- Congrats to you, dorks of the world. You all dug deep into the piggy banks you’ve been jamming your spare change into for more than three decades, got your mom to drive you and your buddies to the local multiplex in her minivan and camped out to help make Star Trek the highest-earning movie in theaters for its opening weekend. J.J. Abrams' flick raked in $72.5 million from Friday through Sunday, according to early estimates. That's the second-best opening of 2009 (after X-Men Origins: Wolverine's $85.1 million last weekend). A sizeable chunk of that amount ($8.2 million) comes solely from in IMAX showings, a new one-weekend record for the large format (beating The Dark Knight's $6.3 million). If you include
the $4 million that the movie earned in late-Thursday showings, Star Trek has tallied $76.5 million so far. For some odd reason, that exceeds the expectations of most industry analysts - I’m just not sure why. Don’t they know how many no-life-having dorks live, eat, breathe and drink Star Trek? These pathetic losers have nothing else in their lives, so when a new ST movie comes out, of course they are going to see it in droves - and see it at least a half dozen times. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was next on the earnings list with $27 million, a 68 percent decline from last weekend. That brings the movie’s total to $129.6 million in 10 days. Matthew McConaughey’s latest copy of the same damn romantic comedy he’s been doing over and over for the past five years, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, was No. 3 with $10.5 million, followed by Obsessed (No. 4 with $6.6 million), and 17 Again (No. 5 with $4.4 million). Not surprisingly, the stupid-looking, poorly written, conceptually moronic comedy Next Day Air, starring Mike Epps, was a huge bomb. It grossed just $4 million at No. 6, which actually managed to underwhelm even the exceptionally low expectations for the movie by most observers. Overall, the box office was up nearly 22 percent from the same weekend a year ago, which continues to be a trend for 2009……
- Not that I take any joy in seeing homes and entire neighborhoods ravaged by the wildfires that regularly plague Southern California, but it is always interesting to hear just how the fires started. Each has its own unique story, whether it’s a disgruntled public employee looking for revenge and sparking the blaze, some incompetent camper who forgets to put out his or her campfire, etc. With the latest wildfire still making life miserable for residents of Southern California, it appears that this blaze, which scorched thousands of acres and destroyed dozens of homes last week, may have started by a power tool clearing brush in the area. The fire started near a trail in the Santa Barbara, California, area and appears to have been "related to the use of power tool equipment involved in vegetation clearance," according to the multi-agency group fighting the blaze. So if you or someone you know were clearing brush in the Santa Barbara area on Monday and Tuesday, the authorities are looking for you. As of this moment, the blaze is 55 percent contained and most of the 50,000 residents and business owners who last week fled the Jesusita Fire near Santa Barbara, California, returned by Sunday afternoon. Not that I would want to be the person responsible for starting a fire that displaced 50,000 people, torched nearly 9,000 acres and destroyed or damaged about 80 homes and other buildings, but this could be someone’s 15 minutes of fame - or infamy, as it were. Thankfully this doesn’t appear to be one of the worse of the California wildfires in recent years, as mandatory evacuation orders have already been downgraded to evacuation warnings. As of yesterday, portions of three roads and Highway 154 remained closed, but don’t expect that to last much longer. Eighteen firefighters were injured, but most of the injuries weren't serious and with area temperatures in the high 60s with winds between 3 mph and 7 mph on Sunday, conditions were favorable for stopping this fire before it really got out of hand. SoCal residents could be bent about having another wildfire to deal with, but they did get a whole six months to recover from , the Tea Fire, destroyed about 200 homes in the area over the winter. Sooner or later, you SoCal’s are going to need to get better at not doing things that touch off massive wildfires, lest you burn yourself right out of paradise…..
- Once again, the international war on drugs is going to hurt the common drug user and I don’t like it one bit. Joe Cokehead or Jane Pothead doesn’t need to hear that federal authorities arrested 25 police officers and two civilians in Tijuana, Mexico Friday over alleged ties to organized crime and drug trafficking. Wanna know why that is? Because drugs aren’t freaking cheap, and developments like this are just the thing to drive the price up even further. Federal authorities said the accused are linked to drug lord Teodoro Garcia Simental, also known as “El Teo,” a trafficker with operations in northern Mexico. What did Senor Simental ever do to anyone other than supply the narcotics to help them get their fix? Nothing, as far as I know. He’s looking to supply their demand and makes their lives happier, yet here are the authorities busting down doors and hauling valuable members of Simental’s operation off to a federal rehabilitation center in the western Mexican city of Rincon. Oh, and verrrry surprising that police in Tijuana would be involved in any sort of illegal drug activity, what with them being the one of the primary gateways between the U.S. and Mexico. Besides, isn’t that part of the legend of law enforcement in Mexico, that widespread corruption that we’ve all come to know and love? Busting two dozen cops and hauling them off to jail just because they were looking to line their pockets with bribes from a drug lord isn’t going to help maintain that image; it’s going to hurt it, and you shouldn’t be arresting corrupt cops like that, man……..
- As previously stated, I’m not a huge reality TV fan. There are dozens of these shows on because they are cheap to produce, easy to produce and they tend to draw big ratings due to the incredible number of mindless idiots in this country with television sets. That being said, there are two of the many that are decent shows to watch: The Biggest Loser and the Amazing Race. Both shows had their season finales this week and both had really good seasons. Between the two, Amazing Race had a better finale. That’s mostly because it contained mostly action and not a lot of filler like Biggest Loser’s finale, which played up to all the terrible clichés about reality competition show finales - lots of commercials breaks, using those breaks to drag out dramatic moments, a live studio audience that they clearly pandered to, etc. Still, seeing people who began the season uber-fat, or as Keyser Soze would put it, orca-fat, lose anywhere between one-tenth and one-half of their body weight was great. Those who read this blog regularly know how depressed obese people make me, so having these 22 individuals improve their quality of life dramatically AND remove a few dozen flabby physiques from this world is a quintessential win-win. The victor for the season was Helen, who lost more than half of her body weight and beat out 18-year-old Mike, who lost 207 pounds yet came in second. As for Amazing Race, the winners were siblings Tammy and Victor, the annoyingly perky, crafty brother-sister duo who beat out Margie and Luke (mother-son) and Jamie and Cara (smokin’ hot former NFL cheerleaders) to win the $1 million first prize. Seeing these three finish a race across three continents and multiple countries was great. The race always brings out a lot of drama and also a lot of really cool locations and pieces of culture from around the world, which is what I enjoy the most. So all in all, these are the two reality shows that are worth your time to watch and both are worth a look on your TV when they return later this year…….
- Uh-oh. Seems that internationally known Catholic priest Rev. Alberto Cutie has a tough decision to make. The man who is sometimes called "Father Oprah" because of the advice he gave on Spanish-language media finds himself in need of some wise counsel because of the difficult position he’s put himself in. As with all public figures (even those the majority of us have never heard of), Rev. Cutie (his real name) attracts attention when he goes out among the masses. Normally, being photographed on a Florida beach embracing a bathing-suit-clad woman wouldn’t be a huge issue, especially if the guy in the pictures is neither married nor engaged to another woman. However, when you’ve taken a vow of celibacy, that tends to color the outlook on your actions a little differently. Cutie admits that he is in love with the woman and is considering his options: Whether to break up with her or leave the priesthood and marry her. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, wants to get married, Cutie said. Cutie will now have some extra time to consider his choice, having been removed from his duties last week at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church in Miami Beach, and on the Radio Paz and Radio Peace networks. All I can say is that dude better be 100 percent sure about this relationship if he decides to leave the priesthood, because I’d have to imagine that a post in Miami is a tough one to score. Being appointed to a post in a place like Bismarck, not so tough to swing. But Miami Beach…..that’s a prime gig no matter what your profession. To his credit, Cutie is owning his actions and not trying to claim that they are being misinterpreted or misrepresented. “I take full responsibility for what I did, and I know it's wrong,” he said Monday. The photos of the Cuban-American priest, also known as "Padre Alberto," were front-cover in last week's TV Notas magazine and on eight inside pages. The resulting drama led Archbishop John C. Favalora to post a message on the Miami, Florida, archdiocese Web page last week, apologizing to parishioners for what he called a scandal.” What could be good about this is Cutie’s idea (albeit a self-serving one in this case) that celibacy priests should be optional. “I don't support the breaking of the celibacy promise," Cutie said. “I understand fully that this is wrong. "I don't want to be the anti-celibacy priest. I think that's unfortunate. I think it's a debate that's going on in our society, and now I've become kind of a poster boy for it. I believe that celibacy is good, and that it's a good commitment to God. This is something I've struggled with.” Personally, I’m rooting for Cutie to choose love on this one. He and his mystery lady have been friends for a long time and the attraction was there from early on, but it was not acted on until a couple of years ago. “She's also a woman of faith," Cutie said. "She's also somebody who cares about the priesthood, who cares about these things. So it hasn't been easy.” Besides, choosing love doesn’t mean he’s abandoning his faith; it merely means he’s choosing not to be a priest. He does have some noteworthy accomplishments as a man of the cloth, including becoming the first Catholic priest to host a daily talk show on a major secular television network, making frequent TV and radio appearances and writing a self-help book, "Real Life, Real Love." Now, he must choose whether to give that all up for the love of his life……
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