Robbed!

I very rarely, if ever, claim the role of victim. I'm sure I have at some prior point, but I don't recall. Today's different, though. Gina went out to do some errands, and came back a few minutes later reporting that her car was broken into the night before. Her Sirius stereo, cds, etc, were missing.

My first question was "broke in, or opened the door?". The answer was "opened the door". For years, I've been saying that was going to happen, and its unfortunate that it finally did. Then I checked my car, and my GPS was missing. Apparently I too failed to lock my doors. Or, they forced it open, though I see no signs of that. For me, it was a fluke, unless I'm more careless than I realize. My intent is to always lock the car doors, and I usually do so several times as I walk away from it.

So, my TomTom 910 is gone along with some of my negligible CDs.

I sent the HOA an email to let them know that I'm disheartedned that this is the kind of community we live in. He responded that a lot of people were hit last night, and he too is disheartened.

People are disgraceful. Now I want to leave the state, though you can't run from the depravity.

Patriots 2008: Good job, but just a hair short

Oh well. The patriots are out despite an 11-5 record. What's one to do? Who do I root for now?

I've put some thought into the "who to root for" thing, and have come up with a plan. At the top of the list are THE GIANTS and THE COLTS. Should they both go to the superbowl, then the patriots loss will be overpowered by the manning bowl: perhaps the most legendary game ever. So, Go Colts, Go Giants.

But, if either blow it, then I'll change temporary loyalties to Miami. I really have no interest in Miami even though I live in West Palm Beach. I'll only root for them by geographical default.

Other than that, I have no preference.

Matt Cassell probably won't be around for the patriots next year, so lets hope Brady is fully recovered and ready to win.

Annapolis - Super Cringe

I recently read that Tyrese Gibson was joining the cast of Fast and Furious (the fourth movie of the series). Having a few minutes to spare, I jumped on to IMDB and did some browsing. Primarily, I was curious if Lucas Black (from part 3) would make an appearance. Then I noticed that the director is the same for parts 3 and 4. Interesting. So I clicked the link. (Before I go off, let me answer the mental question you probably didn't ask: Lucas Black is not in F&F4)

It turns out that Justin Lin directed Annapolis. As soon as I saw that, my complete spontaneous reflect reaction was to groan and cringe. I'm not being theatrical. I really felt as if I was punched in the stomach, a very common reaction to all things related to annapolis.

Annapolis is a massive achievement in crappy movie making. There are a lot of bad movies out there. Take, for example, The Guardian; its arguably in the same family of movies, and its pretty bad, but I don't cringe when I hear its name. Annapolis makes me ill. What's the difference?

The difference is that Annapolis is offensively bad. It has the "have the guy hit on the girl, then find out that the girl is the teacher" gag. God. If I didn't have so much respect for my own personal property, a brick definitely would've gone through the tv. Thankfully, we didn't watch it at a friend's house.

Tyrese Gibson was about 28 years old at the time of the movie, yet he plays a seasoned war vet. Certainly you can have plenty of experience by 28 years, but not as much as he attempted to portray. You can't act like you have 30 years of experience when you've only been in the service for a maximum of 10 years.

Then there's Jordana Brewster... Always a pleasure. I most recently enjoyed her work on "Chuck". But, the same thing here. She was 26 years old with the same type of role as Tyrese.

Its bad, bad, bad. Its not the negligible bad. Its the kind of bad that demands that you stand up and inform everyone else that its bad. Its bad cliche after bad cliche. There's so much to hate that I can't even remember; I've mentally blocked most of it.

While I'm exicited to see Fast and Furious, I'm now less excited. Damn the day that I decided to poke around on Imdb. Damn the day. I can't think of any other movie that induces bile and anger as this one does; and I've seen a lot of bad movies. Movies shouldn't make you angry, and most don't... but there's just something about this thing that really pushes my buttons.

I quite enjoyed F&F3, so hopefully he approaches F&F4 more like 3 than annapolis. As-is, I'm going to have a hard time justifying a viewing of another film by this so-called "director".

Original non-review: DvdFriend non-Review of Annapolis