cheapest by almost half of the others in the neighborhood.  Why?

It has been dubbed "The Murder House" not only by nearby residents but also by a Los Angeles tour that stops by the house daily to relate its bloody past.  Nothing good seems to come to residents who inhabit the house, and everyone seems to have met a bloody end.  Throughout the series, we get a peek into the lives of those who were killed in the house and we get to see not only their end, but also how they relate to the Harmon family.

Equally creepy is fallen starlet neighbor Constance Langdon, played by the excellent Jessica Lange ("Tootsie," "Blue Sky," "Grey Gardens") in her first regular television role.  She won an Emmy for this role in 2012. With her mentally challenged daughter Addie and her son Tate in tow, she is constantly dropping in on the Harmons to "help" them and offer biting criticism of the decor and their plans for the house.  These are not just ordinary people, as you'd imagine.

Ben (McDermott) is a psychiatrist who sees his patients at home, including Tate.  Other patient cameos for the season include Eric Stonestreet (Cam, "Modern Family"), Adina Porter (Lettie Mae Thornton, "True Blood"), and Mena Suvari ("American Pie") as Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia.  Each has their own story that integrates into the house and the lives of the Harmons.

One of the major themes of the show has to do with children in the house, and the potential joy they bring, so imagine when Vivien becomes pregnant. Residents past and neighbors fall all over themselves to make sure the baby gets delivered safely.  But the problem is, they each want the baby for themselves.  This idea plays out well over the course of the season and serves as one of its major plot points.  What also makes it interesting is that we get to learn the backstories of all of these residents and others who pop up throughout the story.

Throw in Frances Conroy ("The West Wing," "Six Feet Under") as a maid who "comes with the house," Zachary Quinto ("Heroes," "Star Trek") as one half of a gay couple who used to live in the house, Sarah Paulson ("Studio 60," "American Gothic") as a medium, and Denis O'Hare (Russell Edgington, "True Blood"), and you've got a bunch of fine actors telling a great story that will leave you wishing there were more episodes to see.

But wait!  You can see "American Horror Story: Asylum" should you wish to continue the journey.  Jessica Lange returns this time as Sister Jude, the administrator of an Briarcliff Asylum in Massachusetts, and you'll recognize other familiar faces from Season 1.  Additions to the cast include Lily Rabe (daughter of Jill Clayburgh) as Sister Mary Eunice, Franka Potente ("Run Lola Run," "The Bourne Identity") as Anne Frank, and James Cromwell ("Babe," Six Feet Under") as a physician with a God complex.

Lily Rabe as Sr. Mary Eunice---->

These shows do not necessarily need to be watched in order, but it's more fun if you do to see who pops up in season 2 as a different character.  However, be advised that the show is gory at times, and it is not for the squeamish.

Homeland is Where the Heart Is

At the urging of my brother, and because I don't watch that many TV shows too closely, I decided to start the new Showtime series "Homeland," starring Damian Lewis and Claire Danes. I'll be the first to admit it.  I have a short attention span these days.  Chalk it up to being super busy with family and school, or whatever other excuse I can come up with, but I usually stick to comedies and other half hour shows.

"Mad Men," "True Blood," and "Dexter" are the rare exceptions.  So I watched an episode of "Homeland" on demand one Friday night, and I wasn't hooked immediately but I definitely knew I wanted to watch the rest.  Serendipitously enough, there was a marathon on the next day because it was premiering soon, so I let it ride while I did other things.  I can't justify sitting myself in front of a television and simply doing nothing.  I have to be accomplishing something, however small.  But "Homeland" was worth it.

The show tells the story of Nicholas Brody(Lewis), a U.S. Army Sergeant who was captured and held by al Qaeda for a few years.  As the show opens, he is being rescued in Northern Iraq.  He is brought back to the United States where he is immediately hailed as a hero for his tribulations.  His partner in Iraq, Sergeant Walker, is presumed dead and the show follows the assumption that he died a traitor as he succumbed to the torture and allegedly offered his allegiance to al Qaeda.

Brody, however, is not what he seems.  Despite being back with his wife (Morena Bacccarin, "V") and family, he acts suspiciously.

He quickly piques the interest of Carrie Mathison (Danes), who is a CIA operative with a specialization in the middle East.  She speaks Arabic fluently, but she has a few secrets of here own.  Danes gets a hunch about him after meeting him and decides to wire his house to spy on him.

Her suspicions are heightened when he continues to act suspiciously, and she comes to the conclusion that he, too, has succumbed to al Qaeda and is essentially a sleeper agent inside the U.S.  The al Qaeda leader in this show is named Abu Nazir, a high profile target who has eluded capture and has terrorized U.S. interests at home and abroad.

With Brody in the spotlight and Mathison pushing her paranoid conclusions that Brody is going to help Abu Nazir launch an attach on the United States, the stage is set for a clash of morals and patriotism.  Has Mathison gone too far? Is Brody innocent? Or is he really a sleeper agent working on behalf of Abu Nazir?

My summary couldn't possibly do the show justice but I urge everyone to check it out to see the intrigue.  Mandy Patinkin also co-stars as Carrie's mentor and foil, Saul.  Who's hiding what?  Who's wrong? Who's right?  You'll have to watch to find out.

In 5...4...3...2...1

I don't remember if I saw any trailers for this movie, and have a foggy memory of how it was marketed.  It seems like something I would definitely watch, not in theaters, though, but most likely on HBO or Showtime.

It came out in 2007 and, as the title suggests, it's about a television program that airs live.  Nothing unique about that aspect of the show, but the concept behind what the program is fascinated me. I happened to catch it about 15 minutes in, and it held my attention for the rest of its running time. 

The movie, "Live!" is filmed in a mockumentary style with David Krumholtz ("Numbers," "The Santa Clause") as lead documentarian.  He is filming Katie Courbet played by Eva Mendes ("Training Day," "Hitch," "Ghost Rider") as she tries to come up with a revolutionary concept in order to save her network, ABN, from falling out of competition among the other major networks.

During a pitch meeting, she and her staff are discussing the American television palate and one of her associates jokingly says that Americans would probably watch Russian Roulette if it were televised.  Katy seizes upon this idea immediately, despite her associate contending she was joking.


Katy becomes hellbent on this idea of getting people to audition to be on the game show.  The winner would get $1 million in cold, hard cash.

However, when she mentions the yet-to-be-green lighted show on an entertainment program, she returns to the TV studio with lines out the door of people applying to be a part of the show.

However, the problem is that the people hoping to audition are all suicidal, and Katy thinks that this would make for boring TV if people actually wanted to die.   She discusses her problem with her documentarian, and they come to the conclusion that the prize money should be $5 million apiece for survivors, and the other hook would be that the loser and their family get nothing.

The movie is an excellent take on what people will do to get famous, and what network executives will do to gain viewership and win advertisers.  It's all about the profit from both ends.  Check out the trailer below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES1kncl1DMQ

Despite battling with Standards and Practices, the network lawyers, and other top brass, she eventually gets the idea green lighted and all is well to proceed.

However, in true "Real World" fashion, she has the filmmaker who is documenting her edit and create video biographies of the contestants.  She uses a particularly heart wrenching one about a farmer trying to get money for his child's expensive medical bills to ultimately sway network execs.
Abalone


Furthermore, the video bios she creates air and America gets to know the contestants and hear their back stories.  Six are chosen, and five will survive.  We meet such characters as Abalone, the former fashion model, Byron the Princeton Graduate, and Miguel, the gay Mexican trying to get out of the barrio.

On the stage they go as they are wheeled out on moving pedestals.  They are chosen randomly to start, have their life story told via video bio, and take their shot.  The gun has five dummy rounds and one live on. 

As the TV show begins to air, ratings slowly climb throughout the night.  More contestants are introduced to America, and ratings soar upward more quickly.  But, is it worth it?  What will happen?  Will there be any repercussions?  You've got to watch to find out.

Enough "reality?"

This movie didn't get too many great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but don't let it fool you.  This movie is a little gem that speaks volumes about American desire for fame and money.  I think it's a great movie and I hope if you watch it, you enjoy it.  I did.

And We're Back

Wow.  It's been way too long since I wrote a blog entry so I thought I would write one today as I sit in the empty Testing Center at school.  While everyone else is downstairs at an in-service, I am awaiting a few ESL students so that I can begin their diagnostic testing.  We have an ESL lab, but the lady who ran it quit in a spat with her supervisor.

It's been a long summer, and the summer session just ended.  I took a 10 week Calculus II course to bolster my math education (for review, of course, as I'd had it before) and let me tell you.  Never again.  It was online, and there were DVDs associated with each lecture.  But we had to take 18 long quizzes, seven tests, and we had to complete four projects on Maple, which is a Computer Algebra System.  I'm just thankful I got through the course in addition to teaching four others and working in the testing center. 

It's been busy, and now I have two nights this week where we're celebrating the August birthdays in my family.  My sister and father were born on the same day, August 15, and my brother was born on August 20.  So logically we'd have two separate dinners, of course. 

I'm also writing a novel that I am desperately trying to finish.  If anyone is interested in the link to the blog, please let me know.  It's loosely based on a true story of a week I spent in Manhattan way back in 2006.

Aside from that, I hope everyone else is doing well and I'm going to post another blog later this morning hopefully about an awesome movie I just watched. 

The Gun-Bow Incident

Today, I became  a man.  No, not in the way you're thinking.  Get your head out of the gutter.

The wound you are looking at above and the accompanying (what is that, exactly?) thing in the picture are battle remnants I display proudly.  And yes, it is a casing.

Let me back up for a minute.  For my birthday, my brother had given me a gift certificate (well, more like an IOU, actually) that promised that he would take me to a firing range.  Guns are not an item that anyone in my immediate family that I know of has ever possessed.  None of us owns or had at any time owned one, save my grandfather who passed away in 1995.

He used to hunt, and he'd take me, my brother, my sister, and my two cousins with him sometimes. But never altogether.  When we were old enough, of course.  And no, he didn't let us shoot the rifle.  Right.

He would take us hunting in the Poconos in some woods that abutted the front yard of the house.  Usually, we would wander these parts of the woods with him looking for stray golf balls from the 18-hole course whose holes were right next to said woods and thus near the house.

It was fun.  Most of the time we'd find one if we were lucky, but sometimes we'd find handfuls if the golf gods were feeling it necessary to inflict the pain of a terrible golf game on those foursomes and threesomes playing so often, particularly during the hot summertime.

My grandfather had a hunting rifle and would often wander into the woods to think.  He wasn't big on hunting to kill.  It was just a way for him to blow off steam, I think.  Often, he would bring old soup, soda, or beer cans and set them up on rock formations, trees, or anything else he could find to keep them elevated.  He'd shoot for the fun and see how many holes he could get in one particular can, or if he got bored he'd line 'em up and see if he could knock them all down.

I know he took my dad and my uncle sometimes, too, especially before we were born.  But the gun bug never bit them, and our families were always taught that guns were bad.  These fearful notions of guns were only solidified when once my cousin and sister were seven years old and playing hide and seek at my great aunt's house.

Well damned if one of them didn't find her handgun, show it to the other one, and bring it into the living room where the rest of us were sitting to announce its discovery.  My dad leapt up as calmly as he could and took the gun from them.  Then came the safety lecture, yadda yadda yadda, and my family never had any guns.  Ever.

However, after hearing its demonization in the media, from anti-NRA groups, and from any other left wing nut cases you can think of, I had a change of heart.  Not about owning them, but about trying them.  I thought it might be fun.  I'll admit I was a little leery when my brother first gave me this birthday gift, but regardless we got around to doing it today and it was cool.  And manly.

So up to Targetmaster in Chadds Ford, PA, we went.  You know, even though I have lived in this area all my life, I've often wondered, as I did today yet again:  Who's Chadd?  Where's his Ford?  I assume it's referring to the Brandywine River near the battlefields of the same name, and not the car.  You hear names all your life, but no one ever explains to you what they mean.

Targetmaster was crowded.  Or so it seemed. It turns out most people were parking in their parking lot as a spillover from the limited parking at the shops next door.  We went inside, and it was your typical gun shop, but with a firing range attached.  My brother and I grabbed our targets.

They had choices of Osama bin Laden, mother-in-law, among others, but we went for the more subtle, stereotypical ones a la Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs." We certainly looked like her with the large ear muffs on.

We had glocks (17 and 19) and after we talked to the range observer, we set up the targets and began shooting.  One at a time, of course.  On my first shot, a casing fell out and landed on my thumb, causing the small welt that can be seen in the first picture of this entry.  It was hot and I shook it off, but it left its mark.

The guns themselves were easy to use, but the recoil was more than I expected.  It took me a few tries to realize that the top of the gun moves back and will hit your hand if you don't move it.  It took a few times, but I learned.  They were loud, too.  However, it was pretty cool to unload on a target twenty five feet away.  We bought six of them, but only used three.  My brother was a better shot than I by far.

As I said I was a bit apprehensive, but it's easy to learn.  And now I know how to load and fire a weapon.  It was weird, but cool.

I think every person should at least shoot a rented gun at a range in their lifetime.  As much bad press as guns get, for recreation at a range it's not that scary or intimidating. Plus, as a guy I think it's important to at least be able to say you've shot a gun before if for nothing more than a conversation piece in guys' constant quest to one-up each other.

Would I go back? Yes, but probably not too quickly.  It was a much better experience than I thought and yes, I feel like a big, bad dude.

When we looked at the targets, my brother's shots were all around the heart and upper body of the mock person.  Mine were mostly at the torso. Go figure.

It was a very different and interesting experience.  I would go back.  I'm not too sure I'm a great shot, but as I mentioned before I think my brother is more adept in that regard.  If we were ever in a situation where we had to use a gun I could picture my brother saying something to a perp like "Don't move, or I'll shoot you in the head."

If I were ever in that situation, and all I had was the hour session on the range I had today, I guess I would only be able to say "Don't move, or I'll shoot you in the...crotch?"

The Illuminati Card Game

In 1995, Steve Jackson and his game company came out with a card game entitled "Illuminati: World Domination." Whether or not this game depicts realistic events is up for debate, but some of the cards have actually come true, according to some conspiracy theorists.

Today we're going to look at some of the cards and see: was he on to something? If so, how did he know if there was a hidden agenda by various secret societies?

I will say, before we begin, however, that Steve Jackson's house and computer were raided by the FBI and he was involved in a protracted legal battle to even get the game to be published.  Did he know too much?  He did win an injunction and since I am writing about this, the game did get published along with several subsequent variations. Enjoy and think about it...even if you choose not to believe it.  I'm still up in the air.  Coincidence or not?  Let's look at a few cards...

 

Although I don't know how to play this game, and it was not a terrorist nuke that brought down the World Trade Center, don't these two cards look eerily like 9/11?  Coincidence, maybe...let's look at some more.

If you go back and look at the coverage of the BP oil spill in the gulf a couple of years ago, this was a very common image used in news coverage of the event.

History is written by the winners and, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.  Never thought I'd be making a reference to "The Man who Shot Liberty Valence."

One of the stated goals of secret societies is to control media, religion, and education, to name a few.  We follow a subscribed curriculum in schools and are forced to memorize and regurgitate facts, definitions and formulas.  Research papers themselves (which I hate) use the conclusions of others to make a statement.  They're not really original, per se.

Even if this Steve Jackson guy was just writing about people's worst fears, weren't there two cases about flesh-eating bacteria in the news last week?  Could the game be predictive programming?

Big banks are buying smaller banks at a rapid rate.   Wilmington Trust is no more. M&T bought them out, and M&T is national.  Sovereign Bank?  A little publicized fact is the Banco Santender (Spain's second largest bank) bought them out.  

Didn't this occur in Fukushima recently?  Wasn't it caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred?  Which leads me to the next one...

   It's been a state goal of both the UN and the US Military to be able to influence "natural" events such as the weather and other disasters.

See Agenda 21 and other documents from the UN and look up HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program).  Also, check out this youtube video of the Tampa Bay Rays game last year on August 22nd, the night before the East Coast's largest earthquake in a century.

Check out this other video taken the day of  the earthquake in Colorado which occurred when? August 22, 2011, the day before the East Coast earthquake.

Sure, weather manipulation sounds crazy.  Didn't we have a snowstorm in October, right before Halloween?  And how about Hurricane Irene reaching from Florida to Canada?  How about that earthquake felt from the Carolinas to Maine to Canada to Michigan?  And where's my warm summer? It's mid June and it was cool last night.


Regardless of what you believe, the card game is interesting to ponder and may make you wonder, who is Steve Jackson?  What's his deal?  I don't know.  But let's look to see if the card game has any future events in store...

Arab Spring?

Crash of 2008?  Another to come?

Is that Big Ben? London 2012 Olympics

And hopefully not...

Again, all of this is just food for thought...read at your own peril.