Due South

I had a serious Due South moment yesterday: I let some guy get on the bus before me and he took the last seat, so I walked home. I could have stood, but more people were getting on the bus and I figured most of them couldn't walk home in 30 minutes like I, or they were ladies, who should be given every consideration, or simply people who didn't look like they were in the right shape to walk through downtown Dallas, which is my favorite place.

If you're confused about the Due South thing, it's from a funny TV show about an overly polite Mountie who moves to Chicago. In this clip (the opening theme) you can see him walking from the airport to Chicago because he let too many people get into cabs before he did and he got tired of waiting. Anyone else remember this show? One of my favorites, and my mom gave to me for Christmas this year!

Oh, yeah, he also has a pet wolf who is deaf, but the wolf reads lips so the main character has to grab the wolf's head and point it toward him so he can read his lips when he says things to him. It's funny.

First Look: Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian is coming! For those of you who are fans of the Narnia stories, the next film in the franchise is Prince Caspian, coming your way on May 16, 2008.

The first film was quite good, it stuck to the themes of the books well and told the story accurately. I thought it was a bit childish, (of course, it was adapted from a children's book) but still good.


My top three books (this week) are 1. The Bible, 2. Les Miserables, and 3. The Narnia Chronicles. Pretty impressive for children's books. Here's more pics, there's more info here at IMDB.

He was one of my Favorites

There aren't many actors I like. In fact, I think the good ones normally go unnoticed while people speculate about quasi-actors from shows like 'Friends'. (Ask 100 people about their favorite Alfred Molina film and see if anyone has one.)

But, Heath Ledger was truly great. It is difficult to speak of him in the past tense because he was such a fantastic actor. He had a smile that could light up everyone's face in the movie theater. It seems there was nothing he could not do. His British character in 'The Four Feathers' quite convincingly pulled off looking like a Middle-Eastern man while carrying his personal guilt with him. He was a confused but dogmatic (and still very likable) priest in 'The Order' and an excellent foil to Mel Gibson in 'The Patriot'.

He was one of my favorites. He's going to be missed. I certainly hope his example brings more dignity and talent to the largely useless pool of celebrities we deal with today.

Here are some Heath Ledger clips I'll probably never forget as long as I live.

Why I am Going to Destroy the Planet!

I get a lot of mixed reactions when I talk about the environment. It's one of my favorite subjects because the environment is (obviously) very important and only a great fool would destroy it.

However, it appears that I go out of my way to criticize the 'going green' crowd and the media outlets that want to guilt trip me into thinking that my car is destroying the planet. What people seem to be telling me, is, "sure, these people are annoying, and maybe wrong, but doesn't it help the planet to go ahead and clean it up?"

In other words, if you really cared about the planet you would help the fanatics save it, even if you thought they misunderstood some science stuff somewhere.

My problem is that these trendy eco-friendly people are not always helpful to the environment. I was passionate about recycling before learning that it doesn't appear to be very helpful and might actually hurt the environment. (More blogging on that later.) Political groups are asking for crazy amounts of money to combat man-made global warming, which appears to be fictional. Why should I want my government to spend billions of dollars to fight an enemy that doesn't exist in our air? That is harmful to our country and to our economy.

This is a huge topic, but I don't want to unpack all of it in one sitting. I want to blog about the specifics but, for now, I would invite you to take a test. It's an excellent test written by Monte Hieb, P.E. It's quite fast and gives some good information. I learned quite a bit from it when I ran across it a few weeks ago.

Click here for the test.