The Annekenstein Monster

Here’s a link to a BBC article called A Hundred Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Year.

Kinda interesting, in a waste-a-few-minutes kinda way.

Just found out that Sketch 22 will be performing as part of the Madly Off In All Directions performance, Jan.22 in Charlottetown.
Should be a fun, fast fifteen minutes of material. 

I did a Madly Off a couple of years ago as a member of 4Play improv, and we had lots of fun.

View this photo

This is wonderfully sad.  Poor Hobbes

Who Would Jesus Drown?

(from Eschaton)

This (Tuesday) morning at 9am, C-SPAN had a live telecast of
the 109th Congressional Prayer Service from a church on Capitol Hill. There
were some sentiments shared about the recently-passed Bob Matsui and Shirley Chisholm,
and, amidst the scripture readings, reminders from a few Congressmen about the
Christian foundation of our government. Others spoke of the Asian tsunami
tragedy.

Then Tom
DeLay gets up to the pulpit, and — striking a beautiful note in light of
the 150,000 dead from the floods referenced by his colleagues — lets loose
with some Matthew
7, beginning at verse 21.

(Many thanks to ben for the heads up on the exact wording, and to DemWatch for directing us to this transcription
of the reading and MP3.)

Saith DeLay:

"A reading of the Gospel, in
Matthew 7:21 through 27.

Not every one who says to me,
"Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven; but only the one who
does the will of my Father in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day,
"Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons
in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?

"Then I will declare to them
solemnly, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, you evil doers.’"

Everyone who listens to
these words of mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man, who built his
house on a rock:

The rain fell, the floods
came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse; it
has been set solidly on rock.

And everyone who listens
to these words of mine, but does not act on them, will be like a fool who built
his house on sand:

The rain fell, the floods
came, and the winds blew, and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was
completely ruined."

He finishes reading, says nothing more, and sits back
down.

Here’s a link to an interesting wrap-up of last year’s global political scene, authored by Gwynne Dyer.

Last night, I was faced with the dilemna of 3 programs on television at the same time:  the World Junior Hockey Championship (9p – 12), the American Collegiate Football championship game (9p – 1), and The Amazing Race (10p – 11).
My plan of attack was this:  From 9 to 10, I’d watch primarily the hockey game, flipping occasionally to the football game.  From 10 to 11, it’d be TAR with commercial-break flipping to both hockey and football.  From 11 onward, I’d focus between hockey and football, whichever seemed to be the most exciting at any given moment.

Well,  the hockey game was basically over before 10 o’clock.  Even with 2 periods left, it was obvious the Canadians were going to win.  I’ve never witnessed such dominance of one team over all the others in a tournament.  Too bad such a talented team makes for boring hockey.
The Amazing Race is a little frustrating this year.  I’ve never seen such a collection of teams who don’t seem to like each other.  Seriously, apart from Kris and Jon (who seem like a genuinely nice couple), there is no other remaining team (now that the father/daugther team got the boot) worth rooting for.  None of them seem capable of offering positive support, and when they do, it’s only momentarily and self-serving.  And whether or not Johnathan is putting on some of his The Most Obnoxious Asshole Ever character, he is stil the most reprehensible person I’ve ever had the displeasure to view.  I’m fearful that The Amazing Race is losing some of the appeal that had made it the best ‘reality’ show on television.  It’s still the best by far, but it is slipping a bit.
My commercial-break flipping focused more on the football game, and at first it looked like it’d be a great matchup.  OU scored first, SoCal came back and scored right back.  "This is gonna be good", I thought, flipping back to TAR.  Next time I check in it’s 21-7 for USC and they’re about to go up even more, this even before the half.
So, two games I’ve been looking forward to for a while turned out to be no-contest affairs.  Too bad.
The half-time of the football game was noticable only because it featured singers singing live, one of them the infamous Ashlee Simpson.  Yes, the sound was hit and miss, but I so much prefer watching a performance where the artist is actually performing.  Ashlee doesn’t have a great voice and she wasn’t able to carry the bigness of the venue, but I’d rather hear her sing and miss than to watch her sing along as we hear mostly a pre-recorded vocal track.

I watched Hotel Rwanda over the weekend, and for those who don’t know the story, here’s a synopsis (as best as I could follow it):

Rwanda is a country in Africa.  Africa is someplace that must be very hard for Americans to get to.  Apparently, back in the early 1990’s, there were some rebels who may have been followers of Tootsie, the rollerskating girl from Facts of Life.  They were very angry at another group of rebels, who were followers of Dr. Suess, I’m guessing.  They were called the Who-To’s (I assume a shortened nickname of Suess’s Horton Hears A Who-To).  Whatever their problem was, it caused a lot of people to be killed.  The thing at the end of the movie said about a million were killed (good thing this is just a movie!)
Anyways, there’s this guy, played by Don Cheadle (the British guy from Ocean’s 11, but here he doesn’t use his regular British voice but rather puts on some sort of accent, presumably African), who is the hotel manager at the hotel in Rwanda.  He decides to use the hotel as sort of a getaway for the poor people of the country, so he invites all the poor people to come and be guests.  I don’t know if he offers reduced rates or not, but alot of people come to stay.  In the end a bunch of them take a bus to somewhere else.  Maybe America?  Oh, and the guy from that Eddie Murphy movie (the one where he sings Roxanne in the prison) was in it too.  I didn’t no he was Canadian!
Anyways, the movie was pretty good.  Not really alot of shooting and stuff, but still it was okay (don’t you hate it when movies show alot of people with guns but not alot of them shoot them?  I mean, what’s the point?)
(Look for more movie reviews from American Grade 12 High School student Rob MacD in future postings)

But seriously folks…
I did watch Hotel Rwanda.  It’s being hailed as this year’s Saving Private Ryan (a comparison I don’t quite understand, apart from ‘both are serious movies about mass death) and/or Schindler’s List (one whose ‘save them from genocide’ plot I can understand).  I don’t think it lives up to those comparisons, and perhaps my viewing of it was diminshed because those comparisons were in my mind.  I was expecting more scenes of uber-realistic fighting (Saving Private Ryan), and it didn’t deliver.  I don’t blame the movie for that.  I blame my own expectations based on the comparisons the movie has been given.  I also expected it to have the emotional impact of Schindler’s List, but again was disappointed when it failed to live up to that comparison.
Good performances and all (Cheadle was very good) but I found the movie lacking enough gravitas.  I wanted it to slap me in the face more with its depiction of the horrors and atrocities of the slaughter, and really it only gave me snapshots. I never really felt connected to the characters and always felt like I was merely a spectator (Ryan and Schindler’s List somehow pulled me right into the action and heart of their films, making me feel like a participant). 
Perhaps it’s that it lacked a specific villain to root against, someone to personify the hatred and horrors, or that it lacked a specific task to accomplish.  Whatever it was that kept me from "entering" the film (and it could have been my own mood at the time or my ever-growing descensitization to violence), that failing kept this movie from being a great film. 
It’s a good film, one I’d easily recommend, but I don’t (as others do) see it as a great film.

I kind of feel cheated, and a bit guilty because I wasn’t as moved by it as so many others claim to have been.
This movie would have been a fantastic HBO movie.  Isn’t it strange how expectations can alter one’s impression?

or… For Getting Rid Of Bootleggers, Mr. Garrity gets… The Boot

There hasn’t been much that the City of Charlottetown has done lately that’s impressed me or given me hope or confidence in that government or its ability to decide what’s in the best interest of this city.
Kudos, however, must go out to councillor Bruce Garrity and those involved in the effort to get rid of bootlegging.  It’s yet to be seen if their efforts will be a long term success, but it’s certainly had a positive effect in the short term.
It must have been quite daunting a task to go after an illegal activity that has become an institution here on the Island, and I can well imagine the difficulties associated with following through with this plan.  I would assume the mayor would be thankful to the people who have succeeded in eradicating bootlegging.  Apparently, though, the mayor expresses his thanks by removing Mr. Garrity from his position and placing him in what appears to be in a portfolio whose metaphorical office is quite likely in the basement of City Hall, next to the furnace, beside the janitorial room.

So, before your efforts become the forgotten positive in a council that has so few positives, I’d like to say thank you, Mr. Garrity, for your dillignece and hard work.

I happened to catch, a couple of nights ago, a minute or two of ABC’s special report {dramatic music} "Tsunami: Wave of Destruction" {/dramatic music} and am so fortunate that I happened upon it.  Why?  Because of their in-depth coverage of the fate of that Sports Illustrated supermodel who broke some bones in her struggle to survive the disaster.  I am so relieved she is going to be okay.  I’m equally saddened, though, that her photographer boyfriend seems to have perished.  I hope her face is okay.  And her figure.  Let’s not be too sad for her, though.  I’m sure she’ll find another photographer/boyfriend.
Thank you, ABC, for this report.  I look forward to the million or so other reports on the millions of people who have likewise been affected by this devastation.

It’s now a bit of a puzzle to get to the road on which the Carrefour school is situated.  One must now either enter the Escher puzzle that is the Hillsborough development, or turn onto the QEH road and travel it around the shoreline past the hospital, the seniors home and the mental hospital. 
It is much more inconvenient (than turning onto the road [Pioneer Drive] which no longer offers access to the bypass), initially, but may turn out to be fine once we get used to it.  Last night was my first foray onto that road.  We took the west-bound-only off-ramp from the arterial highway (the only remaining access to or from that road at that intersection), onto Pioneer Drive, and as we were off-ramping, we were met by a car illegally travelling the wrong way up that access.  I expect that will become a handy illegal shortcut to the arterial highway unless the police make a concerted effort to stop it.

I wonder if what they’ve ended up with is the best solution.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to increase the volume of traffic flow in and around the hospitals, but that’s the result.  Anything that increases the perception that the Carrefour theatre is more difficult to get to is not a good thing for those of us in the theatre community who are sometimes faced with the quandry of whether the Carrefour can ever be a viable theatre alternative.