Vote for a Lego Star Wars Set

If you like Star Wars Lego, you can vote on one of 3 new sets they'll produce, all of which are actually pretty cool. One of them is "The Arrest Of Palpatine" scene from Episode III, followed by a cool Slave I on a landing platform, or the ol Ackbar cruiser set from Return of the Jedi.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE, SUCKA

God's Carbon Footprint

Why did God have to flood the world anyway? Couldn't he have just snapped his fingers and made all the bad people disappear? It's not like he had to teach the people he killed a lesson. It would have saved the innocent slaughter of millions of animals, and destruction of the world's trees. Just think of how many old growth trees we would have had if they didn't have to grow from scratch again?

Same goes for Soddom and Gommorah getting burned to the ground with fire and brimstone. The after affects to the air quality are still being felt. God's carbon footprint is way too big.

The Long Walk

I like going to used book stores every so often and pick up some stuff on the cheap. I saw Stephen King's "The Long Walk" while visiting my wife's family in Eureka a few weeks back and couldn't resist. He wrote it back in 1967, and it was rejected. He later published it as Richard Bachman, and it was reprinted in the '80s compendium "The Bachman Books" which contained The Running Man, Roadwork, and the purposely taken out of print Rage (which dealt with a kid who takes over his class at gunpoint, but became a little too close to home in modern times).

I read it back in 1986 but forgot most of the details, so I was happy to revisit it. It's a great quick read that cuts through the shit and gets right into the story. A boy named Garraty joins 99 others for an annual event called The Long Walk in which other boys under 18 join in a marathon non-stop walking contest. There's no breaks or sleep and if they ever go off course, stop walking, or fall under 4 miles per hour, they're given a warning. The 4th warning is a bullet.

I love the story in that it doesn't overexplain anything. You just have to accept the reality that there's some screwed up fascist version of America in which a military head (known as "The Major") organizes this huge event which most of country seems to think is the greatest thing ever. Why would someone willingly enter such an event? Most of the entrants don't even know for sure, but the winner receives anything they want, for life.

The book's told through Garraty's point of view and he meets a ton of interesting chacters along the way. Some confused, some suicidal, and one in particular, who walks in the back of the pack with the apparent ease of a robot, who is just flat out mysterious.

It's full of that great raw juvenile dialogue that Stephen King did so well back in the early days. It's a journey book like his later work "The Body" (which became the film Stand By Me) and even Huck Finn, with a sick twist. There's a great bit where a kid, overcome with horrible diarrheah, has to stop walking. His co-walkers egg him on, and Garraty is even thinking "better to shit yourself than die", but he's eventually taken out, shot in the head while doubled over in intenstinal agony, shitting on the road.

I totally forgot the ending, and rereading it, I can't say it left me completely satisfied, but it wasn't a cop out either. It certainly makes you think about the meaning, that's for sure.

It's a neat idea with a lot of "What would you do" type of situations. Is there any way to fight back against this situation once you joined? How would you bow out if you couldn't walk anymore? How far could you really walk non-stop if a gun was at your head? How could you possibly fall asleep while still walking? All sorts of cool scenarios like this play out.

Frank Darabont owns the rights to turn this into a movie, which seems to be completely "un-makeable", but he has said he wants to make it a very small low budget movie so he can adapt it properly, so there's hope. He was willing to go the dark and unexpected route with his film of The Mist, so maybe he's the right guy for the job. The dude gave us Shawshank Redemption, so I'm willing to give him a break.

Cool Hand Luke

I always knew Cool Hand Luke was a good movie, just never got around to watching it. When I saw it was coming up on American Movie Classics, I figured it was worth saving on my DVR and giving it a look. All I knew about it was that Paul Newman cuts off the tops of parking meters, eats a bunch of eggs in a contest, and some chain gain boss says that famous "failure to communicate" quote. An intriguing sample of things, for sure, but it was finally time to give it a look.

The story is pretty simple. Paul Newman is clearly a born loser who has a lifetime of screwing up. He's thrown in a workcamp jail for a drunken night of mischief and has an unchained spirit that can't be held down. His "I won't back down" attitude and cool demeanor make him a hero to the other convicts and the bane of the folks in charge.

I really like that this "prison movie" is in a non traditional setting. It's really more of a work camp and they work in a chain gang doing work like hacking at dry weeds and tarring roads. There's some hazing of the new guys, but mostly it's a bunch of decent men who screwed up and are trying to make the best of it.

Newman's Luke is an oddball new guy who immediately gets under the skin of the camp's alpha prisoner "Dragline" played by George Kennedy. It all comes down to a sanctioned boxing match between the two on a hot dusty Saturday afternoon. Dragline, twice the size of Newman, easily knocks him down, but Luke just won't stay down, despite getting floored over 15 times. The half conscious Luke still throwing punches as Dragline walks away out of pity. Luke wins the fight not by taking out his opponent, but by never giving up.

Another famous scene is when Luke brags he could eat 50 eggs in an hour, for no other reason than to provide something to get the camp excited about. It's a painful sequence with a payoff that has a non unintentionally Christlike Newman laying on a table, arms stretched outward in collapsed agony, with a halo of broken eggshells around his head.

But Luke is no messiah figure. He even chastises his pals to stop leeching off him. And his escape attempts are both inspiring and humbling. Like many folks who get out of jail, Luke can't function in the outside world either. He'll be back whether they catch him, or he simply screws up again.

For a guy who can't make it inside or outside of jail, it's a Catch-22.

The ensemble cast is great with some very young classic actors here like Wayne Rogers, Harry Dean Stanton, Lou Antonio, Dennis Hopper, Ralph Waite, and Joe Don Baker present. These guys weren't hired to be in the movie for any other reason than they were just damn good actors.

The art direction in the movie is wonderful, as is the music by Lalo Schifrin (who gave you other classic scores like Planet of the Apes and Mission Impossible).

I don't know what the message of this movie really is. In the case of The Shawshank Redemption, you have a wrongly accused man who fights for his own freedom and uplifts his fellow inmates along the way. Cool Hand Luke doesn't really aim that high. Luke doesn't just want to escape from prison, but he wants to escape from responsibility. To Luke, the whole world is just one big prison.

It's a great character study that would make a great live stage show, too.

Directory Stuart Rosenberg, who passed away in 2007, made another prison film in 1980, Brubaker, which I'll be watching next.