E = MC2

My kind of guy!

The older I get the more I look like this – especially the sharp wardrobe. 

Whoa! Crash test, dummies.

A friend of mine sent me this amazing video of a crash test of a head-on collision between a 2009 vehicle and a vehicle of the late fifties.  This is yet another example of the “good old days” not being that great.  Stick with the video to the end so that you don’t miss the overhead view and the assessment of what would have happened had there been real drivers. 

“Kick-Ass” kicks ass!

Last night we watched the blu ray version of "Kick Ass" on our plasma big screen. What a guilty pleasure it was. I absolutely loved it. Sure, it has loads of stylized violence and requires a suspension of belief as to the laws of physics (i.e. the speed of fire/explosion and the ability to dodge bullets), but that's not the point. The movie has tons of sly humor, an intelligent script, and the over-arching theme of a nerdy, good-hearted guy who thinks he can become a super-hero just because he wants to. (More often than not, Kick-Ass does get his ass roundly kicked.) The actors all put in terrific performances, but the whole movie is stolen by Chloe Moretz playing "Hit Girl." She is simply amazing. (Of course it doesn’t hurt that she gets to play off Nick Cage as her father “Big Daddy.”)

Lest you think I’m crazy, Mick LaSalle, the lead critic for the SF Chronicle gave this film his highest rating. His review will tell you most of what you need to know. Here is the opening paragraph of his review:

"Kick-Ass" lives up to the promise of its title, but it's better than its title, too. It's not an innocuous comedy. It doesn't talk down to audiences. It brings together several popular strains of contemporary moviemaking and combines them into one big, shameless, audacious, compulsively watchable, irresistibly likable piece of pure entertainment.

~ Tom

More sad truth…

This excerpt from today’s E.J. Dionne column in WaPo fits perfectly with the above cartoon.

But there is something far more troubling at work: the rise of an angry, irrational extremism -- the sort that says Obama is a Muslim socialist who wasn't born in the United States -- that was not part of Ronald Reagan's buoyant conservative creed. Do Republican politicians believe in the elaborate conspiracy theories being spun by Glenn Beck and parts of the Tea Party? If not, why won't they say so? Liberals who refused to break with the far left in the 1950s and '60s were accused of being blinded by a view that saw "no enemies on the left." Are conservatives who should know better now falling into a "no enemies on the right" trap?

When Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert warns, with absolutely no proof, of the dangers of "terror babies" -- children whose mothers allegedly come to the United States to give birth so their offspring can have American passports for later use in terrorist activities -- have we not crossed into never-never land? Where are the responsible conservatives who should be denouncing such crackpottery?

~ Tom

I needed some cheering up…

I have to admit that I have found the last couple of months to be very depressing on the political front.  The constant, unremitting assault on President Obama by the right wing, coupled with mainstream media’s utter abdication of its duty was grinding me down.  I was to the point where I was saying to myself, “he’s going to be a one-term president.” 

Then today, I was perusing the July 30 issue of “The Week” which referred to this article by Charles Krauthammer.  Krauthammer is someone I rarely agree with, and in fact I get my dander up over a lot of the outrageous stuff he writes.  Thus it was with great pleasure that I read him warning that “Republicans underestimate him [Obama] at their peril,” and observing that Obama is playing the “long game.”  It made me remember how I went up the walls during the primary fight against Hillary, only to see Obama pull it off to my amazement.  This is one time I am rooting for Krauthammer to be a prophet.

~  Tom

This says it all.

Most times, less is more. So I say, read this.

Sadly,

Tom

Quote for today

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly. ~ Alexander Pope

Dinah & Amy

Way back in December 2007 I wrote a post in which I observed that Amy Winehouse reminded me a lot of Dinah Washington. So today, I decided to see if I was imaging things.

First I listened to a lot of tracks by both. Next, I picked out one 0f each for my little project. Then I went to Rhapsody and played the tracks while recording those streams in real-time with the "Total Recorder" software, which gave me a *.wav file of each track. Then I loaded the tracks into my Mixcraft multi-track recording studio and got down to some serious business. Here is the result.

Comments please...

Take your licks! * Neil Geraldo

Hey, sorry I have not posted for a while.  I was working on a big trial brief, which consumed most of my time and wiped me out for the remainder.
Anyway, I’ve been meaning to start a new feature on the blog.  The deal is that I hear cool things in the midst of a music track, which stick in my mind and make me want to share it with friends.  So I have decided that whenever that happens I am going to engineer an excerpt of the “cool licks” and share them with all of you.
My maiden offering is the great guitar solo in Pat Benatar’s “Promises in the Dark.”  The guitarist is Neil Geraldo, who has been with Pat from her beginnings – they eventually married.   Anyway, I’m fading into the track about a minute before the solo because you need to hear how the whole thing builds up to the solo.  Then I give you a fade out at the end.  So with out further ado, Neil Geraldo’s solo in Promises in the Dark.
By the way, standing on its own as a whole, “Promises in the Dark” is one of the great rock tracks of all time.