Frequent Flyer Magazines, Round 3

About a month ago I got a letter from (I think) US Air to let me know that I shouldn’t let my 4,213 air miles go to waste. I should buy some magazines. I have no clue if these things are really endorsed by the airlines (probably not), but I do know that I actually have 12,106 that will be forfeited by June 29th if I don’t pay them $100 (probably not.)

So I did what I usually do when I get one of thee offers, I subscribed to a couple magazines: Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. This makes 3 weekly magazines we get now as the Time subscription from the last similar offer doesn’t run out until August.

Just the other day got one of the same style offers from Delta, but she had over 6,000 miles (just where had she been without me?) So now we will add a fourth weekly magazine to our coffee table with 6 months of People. We will also get another year of Time, a year of Sunset, a year of Money and 2 years of Travel + Leisure.

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The End

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again
Jim Morrison

It all comes to an end tonight at 11:30PM and quite frankly I think I will be glad it is over. What started as a survival story on a mysterious island has morphed into a battle between good and evil to control the island that no one can find.

Millions of people want answers to the thousands of unanswered questions and mysteries, but I for one don’t care if I find out what happened to Rose, Bernard and Vincent the dog or any of the others.

How will it end? Will we merge the the island time lines with the alt LA universe? My guess is it will be a variation of the first scene of last season’s finale; Jack (the new Jacob) will be sitting on the beach and John Locke (the new MIB) will approach and say, “You know how much I want to kill you?” They will stare out to sea and see a boat approaching. Locke will ask Jack, “You brought them here didn’t you?” The camera zooms in until you see the transom. It reads, “S.S.Minnow” Fade to black.

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New Coat

Its not really a coat either, its a jacket. Aiken’s climate is such that you only need a coat for 3-4 weeks in late January and/or early February and for that I have my trusty US Navy Cold Weather Flight Jacket that “inadvertently” got packed up when I left Japan. A new jacket is a big deal for me because once I find something I like I stick with it (i.e. the 30 year-old flight jacket) and since October of 1999 I have been wearing an MMC jacket. It is forest green with tan accents and has a large embroidered Club logo on the back and my first name in script on the front. This baby has seen a lot of use. It gets worn probably around 275 days a year (sometimes summer mornings can seem cool to me with the top down) and is starting to show it. The tab came off the zipper a while back and was replaced by some string, the lining near the collar in the back is getting frayed, the waist and cuffs are loosing their elasticity, etc.

Instead of the usual Extra Large size I normally get (mostly for the sleeve length) I decided to try and find a Large Tall size. I wanted something similar; lightweight, contrasting light inner lining, water resistant (but not shiny nylon), 2 side slash pockets and elastic waist and cuffs, so off to the internet I went. After an exhaustive search I found just the thing.

Behold, my new outwear of choice, a Tri-Mountain 5300 Panorama in Navy/Khaki/Khaki from the Highland Apparel Company. Hopefully this puppy will hold up for the next ten years as well as the Club jacket did for the past ten. I will still break out the MMC jacket for Club events, but mostly it will be spending a quiet retirement in the hall closet on a hanger.

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Really?

Some one lent me a copy of Avatar (thanks James) because it won’t be available from Netflix for a few more days and I watched all of 25 minutes of it.* I’m thinking Cameron had a really vivid acid trip back in 1994…

Don’t ask how I can buy into a guy in a metal suit that can fly at supersonic speeds and shoot, like, plasma rays out of his palms and then one day later can’t believe 10 foot tall blue creatures. Probably had to do with what seemed to me like a continuous stream of scenes I’d seen before several times in numerous other movies.

* Edit: While pondering this morning on why I didn’t like this movie, I thought of a better title for this post, GCI’d Disney Movie, but for some reason WordPress won’t let me edit my own titles.

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Bacon Tree

Two Mexicans are stuck in the desert after crossing into the United States, wandering aimlessly and starving. They are about to just lie down and wait for death, when all of a sudden Luis says………

“Hey Pepe, do you smell what I smell. Ees bacon, I theenk.”

“Ees, Luis, eet sure smells like bacon.”

With renewed hope they struggle up the next sand dune, & there, in the distance, is a tree loaded with bacon. There’s raw bacon, there’s fried bacon, back bacon, double smoked bacon … Every imaginable kind of cured pork.

“Pepe, Pepe, we ees saved. Ees a bacon tree.”

“Luis, maybe ees a meerage? We ees in the desert don’t forget.”

“Pepe, since when deed you ever hear of a meerage that smell like bacon…ees no meerage, ees a bacon tree.”

And with that, Luis staggers towards the tree. He gets to within 5 metres, Pepe crawling close behind, when suddenly a machine gun opens up, and Luis drops like a wet sock. Mortally wounded, he warns Pepe with his dying breath,

“Pepe… Go back man, you was right, ees not a bacon tree!”

“Luis, Luis MI amigo… What ees it?”

“Pepe.. Ees not a bacon tree. Ees

Ees

Ees

Ees a ham bush…..”

Iron Man 2

My rants about this movie the other week turned out not to be as big an issue as I imagined. The intro to the Stark Expo was still a little long, but taken in context not all that bad. The race scene/suitcase suit grip disappeared because Whiplash didn’t just wait for it watching, he was pinned to the side wall by Happy driving a Rolls Royce. Mickey Rouke makes an awesome villain. I don’t understand why they change the opening bit from the trailer wher Tony jumps out of the plane unless they though it might spoil the the ending bit. I thought it would have been a perfect way to tie that together…

Scarlett Johansson looks good in black hair and her chemistry with RDJ leads me to believe she would have made a good Pepper Potts had not Gwyneth Paltrow already had a lock on that role. But the whole Black Widow bit seemed tossed in as an intro to the character and for the sex appeal of the suit (not that there is anything wrong with that.) But if rumors are correct and the Black Widow gets her own movie, I think I feel a repeat of Cat Woman or Elektra coming on.

There is more action in this one, some dangerously close to being too much (and/or too long), but all and all very satisfying. Man I need one of those suits…

Two important lessons can be learned from this movie, 1) do not ever let a Russian near your computer, both the males and females seem to be trained hackers that can break any encryption thrown at them and 2) (this one I already knew) a convertible is as good as a pick up truck on a sunny day.

Brian gives it 2 thumbs up and Donna says I owe her a Julia Roberts movie.

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Inside on a Beautiful Day

It was spent mostly watching Life. We had disc three of season two from Netflix to watch and did. Then got antsy and didn’t want to wait for the last two discs to come in the mail, so off to the back alleys of the internet. I downloaded the four episodes that are on disc 4 while we watched the other red envelope disc, Michael Clayton (which after watching the four simplistic 42 minute TV shows was hard to follow because you had to pay attention, but if you did you were rewarded.) We then watched those four downloaded episodes of Life. The next thing we knew it is past 8:00 PM with the sun is going down.

The last 5 episodes of the short lived show are being torrented as we speak, but those won’t get watched until tomorrow afternoon or night though. We are off to do some geocaching in the morning and possibly see an early showing of IM2.

My last post chronicled all the TV I’ve been watching, well that is about to come to an end, literally and figuratively. Monday is the season-enders for House and Castle. Flashforward didn’t get renewed for next year, so I probably won’t even bother watching how many ever new episodes of that are left. There are only 2 more episodes of Law & Order (the Mothership version) ever. It ends its 20 year run the day after TDTVS finishes its 6 year ride on the 23rd of May. That leaves just a month and a half left of new of L&O:Criminal Intent (although I really miss Goren and Eames) and In Plain Sight to see on USA.

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