So, it turns out I was completely wrong about Limitless…

So, I had plenty of time to kill last night while being at home.  I went thru my Netflix queue and found that I had saved Limitless sometime in the last week.  I watched it.  I didn’t expect any of what I saw.  Sure, Bradley Cooper takes a pill and begins to earn money better and all of his dreams come true.  But the way the story and screenwriting was crafted, made it seem more like a futuristic version of Less Than Zero or any other drug addiction story that was fast paced and had a touch of confusion to it, just to keep the viewer at the edge of the seat.  The dialogue wasn’t the best, but the scenes and cinematography were a lot better than what I expected.  Going from one end of town to the next in a series of shots that look like you are traveling through a tunnel was really cool.  I ranked it 4 out of 5 stars on Netflix.  The main part that kind of hooked me in was the struggle to find more of the drugs and the the final scene of the movie which I will not spoil for you.  One thing that I first questioned was whether or not it was really Bradley Cooper’s voice that does the voiceover in the movie.  It doesn’t sound like any other character of his, which made me wonder if it was going to be one of those movies starring one person but then having a different actor do a voiceover.  My next review will be of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which as I’m watching it, is already terrible.

How many hours would it take to catch up on everything that is on TV?

Let me explain this: I don’t have cable.  I have Hulu and Netflix.  That’s all how I get my entertainment from television shows that everyone (except me) talks about.  Now, Hulu doesn’t always have the shows on my queue the next day after the show airs.  Here is a list of shows I’ve kept tabs on in the past year:

Family Guy, Cleveland Show, New Girl, Archer, Workaholics, Jon Benjamin Has a Van, Community, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Bob’s Burgers, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Whitney, Beavis and Butthead, Walking Dead, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, Louie, Portlandia, The Event, Up All Night, Wilfred, Game of Thrones, South Park, Saturday Night Live, Kitchen Nightmares, White Collar, Burn Notice, Tosh.0, 30 Rock, The Booth at the End (Hulu series), and Whites (another Hulu series). 

I think that’s all of them.  I did catch a couple episodes of 2 Broke Girls, but I didn’t really care about it as much as any of the other shows listed.  But think of all the other shows that I didn’t list.  I don’t watch just about any reality show except for Jersey Shore and I didn’t even watch this season. 

If you figure that Sunday nights consist of Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Cleveland, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead on a given Sunday night: that’s roughly 4 hours of television.  If I were to try to watch a weeks worth of television, I don’t think I would make it through a week unless I actually planned to sit down and track all of this.  But let’s try to figure this out.

Sunday: Pending Football season I would need to watch roughly 4 hours of television.  If I was watching during football season, it would amount to about 12 hours or so.  12 hours being 4.5 original TV hours for Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, and Cleveland and about 8 hours of TD’s, INT’s, and Ed Hochily triceps.  Game of Thrones might also be in there if I continue to watch although it hasn’t been that successful.

Monday: Mondays consist of Monday Night Football (if I had cable) and just about nothing else.  Very boring here.  I imagine if I were to take a future night class I should schedule it for this night, seeing that missing Monday Night Football isn’t a bad thing, but a great thing.  I can’t think of the last MNF game I cared about. 

Tuesday: New Girl, Jon Benjamin Has a Van, White Collar.  2 hours.  I like these shows mainly because they are so far apart from one another.  The quirky comedy, the clip show that bends the rules of comedy, and the serious crime show that keeps me interested in men’s fashion and artwork.  I mean it, White Collar might be the show with the best dressed people on it.  Plus Tiffani Amber Theissen is on the show.  And has a major role in this upcoming season.

Wednesday: Up All Night, The Booth At The End, Whites, South Park, Tosh.0, Workaholics.  3 solid hours.  This sounds like a riveting night.  Comedy, Serious, Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Comedy.  The Booth at the End is a really low budget serious film about a man who sits at a booth at the end of a diner restaurant who can give people whatever they want as long as they do something in return.  Kind of like making a deal with the devil.  It’s really something that isn’t found that often anymore in cable, mainly because it’s setting is just one section of a restaurant and the actor doesn’t have to move for 8 hours. 

Thursday: Community, Whitney(moving to Wednesdays), Parks and Rec, The Office, Archer, The League, Louie, Beavis and Butthead, Burn Notice, Wilfred, Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  6 hours of viewing.  Quite possibly the busiest night of the week.  Every good comedy show is on this night.  Mostly on FX and NBC.  Because that is where comedy lives now.  Burn Notice is a show that is more like a Miami Vice kind of thing, but with a Magnum P.I. twist.  A ‘burned’ spy who is a hired gun to help put away bad guys and find out who burned him and help get his girlfriend back with him and his life back to normal. 

Friday: Portlandia, Kitchen Nightmares.  Hour and a half.  Both shows are just great.  Sketch comedy and reality-ish TV where you know what is going to happen in a given week.  This TV line up screams I am hip and love good television as much as I like a delicious dish right before it.  If I were a hipster chick, I would only be watching these two shows in a given week.  Mainly because I would love Portland, be stuck painting something to a Smiths album, and only drink coffee that costs $5 and took 24 minutes to make.  I think I just found a new idea for another blog. 

Saturday: SNL and maybe Key and Peele if it ends up being a good show.  2 hours.  Saturday nights aren’t a very good TV night.  Mainly because they are just consisting of college football, hockey, basketball, and SNL.  Pretty much anything you can watch at a bar is shown on a Saturday night.  Which is why most people go out and drink on this night.  Or just stay in a catch up on their weeks worth of television.

So that’s 13.5 hours of television of just scheduled television that I consume basically in a week.  Not including any sports, news, weather, or anything else.  Just the shows that I have loved over the last year.  I haven’t added in that I watch sports, which for some ungodly reason have decided to come close to 4 hours long for a single event.  How can anyone even sit for 4 hours and enjoy something?  Especially when someone like Josh Beckett has control of the time.

I don’t even know if I can sustain the on-coming new shows that are going to appear this Spring.  Who knows if I will even have time to blog about them.  Not because I blog so much, but because when I blog I try to get every thought I have on something out at once.

This number doesn’t even count the fact that I don’t watch a single CBS show or ABC show that just so happen to be very popular right now.  Modern Family may be the most popular show right now, but I could really care because all the talent is on NBC, AMC, and FX.  Prove me wrong. 

One more reason to hate Ed Rendell and the City of Philadelphia…

I recently went thru my Netflix queue tonight and picked out a documentary that I have not seen or heard anything about: The Art of the Steal.  I had no idea who it involved or who it was made by.  I only knew that it was a catchy art film about a collection of art that was involved in the press.  After seeing it, I was shocked and appalled that something like this flies under the radar of national attention.  Now I don’t want to draw anyone away from seeing this documentary, mainly because it involves an art collector by the name of Albert C. Barnes, who had more post-impressionistic art than the Louvre, among other priceless pieces, and his collection is the more impressive collection in the world.  It was opened to students and people who were open to the idea of going to an art gallery to learn about the history and essence of these pieces of work.  It wasn’t a museum and wasn’t something that was generating money for a profit of a corporation. 

Now here’s where the story begins.  Barnes drafted a trust that would protect his assets and keep the art where it was: AWAY FROM THE CITY.  Governor Ed Rendell and many more politicians try to move in and take away the art from the city of Merion (5 miles from Philadelphia, by the way) and do it in a way that would make you never think. 

As a fan of Art in almost every form, this is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person’s legacy.  One creates a trust to protect the future of their assets, not to have them squandered by politicians who control zoning boards and pocket trustees of foundations.  After seeing the end of the documentary, I would urge any person who owns or collects priceless pieces of artwork to have them securely entrusted to a child or grandchild.  That was Barnes’ only mistake.  Not having a future to defend his priceless collection.

Most important part of a party is…

When I think about college and all the good times I had with friends at their off-campus houses and wild raging parties at some other university, there would always be this moment when you could tell this party is either going all night or is going to end really quickly and end badly.  I remember times when people would leave about 20 minutes too late and things would get real salty.  Missing one cab or leaving behind one other person would end up with someone taking a long walk in the cold and passing out somewhere unwanted, like a bush or the side of the road. 

Partying too long can also kill the mood when everyone is just about to pass out and someone decides to rage on like it’s 8 hours earlier than it really is.  Nothing makes a situation more awkward like one dude or chick raging to whatever is playing on the iPod while there is either no one around them or everyone is around them, but they are passed out.  It’s never both of those, it’s usually just one of those kinds of situations.  There is no timetable for when things could go from high speed fun to downshifting and passing out while everyone is feeling like death. 

In the last year, I think there have been at least 5 different examples of someone staying too long at one position in their life where everything went badly for them.  You always hear about people who work at a job for 35 years only to be laid off within the week of them telling you that.  35 years.  Didn’t think at any point that you overstayed your welcome?  Not one point where you thought, ‘hey, I think this is the high point of my career, I should plan my exit strategy so I don’t end up like <insert culturally acceptable leader who overstayed his welcome and ruined his legacy>.  I don’t want to end up like that guy.  He sucked”.  People who are just graduating college and entering the workforce will not only face the irritation of someone overstaying their welcome but it will echo in their future as well.  If a college grad doesn’t have a job within a certain amount of time after their graduation, they are doomed to lose thousands in income and expected thousands in retirement money. 

Billy Hunter and David Stern overstayed their welcome and almost ruined an entire season of the NBA because they loved listening to their own ideas.  Stern’s even ruining this Chris Paul trade event that was agreed upon, but it seems that owners don’t even know their own rules that they set in place.  Joe Paterno should have left college football coaching and since this Sandusky issue blew up over the media, Paterno as well as Penn State are doomed for as long as we know.  Penn State has their Library named after Paterno.  The city that the college plays, in becomes the largest city population wise in the state of Pennsylvania during their football games.  Peachy Paterno at the Penn State Creamery, from what I believe is now just called “Peach” and the Sandusky Blitz is gone forever.  Terry Francona and Theo Epstein got run out of town because Boston needed a scapegoat and there was no logical reason that a team that great could lose 1/3 of its games in the final month of the season and still make the playoffs.  Theo should have left right after he won the 2nd World Series.  I’m sure everyone in Boston would’ve understood if he said he was moving onto bigger and better things.  

Brett Favre?  Couldn’t say goodbye.  Didn’t know when to hang ‘em up.  John Elway?  Knew exactly when to leave.  This rule echoes in sports.  Legacies can be ruined.  Your signed baseball cards can be turned worthless with one bad piece of news.  Staying around for that last year to try to win a championship, but end up tanking down the stretch?  Staying those extra 3 hours at the strip club seem worthwhile for a professional footballer?  Doesn’t anyone know that nothing good ever happens at 3am?(unless you’re getting lucky I suppose)

Leaving the party(in life) is just one of those things that you have to time just perfectly.  Leaving at the peak might not be the best course of action, but usually the best time to leave is when at least two or more people can admit that the current situation has peaked and that nothing can really top this.  I’ve experienced this in Vegas.

Speaking of which, that story’s for another time.  Meaning: I know when to end this blog post.

The Death of the Post Office: Paying for Postage and Congressional Free Riders

So, a couple days ago the United States Mail Service announced that they will be cutting their overnight delivery for packages since the costs are getting too high.  What this does for Netflix and Gamefly services is ridiculous.  Paying bills can be done online and should be done online.  DVD’s though, are a different animal.  In other country’s like Japan, the postal service is privatized.  What’s weird about this story is that mail and the mailing of things is mentioned in the Constitution.  Meaning, that if the country is going to try and fix this problem of closing post offices and less mail being delivered, it will literally take an act of Congress.  Congressman are allowed to have franking privileges for the U.S. Postal Service.  In economics, we would call this a free-ridership.  A certain group of people pay for one service while another group of citizens use that service at no charge. 

Now, the video said that he expects to lose around 50% of his business.  Now if Congress continues to mail me flyer after flyer regarding the campaign issues and smear campaigns and “vote yes on whatever” while not paying for something like stamps and postage that we all pay for, there has to be some changes.  Congress may have thought this would be a good idea 200 years ago since they didn’t want to be held back like they were during King James’ reign.  However, we live in different times and modern countries have allowed for privatizing of public goods to decrease the amount of dead weight loss on a publics budget.  I had asked my mother how her Congressman gets in contact with her and it’s mostly through e-mail, which is free. 

The part about this that is so absurd is that if I asked someone to take a letter across the country for me and get it there in a couple of days, would you pay the less than a dollar?  No.  Wouldn’t they want to get at least whatever it took in gasoline for the travel?  Exactly.  The mail service in this country has become unsustainable and must be either paid for in full, meaning higher prices and less service, OR we privatize it and let someone else take charge of the operation.  How that would be done is very hard to comprehend.  We would either have to have a monopoly or a duopoly operate while knowing everyone’s mailing address.  This would also affect the process of getting a license and changing addresses.

This would also make one wonder if companies would charge one for concealing or making your address private to certain entities.  Quite a future we would have to plan ahead for, don’t you think? 

One, there would have to a couple of companies competing for your address or just claiming your address for them as if they were marking their land in a game of Risk.  They would then have to set up mailboxes and stations at mini-malls and corners where ever seemed suitable.  Then comes the time when you receive mail from either one or both companies that deliver this mail.  They charge for postage and all that jazz, but then comes the time when they must keep your information from security breaches and hackers. 

Would such a world exist?  Would Congress allow for it to exist?  Has our economy come to the point where we need to privatize more and more of our public goods so that we can employ more people? 

I personally think it’s a good idea, because if this Congress doesn’t see that there are forces in this universe that not only work faster than them but more efficiently and are able to keep the ship afloat, then I think it’s a road that we should start to explore.

I’ve seen just about every James Bond movie and here’s how I rate them…

So, I’ve spent the last several days and hours on Netflix watching Bond movies that I queued a while ago that Netflix decided to remove for the month of November for some reason.  I’ve seen just about every Bond movie or all I could stand of most of the Bond movies (Octopussy is just as bad as it sounds).  So I thought I would blog about them and how I would rank them.  I will first explain that there is a little hidden Bond history that needs to be shown.  The “Bond” film Never Say Never Again, featuring Sean Connery and Kim Basinger isn’t an actual Bond film.  It was made by Paramount and if anyone who has ever seen a Bond film, knows that MGM is the production company that makes Bond films.  It came out the same year as Octopussy (like I said, I don’t think anyone knew what the hell was going on) and Connery probably thought he still had something in him (definitely wanted another paycheck). 

So, without further or do, let’s begin this list.  I’ll list them off and take note to the key things that make these Bond films distinct besides the car chases, shaken martinis, gorgeous women who love to sit around the baccarat table looking to screw anything with a pulse.  Riveting, I know.  Let’s start:

1. Dr. No (1962)

James Bond’s first ever movie!  He’s on assignment to team up with the CIA’s Felix Leiter (a repeating character who not only changes people but also ethnicities) and solve the mystery of some Jamaican island that has what the natives call “Fire Breathing Dragons!”, (SPOILER ALERT: it’s a tank with a flame thrower on it) .  Aside from this stunning image of Ursula Andress, the only thing else that is note worthing here is the ridiculous suit that the villain, Dr. No, is wearing in the nuclear chamber.  The scenes are nice, being pretty much set in Jamaice and all of the future pieces of the 007 world are introduced: M, Money Penny, Q, and SPECTRE.  Not the best, but it’s a nice start.  One thing I remember about this and most of the Connery/Moore Bond movies are the fight scenes where the sound mixers just decided to use the basic sound of guys punching and running all over each other.  Plus there is this one scene that made no sense at all: something that had to do with getting hijacked from a car.

2. From Russia With Love (1963)

This movie is easily recognized as “the one that takes place primarily on a train with a blonde guy and blonde girl”.  The blonde jacked Russian guy (Donald Grant) and this lovable Kremlin-esque face above (Rosa Klebb) work for SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), which is pretty much the best idea that no one every really spun off from in any major film genre.  I mean, the Justice League has the Legion of Doom, and James Bond has SPECTRE.  It guarantees a slew of future movies.  Anyways, a beautiful Russian blonde (like this storyline won’t repeat ever) is trying to lure Bond into a trap while in the hunt for a Russian decoding machine.  This film pretty much makes Bond what it was for the rest of the 60’s and 70’s.  The main bad guy behind everything is a deep voiced man petting a cat with numbers for names of people, Bond goes on a boat race and blows up some oil barrels, and also blows up a helicopter while escaping from it using what might as well be a BB gun.  Well, played James.  I

3. Goldfinger (1964)

The third film, Goldfinger, is by far the most popular Bond film, probably of all time.  It featured the Aston Martin DB5, Fort Knox’s Gold, A bad guy with a pun for a name (Auric Goldfinger), a sexy henchwoman with another pun for a name (Pussy Galore), the first ever deranged bad guy with some obscene amount of strength and a hidden weapon (Oddjob), a slew of clever gadgets and tricks for Bond that somehow make a timely use for every movie, and a plot that’s still believable to this day.  Setting off a nuke inside Fort Knox to make make the U.S. Gold become radioactive for 56 years, thus making Goldfinger richer than ever?  What’ll we do?!  Oh yeah, let’s leave it up for MI6 and James Bond.  Felix shows up here too, this time white and a different man.  This one is the only Bond film not streaming on Netflix that I would’ve loved to watch again.

4. Thunderball (1965)

Bond heads back to the Bahamas!  Nassau!  Woo!  Spring Break!  Eyepatches!  SPECTRE is behind this one again (see, told you this would make someone money).  This film is easily the one described as “the one with Sean Connery mostly swimming and fighting off the eyepatch guy”.  The eye patch guy is Emilio Largo.  He stole some warheads and Bond wants them back.  This would never happen nowadays, it would be phone calls and paid ransoms.  SPECTRE would totally have the world over a barrel.  This is also the Bond movie where he flies a jetpack and fires a harpoon at someone sneaking on him and his honey pie (a brunette this time, named Domino), oh yeah and uses a woman as a human shield.  I love these movies the more and more I think about them.  Can you even imagine someone remaking these movies shot for shot? 

5. You Only Live Twice (1967)

That’s not Dr. Evil, that’s Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, one of the many people behind the SPECTRE operations.  This time, James Bond stars in “the one where he goes to Japan to find out about the space ship swallowed by the Russian spaceship.  If you IMDB this movie and see a picture of Sean Connery with a racist looking haircut, its because 1960’s Japan to the rest of the world was actually 1920’s Japan.  This definitely shows the downward spiral from Goldfinger and Thunderball.  I don’t think the creators knew where to go with this, so they went to Japan and tried to make American’s like Japanese people even though it’s a hard sell, even 20 years after Pearl Harbor. 

After this movie, the producers decided to go with George Lazenby for James Bond.  I won’t even mention that film here because it’s such a piece of shit.  Basically Blofeld is hunted again, and Irma Bunt, a henchwoman who reminds me of a bizarro Mary Poppins, kills “Mrs. Bond”.  Mrs. Bond?  Oh yeah, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the one where “James Bond was married for 5 minutes and George Lazenby was James Bond for 142 minutes”.  Let me repeat that, a two and a half hour Bond film.  The ones that were two hours were hard enough to watch. 

7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

After the atrocity known as George Lazenby exited quickly, Connery returned as 007.  Ironically, the guy you see before you is playing Blofeld.  That’s right, instead of keeping Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, they went with acotr Charles Gray, who had a little more charm to his bad guy persona.  This Bond film can be described as “the one that takes place in Vegas with the stubborn redhead and the two homosexual henchman”.  In case you don’t remember the two henchman, look up Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd and try to tell me those two weren’t the first homosexual bad guys on film.  The setting of Las Vegas for this film was a pretty good idea.  Q played slots illegally while not a single Pit Boss is accosting him for answers.  Jill St. John wears a lot of bikinis and tells a 10 year old to blow up his pants.  And Blofeld makes a remark about St. John showing too much “cheek”.  The main story behind this was that a satellite had Diamonds on it was going to be send a laser beam onto everything on Earth and heat it up until it exploded (ahem….Goldeneye).  Plus there was something involving marching band music in this movie which I still didn’t understand.

8. Live and Let Die (1973)

It should’ve really be called Roger Moore takes on Prince and the Revolution.  Jane Seymour aka Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman is a tarot reader in this film.  It’s the second film for a new Bond and so far the studio is 0/2 with the new Bond thing.  I don’t know what the process was for making these movies, but this one was too damn hard to watch.  It was a lot of Voodoo and New Orleans and huge Cadillacs and Tarot cards.  WTF is James Bond doing in New Orleans?  It’s 1973!  He should be in New York with the Disco scene!  I tried to watch this, but all I knew was the Jane Seymour character was the slave tarot card reader who turned over a love card when she mentioned James Bond instead of the Death card like she was supposed to.  Nothing special in this movie at all.  It’s “James Bond versus Black people”.

9. The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

This movie wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t even close to enjoyable.  It revolved around a man who owned a wax museum on an island and also owns a laser controlled from solar cells which harnessed the power of the sun (ahem, Die Another Day).  It opens with the worst thing ever for a Bond villain to have: 3 nipples and the short guy from Pleasure Island (de plane de plane guy).  Not kidding.  Scaramanga, which might hold the title for most creative name to never be used again in any pop culture, is a million-dollar-a-job hitman, who sends 007 a golden bullet which makes him his next target.  The Golden gun is made out of a cigarette case and if anyone forgets from the video game, is a one shot kill. 

10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Of all the henchman that scare the living hell out of people, Jaws has to be the one.  Oddjob had his hat, Nick Nack was small and quick, Pussy Galore was just a woman, the Russian guy from SPECTRE, none of them even come close as Jaws.  The Spy Who Loved Me, which was parodied very well by Mike Myers in Austin Powers 2, was about a Russian female spy (this time brunette) who are working together to try and find out how a Royal submarine carrying nukes was sunken (ahem, Tomorrow Never Dies).  The female agents name is Agent XXX.  Kinky I know.  One of the more famous scenes in this is when Bond drives the Lotus Elise into the water and it turns into a submarine.  Part of this movie also takes place on a train, but Jaws is involved.  Also, one of the main points of this movie is that when the mission is over, Agent XXX plans to kill James Bond.  Or does she?  (No, no she doesn’t)

11. Moonraker (1979)

One of the more futuristic Bond films during the 70’s, it involved space and rockets.  Hugo Drax, along with Jaws again as the henchman de jour, try to steal a NASA rocket from the USA without anyone knowing what they are up to.  Bond is sent on the case and uncovers a mystery that has more to do with the past than it does the future.  Some memorable scenes are the skydiving one where Jaws and Bond fight over parachutes in the beginning, there’s a speed boat race involving some explosive charges, and also some pretty fancy space suits and some futuristic technological laser guns.  Not a bad movie, but it’s certainly better than some of the other Moore Bond films.

12. For Your Eyes Only (1981)

I’ve seen this movie.  Less than 3 days ago.  Yet, I don’t think I could tell you a single important or distinct thing about it.  I know at one point there is a giant scuba suit fight.  Someone gets murdered and someone sees it.  I also know there is an encryption device, which I’m also positive I’ve written about already.  Either way, this movie was uninteresting.  The same Blofeld character comes back in a wheelchair for some reason and controls a helicopter with Bond inside.  This one also involves skiing and a hot Olympian that Bond does not sleep with, but might as well have since she was horny as hell and hits on him.  Who knew 20-something Olympic athletes liked 40-something secret agents"?

13. Octopussy (1983)

This Bond film is best described as “the one involving a Faberge egg and a clown.  Some villain buys a Fabrege egg and heads to India.  This is another movie where nothing really happens that is worth knowing.  There’s a train scene and an atomic bomb somewhere involving nuclear war.  The car doesn’t look that great.  The woman is okay.  The only memorable line is “Oh that?  That’s my little Octopussy”.  Lame. 

14. A View to a Kill (1985)

This Bond film is great start to finish.  Christopher Walken, a true acting talent, is the bad guy, Max Zorin.  May Day, who is played by Grace Jones the black version of Lady Gaga circa 1985 is the henchwoman who is just as sexual as she is dangerous.  Along with Tanya Roberts who plays a blonde geologist who knows Zorin’s plans to flood the Silicon Valley to take over the microchip industry.  There’s several twists about this plot.  There’s a part involving horse race cheating and Silicon Valley and the Eiffel Tower and tons of cool scenes.  This film was Roger Moore’s last one, which was a good way to go out.  The title song from Duran Duran is probably the best song to ever come from a Bond movie and make the Top 10 charts.  It’s interesting because the beginning title card shows “Neither the name Zorin nor any other name in this film is meant to portray a real company or actual person”, which always makes a person feel suspicious about the actual making of the film.  I know I was intrigued when I first saw that. 

15. Living Daylights/Licensed to Kill

Didn’t bother watching these ones either.  Here’s one thing I know about these two movies.  If Bond was going into a dark period, this was what put it there.  Timothy Dalton killed the Bond franchise for about 6 years. 

16. Goldeneye (1995)

The 6 year silence of James Bond returns and came out with a boom.  Probably considered the Best Bond film ever by some.  Pierce Brosnan, who has all the good looks, charm, and agent-like talent to pull off this movie.  Not only does it involve a Cold-war scenario which, during 1995 was hard to do at all seeing that most people were over Russia and the USSR thing.  The opening scene is tremendous.  The second scene is just as great.  The third scene, guess what, just as good as the next.  Sean Bean stars as 006, who “dies” during the opening scene but returns later to get his revenge on 007 for not staying and getting him out of their nasty little break-in.  Famke Janssen, plays Xenia Onatopp, who is probably one of the sexier henchwomen since her key move is crushing guy’s ribs and lungs with her hips and getting off to it.  The main story involves an electromagnetic resistant helicopter that is used in the hijacking of an old Soviet satellite that eliminates cities with one quick shot (sort of a remake of Diamonds are Forever).  Also Judy Dench is M in this one.  But Q returns and give Bond the BMW convertible which sold tons of models just because of this movie.  And guess what?  There’s a baccarat scene as well.  Bond does have an American friend, but it’s Jack Wade, not Felix.  I don’t know if I can say enough about this movie, but I will.

17. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

This film is a very modern and very slick Bond film.  It has a new BMW car, not a convertible, but an M5 series.  The bad guy is a media mogul (Murdock-esque) and is trying to create the news while reporting it.  One of the main lines that is a spin from Citizen Kane is “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war”, which is originally “you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war”.  Teri Hatcher, is a past Bond fling who is married to said  Media Mogul.  After he finds out, he has her killed and frames Bond for the murder, before it even happens.  Bond’s co-agent, a Chinese version of Agent XXX from Spy Who Loved Me, is named Wai Lin and she needs him to discover the whereabouts of a submarine that sank in the South China Sea, but was really outside of the zone where it really sank.  Elliot Carver, the villain, sails around in a stealth boat and decides to fire on both the British and Chinese, causing a war for his media coverage.  The henchman, Stamper, is a jacked Blonde guy who is famous for torturing people for hours while still holding them alive.  A very good Bond flick if I do say so.  Never really a dull moment, plus the car has a talking female voice and is drivable from a cell phone.  If only this technology panned out in real life.

18. The World is Not Enough (1999)

What do you get when you mix Denise Richards, a nuclear plot, a kidnapper named Renard who is losing his senses making him somehow stronger, and a victim who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome with a sexual twist?  This movie.  Not too much to write home about with this one.  It has some flashy scenes.  A submarine…again.  But this time it explodes underwater and is inches away from becoming nuclear.  Viktor Zukovsky is back from Goldeneye.  This movie also introduced Q’s replacement R, played by John Cleese.  This is Q’s last movie, making it hard to imagine another Bond film with the charming old scientist who invents things.

19. Die Another Day (2002)

Aahh.  Halle Berry.  Oscar winner.  Black beauty.  Why wouldn’t she be a Bond girl?  In this movie, which was very well thought out and futuristic, involves Bond being captured by the North Koreans and then traded for a Korean soldier who is of similar value to Bond.  In Bond’s return to duty, he looks for a Diamond mogul and tries to figure out the connection between the two.  While catching a couple views of Jinx Johnson here, he finds an island that offers gene therapy to people that alters their complexion and allows for a complete metamorphosis of the face, confusing Bond and other people suspicious of  them.  Madonna was in this one as some fencing instructor.  Inside MI6, there is a spy known as Miranda Frost, who works for the bad guy named Gustav Graves, who harnesses the power of the Sun on the North Pole to show to a bunch of World Powers at some Ice Hotel.  Then he goes nuts and tries to kill Bond.  This is Bond’s first movie with the new Aston Martin DB9 Vanquish which had some good tricks up its sleeve.  Pierce’s last film as Bond was okay.  Hard to go out on top, but I think he did the best he could.

20. Casino Royale (2006)

This movie is a reboot for the 007 series.  It’s with a new cast for the most part and a new style of Bond.  Daniel Craig, who is less charm and more machismo, is playing Le Chiffre in a marathon game of poker in Montenegro.  Bond is sent with Vesper Lynd and gets help from CIA Agent…(drumroll please)…..Felix Leiter!  Who is Black!….Again!  So there’s a team of people trying to play the World Series of Poker to try and win and beat Le Chiffre at his own game and lose his money so he can stop being a banker for the World’s Terrorist organizations.  There’s a twist at the end of this movie and it’s best to keep it secret since it ties into the next film.

21. Quantum of Solace (2008)

So, (SPOILER ALERT) James Bond is on a revenge trail and has to find whoever is responsible for his previous lover’s death.  There is a couple nice shots in Egypt and some good action sequences that have really gotten better from the previous Bond films.  I have no idea who the bad guy is or what he’s really after.  I don’t even know who the woman is, but I do know that she is named Camille.  Felix Leiter is once again in this, and he is played by the same person as the last movie. 

With this last movie being only so-so and the newest Bond film (Skyfall) looking better by the day, it’s hard to see what kind of Bond movies will be made my Daniel Craig and company.  Either way, I will be enjoying it.

The City of Bakersfield just left the Job Market

Okay, not really.  As cool and righteous as that sounds, Bakersfield did not leave the job market.  But according to new economics data, unemployment dropped to 8.6%, but only because 351,000 people decided to quit looking for a job and leave the job market.  I can’t think of any worse sounding news in times like these.  Who knows what this many people are doing with their time or if they are just using unconventional methods to make money for themselves.  I can’t imagine 350,000 people just start becoming drug dealers or prostitutes or day traders or any other job that sounds terrible.  Let’s hope that some of these people make it through the holiday season.  It’s statistics like this that bring me back to Prez from The Wire explaining to another teacher what stats like this really mean.

Why Rondo for Paul doesn’t make sense

So the Boston sports media thinks that Rajon Rondo will get traded to the New Orleans Hornets for Chris Paul.  I laughed at this and then realized, "shit, someone is actually serious".  That someone is probably former Celtic GM genius turned mad man with trading power Danny Ainge.  I don’t think he is all there upstairs anymore.  He traded our starting center for 6th/7th man, during a playoff run and then tried to defend it.  Someone should have told him there are 5 good centers in the league and we had one.  But, before I rant on that, here are some videos of why we shouldn't trade Rondo for Paul.

Video #1:

Rondo is as tough as they come.  Coming back into the game after something crazy like this happens?  Who does this?  Plus I think people underestimated Dwayne Wade for physically taking Boston out of the game at this point by losing their passer.  Rondo gets injured and yet is back before the end of the game.

#2:   Chris Paul is very prone to injury.  This is just a head collision, but let's let the next picture signify what our future "running point guard” will be wearing along with a uniform.

That my friends is a full on knee brace.  Meaning he has had knee surgery.  Meaning he isn't nearly as fast or is going to be able to keep up with players that will be guarding him.  Point guards need to have perfect running ability and not knee injuries of any kind. 

#3.  Didn’t think there would be something like this one Youtube, but then again, what isn’t out there.

Not so sure that Chris Paul would be a psychological fit for the Big 3.  This trade wouldn’t make anyone better.

#4:  I don't think I need to say anything more that what this next video says.  Pure hustle.  You can't show hustle on a statistic, you can only see it.

 

Some skeptics think Rondo is only good around players that are Hall of Famers.  If that is the case than Rondo should be considered one of the players that would be a building block for players that are elite.  Pierce, Allen and mainly Garnett were the rocks that the Celtics built their championship hopes on.  They made it as far as they could, winning a championship one year and losing in the finals another and for some reason trading their starting center for a 6th man within the last year, wiping away all hopes for a possible return to the Finals and leaving a bad taste in every Celtics fan’s mouth.

If Danny Ainge plans to return to the Finals, he needs to find the right building blocks to rebuild his team.  Having a point guard that primarily scores wouldn’t be the same as a point guard who primarily passes.  It’s more important for a team to have the guys that don’t make a ton of mistakes than the guys that are going to put up to high standards.  If the Celtics were to keep Rondo, we’d need to have find the replacements for Garnett, Pierce, and Allen.  If we trade Rondo, I’d at least want someone that moves the ball just as well as Rondo did.  Paul isn’t that guy.  The Celtics can’t afford another player whose going to want a max deal, seeing that we have a hometown bargain (Pierce) and a max deal (Garnett).  I think the Celtics needs are in the Center position and in the area of bench players.  Particularly bench players who aren’t overweight and who can make it seem like there wasn’t a substitution in the first place.  More developments will come from this later, but I still think Rajon Rondo is a cheap point guard who moves the ball and is the emotional center of the team right now.