Why would anyone intelligent enough to use a computer believe that Microsoft would email them an operating system patch from a domain other than microsoft.com?

Today’s movie: School of Rock

Ain’t nothin’ in the world like a good face melting guitar solo, am I right? Of course I am. Is there, though, anything more annoying than 108 minutes of in your face Jack Black, especially when everything else about the movie is really good? No, of course there isn’t. Such is the sadness that is School of Rock.

Seriously dude, Jack Black just pushes my buttons. He’s a little bit younger than me, eight years, but we seem to have grown up with more or less the same influences in music and movies (okay, more AC/DC and less Springsteen for him) and yet Black has missed the point completely. The cliche is that there’s a thin line between madness and genius but the other side of that coin is that there’s also a thin line between funny and too much. It’s a line that Jerry Lewis crossed once in awhile but generally knew where it was drawn; Martin Lawrence doesn’t even appear to sense the line’s existence. Black, unfortunately, is closer to Lawrence than Lewis.

Which is really too bad because Mike White (most famous for Chuck & Buck but also last year’s The Good Girl) has written a really funny script and, other than Black’s exaggerations that he probably couldn’t control, Richard Linklater does a superb job of blending a gaggle of 10 year olds with clueless adults. White also decided to act, taking the supporting role of Black’s roommate and pseudo-role model, though that was also probably less than optimal–is Jason Lee too big to take the second banana role these days?

The kids who play Black’s students are just terrific–they actually play the instruments that you see on the screen and were cast for their musical talent as much as (or more than, in some cases), their acting. Frankly, a couple of them can’t act but fit a desired stereotype, but no big deal.

I must say that the ending is about as cliched as you can expect but sometimes cliches work–because of the truth that underlies them–and that’s what happened here. Everything is jeapordized as the lies unravel but, bless their hearts, the kids have learned Jack’s lesson and refuse to lay down. They force Jack to stand with them and even make their parents, cardboard cutouts of people with sticks up their asses, demographically perfect, coo and awe at rebellion. Stickinittodamanitis, indeed.

Recommended

Bushinations: My opinions are not decaffinated

Title courtesy Rose is Rose.

Not even necessary to touch on foreign policy and events to get your blood boiling on this Saturday.

Today’s movie: Wasabi

“(2001) Jean Reno, Ryoko Hirosue. When his former lover dies, a French policeman travels to Tokyo to take care of his estranged daughter. Comedy Drama” Well, I think enough of Jean Reno and writer Luc Besson to at last sample any of their movies and this was the oldest thing left on my TiVo stack–what’s a Friday afternoon for anyway? And boy, I’m glad I watched!

Wasabi is a funny, well-done action comedy sort of like Rush Hour except set in Japan and with dialog in French. Plus a little Japanese but at least for the French the film had subtitles. No biggie, since most of the movie is in the action and the dialog is mostly for laughs. Worth it, though, because the laughs are pretty decent although not quite the sideslappers that Jackie Chan had.

Besson is pretty prolific scriptwriter–he fit Wasabi in between The Transporter and Kiss of the Dragon–but he always seems to do well with Reno in hand. Reno is big and bulky, not given to graceful martial arts though quite good with his fists and a gun, and surprisingly adept at delivering straight lines to the funny men. Hirosue is just adorable, especially the red hair, and she provides the emotional weight for the film.

Recommended

Get Schmart

Are you into prototyping circuit boards? If so, check out SchmartBoard and their patent-pending pre-traced printed circuit boards that are connectable like building blocks. My personal electronics expert and I went to the company’s initial presentation today over in Milpitas and found their offering quite interesting and valuable. Not to mention that one of the founders, Neal Greenberg, is a friend and a real mensch. Good stuff.

Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Xanax, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills!!! Bigger Breasts!!

As JeremyZ suggests, I’m joining in his Screw the Spammers day effort with this entry. I’m pretty much just copying his post…

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As noted here, I’ve decided to play the spammers’ game for a day to see if we (bloggers) can out-spam the spammers.

Won’t you join the fun? Post a entry with a similarly spammy subject on your blog. TrackBack to Jeremy’s entry. Link to this one. I’ll link to yours. Let’s abuse our PageRank in a way that’d make the spammers jealous.

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Boomtown boom boom

NBC can really suck my ass. I mean it. Bad enough they moved Boomtown from Sunday to Friday but for them to now put the series on hiatus for (at least) three weeks due to low ratings after only two showings this season is sad. Perhaps it’s for the best, sort of a mercy killing, since the network already forced creators Jon Avnet and Graham Yost to stop using the Rashomon-like multiple perspectives that gave Boomtown its distinctive flavor.

Microsoft: How to tell if a Microsoft Security-Related Message is Genuine

If you are receiving a few dozen of this annoying fucking infested messages every day like I am, take a gander at the article Microsoft has posted on how to recognize them. Fortunately my Norton Anti-virus installation has caught every single one and I’m not foolish enough to run their attachments anyway, but I sure would appreciate a chance to shove my fist down the throat of whoever’s sending them, repeatedly.

At least this part is over

Politics never end, probably why they call them election cycles, but today at least marks the end of one. Will Davis retain his office, or be replaced by Governator Ah-nuld or Cruz ’till You Lose? Too close to call, apparently, but I’m naturally pessimistic about the outcome. Pessimism being the appropriate emotion here since no matter who is governor next month, none of them are truly qualified or capable of doing what I think is a good job.

Still, we detoured during the Morning Coffee Stroll to the polling place inside a fire station. I think they moved the voting booths there, from a school across the street, because the Registrar is afraid so many ballots stuffed with so many lies will spontaneously combust. Anyway, for the record: no, Bustamante, no, and no; I’m even proudly wearing the I Voted sticker.

Say goodnight, Gracie

Can the A’s suck more in the playoffs? Seriously! Bases loaded with one out in the ninth and the next two batters strike out. You can say what you want but this makes nine games in a row where the team could have clinched a series and instead they lost. What’s wrong, boys?

How’d he know?

Conspiracy nutjobs sometimes turn their surreal gaze towards pro sports. Claiming, for instance, that the games are scripted, at least in their outcomes. The effort involved in doing so for only the major sports (NFL, MLB, NBA), even given the huge amounts of betting taking place, doesn’t seem to be justified–how would you keep the secret year after year with so many thousands of individuals involved? Nevertheless, listening to Dick Enberg’s play-by-play during the opening drive of today’s Raiders/Bears game and proclaiming that a first down was made several steps before it appeared obvious to me, the thought did come to mind. Then again, the Raiders do exist only in Bizarro Universe.