If I ever become handicapped, I need one of these:

A Rocket Powered Wheelchair! YEAH!

One of my favorite quotes:

“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

- Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Pay very close attention to the third image in this page

I learned something rather random but interesting today. Rod Serling was a co-writer of the original Planet of the Apes movie.

It really makes sense when you think about it.

A new day & a new link. For those of you who aren’t going to pay attention, the translation of the comic to English is just below it.

Around a year I was talking to someone about how ridiculous sponsorships & advertising has become. People will sponsor anything…ANYTHING. Closed Captioning is always sponsored for television shows so a company can get that little 15 second branding moment. The strangest…and perhaps the funniest sponsorship I can think of to date was at the World Animation Celebration here in Hollywood about 2 years ago. Doodie.com sponsored the restroom facilities for the duration of the event.

I decided that I should get a piece of the action. My plan was quite simple in concept & fairly easy in execution. I would let people sponsor every aspect of my life. A bumper sticker on my car would state “Andy’s commute is sponsored by ______”. I would add advertising slogans to the bottom of all of my emails, instant messages, and now of course to my blog entries as well. The plan even called for me to go as far as sponsoring conversations by ending them with “This conversation was in part brought to you by _______”

Sadly, I never acted on this plan, but it looks like someone else is going to take a plan similar to mine a step further than I ever would have. Check out this eBay auction to see what he conceived.

Saw “The Village” Friday night. Originally it was just going to be Theresa and I, but about 10 mins before the movie started, Kathy & Rachel walked in & sat down by us.

Overall, it was an entertaining film - good acting, nice plot & strong characters. It’s not as good as “The Sixth Sense”, but definitely better than Shayamalan’s other two films, although “Signs” is a great film until the final 15-20 minutes when they come out of the basement.

During the credits roll, I commented to the others “It would have been a much better film if the creatures had actually been aliens….aliens who can be killed with water.” To which Kathy quickly added, “And everyone were already dead, but they just didn’t know it.” That gave us all a good laugh. I think it upset a few of the people around us though because I did see a few nasty glances directed in our way….althought that could just as easily have been because I was throwing popcorn at people whom I felt were unworthy to be in the same theater as me during the film.

This animated video for Radiohead’s Creep is some of the best Flash animation I have seen done yet.

I think by now the entire country is aware of two significant facts:

1. The State of California is broke.
2. Arnold Schwartzneggar is the Governor of California

Right after the election I struck upon a gold mine of an idea. Theresa thought it was good enough that I should e-mail the Governator about it that day. Since that time I have mentioned it to others who seem to share Theresa’s enthusiasm.

The Governator needs to make a non-profit film with all proceeds going to the State of California. I am not talking about one of those low-budget pieces of crap. I mean he calls James Cameron & they collaborate on making a HUGE blockbuster to beat all blockbusters like a Terminator 4 or True Lies 2. It should be a best-of-the-best credits roll with California’s top talent offering their services for free.

The simple logic of this works out. All of the people who would be participating get tax breaks because they are donating their time which can be documented against their average rates. Not to mention that most of the top-level people in an undetaking like this don’t really need the money anyway & could afford the time to do something like this. Even at their worst, the film will make half a billion dollars after the DVD release.

There are a million other ways to earn extra money on the film. Auction off walk-on roles for the film on ebay & when the film is done, auction off all the props & sell autographed posters.

So breaking it all down:
- The state makes an ass-load of money.
- A bunch of rich hollywood-type people & companies get top notch press & huge tax breaks from charitable donations.
- A bunch of well-to-do non-Hollywood people get to write off their auction bids & be in a big-to-do Hollywood film.
- The state of California gets a chance to show off why the studios should continue to stay here instead of shooting films overseas.
- The world gets a top quality action film which gives everyone a couple of hours to not have to reflect on the scare-news tactic of the week.

(I would like to give kudos to Jenn C. who came up with the title for this post during our post-broomball meal.)