For Consideration By The Academy

One more thing. I humbly ask the Damfino readers to check out my blog entry for today, as maybe they can help me win a Bloggie. Well, doubtful, but it's nice to have people rooting for you anyhow.

Look at how fruitless my pleading is here.

Thanks!

Teaser Poster For Kern Returns '06

A while ago, Fino mentioned that I should get cracking on the new Kern Returns flyer so that we'd have something to look forward to. Well, I don't have any specific dates, but I am hoping to come back this summer, if a certain fantastic guy I know will let me crash on his couch again in exchange for free beer and spooning.

In any case, this isn't really the flyer I was expecting to use but I think it's a fun teaser. If everyone digs it enough it may become the official Kern Returns '06 flyer, though. In any case, look VERY closely, as the man behind the makeup is indeed none other than your pal Kern.


I welcome all comments.

There went a day...

After a late Friday night of a second viewing of MUNICH (I was right... it is amazing!!) I completely slept in on Saturday. I then proceeded to crawl out of bed to the couch... and spent the entire day watching Lost!


I jumped on the bandwagon pretty quick last year - Hol and Dan invited me over for dinner and we watched an episode (I believe it was the 4th). I got hooked on the show - loving its dramatic stories of each character and all of the crazy twists and turns that each episode produced.

In mid season, ABC re-aired the pilot of the show and my addiction was complete. The pilot, directed by Mr. Alias J. J. Abrams, was breathtaking. Beginning with Jack opening his eyes in the middle of the jungle... and slowly walking to the beach... and discovering the wrecked plane and all of the insanity that ensues!


That opening was so impressive - so exciting - that I have stuck with the series even though it often makes major missteps!

So of the dramatic moments on the island get excessive and very TVish... and it is becoming painfully obvious that things are being made up as they go along. Never-the-less...

I stole my sisters DVD set and viewed several key episodes that I missed.... and then I proceeded to view 5 more episodes of this season. I had stopped watching, bored with where they had taken the story. And now, after catching up, I am still not all that impressed. But I will start viewing regularly once again (though Gilmore kicks back up this week... and perhaps Veronica Mars will return as well).


Even if the story goes sour and bland... we always have Kate to liven things up!

So that was Saturday - I did not change into clothes until after 5pm. No shower... the house smelled great!

Good to see the Steelers survived... and the Patriots! I am rooting to see the Colts and Pats... that would be cool.

Yo

Oh yeah! Head over to Apple and watch the trailer for Mel Gison's new film "Apoclypto." Inside the teaser, there is one frame of film that... well... let's just say Mel is digging the amount of control old Passion has given him.


That is comedy!

Laaaaaaay-zeeeeeeeee Daaaaaay-zeeeeeeee...

Yo, what's with the lack of activity on DAMFINOBLOG?!?!

There's so much to talk about, like ... Uh... Hmmmm... Ah...

OK. Nevermind...

:)

Hope everyone's first work week of 2006 was good! Only 51 more to go! :)

Have a good weekend!
Flop

Netflix notes

"The Interpreter" dir. Sydney Pollack

Listed as a thriller and staring Nichole Kidman and Sean Penn. Great stuff shot in the UN General assembly and the Security counsel chanmber...good movie but not edge of your seat great. Kept waiting for it to really kick in but it just sort of just marched forward with solid acting and decent story.

Loved Pollack's extra feature where he educates the masses about the wide screen v. pan and scan process and tells how p&s kills story telling.

"Wedding Crashers" arriving tonight.

bunny out

finding home

We all know Steven Spielberg has masterful cinematic talents - he has surpassed even the greatest of filmmakers to become the best director of pop filmmaking. Yet, like Hitchcock or Nick Ray before him, Spielberg often has an ability to take mainstream films and inject them with artistic integrity... films for the masses laiden with fascinating images and thought provoking ideas.


Of course the contradiction comes when he releases dreck like WAR OF THE WORLDS, his first film of this year (yes, Spielberg often is able to crank out two a year... astounding!!). He takes his popcorn shoveling job too easy... and really lets things slip. Again though, little traces of perfection can be scattered throughout the bad. WOTW definitely had some issues... but it had some compelling moments as well. This all leads us to MUNICH.


I think everyone can read a synopsis for themselves - and we have all heard the controversy about the film supposedly showing the Palestinian murderers as being sympathetic... and Israel completely founded in their response. Let's skip all of that for now and focus on what surprised me - the film is actually a very exciting suspense/thriller! Some sequences really got my heart pumping and put me inside the moment like nothing has before (except perhaps SAVING PRIVATE RYAN... but this film does not make the mistakes of RYAN!!). Some of the images that Spielberg has created are downright eye popping... not in the CGI monsters of LOTR eye popping... rather in the "this is real... this is REAL!!" way. MUNICH, as a thriller, is completely successful and entertains like nothing else this year!


MUNICH, of course, has some major political and ethical issues running through it as well. The opening Black September attack on the Israel Olympic team is at once heart pounding/jaw dropping stuff... but it is also scattered throughout the film, cross cut with violent responses by Avner's (Bana) group of hitmen. Palestinian leaders are murdered - bystanders are sacrified... blood for blood. Spielberg offers up a nearly demonized version of Black September (though, it is hard to sympathize with anyone who begets such violence!) yet reflects that same emotion with corresponding murders. The only reason we pull for Avner and his group is because we are along with them for their journey - we see their families... their struggle. Their acts are just as despicable!


I think this is why the film really began to connect with me - and why this film marks a new step for Spielberg. He gets lost in his own violence... gets lost in the unglamorous... sick... choices of his own people. Spielberg steps away from the material and gives the most honest response... honest work... he has ever done. What benefit does blood shed bring? The anger is fueled... and more lives are lost. I think Spielberg's lack of answers or understanding really enables the film to dig into your senses. There is no obtrusive arm leading your ideas... just astounding imagery questioning your sensibilities...


What is exciting about MUNICH is that it triumphs in its Thriller regards... it questions humanity and really challenges the viewer... and it also offers a multilayered mise-en-scene that really kept my attention. How Spielberg balanced the very difficult thriller/political elements is amazing... yet he takes this one step further and creates some compelling visual elements that are exciting to read into and watch throughout the film. Take for instance the odd element of food in the film - how Avner's character has a need to cook... and stare into an empty kitchen. So many interesting conversations about murder - home - the Jewish struggle.. are held over dinner... and the final line... the final image!!!! I am getting myself all excited about watching it again.


I have not seen BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN or CAPOTE or some of the other major films of the year... but right now - MUNICH is the most fascinating film I have seen all year and for quite some time. See it in the theater - let it take you over... experience it all... and come out asking questions and thinking about our world.. and what the hell we are doing to ourselves.

Yo

Lala's holiday treats

New Tiki to tantalize your senses. Watch as the good doctor loses his Tiki cool.

Yo

I can't do this all on my own...

New Years come and gone... hmpf. I have never really enjoyed the New Years parties - always sort of lead up to nothing. This year we had big plans that lead to smaller enjoyable ones.

My buddy Bob got married... that was the big one.


The wedding was held in Grimes and was a much smaller affair than I expected. Bob only had his best friend Trevor and his brother John stand with him.


Jodi looked gorgeous - par usual for her.


Devin spiffed himself for the occasion (he is always spiffing himself - can't get him to stop!).


Josh attended... sort of (don't ask and I won't blow a gasket telling that story!!!).


Dan, Hol and Matt came along to support ol Bobby as well!

Here are some snippets...


Hol - giddy.

Jed - knifey.

Devin - winky.

Johnson - pervy.

The boys - tuxy!

We did not hold out at the reception until midnight - we hightailed it over to Barb and Jason's where we discovered Wendy, Shannon and Pam getting ready to play a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit the Pop Culture Edition! Devin, Josh and I joined in... and ushered in the new year with a win for the lads.

NEW SCRUBS TONIGHT AT 7PM CENTRAL!!!!! WATCH OR DIE!!!!


Oh - Arrested Development ruled last night!

"We must ask for support from the Home Buyers Organization."

"HBO?"

"No - I think it's Showtime!"

Yo!

The Life Aquatic with Dan and Jed

This is our final stop for images from the trip. I know all of you were really wanting the entire experience... but such is life.

Somehow, I convinced Dan to do a scuba diving excursion with me in Aruba! We ran off on our own (which did not happen much on the trip) and faced our fears of life in the big deep. It was a beginners dive, with an hours worth of teaching and learning. We started off in a hotel pool (which little children swimming around us looking on in interest)!

The equipment weighed a ton... getting used to it was ok... but once we got down on the ocean floor... wow! I am addicted! We only dropped 25 ft and I really wanted to break away from the group and see some stuff by myself. Maybe next time.

The rest of the day is relaxing at the beach (yes, more shots of Dan with his shirt off for you creepy folks!!) and that evening we went out to eat at Carlos and Charlies. The story there is Lynds caught eye of a very large creepy roach... and the girls proceeded to completely freak out!

Good beer though.

BTW - I have added windows versions of each show for those who need... Kern... looking your way!

Enjoy!


View this clip on Vimeo

Windows



Yo

I'm feeling good...

I got all sorts of time today - here is another slideshow of cruise pics.


View this clip on Vimeo

Windows



The boat had formal evenings that were fun... and loads of food that we mowed on! Though I only gained 5 pounds or so (Stevens? We are not sure what he packed on!!).

Enjoy

Yo

Sari - more slideshows

Day two of our cruise was equally stunning to day one. We had taken a look at the excursions the night before at dinner - finally we agreed upon one that would take us on a hike through the jungle to a water fall called Sari Sari Falls. We had no idea what we were getting into!

As Dan stated - we should have known when 19 of 3200 people signed up for the trip that this was not going to be an easy day.

After an exciting bus ride up the mountains of Dominica, we found ourselves hiking through a banana field. This was all fine and dandy, if not a little warm for us... then we started going downhill. Steep dropoffs... very slick rocks... and a muddy path, led us to the river at the bottom. Here we waded carefully through and attempted not to shatter our bones on the slippery boulders!! (Poor Rhonda took a bit of a tumble but was a definite trooper about it!)

After a brutal hike, we finally reached the falls... and they were breathtaking!!! I struggled to contain my excitement as we rushed to jump into the beautiful cool waters. I swam out to the falling water - and it took all of my strength not to drown under them. It was unbelievable!!!

This journey is one experience that I will not soon forget... and I am sad to admit that it might be a while before I get a chance to do something like that again. I thank my lucky stars for falling into this excursion.

Check out some images.


View this clip on Vimeo

Windows



P.S. None of the picutres do any justice to this place.

Yo

Ram ma lam a lama dama ding dong...

So I found some time during lunch to toss together a quick slideshow of our arrival in Puerto Rico - getting on the ship - and our first stop in St. Thomas.

Forgive the musical choice - it does not say much about the images... just kind of keeps things moving along.

St. Thomas contained the beautiful island of St. John, which in turn, contained Trunk Bay. We were recommened this stop by a fellow traveler and we were in his debt!

The water was perfect! Warm - clear - and wonderful for snorkeling (which we do not have any images of!) The beach sand was white and soft to the touch.

We arrived before any large amount of people showed up and basically had the place to ourselves. It was beautiful. This was our first day.

Take a peek


View this clip on Vimeo

Windows



Yo

BTW - Devin did a helluva job whilst I was away. In fact, methinks it is time that he post more in the non-pressured into it way. Me no find the funny anymore... bring on the Schmacker!

Howdy kats and kittens!!

Whaddup yos!!!!

Back in foggy ol Iowa ready to take on a new year! I am rather swamped at work with a few projects - and I want to read through last weeks blog-0-rama.

Look for pics and stories throughout the week.

Carry on my wayward sons!

Yo!

Has he returned????

Fino, come out and play!!!




bunny out

'Tis the Season

Ah, Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. This is my last post for the week. Next week will bring the return of the incomparable Damfino. Scheduled to get home on Christmas day, I'm sure on Tuesday he will have all sorts of stories to tell and hopefully pictures of the fantastic places he's been. I'm not really into the whole political correct scene so the only thing left to say is

Merry Christmas!

I reject your reality and substitute my own

Alright, it's time for my little bit of psycho-nerd for the week. Nothing much happening last night so I got to watch one of MY favorite shows, Mythbusters. It was a rerun, as is everything right now but this was the episode where they are trying to clean dried concrete out of a cement truck with explosives. The most common form of the myth is a stick of dynamite. The crew got an old beat up cement truck and while trying to keep it running long enough to get a good coating of cement around the drum it was accidentally filled over half full. This wasn't discovered until after it had dried leaving them no choice but to get a second beat to death cement truck and try again. The myth was deemed plausible when a stick and a half dislodged a good portion of the dried slag. Of course this left them with the first truck that was half filled, so they decided to get a hold of the FBI and see what they could do. The answer is fill it with 850 pounds of commercial grade high explosives and detonate it in a rock quarry. The crew was over a mile away from the blast and got hit with tiny pieces of cement truck. The aftermath was unbelievable. A couple of frame rails and what used to be part of the engine block was all that was left and that was nowhere near the original location of the truck. I really like this show. I only wish it wasn't a closed studio since it's filmed in San Francisco, and I just happen to be going there in about two weeks. End psycho-nerd rant.

TMT Year End Blowout

Hi all. Just wanted to shamelessly plug myself once again. As most of you probably know by sheer virtue of my inability to shut up about it, I write for a website called Tiny Mix Tapes.

As do most of the good old music review sites and mags worth their incredulity are doing, TMT is putting out their year end extravaganza. And I got to be a part of it!!!

So if you have a minute peruse the year end articles there. You'll get to thrill not only to my individual list of the top 25 albums of 2005, but you can also see several of the blurbs I wrote!

This is good, because the site goes on break until January 9th or something, so I won't be seeing one of my normal reviews in print for a long time. Damn my ego...

Anyhow, if you would like to see all the hard work I have been doing as of late, go to Tiny Mix Tapes and check it out.

Thanks for your support!

You can't take the sky from me.

Well, Serenity was bought. And it was enjoyed, at least by me. Wendy was not quite as thrilled as I, but I really didn't think she would be. I also promised Jed that if I talked about Serenity I would express his disappointment in the DVD cover art. He hates it. I don't especially like it, I would have preferred to see the whole crew on the cover or at least something representative of the movie contained within but I guess they decided to go a different route.

As penance for making her sit through Serenity we watched Wendy's new purchase, Must Love Dogs. Yup, it's definitely a chick flick. With that being said, it wasn't bad. It might not be very manly of me but sometimes curling up on the couch with a pretty girl, a fire crackling in the fireplace, and watching a romantic comedy isn't a bad way to spend an evening. Of course since I'm not currently, nor have I hardly ever been, part of a couple, romantic comedies generally leave me feeling, well, lonely. That was pretty much the case here, no curling was had, but the movie had some funny jokes, and one cruel one about an engineer with a sexual dysfunction (probably involuntary abstinence). All in all if a pretty girl wanted me to call in sick and spend some time on the couch watching it I probably would, but, at least this time, it left me a little more disappointed with my life than before. On the plus side, at least I got to play with fire.

You don't want a hungry dove down your pants

Yet another incredible episode of Arrested development last night. I almost temporarily changed the name from Damfinoblog to the Bob LobLaw Law Blog but I think that might be overstepping my bounds. We can only hope that someone at another network sees our candlelight vigil and picks up the series so we can continue our time with the Bluth family.

No new communication with Jed to report, I suspect that we won't be hearing much from him till he's back. But in other news, today is a good day in my life. Why? Because Serenity comes out on DVD today. You see, I have watched Buffy and Angel for years, at first I was ridiculed and told that I must be watching them for Sarah Michelle (please, if that were true it would be Alyson Hannigan, or maybe Charisma Carpenter. Oh and I can't forget about Eliza Dushku, wait I'm not helping my case with this line of thought, Anyway back to the subject). But eventually some other friends started watching them and found out that there are good stories and a good sense of humor to them. So now after several years I was justified in my enjoyment of the two series. Of course by now I had seen every episode a dozen times. So what is a guy to do, get off the couch and pursue a real life? No, pick up Joss's third show FireFly.

A co-worker loaned me his copy of the complete series on DVD and after a tough first two episodes I was hooked. I think it took me about 24 hours from the time I put in the first disc to the final special feature. I can honestly say I was a little disheartened when I put in the last disc because I knew it was the end. I spent a few weeks bummed and then found out that a movie was being made, Serenity. At that point I made a construction paper chain and every night I tore off a link waiting for the opening. And I loved it. And it bombed. This pretty much tolls the death bell for any sequels and that is tragic. I had heard Joss had a trilogy in mind to complete the crew’s journey but sadly this is not to be. So I will buy the DVD immediately following work and I will put it beside my copy of Firefly. And I will watch them often and remember the good times. At least until the next obsession comes along.

Bon Voyage

Well, our esteemed Damfino set out on his tour of much warmer places yesterday. Some of you may not know me very well or at all so it begs the question, Why did he want me to watch over the blog? The answer is simple, Greg didn't want to do it. And since I have a bad habit of caving to peer pressure from certain individuals, here I am.

Normally Jed has some sort of weekend recap on Monday mornings but since I can't think of a way to make "played Playstation all weekend" sound exciting I will have to pass on that aspect today. Jed did call his brother yesterday from Puerto Rico to tell him it was 85 degrees. Immediately following the phone call Josh shut off the heat to Jed's room opened the windows and soaked his bed with water. Ah Brotherly love, there's nothing quite like it. But I have done my part to help Josh through the week without his brother, I set up my computer to randomly spew obscenities at Josh all week. It's not as good as the real thing but I think it will do for now. Hopefully for my next post I will have something of substance to say but it's kind of doubtful.