Challenging My Father's Viewpoints: Why the Straight-Ticket Sucks

I know there have been a lot of opinion pieces about politics lately, but just hear me out. I won't be quite as bad as most of those.

When it came to the election on November second, I'll admit that I voted largely Democratic. But that was because the Democratic candidates were the ones I consider to have the stances on issues, arguments, and plans. It was not just because I checked the straight-ticket box on the ballot and went on with my day. No, surprisingly, I actually researched the candidates and the issues, then made my decisions.

So I was furious -- no, livid is a better way to describe it -- when my dad told me that he just voted the straight Republican ticket.

I have no problem with him voting Republican at all; that's just the way he was raised (he is a good ole farm boy, after all), and that's the way he's going to stay. My problem lies in that despite being a remarkably intelligent guy, my dad would just take the easy route on voting. And my dad doesn't usually take the easy route on anything. He has to make everything complicated. (Like slicing a stupid pizza. If it's a square, he can't just cut it into a grid. No, he has to cut it the same way you would cut a round one.)

The biggest problem I had with him voting straight-ticket was the fact that in doing so meant he had voted against Proposition B, the legislation imposing laws against puppy mills. The fact that my dad, who gets so absolutely silly over our pure-bred dog in a way that he never got silly over me when I was a child, could vote against a proposition protecting puppies and grown dogs from such cruelty almost made me cry. It didn't seem to matter to him that our Cocker Spaniel could have easily been one of those dogs from the puppy mills.

No, of course, it didn't. Because he thought it was too much of a Democratic legislation. So he voted against it. And then thought there was nothing wrong with voting no on protecting puppies.

Of course, the whole ordeal just made me livid. And it reminded me how much I hate politics . This stupid bipartisanship hasn't helped the government much at all; instead all political venues have now turned into giant schoolyard fights between Republicans and Democrats. Sides always have to be chosen, and it almost always boils down into Democrat versus Republican.

My dad asked me how I had voted. I told him, expecting to get the same reaction I'd gotten when I had told him that I'd voted for Obama. I did.

I probably should have told him that I had voted the gay Democrat ticket. He probably would have had a heart attack.
 

Migraine + Couch = No Homework + Harry Potter Marathon

This past weekend, Friday and Saturday were particularly hectic for me, so of course I wound up with an excruciating migraine on Sunday morning. Which basically meant I got absolutely no homework done and spent all day switching between naps on the couch and watching movies. Since I had all day to kill, I figured why not have a Harry Potter marathon?

Even in my headache-induced coma, I could still remember that I'm eager for Christmas break because it means I finally have the chance to go see the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that I've been dying to see (no pun intended) ever since the book was released. This fleeting thought was enough to make me pop in my much-played Sorcerer's Stone DVD and start the marathon as a sort of refresher course.

I ran into a tiny little problem though. Of the six movies already out on DVD, I only own four: Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, and Half-Blood Prince. This in itself isn't that bad; my favorites (GoF and HBP) are included. No, the problem lies in the fact that I've only seen Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix once a piece, and of course they're the movies I don't own. Well, drats.

But I still managed to enjoy the ones I did watch (perhaps because I've read the books far too many times to count), even with plot holes I probably wouldn't have understood if I hadn't read the books first. And it was nice to remember all my favorite parts from each of them. I'll try my best to keep the descriptions accurate.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Okay, I'm not gonna lie, but my favorite lines from this one really have nothing to do with any major plot lines. And I wish I could find a video of either of them on YouTube, but alas! no luck. But maybe HP fans will understand.

Courtesy of HarryPotter'sCauldron.blogspot.com

The first one is fairly early in the movie, right around the time Harry meets the Weasleys for the first time. Mrs. Weasley is hurrying Fred and George along, and they play the classic which-twin-is-which trick on her. But then one of them drops my favorite line in the whole bloody movie: "Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother." That line would be great with just an American accent, but Oliver or James Phelps' awesome British accent makes it even better.

I knew there was a really slim chance of finding my second favorite line in the movie on YouTube, so I didn't even try. But it's dropped by another minor Gryffindor, Quidditch Captain Oliver Wood, when he's explaining the rules of the game to new Seeker Harry. I am always far too entertained by his simple line "Bludgers. Nasty little buggers." in his heavy Scottish accent.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I slept through a large majority of this one, so a lot of the details are a little fuzzy. But I can always remember this one pictured at left. Not to mention Mr. Weasley's awesome line a few seconds later: "Now tell me, Harry, what is the function of a rubber duck?"

The basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets is pretty cool too, even I hate snakes with a fiery passion. I just hope I never run into him when I'm down at the river or the lake next summer.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

For me, this one has always been obvious. Since they cut some of my favorite scenes from the movie (the Quidditch World Cup game and the creatures Harry encounters during the Third Task), I have to follow it up with a scene I know for sure is in both the movie and the book and is always good for a laugh: Malfoy the Amazing Bouncing Ferret. I'd include a video, but they've all had embedding disabled by request, so here's a link.  I also enjoy McGongall giving the dancing lesson to the Gryffindors.


Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Even though I usually hate it when random things get added into movies, but I thought the scene with the Muggle waitress making a date with Harry, who then stands her up because he leaves with Dumbledore, was a nice touch.  And the scene when Ron accidentally eats the love potion-laced candies meant for Harry, you have to admit it's pretty dang funny:




Sorry, but that's all I got. I'm lucky I managed this. Happy Finals Week! Please don't die. You would be missed.          

This Time of Year, Enough is Enough.

This is me. (Courtesy of TVSquad.com)

This post is going to make me sound like a total Grinch. But it's barely December, and I'm already sick of Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love the holiday. I love spending time with my family and tearing into all the presents.

No, what I hate is that Christmas is freaking EVERYWHERE. There is no escaping it anymore. In fact, there was very little chance of escaping it even before Thanksgiving. It doesn't help at all that I work retail part-time. We had a few Christmas songs thrown here and there into our already-irritating overhead music selection. But that music selection got even more irritating when it switched to nothing but Christmas music. The week of Thanksgiving.

All Christmas music wouldn't be so bad. If it weren't the same six songs over and over again with a few different ones randomly thrown in. I swear, I could be at work for roughly six hours and hear twelve different versions of "Little Drummer Boy" or "Santa Baby" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Not to mention I just get really ticked off whenever I look at these stupid pyramid-shaped thingamajigs that basically look like trees made of red plastic ball ornaments and that seemed to be sprinkled randomly throughout the entire store. It's not really the way they look, although that irritates me, but it's the fact that they were put out on the sales floor along with the rest of the Christmas decorations at the end of October.

I've decided that we've started celebrating Christmas way too early in the year (is it too much to ask that we wait until after Thanksgiving is over?) and that there's also too much Christmas overkill. But maybe that's just the frustrated thoughts of an equally frustrated retail worker.

(Oh, and just a hint, please be nice to us. This is one of our busiest seasons, so we're doing our best, but we can't do everything. And your being rude to or impatient towards us isn't going to do you any favors at all. We have the tendency to act passively aggressive towards you in subtle ways you won't notice.)

Okay, now that I've done my little rant, I can take a deep breath and calm down a little bit. To make up for my tirade that made me seem like the new Grinch, I thought I'd share with you some of the things I DO like about Christmas. At least in the days/weeks leading up to the holiday, my favorite parts are watching my favorite Christmas movies. And I guess I'll be like Santa and make my list.

First up on the list is one that does double duty for two holidays. I usually save Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the month-and-a-half span between Halloween and Christmas. And even if I don't get around to watch it, you can bet I will be belting out the soundtrack in my car several times throughout the holiday season.

Courtesy of IMPAwards.com

Second up is one of my all-time favorites. I can remember watching Christmas Vacation when I was about five or six years old and laughing at all the parts I didn't understand but still thought hilarious. It's even funnier now that I actually get it. Plus, it helps that I finally realized that Rusty is actually played by the same guy who plays Leonard on The Big Bang Theory (small world and mind now blown, huh?) And who can't help but laugh at Clark's awesome, "mature audiences only" tirade?




Third on the list is another of my childhood favorites: A Christmas Story. This was an ode to all the kids who were sure they'd never get the thing they wanted most for Christmas. It's also one of those Christmas movies that used to have a full 24 hours dedicated to; now, though, I have to settle with watching it with my DVD player set on repeat. And there are so many great scenes from the movie: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid," all of the main character Ralphie's long-winded descriptions of the Red Ryder BB Gun, "the F-dash-dash-dash" scene, the tongue-stuck-to-the-flagpole scene, the "I can't put my arms down" scene, or the infamous leg lamp. (By the way,you can buy the leg lamp here.) But this is one of my favorites:




Another of my favorites is the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Don't get that confused with Jim Carrey's The Grinch. The two cannot even be compared. Jim Carrey's version wasn't narrated by Boris Karloff and didn't have the song "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch." It didn't stand a chance in my book.

Courtesy of Aveleyman.com

A new favorite of mine is ELF. This one was surprising because I typically don't like Will Ferrell all that much (so sue me), but it still had its hilarious moments like "You smell like beef and cheese, you don't smell like Santa!" And for true Christmas Story fans, grown-up Ralphie has a brief cameo, which makes the movie even better. A new Christmas classic and the star from another classic? Yes, please.

Well, my list is complete, and if you don't mind, I think I'll go check it twice and watch some of those movies. Especially A Christmas Story. But just remember: "You'll shoot your eye out." :)

News of Dark Shadows Recently Overshadowed...

Over the last few weeks, Hollywood has mainly been buzzing with all kinds of new information about the upcoming release of the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Simply scrolling through all the posts on the MTV Movies Blog is enough to illustrate my point.

But there's one story I'm a little distraught that didn't raise a bigger fuss. (Don't get all judgy on me, claiming I'm not excited about one of the final HP films finally arriving in theaters; I totally am, but it shouldn't need this much publicity. After all, it is Harry Potter.) No, I'm upset that nearly none of my friends have recognized or even heard about the announcement of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's latest project, a film adaptation of the '60s TV show Dark Shadows.

Depp & Burton on the set of their last project Sweeney Todd 

Maybe I'm just weird like this, but ever since I'd heard the rumors about the project, I've been anxiously waiting for official confirmation. So when I saw the post on MTV Movies Blog called "Johnny Depp Sinking His Teeth into Vampire Role for Tim Burton's 'Dark Shadows'," I pretty much flipped out. With the vampire's sudden popularity, I was just waiting for the day when Tim Burton would undertake a vampire project. Which is largely due to the fact that his spin on vampires probably won't be as romantic or sex-driven or cliched as most of the vampires in recent popular character.

Not to mention Johnny Depp would probably make one of the coolest, most badass vampires.

But when it comes down to it, I don't really know a whole lot about the original TV show. So I went over to good ole IMDB and checked out the summary they had, which wasn't all that helpful: "Dark Shadows is a gothic soap opera, which follows the strange happenings to the Collins family and their surrounding friends. The show features everything from Vampires, to Witches, werewolves... you name it." But I have since done a little bit more research, just shy of watching the show somewhere online, and the most important thing I've learned so far is that the show circled mainly around the vampire Barnabas Collins (who will be Depp's character in the movie adaptation) and his supernatural friends who live in and around the small Maine town of Collinsport. And this doesn't tell a whole lot about the central plotlines of the TV show, but I did find the original opening credits to the show. You can check it out below:



The general storyline certainly seems like a good one for Burton to sink his claws into: A small town with some kind of supernatural beings haunting it. (Hmmmm...Sleepy Hollow, Nightmare Before Christmas, or Corpse Bride, anyone?) And of all the major Hollywood actors who could possibly get roped into the vampire scene, who better than Johnny Depp? Maybe he can do to vampires what he ended up doing to pirates.   

Talk About A Throwback to the Old Days...

I guess I'll be honest. Instead of working on the massive amounts of homework I had, I chose to procrastinate and watch one of my favorite TV shows on DVD. And the one I picked over the weekend was one of my childhood favorites, Dinosaurs, the sitcom starring none other than dinosaurs.

Courtesy of Sharetv.org

Because I was only a year old at the time Dinosaurs premiered, I'm guessing that I just always caught the reruns. But I can remember watching the show and always spouting off the trademark line, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" (For the longest time, though, I could never remember the name of the show and could only call it "that show with the dinosaur family and the baby with the big purple eyes.")

Now, however, I can watch it and see and/or appreciate so many things I hadn't when I was younger. For instance, little me probably never would have cared that the Sinclair family and all their friends existed only thanks to the Jim Henson Creature Shop, which had also been responsible for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (another of my childhood favorites). In recent years, though, it completely blows my mind how awesome those dinosaurs looked in the days before CGI took total control over the industry.

And I know for a fact that little me also never would have gotten any of the very-grown-up references or morals. At five or six, there is no way I would have understood the jokes about the mating dance or even the drug abuse episode where dad Earl and siblings Robbie and Charlene go a little overboard eating a plant with side effects similar to those of marijuana. But, like so many of my childhood favorites, I can laugh at all those jokes I'd never gotten when I was little.

Not to mention I now remember exactly how hysterical the family baby -- fondly named Baby Sinclair -- was. In case you don't have any idea, you can check the Youtube video below of some of Baby's best moments from the first and second season:



Considering how much I loved this show growing up, I was so excited when I found all four seasons on DVD (on sale here from Amazon). And given that I've actually never seen the series finale for the show, I was a little devastated to find out that it had nabbed the number 6 spot on Cracked.com's List of Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History. But I guess a TV show starring dinosaurs couldn't be guaranteed a happy ending.   

Same Basic Plotline, Three Different Series

Lesson #226 - Vampirism, courtesy of SurvivingtheWorld.net

The fact that Halloween was yesterday combined with the fact that I am grossly behind on some of my favorite TV shows makes me realize exactly the nearly-disgusting overabundance of vampires in our culture lately. (I'll openly admit that I help contribute to this gross overabundance, but I'll have more on that later.) Seeing this picture over the weekend did little to change my mind.


Vampires are freaking EVERYWHERE. And I hate to admit this, but they're kinda starting to really bug me.

That said, I can't really complain too much. I am desperately trying to catch up with two of my favorite TV shows, one of which is currently in an off-season and the other which is currently in its second season, both of which are about none other than vampires. Not to mention, I'm also a little ashamed to admit I own the entire Twilight series and have already seen the three movies that have already been released.

But let me explain.  True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and the Twilight franchise are my guilty pleasures. Maybe even not that guilty. But they all entertain me to some extent. With True Blood, it's the fact that a lot of the romanticism is stripped away from the vampires, which may or may not be attributed to it airing on HBO. I mainly watch The Vampire Diaries for the character Damon; his smart-ass, don't-get-in-my-way-or-I'll-kill-you attitude rarely fails to deliver. (Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, according to this article on IO9.) And Twilight, well, it's just so bad it's almost good. Almost.

Courtesy of Photobucket.com

My biggest pet peeve about all three of these, though, is that you could basically strip away all the character names and personal backgrounds and all three story lines will still be pretty much identical, as the chart can explain. Granted, each series has its differences, but those are very few and far between.

Thankfully, vampires finally have some competition in pop culture obsession with classic horror movie characters. AMC's new zombie show, The Walking Dead (you can check out the show's site here) is certainly a forerunner to help zombies knock vampires off their pop culture throne. Which is becoming more and more likely, according to this article from Comcast.

Well, now I have another TV show I'll have to keep with every week. And I hope this one won't have a love triangle or a werewolf lurking around. 



 

I Think I'm Getting the Fear

Fall break is over (sadly), but I did use the opportunities of no classes and no work to my advantage and re-watched some of the great classics stowed away in my DVD collection. One of these was the complete mind-warp Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The movie, starring Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro as well as a hodgepodge of other celebrity cameos, is a really intense story about two men who basically go to Vegas and spend the next several days in a illegal-drug-induced haze. The trailer from Youtube is below, but I should warn you that there's some adult material (mainly drug use, but hey you've been warned):



As disturbing and somehow equally hilarious as the movie is, though, the book is even more so. It did make one of my lists from my troublemaking post, for the explicit and gratuitous drug use and the chaos that follows. But it still ranks pretty high on the list of my all-time favorite books. I will admit that I first learned about the book only because I had watched the movie, which I had only watched because Johnny Depp was in it.

Yet between the two, the book is my favorite. I managed to find it one day in a secondhand bookstore (where it was buried in the journalism section), bought it without a second thought, and went home to devour it immediately. Fear and Loathing is one of the few books I've read where I spent nearly every page laughing because everything was so comically unbelievable. And thanks to one book, I was introduced to one of my all-time favorite authors, Hunter S. Thompson.

I want to be able to call Thompson my journalism idol, particularly for his unique Gonzo style where the writer becomes the subject and where the journalism almost becomes fiction. Thompson pushed the boundaries of his writing every single day wherever he worked (but especially Rolling Stone) and made quite the impression on nearly everyone who ever met him. That much is obvious from the numerous stories told in the oral biography Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, which was edited by Thompson's own RS editor Jann Wenner (check out the NY Times review for the book here). But Thompson was way into drugs and alcohol to really prove himself as a good role model, so I scratch his name off my list of role models.

Anyway...back to Fear and Loathing. There's been disagreement on whether the movie is a good interpretation of the original story, but I really have no opinion on that because I'm partial to both the movie and the book for different reasons. So instead, I thought I would share some interesting trivia about both that only a sometimes-obsessive fanatic would know.

Courtesy of The London Telegraph

Trivia Fact #1: Johnny Depp, who plays Thompson's autobiographical Raoul Duke in the movie, lived in Thompson's basement for four months to better imitate the journalist. Also, Depp's entire wardrobe throughout the movie consisted of Thompson's own clothing from the Seventies, and the red convertible you can barely see in the photo at the right is also Thompson's own '71 Chevrolet Impala

Courtesy of zuguide.com

Trivia fact #2: In the first twenty minutes of the movie, we already see our first celebrity cameo, and it's fairly unexpected. Check it out at left and see if you recognize him (this one's hopefully kinda obvious). In case you can't, probably due to the bad picture, it's Tobey Maguire pre-Spiderman days with a really bad hairdo (I think I've read somewhere it's a wig). And it's impossible to tell from this photo, but Maguire's shirt has a caricature of Mickey Mouse that is identical to the one found on the same character's shirt in Ralph Steadman's original illustration for the story.

Screenshot taken from Youtube.com

Trivia Fact #3: Okay, this one really has nothing to do with the book, but it's still entertaining. When Depp and del Toro's characters go to the Circus Circus Casino (called the Bazooka Circus Casino in the movie), they pass by this statue. According to Johnny Depp, this same gorilla now "lives" in his front yard. (Which is interesting because in the book, Duke and his companion Dr. Gonzo contemplate and even buy a gorilla off some guy while they're in Circus Circus.)



Okay, I could go on and on about either the book or the movie because I love them both. But I should probably stop while I'm ahead and leave this discussion where it is. If you're wondering where I get most of this stuff, all the facts I mentioned above, as well as more entertaining trivia, can be found on IMDB's site for the movie.

So if you're looking for whacked-out, and hilarious yet disturbing entertainment, then you have to check out Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Just read the book first, trust me.)  And if you have read the book or seen the movie already, tell me your thoughts about it.