Ever wonder about all those medical studies?

It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

Yeah, that’s what I figured.

What’s this?! A review of a movie that’s still in theaters?! Can’t be!

Yep. Tammy and I made a trip to the Movie Tavern for the opening night of Leatherheads.

I should start off by saying that I have never liked George Clooney and Renee Zellweger. They are not actors according to my definition of the word. They are warm bodies that are able to speak words someone else has written. Actors, by contrast, are able to portray a character other than themselves in a convincing manner. (See Depp, Hanks, etc.) Clooney and Zellweger make obscene amounts of money by playing Clooney and Zellweger, just with different costumes. And even though I’m a huge fan of The Office, I’d have to say that John Krasinski portrayed very much the same guy as a 1920’s college football star as he does as a 2008 sales rep for Dunder Mifflin.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed the movie. It was superbly directed and shot. Everything outside of the three main actors was very convincing for a period piece. It was laugh-out-loud funny throughout and still had a good message. One thing that I really appreciated about it was how clean it was… right up until the “you can’t say that on the radio” bit near the end, a gag that was contrived and unnecessary.

Much like watching a superhero flick, when you watch a period comedy like this one, you have to allow a certain amount of suspended disbelief. This is not a historical documentary. If you’re the type to stand up in the theater and shout that the NFL didn’t have a commissioner until 1941, then you’d better watch something else.

Over all this is a fun show and I’d be willing to watch it with the kids in my youth group. Maybe not “family-friendly” but well inside the safety of PG-13. I give it three grins.

I caught a teaser on GMA this morning about yet another twenty-something teacher getting married to his teen aged student. Robin Roberts posed, “What has caused this alarming trend?”

I didn’t see their story (I did find it on their website), but I had an answer for Robin on the spot. (Imagine that! I have an opinion on the matter. That never happens.</sarcasm>)

I have a favorite quote from Ronald Reagan that I’ve mentioned before. “What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces.” The Gipper was talking about communism, but the statement holds true for almost anything.

Let’s look at the previous generation in this case. In the 60’s and 70’s, the sexual revolution taught that sex is good and love is free. That generation chided their parents for “repressing” our “natural” sexuality. They believed that children should be taught about sex as early as possible and taught that it’s a beautiful thing that should be expressed and experienced freely. (See novels like “Brave New World” were “sex games” are part of elementary education and abortions are as common as flu shots.)

When the youth of the 60’s and 70’s came of age in the 80’s and 90’s, they became the teachers and policy makers. They brought their ideals with them and taught them to the youth of the 80’s and 90’s. My generation was indoctrinated. We were taught that sex is good so enjoy it. “Embrace your sexuality.” “We can’t stop you from having sex, so we’re going to teach you to have sex safely.” (What a crock!)

Now, the youth of the 80’s and 90’s are the teachers and policy makers of today. The 27-year-old teacher who was raised in this post-hippy, free-love culture is preprogrammed to think that sex is natural and good and should not be hindered. It’s a very short leap from that preprogramming to “Sex is good and natural so I should not hinder my 16-year-old, hormone-crazed student’s sexual awakening. Nor should I hinder my own sexual growth. So sex between me (the adult teacher) and my student is good and natural.”

We have raised a generation (my generation) of people with no moral emergency brakes. A 16-year-old doesn’t have moral emergency brakes yet. Kids are going to be infatuated with a teacher. That’s natural. But, said teacher should be smart enough, and have enough of a moral compass to stay miles away from such a situation. As long as the teacher keeps things professional and is mindful of not giving any shred of credibility to the crush, the crush will fade and the kid will learn to identify a crush for what it is.

But this current crop of twenty-somethings never learned the moral background they need to be the grown up and do the grown up thing. This “alarming trend” should be no surprise. We are reaping what our teachers sowed. God help us when the coming generating takes the reins.

Interestingly, according to the article, this most recent case takes place in Texas. The 27-year-old, male teacher was arrested despite the fact that the girl’s parents signed a consent form allowing them to file for a marriage license. The teacher faces up to 20 years in prison for having sex with a student. See, we don’t put up with that kind of hanky-panky in Texas. We know that, “That boy ain’t right!”

I rode my bike to work today for the first time this year. It was a little chilly (53-ish) but otherwise a perfect day for it.

When I got to work and logged in to my PC, Tammy sent me an IM. “Did you make it to work ok?”

Now, on the face of it, that’s an honest question from a loving and concerned wife. But you know me. I can’t pass up a chance to be a smart alec.

“Nope. I died. I logged in from Heaven. God set me up with a sweet laptop with the fastest wireless connection imaginable.”

I’m so mean.

I may have mentioned before that I have had “issues” with TiVo. I may have mentioned that TiVo’s customer support is based somewhere in the fourth level of hell and staffed by demons who usually speak English, but not always. I may have mentioned that I would really really really love to have a DVR to record my favorite shows but I’ve given up on that impossible dream after two, yes two, attempts at buying a TiVo, each of which made a root canal look like winning the lottery.

I may have mentioned before that I can get kind of carried away with weird analogies when I’m trying to tell a story and get side tracked on barely related topics.

So anyway, I’ve been using NetFlix as my poor-man’s TiVo for a while now. I’ve caught up with all the available Office DVD’s and most of Monk. Unfortunately that still leaves me about two years behind what is currently being aired. But I’m not bitter… much.

Well, today all that changed. I stumbled across a link to Hulu. At first I thought it was just another YouTube knock off. They had some great SNL clips, really impressive video quality and, oddly enough, the clips were from the show that aired just a few days ago. Then I saw a link at the top of the page. “Browse TV”. Hmm. What could that mean.

Hulu hosts TV shows, on demand, over the interweb, for freeee!! They have the most recent episode of The Office! All of seasons 3 and 4!! GLEEEE!!! There are commercials, but they are tiny web commercials and only one per break! I can deal with that!! Oh, this may change my life forever. It also may completely ruin my career and get me fired for watching TV during business hours.

I guess that last part could be looked upon as a “con” rather than a “pro”, huh?

[Edit: Ok. I lied. I misread the listings. They don’t actually have all of season 3 of The Office, but they do have all of season 4. They have “clips” from season 3. Not as cool, but still, enough to be excited about.]

There were well over a thousand pictures collected from the various digital cameras that joined our mission trip to New Orleans this year. A few times during the week, I gathered up everyone’s cameras and compiled short slide shows.

Once we got home, it was my job to take all the huge, uncompressed, unedited image files that we’d collected and serve them up so everyone could download their favorites. Fortunately, BlueHost offers some really cool image gallery applications for free. (Along with oodles of storage space and unlimited bandwidth!!) I installed Coppermine.

Once I got all 5 gigs uploaded, all I had to do whats point Coppermine to the directory containing the images and it auto-magically created scaled down thumbnail and preview images. Awesome!

You can see the gallery here.

When Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (hereto after referred to as PotC3) came out, the reviews I heard were less than complimentary and several people told me to be sure and watch the previous installment first or it wouldn’t make any sense.

That saddened me because Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (or PotC1) was really awesome and served to reinforce my admiration for Johnny Depp’s acting prowess. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (PotC2) on opening day and thought it was not bad for an “act 2” movie, hoping the final chapter would salvage the franchise.

See, “act 2” movies are often the worst installments. In classical theater, act 1 introduces the story and characters and sets up some conflict. In act 2, the conflict reaches it’s worst, leaving the protagonist at his worst. And in act 3, it all works out and the protagonist saves the day. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Star Wars IV (actually the first one released) told us that Darth Vader was bad, Luke was good, and the Force will be with you. But in Star Wars V (The Empire Strikes Back) Han gets frozen, Luke loses his hand, and Darth comes out on top. Oh no! Then, in Star Wars VI (Return of the Jedi) Luke kicks butt, Darth turns into Dad, and the good guys get all “crunk” at a little fuzzy people party.

Think about it. Raiders of the Lost Ark: Awesome. Temple of Doom: Crap. Holy Grail: Even awesomer.

Then again, there are those trilogies that should never have been trilogies in the first place. The first movie was pretty good and made enough money that Hollywood got drunk on it and decided to go for more, but like most decisions made while drunk, it ends poorly. There are too many of those to count!

Usually in these cases, the trilogy goes places that the first movie never intended and you end up with something like Highlander. It starts of as a cool movie about immortals having sword fights in back allies and ends up as some retarded alien, tree-hugger, psuedo-sci-fi mess. The Matrix was this whole mind bending, nothing-is-was-it-seems riddle with some amazing fight scenes thrown in. The Matrix Reloaded was … well … confusing, contrived crap. And don’t get me started on Back to the Future.

Anyway, back to the pirates. I had high hopes that this would be the “classical” trilogy and not the “Hollywood gets greedy” variety. But my hopes were dashed.

In PotC1, Depp plays the best pirate to ever grace the silver screen. Legolas (a.k.a. Orlando Bloom) plays the good-hearted hero who becomes a bad guy in order to do good things. And the other Natalie Portman (a.k.a. Keira Knightley) plays the spoiled rich girl who thinks pirates are cool until she’s kidnapped by some. The bad guys, led by Captain Barbossa (the second best pirate portrayal ever), are cursed and zombiefied. This makes all the fight scenes with them kind of pointless, but it the fights are so good I can forgive them for that. In the end, the bad pirate (redundant?) gets killed, the good pirate (oxymoronic?) gets away, and the good guy gets the girl. Top notch special effects. Top notch acting. Top notch action. Top notch movie! Four grins!!

In PotC2, things start to get a little weird. The good/bad guy, Edward Scissor-Hands, has a curse of his own. Mr. “Ends Justify the Means” is forced to do even worse things for an even worse bad guy but for even better reasons. And Not-Queen-Amidala gets all women’s lib having apparently burned her corset and learned to sword fight better than 95% of the pirates in the movie. Good guy goes to hell to save his dear papa from Mr. Icky Squid Face. The cool zombie bad guy crew is replaced with the creepy sushi bad guy crew that is still arguably undead. We’re stuck with the good guy’s good-guy status in question, the girl possibly falling for the good/bad guy, the good/bad guy eaten by a very ugly monster, and in the last 30 seconds of the movie, the old bad guy who died in the first movie is now somehow alive again and going to save the day. What the…?? Two grins for you!

Now it’s up to PotC3 to bail us out of this mess. The good elf is good again, even though he’s teamed up with the old dead bad guy who’s now alive and good… I think. With the help of Creepy Voodoo Lady, they all go sailing over the edge of the world (a la Erik the Viking, 1989) to rescue the good/bad guy from real hell (not the squid-face hell from the episode 2). Then there’s all these pirates from all over the world who make the Ms. Women’s Lib their Pirate President of the World. (I only wish I was making this up.) Mr. Icky Squid Face is back with his sushi crew but now he has a tender side (aww) and there’s some kind of love story going on with him and Creepy Voodoo Lady. A gazillion ships show up to sink the pirate fleet. (So that makes them the good guys, right? Wrong!) Then just before all hope is lost, someone flushes the ocean and there’s an epic tidy-bowl battle. *pant pant*

After the first two hours, you think (or hope) the movie is about to be over. The problem is it “ends” for another hour!! I would love to spoil the ending for you, but it was too confusing and unbelievable for me to retell. I think I’m just going to pretend that Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is just one movie and the ugly rumors of a trilogy are just a bad dream.

Charlton Heston died Saturday. Reports say he died at home with his wife by his side. Cause of death is still undetermined, but he was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Besides starring in some of the most iconic roles Hollywood has ever produced, Heston was an outspoken Christian and Republican (beginning in the 1980’s). He served as president of the NRA for five years where he made famous the phrase, “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands.”

Eric Meyer (web standards guru) posted to Twitter, “So I guess we can have Charlton Heston’s gun now” Crass, sure. Funny, absolutely!

While I’m no longer paying for WeightWatchers, I’m still employing what I learned. I’m not “on a diet” but rather I have “changed my diet.” Last week I broke the 230 (227.8) mark for the first time in seven years. Then I got cocky and this week I’m back on the wrong side of that mark by a quarter pound.

This weekend the weather in DFW was gorgeous and Tammy and I busted out the bicycles. We stuck to pavement, but still got a great “break-in” workout of 15 miles (followed by some sadistic weight lifting).

This leads me to this week’s white board quip on dieting.

I have a great diet. You’re allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
– Steven Wright

I’m back from the dead.

A quick recap:

• New Orleans Mission Trip – Great success, hundreds of pictures soon available (and that’s not an exaggeration).
• Food Poisoning – 12 hours of near continuous technicolor screams was the best (or worst) ab workout I’ve ever had.
• Office Space Construction – I have a ceiling again and it appears to be obediently staying above my desk, instead of raining down on it like it did last week.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m painfully behind on my projects at work. Thankfully, there are no hard deadlines right now, but it would be nice to use the word “finished” in a status meeting in the month of April, since it didn’t happen in March.