Let’s go… Slaho!

So here I was watching something I never thought I’d ever wind up watching… So You Think You Can Dance. Yes, I’ve turned over my man card to the authorities, but in my defense I’m a warm blooded mammal, I must admit I find the women very easy on the eyes (aka hot), which is OK for me to say only because Dania is ogling at the abs on some of these guys (some people would have used a different vowel on the last word… I just think they’re emotional, that’s all). While watching this show Dania suddenly points out that she was taught dance for one year by one of the main choreographers sending people to Vegas and also choreographing in Vegas, Mia Michaels. Apparently she was a teacher at some dance studio in Miami where Dania took classes. It made me start thinking, how I am linked to certain people by so few, well, “links”, for lack of a better word. And it made me think of the whole notion of the Six Degrees of Separation. And that made me wonder how I am possibly linked to certain people.

Now, supposedly the six degrees of separation refers to six steps that each person is from every other person in the world through people they know. Well, according to this I am a mere two steps from Alex Rodriguez (A Rod) since many of my coworkers actually know him… there is an ARod tournament at Columbus which he annually attends, and I have seen him there a number of times. That puts me at three degrees from every Yankee who has played over the last six years with him. Pretty cool. It also puts me three degrees from my all-time favorite baseball player Reggie Jackson, who is a friend of A-Rod’s. Now, I’ve met Reggie, but I don’t think that counts, so I’ll leave it at 3 degrees. I’ll get a ruling on that later from a six degree expert. First I gotta find one of those.. hopefully he is only a couple of degrees away himself.

Probably the most famous Six Degree person is Kevin Bacon. There actually is a game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon where one has to find a link between certain actors and Kevin Bacon through movies they’ve been in. I was wondering if I was six degrees from him myself. Well, I came up with this in but two minutes earlier today so I know I am… maybe I’m even closer but here it goes. I played softball some years back with Danny Pino, he of Cold Case fame (it’s a show on CBS for those who don’t know). I’ve known him since he was in Coral Park High School YEEEEARS ago. Well, Danny was in a movie with Andy Garcia, who is friends with Bill Murray, who was on SNL with John Belushi, who was in Animal House with… KEVIN BACON!! So, we have… 1) Danny, 2) Andy, 3) Bill, 4)John, and 5) Kevin Bacon. I’m only 5 degrees away from Kevin Bacon!! Pretty cool, huh?

So, who else can I come up with… how about politically? I have a friend Alfie who worked with our former Mayor Alex Penelas who knows Bill Clinton, who spoke at Barack Obama’s nomination at the DNC. That puts me only 4 degress from our president. If only I agreed with the guy just a little bit more…

And how about this one… going back to So You Think You Can Dance. I’m not going to use Dania’s link here, because I’m pretty sure this choreographer doesn’t even remember Dania. But I still have a quick link to the show, that I only learned about thanks to facebook and that little sidebar that now appears thanks to that new layout that I can’t stand. It seems a friend of mine, Becky, knows not one, but TWO, of the dancers on SYTYCD. One of them,Brandon, in particular, was her student. My daughter heard me saying she also knew Jeanine, who dances with Becky’s daughter, and asked if Becky had any pictures of her on facebook. (She wanted me to become a “fan” of facebook of both dancers.. I declined, citing the inability to hand over a man card I no longer owned). While looking for a picture of Jeanine, I instead found a picture of Becky with Brandon, just before finding a picture of myself with Becky. I’m but two steps away from this dancer dude, Brandon. Which puts me 3 steps away from judge Nigel, four steps away from producer Simon Fuller, 5 steps away from Simon Cowell, and 6 steps away from anybody who has ever been on American Idol. If I take a slight detour I get something even more intriguing. As I mentioned, I am four steps away from Simon Fuller who produces SYTYCD, as well as American Idol, and also America’s Got Talent. That puts me 5 steps away from David Hasselhoff, a judge on AGT, which leaves me six steps away from yes, you guessed it… NO, not the Baywatch babes! Though I am… but I find this other link MUCH more interesting. I am six steps away from SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS who got to ride on “the Hasselhoff” in his movie. How cool is that? If I follow the right path, I can get to the sponge himself!!

To finish off, I found another pretty interesting link, considering this topic. I have a former student of mine, Andy, who is currently directing movies in Hollywood. Nothing big yet, but maybe he’s on his way. Well, I saw a short film of his where he stars with none other than “Uncle Carl” from the Freash Prince of Bel Air. Of course he was “Uncle Carl” to the “Fresh Prince” Wil Smith, who got his big break on the big screen in a movie called, you guessed it, “Six Degrees of Separation”. So, I am but 3 degrees from Wil Smith! His costar was Stockard Channing, who is also of Grease fame, meaning that I am 5 degrees from the entire cast of Grease (so is my wife because she knows Andy, which if she was easily excitable, she would find this pretty cool… but she’s not. She leaves that sort of excitement to the big nerd in the family… me).

So, who are you linked to, and if you know me, by default you are linking me to them too! I want to know the world! Am I really six degrees from everyone? Heck, I’m but two degrees from people in Nigeria, Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, China, the Canary Islands, and Korea, to name a few countries, so I’m sure that it’s a matter of time before I can link myself to Mopatu (tongue click, cheek click) LucLuc from Zaire, some bushman waiting to be discovered for “The Gods Must Be Crazy Part III”. That would be really cool! After all I’m only 2 degrees of separation from Bono from U2 at this very moment, and he does a lot of work in number of African countries. With a little work, I’ll get to meet him and then I’ll be down to just ONE (no pun intended).

Feel free to cue me into YOUR degrees of separation. Let’s see what we can find out.

When two people get married, tasks need to be separated to make sure that both people pull their weight, especially if both people are working. That is what Dania and I did, especially once the kids came around. We needed to have our chores well defined to make sure that we wouldn’t fall behind and so that we wouldn’t always be waiting for the other person to do certain things. Me, I’m not very organized so I needed this in my life, and Dania was more than happy to oblige. Well, when doling out the chores somehow I wound up with the responsibility of doing the grocery shopping. We take turns sometimes, but for the most part this is Wency’s job. Do the groceries.

In recent months grocery shopping has gotten a little trickier for us. First, food prices started going up. Then, my 22 month old, Andres, started eating more. Then so did Lucas, my nine year old… a lot more in fact. Then with the economy the way it’s been going, money just hasn’t been going as far. So we have decided to make a food budget. We plan all our meals and do our best not to buy more than what we need. We plan the kids’ lunches, our own lunches, afternoon snacks, and dinner for every night. We have in doing so stopped buying a lot of the unnecessary foods that we would buy because it just looked good, or because “Man, this really tastes good”.

We, especially me, have learned to also buy what’s on sale. We’re no longer buying our favorite brand, but whatever brand is offering the better deal. We’ll buy Kraft cheese one week, then switch to Sargento the next. Which cereal is buy one get one free? That’s the one we’re buying. And generic brands have suddenly become tastier too! When we go to Publix, we get a lot of Publix brand foods. One example is the cola. We’re almost exclusively buying Publix Cola instead of Coca Cola (unless people are coming over, because you know, nothing says times are tough more than generic colas!!! We don’t want to give people the wrong impression, now do we, Mr. and Mrs. Jones). Just today I saved $30 on groceries!! All that’s left for us to do is to start clipping coupons, and trust me we’ll be doing it as soon as we can dedicate some time to it!
(more…)

OK, so I joined Facebook about 2 weeks ago. More than anything I was just curious about how many people I’d run into that I hadn’t seen in a long time. As it turns out, there are a lot of people on facebook I know. I’m up to 270 confirmed friends. That doesn’t include those who haven’t accepted my olive leaf inviting them to be my friends, nor does it include those I know whom I’ve chosen to pretend I haven’t noticed are on Facebook. (Bego, I need a grammar check) At first, I figured it would just be cool to see who was out there. But then I started running into people I really had wondered about, and was dying to find out where they were. It turns out that others were doing the same with me. Next thing I know, I’m having long chats with some “friends”, I’m writing on others’ walls, I’m sending messages to a few and I am getting all kinds of invitations to all kinds of events. I have found people from my elementary school, high school, UM, FIU, my high school and parish youth groups, my parish Young Adult Groups, former students, friends of my parents, and parents of my kids friends. Throw in some acquaintances that I’m not sure where I met, but I know that I know, and I have this very eclectic group of people whom I have accumulated as friends. And this doesn’t even include some that haven’t joined facebook yet. I want to know what’s going on in everybody’s lives, and not in a gossipy way. I don’t need to share the info. I genuinely want to know what’s up with all these people whom I’ve shared in some cases one, and in many cases many, many experiences with. And the kicker is that I don’t have time to do so. So I waste away in front of the computer sometimes knowing full well there are other more important things to do. I can imagine that this is how some people feel about drugs. They know they don’t need them, but they just keep coming back to them instead of doing the things they really must be doing.
Fortunately, I know me, and the truth is that this just a phase I must go through. I’ll blog for three months and disappear for a while (though I don’t want to lose THAT habit). I’ll work out for three months and stop for two years (though I REALLY don’t want to lose That Habit), I’ll play minesweeper every day for two months (that I can do without), and I’ll get into Sudoku, Kakuro, or Crossword puzzles in such a way that a day can’t pass by without me finding and completing one. And then it passes. Like gas, I guess. Once it’s gone it’s a relief, but while it’s there I hold onto it so that no one will notice what I am keeping. Am I making sense. Well to me I am!

Anyways, this too will pass, much like AIM did for me. In the meantime I’m going to ride this wave for a bit, and see who I can find. In fact let me check who’s on their now before I hit the showers, (Yes I am stinky from a workout) and then goto bed. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into YOU there

You know people can be really touchy. They don’t like it when people poke fun at them, they don’t like it when someone notices a flaw, and they definitely don’t like to be corrected. I don’t particularly like the second one when it’s ill intentioned, but the other two don’t bother me too much. Which leads me to my observation. For over two and a half years I have had this little category of mine that I call Life Occurrences. The problem is that I had it as Life Occurances. Occurances, for those not paying attention, is not a word, or better said, it’s a misspelled version of Occurrences.

Two and a half years. TWO AND A HALF YEARS! Nobody told me it was misspelled! Now, I have a few clues as to why. One is that as a writer I may have chosen to write it that way and my readers just figured it was a “creative” thing on my part. Another possibility, and probably closer to the truth, is probably related to the aforementioned fact. People are touchy. Therefore everybody assumed that I too am touchy. Thanks for the sentiment. Truth is that I’m one of those people who would have greatly appreciated being told so that I wouldn’t appear like some illiterate buffoon.

When I first started blogging I wasn’t using spell check, maybe because I was a four time spelling bee champ in my school and didn’t need it. Or MAYBE because I never bothered to find out that I could spell check my blogs. DUH!! Now I figured out how to use it and realized my serious oversight. I CAN’T SPELL MY OWN TITLES AND CATEGORIES. Well, thank God for spell check.
(more…)

OK, so last night I said I’d throw in an L.O. today. It didn’t happen. Get over it. I have but 2 days left in summer school and I chose to pay attention to what my boys needed to do to pass before Friday came around. Too many boys with diplomas at stake expecting me to hand over a passing grade just because they went to class for three weeks. They never thought they actually had to EARN their grade. I mean they paid their dues, right? Well, they got the wrong teacher. Someone forgot to tell me that learning wasn’t important in summer school and I decided to… “GASP”… TEACH. Now these poor souls need to complete more work than they’ve done over the last year and turn it in in the next two days. Good luck to them. Let’s see how badly they really want it!!! Hey, I just realized something. This just became a Life Occurrence. Go figure! Well, now that I’ve written it let me let it go and go on to another topic. Hold on a second, I’m transferring to another post… (actually you’ve probably already read it because they appear here in reverse chronological order… ANOTHER OBSERVATION OF MINE! How exciting…

I know, I know. It’s been a while. Look, people being a father of 4 ain’t easy. That’s right, FOUR! And one of them is a six month old, whom I have to give the midnight feeding to in a matter of minutes, so I gotta write this F A S T. So, I’ve decided to start observing again. You knew that it was only a matter of time. Well, the time has come, and so has this very keen observation.
Picture this. You drive to the supermarket. You get out of your car. You walk all the way into the store, go get a cart, and to your surprise, YOU DON’T FIND ANY. You know it has happened to you. It’s happened to all of us. But, wait let’s rewind, and revisit your arrival to the supermarket. You drive into the parking lot, you prepare to park. You narrowly avoid hitting a shopping cart that someone left right by your parking space as you park. You get out of the car. You pass a poor soul who has been asked to pick up ALL the shopping carts left in the parking lot. He currently has amassed a row of about 37 carts all attached and is preparing to maneuver them towards the store. You pass but 5 feet from the guy, and feel soooooo sorry for him that he has such a menial job. As you continue to walk towards the entrance you see someone leaving an empty cart behind another car and you think how pissed you’d be if someone would leave a cart behind YOUR car. You pass by the handicap parking spot and you notice that the poor person who parked there can’t get out of her car because people have left a collection of carts adjacent to that spot. “How insensitive!”, you think. You take another 20 steps and you’re at the door. You walk inside and you realize there are no carts inside the market. Where are the carts? I can’t believe that I walked all the way over here to find no carts. Now, I have to go looking for one!
HELLO!!!!
Apparently people have issues with taking carts found in the parking lot. I continually see people walking by cart after cart in the parking lot only to find a cartless store, and their reactions are usually priceless. What are the carts outside not good enough. Do they have like extra cooties? Do they think that the carts inside have been disinfected or something? Maybe it’s just too much effort to push an empty cart ON WHEELS all the way into the store. I’m sorry it just makes no sense to me.
Sometimes I see people get all upset because they do find a cart inside and it’s broken! The wheels don’t all touch the floor, or they get stuck as you push the cart. Then the sighing and the egg frying begins. You know, maybe those carts were outside because they were good enough to be used. What do you think, just maybe?
I for one always grab the first cart I can find after getting out of my car. I’ve noticed people staring at me though as if I’ve committed some great crime, or as if I’ve done something taboo. “Look at that poor guy. He doesn’t understand… we don’t do things that way here. Tssk, tssk.” Hey, maybe just feel that they are denying that poor kid who’s collecting carts an opportunity to do his job. “Dude, put the cart back, you want that poor, ugly and acne-scarred kid, to get fired? Isn’t his life hell enough already?”
The reality is that I find it ridiculous that people can’t just do what obviously makes sense. But, then again, I believe that’s not in our nature as humans. I’ll save it for my next Life Occurrence to get into what I mean by that. Unfortunately now I gotta go feed my 6 month old. I’m going to go now to the fridge and take out the formula so that I can prepare his bottle. Of course if I find a bottle and some formula on the way to the fridge, I’m just gonna grab it and use that! I wouldn’t want to get to the fridge and find that all the formula was gone and that I passed by an available one, now would I!

Today I was attending a party for a child of a friend of mine. Actually that child’s father was responsible for me becoming the writer/blogger that I’ve become. Please do not hate this child. It was not his fault. Hate his father. I’m KIDDING!!! I hate him enough for all of us already. AGAIN I”M KIDDING!!!!! The truth is that i am very fortunate to have been inspired to write by Rob, and it has opened up my mind to all sorts of creative possibilities, the first of which is what you are reading… the Life Occurrance. Remarkably NONE of this is what I’ve come in here to write about. No, this is one GIANT tangent, but what would you expect out of a Math teacher specializing in Trigonometry. Exactly, TANGENTS!
So, yes I have a point to this whole entry. I was about to leave the house this morning to attend this party with my wife and three kids in tow, when my wife reminded me to grab the presents. I, as a good husband, obeyed immediately so as to collect the necessary brownie points for future “fun” (wink, wink). In doing so, I made one grave mistake. I did not bring them in proper gift giving mode. (So much for the brownie points… I guess I’ll be blogging tonight… yep you are all a witness to this) Apparently somewhere down the line over the last few years someone created a certain protocol for giving gifts. They must be either wrapped, or must be given in a colorful bag… stuffed with tissue paper.
That is where the problem was. I brought the bag. I failed to bring … TUN tun TUN!!!… the tissue.
TISSUE.
Is it really necessary? I mean, isn’t it sufficient that it was gently placed in a colorful bag? I’ve never really understood the actual need for wrapping presents. Sure, I can appreciate that it’s fun for kids to just absolutely RIP and TEAR this paper to shreds. It must be thrilling for parents to see their kids expending their energy doing this in hopes that they have even the slightest bit less energy later. Yeah, and I guess that the surprise in their face is cool too. I never understood when people didn’t bring a present with the argument… “I couldn’t bring the present because I didn’t have time to wrap it.” Even more perplexing was when the answer to this was, “Of course, I understand.” You do? I don’t! To me it was a silly reason to deprive the poor kid out of getting his birthday gift. Then again, I guess it was a good excuse when someone forgot to buy a present. Both parties probably understood this, so it was just a nicer way of saying that the present was not bought.
But I thought we were off the hook when the bags began being used as an alternative… until I found out that the tissue was a prerequisite. Tissue! The same stuff you wipe your nose with when you have a cold. That’s what we’re putting in the bags. I don’t get it. Is this supposed to hide the present to simulate the surprised look or something? Maybe, but in my book, the tissue is just a waste of money and trees. Imagine a poor family of trees being informed that their young sapling was used simply to stuff a bag for 4 minutes, simply to be discarded without even the joy of being ripped to shreds for enjoyment, or the slight expenditure of energy. “He had so much potential… how could it end this way?” they’d be crying as they watered themselves and their seedlings in the hopes of creating a tree with a better purpose.
Tissue! Tissue is made for boogies, isn’t it?!? Why put it with presents? I hope that no one has to deal with the outside chance that a recycled tissue doesn’t get recycled properly resulting in a child pulling out a small surprise with his present. “Look mom a space alien action figure!! And it brought it’s own goo!! COOL!” Ewwwwwww!
Well, it turns out we had no tissue paper for the poor child’s gift. Should have I gone to the bathroom and pulled out some bathroom tissue? I mean it’s still tissue, and we have some lovely prints at home. And they are extra fluffy and soft and lemony fresh. Wouldn’t that do? Well, obviously it didn’t. And the mere suggestion, (and the supposedly implied sarcasm, which didn’t come across as sincere, even though I SWEAR that was my intent) wound up earning me NEGATIVE brownie points (I guess I’ll be blogging again tomorrow… look for me!)
So, I guess that the tissue is important in the end, though I still don’t understand why. And the more colorful the tissue, apparently the better, or so I’ve been told. The truth is that I’m glad I am not very sensitive. If so, i may have had to cry my lonely self to sleep tonight. That would have really stunk though, because I couldn’t have wiped my eyes or nose should that have happened. No tissue.
Tomorrow I am going to go buy tissue. Maybe I could negate the negative brownie points. Hey it’s worth a shot, right?
And by the way, Rob, I’ll be sending you the tissue to complete the package so you won’t feel I cheated your son. I don’t want to come across as insensitive or a slacker you know.
But for now, I will just silently enter the night, with another LO under my belt, sans the tissue paper. TTFN

You know, I find it extremely interesting how we as humans work.  We are siocial creatures by nature, but we seem to have such a difficult time socializing, and sometimes we don’t even realize it.

Take for instance my latest observation of life.  The use of technology like the iPod, or the cell phone, or text messaging will be my focus.  I am currently in the midst of another wonderful year teaching summer school.  the boys seem social enough in class.  They’ll do anything to not have to do any work (hence the reason they are in summer school), including, GOD FORBID, speak with each other!  Then the bell rings for their break and they go outside and go straight for their iPods.  They will sit in a group of five or six and they will be staring at each other while each is sitting there just listening to their iPods.  These guys must all be a bunch of bores.  You’d figure they’d be talking to each other otherwise, right?  I mean, that would make sense under normal circumstances, at least in my opinion, if that matters to anybody. 

Well, it does not matter to them, because the mere mention of them talking to each other results in blank stares as if I am speaking to them about the physics of air travel.  Their stare to me translates to, “Speak to each other?  Is that like allowed?  People actually do that?”  WOW!

Then, if they decide to actually say something to another person, they can’t remove the earpieces and ask the other to do the same.  No, they do the totally logical thing.  they yell in the direction of the other person, and if the latter doen’t understand, they’ll do hand signals to clarify their message.  Makes lots of sense right?  I was thinking that maybe we should just start teaching sign language in schools.  No really, hear me out.  then when these guys need to communicate they won’t have to worry about yelling or random hand movements… they could simply sign to each other and they’d be able to relay their messages.  in fact, this would teach our young boys to multitask!  Listen to musci and communicate at the same time!!  What a concept.  I’m sure they’d go for it.  Hey how about, we just let the boys bring the iPods to class, then we can teach them in sign language while they can eacgh listen to their own favorite music!  Maybe then they’ll be excited about coming to school right?

Another thing that copnfounds me uis the whole text messaging thing.  A kid can’t type a paper for himself, but man can they text.  They can send upwards of 100 texts a day!  Hey wouldn’t it just be easier for them to pick up the phone and call the other person and tell them whatever they’d like to tell them.  I mean it would save time over texting the same person 6 times to make sure they understood them properly, wouldn’t it?

OH YEAH, I forgot, they can’t call their friends.  Their iPod headphones are already there! And there is no way they can think clearly and relay a proper message if they are not listening to the proper music, right?  So text messaging is the only way, I guess.  Well, I’m glad that this has all been clari…

Oops, hold on, batteries are low. I gotta recahrge my iPod battery.

OK reconnected!  Now i can finish this entry.  Where was I?  Oh yeah.  I’m glad that this has all been clarified for me so that I can understand the intelligence that my summer school boys obviously have that I never noticed.  I only wish I can multitask like they obviously can.  How stupid of me to think they were actually lazy!  SHEEESH!

Now, as soon as my iPod is recharged i can start thinking again so that i can come up with another LO.  So where did I put that thing, anyway?

One life occurrance was just not enough. It was obvious from the first one I wrote that more would follow, regardless of popularity, or critical acclaim. Alas that cannot be said for movies. It seems that nowadays if a movie makes a big cut in the box office, there will be more to follow. So what’s the big dea, right? Isn’t that what the public wants? Apparently so, but to me it seems that it dilutes the market. Hollywood pictures have been reduced from , “What do you think would be a great movie to see?” to “What movie can we make that will guarantee us a lot of money?!?”
I guess we can only blame ourselves for this. It seems we dish out more money to see a rehash of a good movie than to go and see the original movie itself. Word of mouth is not sufficient in some cases. We need to see the final product on the small screen ourselves, then kick ourselves in the rear end for missing it, and THEN we pay full price for a movie that is not nearly as good, and we kick ourselves again for NOT waiting to see that one on video!
The truth is that early on, (at least based on what I’ve seen) most sequels were horror movie sequels. Take a scary character and continue to scare moviegoers with this guy over and over and over again: guys like Jason, and Freddy, and Michael Myers, who among them have almost 30 movies to their credit (and more on the way with another Halloween on the horizon!). But that has changed. It now seems that if a movie hits it big, it is almost guaranteed a sequel. Some of the most ridiculous movies have wound up with sequels thanks to their initial success. The most ridiculous in the bunch? In my mind, that would go to “Weekend at Bernie’s 2″. Talk about dragging an old joke until it’s dead! (Pun definitely intended) But nowadays, every big movie gets the treatment, with few exceptions.
Looking at the top 10 grossing movies made, some are sequels, some have spawned sequels, and few did neither. Let me list them for you:

TITANIC $600 million
STAR WARS $460 million
SHREK 2 $445 million
E.T. $435
STAR WARS: EPISODE 1 $431 million
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 2 $423 million
SPIDERMAN $404 million
STAR WARS: EPISODE 3 $380 million
LORD OF THE RINGS 3 $377 million
SPIDERMAN 2 $373 million

In the bunch there are 3 Star Wars movies, and 2 Spiderman movies. Shrek, Pirates and Lord are all sequels. That only leaves Titanic and E.T. as not having spawned sequels. Well, it’s easy to see how to make an E.T. sequel, but the statute of limitations seems to have run out on that right? I mean it’s been 25 years! Yet, E.T was re-released with new footage a few years back, and with updated special effects. I guess if a sequel was not in order, how about a “better-looking” version of the original. (Star Wars did that too… THEN came out with three more!!!) Which leaves us with Titanic. If you think about it, it would be kind of difficult to pull of a sequel there, huh? I’m sure James Cameron was kicking himself for that one! BUT WAIT! Six years after Titanic Cameron released a movie, “Ghosts of the Abyss” about the wreckage of the Titanic itself. Not even HE could leave well enough alone!

Now I’m not here to completely knock this whole sequel thing. Let’s face it, I’m the first one to line up to see these very sequels… I’ve seen the last 3 Star Wars and last 2 Spiderman movies at their midnight openings… but I must say, I think it is important to get some new stories out there. Instead of Mission Impossible 4, or Lethal Weapon 5, or Naked Gun 45rpm, let’s get some more fresh ideas out there. It seems every year there is only one (at most two) audience gripping movie a year. And most of the time that movies animated!! Again, I’m the first to line up to the animated movies, but how about some fresh live action stuff?

Chances are that the three top grossing movies this year will be sequels to 3 of the top 7 movies of all time… Spiderman 3 (which in 3 weeks is already the 21st highest grossing movie of all time with $305 million), Shrek 3 (which after 10 days was already over $215 million and in the top 60 all time) and Pirates 3 which in 5 days has aleady grossed over $150 million dollars! The other big movies this summer? ANOTHER Fantastic 4 movie, ANOTHER Ocean’s 11 sequel, a sequel to Bruce Almighty, ANOTHER Harry Potter, Die Hard, Rush Hour, Bourne movie, and Hostel. Oh yeah and for the thrid year in a row: a penguin movie… even ideas are rehashed! Possible blockbusters that are not sequels? Ratatouille, PIXAR’s latest, The Simpsons, Transformers, and Underdog… TWO animated movies, and TWO based on animated series! Does everybody see a pattern?

I understand why people would go see so many sequels. After all when you get to grow to love a character, you enjoy watching what happens to him or her. You feel you know the person and want to find out more about the person. It is why Star Wars was such a successful franchise. And Spiderman, and Pirates, and Lord of the Rings. Great characters! But sometimes we get carried away. Austin Powers overstayed his welcome… smae jokes over and over. And by the third Matrix, I was ready to see Neo die, really. And if they make another movie about Hannibal Lecter, I think I’ll scream! All three of these have run their course, but you never know. My favorite movie of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, guess what? After almost 20 years, someone decided that number 4 would be a good idea. You know I’m going to go see it… I can’t NOT go. But everyone knows the driving force behind making that movie… the fact that the other three made $200 million during a time that only Star Wars, ET and Jaws had made that much money.

Last year, we were fortnuate enough to get A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM. It was a fresh idea that people embraced and went to go see. It was not a sequel, it was not an animated movie. I didn’t think it was great, but it was a great premise and people went to see it. We need to get more of these out there to get people interested in NEW again. The PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS was also a nice surprise. The other big original was THE DAVINCI CODE. Of the three only Davinci was expected to be that big thanks to the story so many had read. We need to find more like that to open our appetites to new fare as opposed to retellings of the same stories, to take away our fear of the unknown so that we won’t continue to revisit the same old thing over and over and over again.

In case you are wondering, last year’s top 10
PIRATES 2
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
CARS
X-MEN 3
DAVICI CODE
SUPERMAN RETURNS
HAPPY FEET
ICE AGE 2
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
CASINO ROYALE

TOTALS: 5 sequels, 3 animated (1 animated sequel!). I will say that Casino Royale being the umpteenth in the Bond class stands alone in that each Bond movie could stand alone. Youy can change Bond’s name to somethingelse in each movie and you’s have 20 free standing movies. It’s the name that brings everyone back, though. And I guess that’s my point of this whole thing.

Let’s bring creativity back to the movies! I think I’m going to go out and make my own movie! And after I do, I’ll go and write about it. And hopefully you’ll read it, because you are accustomed to reading my articles, and you care what I have to think! I give you permission to hold on to my mini-sequels. No really, come back and read them. OH, I hope I didn’t make my point TOO well.

Until the next L.O. (I hope)

Suspense really kills me.  It is for this reason that i don’t like slow moving movies.  I need something to be going on.  The suspense is Ok as long as I have time to think about what’s going to happen, and then I get to see a solution by the time I see the result.  What I can’t stand is a longstanding cliffhanger.  I was watching that new show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” and decided never to watch it again because they just take too long to get to the punchline.  No one should have to wait five minutes to see if a moron can tell how many sides a trapezoid has. (It has four, by the way)  If he doesn’t know, kick his rear end out of the show and bring in the next guy.  I’ll talk more about this inane show in another rant. My point is having to wait for a result unnecessarily kills me.

So this brings me to “HEROES”, the new show on NBC about normal people with extraordinary powers.  Right around December I got into this show.  It is actually the only show that I find myself anticipating on a weekly basis.  I haven’t looked forward to seeing the next episode of a show like this since I can remember, maybe ever.  Mondays have always sucked for me, but I finally found a reason to get through it and it was to plop down in front of the couch and see what was going to happen next.  The only problem with the show… every episode is “to be continued…”.  Every week the suspense kills me.  What is going to happen next?  I have to wait a whole week to find out.  Ughhh!

And then came the last episode.  A lot happened in a small amount of time.  It left everything up in the air.  Now I have no idea where this thing is going.  Then when the show ended, an announcement came out… “Heroes will return April 23rd.”  APRIL 23rd?  That’s SEVEN WEEKS from now!  I have to wait 7 WEEKS to just to figure out what’s going on?  THEY”RE KILLING ME!  Now what am I going to do on Monday nights?  Forget that.  I can manage.  How will I live with the frickin’ suspense?  I can’t stand it!  Now I know why people don’t watch shows now, and wait to buy the season on DVD.  It kills the suspense.  They say that patience is a virtue.  Well, right now I’m not feeling very virtuous.  I’m actually very tense.  And I don’t like it. 

It’s like when someone tells you, “Hey, I gotta tell you something.”  And then they say, “You know what?  Forget about it.”  WHAT?  I don’t think so.  You were going to tell me something.  Now you’re NOT going to tell me? No, no, no.  Now I have to know.  I will not be able to sleep just wondering about the information I was denied.  Lie if you have to, but kill the suspense.  If you didn’t want me to know, you should have never brought it up.

So, now here I am.  I’m just going to have to live with myself and my thoughts.  My ideas about what could happen in the show are closed.  Now I just have to wait for the show to start up again to see if my guesses were right.  I’ll have to wait seven weeks.  SEVEN LONG WEEKS.  Uggh!