First Day of Summer!

It's officially summer!!!

I'm going to be honest with you though. I kind of already assumed summer had started. I mean I've been riding my bike, swimming at the pool, and just basically enjoying the sun for a little more than a month now. I mean I have been on SUMMER vacation.

But, hey, now its official, and here I was starting to worry that summer was passing away too quickly. Heck it's just now started. So enjoy yourselfs. It's summer.

Movie: The Expendables

Look at that line up. That is just an outstanding recipe for a freaking, crazy awesome action movie. It's bringing all of the great old actions stars together with the new generation of action heroes; a fantastic changing of the guard if you will. The film is written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, who, by the way, has a history for great success with projects in which he is deeply involved in the creative development.

There was some interesting stuff with the casting. Jean-Claude Van Damme was offered a part (who really does belong in the group) but turned it down because the character lacked substance. Steven Seagal was also offered a part (who really does not belong in the group) but turned it down due to poor history with producer Avi Lerner. There was a part developed for Wesly Snipes. He couldn't do it so they offered it to Forest Whitaker, which makes no sense. Snipes to Whitaker that's a pretty weird switch. Whitake eventually couldn't due it so they offered it to 50 Cent. Finally though they filled the character with Terry Crews.

Movie: The Adjustment Bureau

This looks SO COOL! First it's always great to have a story about the characters fighting with every effort towards something simply for love. It's a very American sentiment; the pursuit of happiness thing.

But then the whole idea of this Adjustment Bureau, this secret, all-powerful, shadow government agencies that controls every aspect of our lives. It totally captures all those ideas of conspiracy theories and "The Man." Notice that all of the agents are these very traditional, 1950's, white (and white haired), male, patriarch figures. One of the agents is John Slattery from Mad Men. It is just one of ideas that we know is too outlandish to ever be real, but we always like to indulge in in the back of minds when things go wrong and there seems to little other explanation.

Movie: Solitary Man

Here's the thing Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas (father and son) had some level tension between each other. The younger Douglas seemed to feel that was the overbearing male figure that was common amongst fathers during that era. As a result Michael Douglas went into Hollywood determined to steer away from the macho characters of his fathers. You can see in his early work that it's all love stories with romantic male figures far away from the Spartcuses and rough, gunslinging cowboys of his father

Over his career though, Michael Douglas has developed a on screen persona of a man's man. True he rarely has any fight scenes, and those that he does are not the most action packed, but his is a more urban manliness; a more civilized masculinity than the barbaric nature of the older Mr. Douglas's characters. While he may have tried to play it soft in the beginnning there was always a kind of darkness that personafied from Michael Douglas; a alluring, devilish quality, which allowed him to so successfully capture his characters in movie such as Wallstreet and The Perfect Murder

In Solitary Man, which shares its title with a Johnny Cash song, we see this urban man's man descending from his peak into old age. The movie was tailored for Douglas and the man he has created on the screen. It is the perfect display of an accumlation of Douglas's talent over the decades.

Celtics Lose NOOO!

Ahh! Dammit! We had a 13 point lead for crying out load, and they gave it all up in the last like 6 minutes of the game.

Ah it was a good run. The Lakers were strongly favored; Celtics weren't even supposed to make it this far. Perkins was out of the game on injury. And in the end I would like to point out that apart from a three-pointer from Kobe, LA's like last 15 points were all free-throws. It was like every time they went down there at the end of the game drew a foul. Yes, that is largely Boston's falt, but it was like 'COME ON! AGAIN!'

Ah well. Just to show though that I'm not going to be terribly bitter about this I do want to show you this commercial they showed during the game. It's actually really clever considering this would be LA's fifth title. The song "All Together Now" is a Beatles' song being covered by Andree 3000. It's a pretty good version. Unfortunately I think it is only for commercial and can't be downloaded.

Billionare - Travis McCoy

With absolutly no authority to do so or power by which to enforce it, I declare this the new CBPA anthem. Just go with it.

Book: The Lost City of Z

Yes, I actually read an entire, real, book book. Pretty impressive I know. But enough of my staggering achievement. This book is freaking amazing, and even more so because it is entirely true.

This English gentlemen from the late 19th century, Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett, was the greatest explorer of his time. He is largely responsible for exploring and mapping most much of the Amazonian region. If you have ever seen the Pixar movie Up, the explorer Charles F. Muntz is pretty much the idea you should picture (without the talking dogs of course). Fawcett was this absolutely remarkable man's man type of fellow. During this time there were no vaccines or other amenities of modern medicine. While most people in his parties were overwhelmed by disease and infection during the journeys, Fawcett never got sick. He managed to form close relationships with local tribes that had only showed other parties violent hostility.

Throughout his explorations he began to develop theory based on evidence he had seen that the storys of El Dorado, while exageranted to some degree, were based on an actual, magnificent, ancient city lost somewhere in the heart of Brazil. However despite having come back triumphant in the face of insurmountable conditions in the past, Fawcett, his son, and his son's best friend mysteriously disappear. Because he was such a notable public figure at the time, all of the search parties have gone out to find him over the decades with often similar results that they do not return.

Helen Thomas

WOW! Haha ... Now I've heard some pretty off color things from the mouths of some from the older generation, but WOW! What is probably even more wild about this is that Helen Thomas, the woman in the video making all of the blatant anti-zionist statements, after 50 years as a member of the White House Press Corp and its most iconic members, she is stepping down because of these comments. The women started there with John F. Kennedy. She has served there for over half a century.

Now to be fair she is around 90 years old and closely resembling the undead, so retirement was bound to come soon, but the circumstances have brought about some questions of the rights of free speech. Now the video shown here asks how Mrs. Thomas can be unbiased in her reporting when she is making comments such as these, but would they have made similar accusations if she had spoken in of the Israel state?

The zionist issue is not a simple matter and is certainly one littered with heavy areas of gray. There is no ignoring the atrocities made towards the Jewish people in the Holocaust of WWII, but the establishment of the Israel state does seem to have been made out of guilty haste with little considerations of the people already occupying the area. There have been tremedous acts of violence committed both parties, and yet the United States has stood in unwavering support of Israel.

To a degree this has been necessary in order to establish the state in such hostile territory, that is if you believe the state should have been established at all. However if you do not believe as such, it begs the question what should have been done with some millions of people having just faced the worst atrocity in modern history. It is not a simple issue, but it is certainly it is a issue that ought to open for discussion.