I ventured out in the rain tonight to meet with Scott Coones (and supposedly Cameron Coen) about a short Scott wrote and I'm going to help produce.  If there had been thunder and lightning, it could have been a Texas thunderstorm.  We're off to Texas in the morning, and I'm not likely to blog while we're there.  Oh, we did get a portable dvd player for ourselves for an early Christmas present so we'll have something to do on the plane.

Many of you, especially Jeff, will love this.

Here's a cool article about ten cool new inventions.  My favorites are the drive-by-wire, plastic chips, and super-light cars.

By happy accident we had the largest group of our friends at church tonight all at one time.  Me, Jamie, Doug, Clinton, Summer, Clinton's friend from Groundlings, Nick, his girlfriend, and Terence.  The service, unfortunately, was not a standout.  It really went on forever and the fill-in pastor used poor analogies and repetition to drive home a point, maybe.  But I don't know what that point was.  Oh well, just one service.  Afterwards, Terence and Summer joined us four regulars at Chipotle.  Halfway through my burrito, I got this weird vision of me eating a second burrito, something I've never dreamed of doing because of fullness.  I mentioned this vision, and Doug admitted that he was thinking the same thing.  He went and got a second burrito and proceeded to play with it as much as eat it.  By the time I finished my first, I knew I couldn't handle a whole other burrito, so I just went to get chips and guac.  While I was gone, Doug had smeared his messy, messy hands all over his shirt and parts of his burrito had fallen down all over his pants and shoes.  What a character.  Then, we all did some seat-swapping, and I got to chat with Terence for a little while.  We're talking about setting up a trip to the Sundance film festival in January for the group.

The next two days, Jamie works for another Maxim shoot, and then we head to Texas on Wednesday.  Yeehaw! 

The rain is coming down again!

It's raining in California!  I can actually hear it coming down!

UPDATE: Our kitchen ceiling leaked!

Twas an eventful Saturday.  I'm a little under the weather, so I slept way in.  Once up and showered, we picked up Clinton and headed to Quiznos for lunch.  Then, it was off to Urban Outfitters to exchange a shirt that was too small.  Next, we headed to the Grove and Farmer's Market for a little shopping.  While there, I saw an advertisement for a movie called The Machinist, which I had not heard anything about.  This really surprised me as it is scheduled for release on Friday, Oct. 22nd and it is starring Christian Bale.  I was immediately intrigued to go home and watch the trailer.  Discussing it with Clinton, the conversation turned to who would be a good actor to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, as Brosnan is only doing one more Bond film.  Clinton suggested Bale, to which I questioned his Britishness.  Clinton and Jamie (and IMDB) confirmed that he is indeed British (if Wales counts).  Here were some other names that came up for Bond potentials:  Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Heath Ledger.  Hmm, I thought that list was going to be longer.  Clinton?  Jamie?  Am I forgetting someone?  None of these seem to quite hit the nail on the head for me, certainly not as much as Brosnan did back before he had been tapped.  However, once it was confirmed that Bale hailed from across the pond, I started to think that he might be a good pick.  Then I started to wonder why I seemed to have this affinity for Bale as an actor.  I couldn't name a single movie of his that I had seen.  I have seen the trailer for the new Batman movie, which I fully expect to be awesome.  That could have been the answer.  So, I looked up his credits on IMDB to see what else I might have seen him in.  The most recent thing I'd seen him in was Newsies, and while Jamie loves that movie, I was sure that wasn't what had done it for me.  Then I saw it, Empire of the Sun.  I saw that movie maybe as early as junior high, and I loved it.  It's a war movie and a little bit depressing, typically negatives for me in selecting movies, but something about it just really hooked me.  So, all that to say, rent Empire of the Sun, I'll see The Machinist asap and get back to you, and start getting excited for Batman Begins.

So far, I've just watched the first 30 minutes of the debate, and now I've got to go to bed.  But first, I had to blog about something that Kerry said.  When asked about some Catholic archbishops' opinions that it would be a sin to vote for Kerry because he supports abortion and embryonic stem cell research, Kerry responded with the following.

I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith....  My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, "What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead."  And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.

I'm a little surprised by this.  I think Kerry is trying to impress his religious viewers by quoting the Bible, but it seems to me that he sets himself up here.  I was really surprised by his mention that his faith is the inspiration that leads him to fight against poverty and for the environment.  This statement completely destroys his excuse for being pro-abortion.  The scripture alone points out that faith without deeds is dead.  Since Kerry feels he is prevented by the Constitution to support his “faith“ that tells him that abortion is wrong, he lacks the works that give life to that faith.  As a result, that faith might as well be dead.  But, in the biggest contradiction of all, Kerry admits that he has no problem legislating his “faith“ as it relates to poverty and the environment.  Why then can he not legislate his “faith“ on the fundamental issue of human life?

If you like this sort of topic, David Mobley has a separate, but related blog entry about legislation and right and wrong.

I'd like to note that for awhile there, I really didn't feel like blogging, and so I didn't.  Lately, I've been wanting to blog, but I've been quite busy working.  Today I got a little breather.  I even got to play a little Tiger Woods today and shot my best round ever, 28 under par.  I got 10 eagles in one round.  Granted, it was an easy course, but I was chipping in shots from 100 yards out.

I also finally got to see The Forgotten tonight.  I'd really been looking forward to this, because I love those can-you-trust-your-own-memory-type movies, like Memento.  We've been so busy and out of town so much that we just now made it to the ArcLight to see it, the first time to the ArcLight in months in fact.  I tell you this story not because I like to rant and rave about bad experiences, but because I always rave about all the good the ArcLight does, and I suppose I should be fair.  There were two big problems.  First, buying tickets took forever.  We didn't have to wait in line, but the guy was new and the system was not working like it was supposed to.  Their card reader couldn't read my ArcLight membership card (which I was using points from for a free ticket), and it wouldn't read my credit card.  I then had to help the employee through some of the screens to type in the card number manually.  He made some mistake, and I had to sign some error log, even though I had nothing to do with it.  Meanwhile, Clinton goes to the counter next to us and buys his ticket in about 0.23 seconds.

Next, we head into our theater and hit our seats (reserved of course), right smack dab in the middle of the first row up from the floor.  Sweet.  Everything looks like it's going to be awesome as the trailers begin.  The theater is practically empty.  I'm psyched.  But then a crazy man comes and sits right next to me.  This is the down side of reserved seats.  Some people think that they have to remain in their reserved seat even if the place is practically empty.  The guy reeks of smoke, and before the trailers are over, I can tell he's going to be trouble.  He's talking to himself in a very conversational way.  At first, I thought he was on a cell phone, but no, he was pointing out to himself how funny or scary or interesting or sad something was.  Throughout the trailers and the movie he had to respond in some way out loud to everything that happened on the screen.  The only times he wasn't talking were when he was opening his very loud bag of snacks, which were apparently very hard to open and required opening many many times during the movie.  His comments were also interrupted by throat-clearing and coughing.  Early on in the movie, I actually even shushed him.  I do not like to do this, but at this point I hadn't realized that he wasn't crazy.  Apparently he was too busy responding to something on the screen, because he did not acknowledge my shush one way or the other.  By the end of the movie, I realized that he was crazy and wished that I had gotten an employee to come in and handle the situation.  Instead, I just sat there and took it and used my extraordinary powers of focus to block him out.  I leave you with the funniest of his interactions with the screen.  At the climax of the movie, there's a chance that Julianne Moore has forgotten about her son, and all she has to do to let us know that she remembers him is to say his name.  There's tense music and a dramatic delay which is filled by my neighbor pleading with her, “Say it.  Say Sam.  That's all you have to do.  Say it!”

I figured I'd weigh in on the 1st Presidential debate before the 1st VP debate tonight.  On presentation, I give Kerry high marks.  His voice even sounded natural.  I think this format favored Kerry as far as presentation goes.  Specifically, the colored lights indicating time were not helpful to the President.  Bush is a straight-to-the-point kind of guy, and having to give a two minute answer to a question that he would prefer to answer in ten seconds forces him to stretch out what he's going to say, to speak slower, and to be more repetitive.  It was kind of like a football game, where you don't want to give up the time of possession stat.  Had we the public not been made so aware of the time factor, I think we would have preferred shorter answers from Bush and would have seen Kerry has long-winded in comparison.  The other factor in presentation was that some people didn't like the expression on Bush's face when not answering the question.  I'm not saying that for presentation sake, he doesn't need to be careful, but one should note that the rules clearly stated that there not be a camera on the candidate not answering the question.  Of course, as Mark pointed out, had the broadcasters gone along with this rule, they would never have been able to have the camera on Kerry, because he was always the candidate not answering the question.

On substance, I stand by Bush.  Kerry is consistent only in saying that Bush always makes the wrong decisions.  According to Kerry, in Iraq, Bush adopted too much of a go-it-alone policy.  However, in North Korea, Bush needs to go it alone.  The fact is that Bush went to the UN and asked other countries for help.  They didn't help.  That did not deter him.  Kerry complained that we aren't training Iraqi troops fast enough.  However, they are in the midst of training.  Unfortunately, we can't plug them into the Matrix and download military manuals directly into their brains.  I thought one of Bush's best points was to ask how Kerry was going to get other countries to help out in something that he calls a mistake.  And I agree.  I understand that Iraq is a rough situation.  Bush understands that Iraq is a rough situation.  Kerry seems to want us to believe that all of the problems in Iraq will go away if he is elected.  If he really does have solutions, I'd respect him a lot more if he would offer them now.  That's the end of my rant.

In the upcoming debate addressing domestic issues, we will undoubtedly hear from Kerry about jobs lost during Bush's first term.  As Kerry reminded Bush that it was Bin Laden that attacked us on 9/11, I hope that Bush will remind Kerry of the same fact, that it was Bin Laden that attacked us, including our economy.  Bush did not attack us with his policies.  In fact, his policies stemmed the tide of the enormous damage done on 9/11 and have brought us back from that horrible disaster. 

Man, I would hate to have to be President.

Clinton just emailed me this link: http://www.mgm.com/pinkpantherthemovie/home.html.  I had heard rumors that this was in the works, but I didn't realize they had made so much progress on it.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I'm a big fan of Steve Martin and an even bigger fan of The Pink Panther series.  Inspector Clouseau (er, Chief Inspector) was such a brilliant character created by Peter Sellers.  I'm worried that any attempts to revive the series by any actor, no matter how talented, are doomed to fall short.  They tried reviving the franchise with Roberto Benigni back in 1993, and it didn't work then.  Don't get me wrong; I want it to succeed, but I'm only 28 and I know all of the Pink Panther movies backwards and forwards.  Maybe in another 50 years...