Additionally, Brandon and I were talking about the best weapon in the world. This would be a special gun (as illustrated below):

Just kidding, I drew up the weapon but it looked kinda lame so just imagine it looking cool instead. Anyway, this weapon would be a Freeze Ray with the added insurance of a Dethaw Ray and an Unthaw Ray.

Dastardly weapon-user would:

1. lather his victim in the sickly-sweet glow of the Freeze Ray (thereby freezing his victim - a.k.a., stopping him cold! literally!)
2. spritz him with a bit of Dethaw Ray (thereby preventing thawing and thence keeping said victim forever trapped within the icy vale of ice).
3. finally, a terse rinse with the Unthaw Ray provides that added dash of insurance (e.g., say some do-gooder has a Thaw Ray +35 and your Dethaw Ray was on +30, its easy to see that with not much difficulty, your nicely chilled victim will be back in the land of the warm and the cozy in no time. flat. yet as unthawing must be the process by which a thawing is reversed, just as your victim is finished thawing, he will immediately begin to unthaw (i.e., freeze!) at the level (in this case +35) of his thawing process - thereby frustrating the do-gooder with a stillmore powerful freeze to deal with - and rendering your victim with that terrifying glimpse of hope dashed! sweet).

Why doesn't unthaw mean "freeze"? Why is it even a word?

Monday Morning Doodle

Sweet. Alias is ending this season. Maybe we'll finally get some wrap-up. I think the series should have been charted for three seasons with a definite conclusion at the end of #3 - that would have eliminated some of the detritus that was created by a too-meandering story.

Really, Alias was one of my favourite shows for a while. But by its third season, it began to founder as its writers/producers/whoever seemed to give up on that little tool we call a rudder. Contrivances and petty characters (i.e., Sydney Bristow) are acceptable so long as narrative is successfully accomplished and engaging. Unfortunately, this ceased to be.

I'm starting to think that a whole series should be plotted out, ep-by-ep before the trailer ever shows. Something like Alias should have been pitched as "A three-act (read: three season) story that makes real progression and features a solid conclusion. Oh yeah, and this [points out concluding two paragraphs] is the conclusion!"

Urban Outfitters: Home to Unintentional Irony.
In typical faux-hip fashion UO is marketing a holiday item that seems kinda fun and kitschy - until one notes the deep irony of the items for sale. The CBCT begins as a cute reminder of a much-loved holiday program, but soon the tree is revealed to be the anti-CBCT.

Let us recall that not only did young Mr. Brown take pity on a poor-in-spirit little tree, but he also, in that pity, was championing live trees over and above the hideously over-merchandised artificial trees which seemed so much the rage in his own milieu. By proffering an artifical tree to masquerade as a CBCT, the chaps at Urban Outfitters have devolved into the crassest of commercialism. It would be like charging people to visit the tomb of Mother Teresa.

I'm just saying, is all...

Great on action + Weak on story = The Goblet of Fire. Slightly diappointed. It was my favourite of the books but the third movie's still the best. Very choppy cuts, especially in the beginning.

With regard to 1 Timothy 3:1ff, is the distinction between ruling elders and teaching elders really all that biblical?

Brandon was reading a news story the other day about a 13-foot, snub-nosed crocodile and I was curious about what that would look like so I did a little research and came across a couple of artist renderings, based off witness descriptions.

Hmm, scriptural modesty seems to be more concerned with the stifling of personal vanity than with the goal of covering as much skin as possible. With that in mind, I would propose that those who dress puritainically are not being modest, but being selfish :)

Irony:

I got a speeding ticket yesterday. Going to the doctor. On Bartleby (what I've named my Vespa).

A Comparative Review:

Neon Genesis Evangelion vs. RahXephon

About a year ago (or was it two), I got the complete series of Neon Genesis Evangelion on sale for $29.oo. It was a price I could hardly pass up. The show retails for $169.98 and usually sales at Amazon for $135.98. That combined with the fact that Evangelion stands among the most lauded television productions in Japan's animated history. It may even be The most highly regarded animated show ever. Or at least to date. It seemed a safe investment.

It wasn't.

There is nothing spectacular or even note-worthy about the show. The characterizations are weak and stalled, never developing beyond those cardboard standees you'll see in Suncoast Video accompanying the latest released features. There is only one character whose development arch is anything close to interesting - and Misato Katsuragi, though afforded a modicum of screentime, is not even one of the principles. The story moves like molassas - when it decides to move at all. The pauses in dialogue are not only pregnant, but overdue. The premise, while vaguely interesting, is drowned in a heavy-handed and out-of-place air of religious arcana - an air that I suspect makes some of its audience imagine there is more substance to the show than there really is. As an example from a top-rated Amazon review:

As an example of the many layers to the story, there is a tremendous amount of Judeo-Christian symbolism worked into the story. The Sephiroth, the Kabalah's tree of life, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Lance of Longinus, and cruciform images abound. All of this adds up to an impending sense of apocalypse, but the truth us far stranger. Hideaki Anno has intentionally used this symbolism to create an atmosphere that is 'mysterious' to his Japanese audiences. Yet there is a whole other spiritual layer that is uniquely Japanese, drawing deeply from the Kojiki, an ancient creation legend. This is something many non-Japanese viewers will miss.

That, in case you missed it, is straightup bullcrap.

And even if one inexplicably finds the repititious and vain drama intriguing, there is no conclusion to the show. At least no sensible conclusion. The final two episodes abandon all sense of storytelling and embark on a stream-of-consciousness–driven wrap-up that is both painful and tedious. Nothing is concluded. Nothing makes sense. Evangelion is, in the end, naught but sound and fury without significance. Nihilism is the only produce.

Not only was $29.oo not a bargain, but I feel raped. Both of my money and, far more precious, of my time. Sure I can claim to have seen the whole thing and sure I was sitting in airports and on runways for a good chunk of that time, but when you consider that I could have been watching Cheaper by the Dozen or Honey, I Blew up the Baby, you should be weeping violently for me.

Fast-forward to a month ago when I began watching RahXephon through my Netflix subscription.

I was understandably skeptical. Every review of the show I read had compared it to Neon Genesis Evangelion - and having seen them both now, it's easy to understand why.

Elementally, the two shows share a lot of similarities. Both feature a teenage male with a unique talent for piloting a biomechanical colossus. Both feature ostensibly alluring adult women as the immediate guardian of the chosen male teen. Both feature regular attacks from impossibly large and alien opponents, which require the reluctant teen to pilot his biomechanical 'thing' into combat. Both feature a male teen as The saviour of his world and its future. And both have unecessarily strange finales.

Still, through almost every moment, RahXephon succeeds where Evangelion fails miserably. It's far from perfect, but the entire time, I was thinking, "Ohhhh, this is what they meant to do when they made Evangelion." It's as if someone watched the more venerable show and just decided to fix it.

The characters are almost all engaging - even the minor ones. In an astonishing turn-around from Evangelion, you might find it possible to actually like some of RahXephon's characters. True, there are times when the principle's confusion and double-mindedness can become tiresome, but in the overall, it's easy to cut him slack. The storyline and characters actually develop along lines toward a goal - something unheard of in Evangelion. More, there are continual revelations that keep drawing the viewer back into the story before it becomes too dulling. While the tale could have been told in thirteen episodes, RahXephon justifies its twenty-six episode run gracefully.

And beautifully. The animation is crisp. The characters are drawn with care and the design, especially of the alien opponents (the dolem of the Mu race), is really just way cool. Strangely, the least inspired design of the series is in the title-character, the enormous biomechanical colossus, Xephon. Aurally, as well, the music is well-developed and plays its part, almost as its own character.

Perhaps the only real flaw is the shows final episodes, where the seemingly Japanese penchant for incomprehensible endings rears its head. Not as boggling as some endings, RahXephon's still devolves into metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and relies heavily on the viewers' abilities to suspend disbelief and accept an odd view of reality and the universe (its unnatural enough that 98% of the cast has no idea what's going on either). In the end, things are resolved, but one cannot be quite sure how. People appear to have died, but maybe they really didn't. In the end, it doesn't matter. One of the final episodes is entitled "Deus ex Machina." I suspect that would have been a better title for the final episode.

As an added bonus for those who did enjoy the series and its romantic aspect, there is a sweet scene that plays after the final credits roll. It made me smile and feel warm things - something that only burning the set could accomplish with my Neon Genesis Evangelion Perfect [sic] Collection.

In sum, to quantify:

Neon Genesis Evangelion:

RahXephon:

So... when exactly should I expect A Thousand Clowns to be released? If elected mayor of the United States, I will do my uttermost to ensure sensible release dates on all digital media.

CONTEST: Guess the Pumpkin

Okay, so the fact that this one's a little bit rotted and the faces a bit deformed should make it more difficult to guess, but swag to whoever correctly guesses both figures first. And of course, if there is cheating like there was on the last one, no prizes to anyone ever again.

Concerning The Recent Top 15 Westerns

Too much Eastwood:
The funny thing is that the choices I made that include Eastwood films are not choices because of Eastwood. Well, not because of his acting anyway (Unforgiven and High Plains Drifter are certainly due to Eastwood's influence as auteur). Really, Eastwood was just fortunate to be involved in three films by one of the best directors of the 20th century - and one who worked most notably in the western genre. Sergio Leone is amazing and his vision of the West is, in my opinion, unparalleled despite being largely inaccurate. I don't count these as Eastwood films so much as I do Leone films. With this in mind, there are only two Eastwood films on my list - and that hardly seems too many when one considers the strength of those two films.

Why didn't you include...?
Young Guns:
Actually, this is a pretty fun li'l cowboy flick. But as cool an idea as I think it may be to have peyote-induced weirdness creep into the proceedings, it's execution seems - to me - a mishandling of the film. In short, I think it breaks the film. Still quite enjoyable though... just not Top 15 worthy.

Young Guns II:
In another way, the sequel is also pretty fun. There are plenty of hi-jinx from Billy the Estevez and the film is definitely "hip" to its genereation. Still, there's not really any driving story, no impetus for character movement. It's more just a chatty, 104-minute epilogue to its prequel.

The Outlaw Josey Wales:
This is probably the most lamentable exclusion from The List, because Josey Wales was a brilliant film - marred by one distinct and fatal flaw. Sondra Locke. Her nepotistic inclusion in the film is its undoing. Eastwood must have been blinded by his bed to imagine she could successfully be added to the film. Blech and double blech.

The Searchers:
A good film. Still, not exactly one I would see more than twice in my lifetime. I fail to see the allure for critics. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I saw it?

One-Eyed Jacks:
This would probably have made the list with Young Guns had I not gotten tricky and added a film I hadn't seen and a cartoon that isn't really a western - being more a sci-fi western. I loved it and found it to be dastardly good fun. I'm sorry Marlon, I didn't mean it.

Shane:
Shane was good. I liked it. It was fun and touching and famous. Gary North would have you believe it the quintessential western. It isn't. But it is a lot better than a lot of the other tripe that came out of the era.

Pale Rider:
This is Clint Eastwood's remake of Shane with an added apocalyptic twist - kinda like marrying Shane to High Plains Drifter. The imagery was a little too obvious and Sydney Penny (who I adored in ninth grade) is often beyond stilted in her scenes. The beatdown with an axe handle is glorious though.

Tombstone:
This is what I consider the Young Guns version of Wyatt Earp. Fun in its own way, yet utterly inconsequential. I think I really liked about three scenes in the whole film, but found the rest forgettable.

Wyatt Earp:
Like Tombstone but better and more documentary. I enjoyed this much more than the other but still, it got pretty darned long and didn't carry the flash or interest that some of the other looooong westerns did.

The Wild Bunch:
Really, the only thing Sam Peckinpah's famous western had going for it in my li'l black book was an overdose of violence at a time when there wasn't so much of it as there is today. Did nothing for me.

The Magnificent Seven:
After seeing Seven Samurai and realizing how good this story could be, I never fail to be unimpressed by the American western version. It's not so much that I dislike it for being faithless to its progenitor, but more just that now I see what it could have been. It's like seeing the special effects of Clash of the Titans after seeing Jurassic Park - it would be tough to be impressed.

Blazing Saddles:
Alternately side-splittingly funny and then just not. I really do like this one and think it Brooks's best (if you don't count the Get Smart tv series), but still, it's only Top 25 material.

Dances with Wolves:
No.

In answer to Tom's Top 7 Westerns (and in preparation to answer a silly, silly post from elsewhere), I hereby present:

My Top 15 Westerns

1 - Once upon a Time in the West (1968)

Director: Sergio Leone
Music: Ennio Morricone
Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, and Claudia Cardinale.

Lyrical, operatic, lilting, and sumptuous. C'era una volta il West (Once upon a Time in the West) is the capstone to Sergio Leone's western masterpieces. Once more he blends sight and sound (once more with the aid of Ennio Morricone) to weave a tapestry of death, a requiem to the old West. Not your typical western, this is still, really, as good as it gets. Henry Fonda is chilling but the most winning part belongs to Jason Robards and the rascally Cheyenne.

2 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Director: Sergio Leone
Music: Ennio Morricone
Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef, and Eli Wallach

With his Dollars trilogy, Sergio Leone almost singlehandedly breathed life into a dead/dying genre of period piece. Sure there were other Italians making westerns (spaghetti westerns), but his were the best - and the only ones to receive fanatical accolades even decades later. Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) is the pinnacle of Leone's raw madness as a blender of frenetic sight and sound. And it's climactic stand-off is the one by which all other such duels must be measured against - it is the unqualified best thus far committed to film. Funny, irreverent, violent, and beautiful, Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo is one of those movies that can draw in even those who believe they dislike westerns.

3 - High Plains Drifter (1973)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood

High Plains Drifter may be the most religiously-themed western every put to celluloid. But that's not what makes it good. Eastwood's sophomore directorial effort, a western ghost stroy and tale of divine retribution is steeped in eerie horror - though not of the typical "horror movie" kind. Eastwood's justice is hard to swallow - like justice so often is. The story seems to have developed out of a fevered High Noon. As well, it has 70s sensabilities written all over it. It seems that John Wayne was affronted so deeply by Drifter that Eastwood received from him a sternly worded criticism, claiming that such was not what the western was to be about. As if there was ever something noble inherent to the western - it seems Wayne had forgotten his on seminal piece, The Searchers.

4 - Unforgiven (1992)

Director: Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood

Eastwood closes out his own reflection on the genre with an ode to the aging gunfighter - a man long since domesticated by the care of a woman and the concerns of family life. Still, no myth can die a quiet death sans fire and glory; and so, the toothless lion sharpens his claws and becomes a danger once more. At the time Unforgiven was released, I had just finished a Clint Eastwood kick lasting several months, during which I had devoured all his westerns, loving especially the celebrated dollars trilogy. And at the time, expectations riding high, hoping for neo-Leone, I was disappointed. Unforgiven is certainly not Leone. It is subdued. It is quiet. It is thoughtful. And it really is a wonderful treatment of the mythos that made the director an actor of legend, and hence opened doors allowing him to direct some of the most wonderful films over the last three decades.

5 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Director: George Roy Hill
Writer: William Golding
Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katherine Ross

An amusing look at a pair of robbers, Butch and Sundance is at once charming and unaffected. Paul Newman and Robert Redford exhibit a camaraderie unmatched by any other western duo. And of course, the ending is famous.

6 - A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Director: Sergio Leone
Music: Ennio Morricone
Clint Eastwood

Before Leone decided to remake Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, there was nothing astouding to his record. He had worked for years in the Italian film industry without note. Finally, he found his element. The success of Per un Pugno di Dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) is owed as much to Eastwood's iconic ronin cowboy and Morricone's phenomenal treatment of music as it is to Leone's directorial prowess. The three would team for two more sequels (in the loosest sense of the term) and each would long be celebrated in the western canon. It is with this film that the idea of the western was changed for all time.

7 - The Shootist (1976)

Director: Don Siegel
John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, and James Stewart

This is the only John Wayne film I have ever enjoyed. Ironically, it was the final film of his career (at least he went out well as opposed to Orson Welles whose grand finale was Transformers: The Movie). The Shootist succeeds where other Wayne vehicles fail because Wayne plays into where his own mythos should have naturally lead. Like Eastwood's gunfighter in Unforgiven, Wayne's character is old and brittle and wants nothing so much as quiet dignity. Still, myths never want to lies back to pass on quietly. Even as Beowulf had his last battle in his Autumn, so must Wayne's shootist. And Howard's hero-worship plays into it nicely.

8 - Dead Man (1995)

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Music: Neil Young
Johnny Depp, Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, and Gary Farmer

Weird. Neat. Spooky. Cool. Weird.

"I understand you, William Blake. You were a poet and a painter. But now you are a killer of white men." 'Nuff said.

9 - For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Director: Sergio Leone
Music: Ennio Morricone
Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef

Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (For a Few Dollars More)
Easily the most intense of the Dollars trilogy, Leone shows himself becoming more and more comfortable with the subgenre he helped to create. Also features perhaps the best and most innovative score of the trilogy.

10 - High Noon (1952)

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Gary Cooper, Lloyd Bridges, and Grace Kelly

Turgid with anxiety, High Noon seems to be the more realistic template from with television's 24 was spawned. As much a study in human nature as Lord of the Flies, Zinnemann's movie (and specifically its ending) was declared "un-American" by John Wayne. And this at a time when that kind of attention was the last kind of attention a filmmaker would want. Really, it's just a good, quick western that harbours no illusions about the courage of man to do right in the face of difficulty.

11 - Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Director: John Huston
Humphery Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim holt

Tragic and wonderful, this Huston classic is the quintessential tale of greed given over to greed. Human frailties are the foundation to this masterpiece. It's like Lord of the Flies, but with adults.

12 - Silverado (1985)

Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and Kevin Costner

Honestly, it's been so long that the details of this one are beyond my remembering. But what has stuck with me is that Silverado was an imminently fun picture. And one of the best post-70s westerns (by 1980, the western was pretty much dead as a viable genre for contemporary motion pictures - it wouldn't be truly revived again until 1992's Unforgiven).

13 - ¡Three Amigos! (1986)

Director: John Landis
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short

Forget Mel Brooks and Blazing Saddles. If looking for western comedy, nothing surpasses ¡Three Amigos! for genuine laughs, for genuine charm, and for genuine sweaters. Easily one of the most quotable movies of the 20th century, Amigos features the tie for best comedic use of Chevy Chase (the other best being Fletch!).

Best Western I Haven't Seen but Have Only Heard Good About

14 - Lonesome Dove (1989)

I haven't seen it so I really haven't anything much to say about it. 'Cept that I hear I'm bad for not having seen it.

Best Non-Western that Still Boasts a Cowboy

15 - Cowboy Bebop (series + movie) (1998, 2001)

Just. Plain. Rad. Spike Spiegel is every bit as cool as Eastwood's "Man with Several Forgotten Names." Perhaps moreso.

I only paid $2.97 per gallon for gas yesterday!

Some of you may remember back a few months ago the pictures of a tremendous number of bouncy balls cruising down the street in San Francisco. It may be because I'm not a television watcher, but I didn't realize they were shots from a SONY commercial. At the time, I assumed they had to be computer-generated, but they very much aren't. You can see the commercial here (it looks like its doing nothing but it's really loading it so just wait patiently). Also, check out the making-of feature for evidence as to the reality of it all.

It's a really cool little commercial. Almost as cool as that Honda one, Cog, awhile back.