Happy Wednesday.

Fandango reports that the Hunger Games has sold out almost 2,000 theaters in advance of Friday's release, making it the top-selling franchise opener and non-sequel in Fandango's nearly 12-year history. I don't really know what the movie's about, except that it's a post-apocalyptic to-the-death reality show (like Rollerball, Death Race, the Running Man, etc.) with teens, but the kids love it and it sounds like this is supposed to be either the next Harry Potter or the next Twilight.

Analysts say the Fed fudged its "stress test" for two TARP banks, so they could be green-lighted to repay their outstanding TARP loans. Although analysts and, apparently, the banks' shareholders thought Regions Financial and Zions Bankcorp. would fail the stress test, the Fed gave them better grades than many of their larger rivals.

This comes with the BREAKING NEWS caveat that what is reported may change rapidly or be corrected: French police are in a shooting standoff with the Islamist jack-hole who killed French soldiers and Jews. They have orders to take the 24 year-old alive, probably because of reports that he wasn't working alone.

Venerable bands KISS and Motley Crue are getting together for a 40-show U.S. tour. They swear this is not a f***ing joke.

Ron Paul has declined Secret Service protection because, he says, Secret Service is welfare. He was on Leno, so maybe he was joking?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (349)
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The Awesome - But Soon To Be Banned - 'Pork-Eating Crusader' Patches

Well the Afghanis may have gotten tired of American troops, but the Americans have also grown weary of being viewed as sub-human by the backward and benighted culture they're trying to help. And GI Joe ain't a bloomin' fool:

In the wake of the recent setbacks in Afghanistan, American commanders are working overtime trying to instill sensitivity among U.S. troops toward their Afghan counterparts and their Islamic culture.

But many American service-members already wear their feelings on their sleeves -- sometimes literally -- choosing a powerful term to represent the way they believe they're perceived by the Muslim world: "Infidel." There are infidel hats, infidel T-shirts and infidel uniform patches -- an entire genre of morale wear that emerged from the ashes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Including this patch which includes an image of a knight in a Crusade's tunic, eating a ham hock along with a translation in Arabic to make the point clear. The terminator eyes are a nice touch IMO.

"Everybody sort of hates occupying forces anyway, so it's kind of embracing that," he told Military.com "If you are going to hate us anyway, we might as well pretend to be the great white devil."

Continued Montgomery: "Originally, when we made the patch, we thought it would be this small thing, the equivalent of an 'I'm with stupid' T-shirt. We didn't think we would sell many, but the demand was there," Montgomery said, describing how his company has sold about 10,000 of the patches.

And it's not just a novelty item - here are some German troops sporting the pork-crusader patches in the wild:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:24 PM | Comments (617)
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Disney apparently did no want to call it what it should be called -- "John Carter of Mars" -- instead calling it "John Carter," which hardly tips you off to the Planetary Romance genre. (Planetary Romance is swords & sorcery in space -- I guess they mean "romance" as in "Arthurian romance." I.e., adventure.)

Apparently this is because a movie called Mars Needs Moms just bombed, so Hollywood of course decided that People hate Mars.

Okay.

It's underperforming. It actually made $184 million, which sounds great, but it has a $300 million cost, when advertising is figured in.

Plus, it says theaters are taking half that haul, which doesn't sound right to me (I thought the movie makers take 90% of a movie's first and second weeks of box office), but that's what it says. Maybe they made some special deal to force it into as many theaters as possible.

I saw this opening night with Verum Serum, out in California. It's good. Not great, but good. The acting's weak, the costuming and make-up is notably bad (it annoyed the hell out of me that the Red Men of Mars were instead depicted with orange tans and annoying reddish tattooing; why not just make them red?), the dialogue is worse than it needs to be (the plot here is actually pretty simple and logical -- but for some reason the filmmakers choose to make it seem more obscure and hard-to-follow than it is).

But it's fun. And it's something that we don't see from science-fiction in movies very often -- it's audacious.

So much of the science-fiction imagining you see in movies is so cramped and routine and based merely on films from ten years ago. All they seem to do is recycle plot elements from the sci-fi hits Alien, Aliens, and Terminator.

John Carter comes fairly directly from an actual writer -- not a hack hired to recycle crap from fifteen years ago -- so he gives his imagination a little license.

The ideas here are not jaw-dropping or anything. But given the dreck I'm used to seeing, it's a breath of fresh air. The Green Martian species, the savage, Spartan-like Tarks, have an oddball birth cycle (egg-layers, eggs are left in collective hatcheries, parents don't know whose hatchling is whom but just claim them upon birthing) which doesn't figure into the main conflict at all, but it's just interesting. The movie at least pays some attention to the idea that these are really actually aliens, and not just Opponents With Kewl Powers.

The Tarks, by the way, are well-done in CGI. Contrary to my normal complaint, the CGI here is good. It's the costuming that appears cheap and assembled from various left-overs at the Costume Department. Cheap plastic-looking fake-metal breastplates with some kind of nonsensical canvas cumberbonds and oddball fur at the shoulders. It doesn't look futuristic, and it doesn't look retro. It just doesn't look real. It doesn't look as if a real culture created it for practical use; it looks like someone did a sketch attempting to look odd and succeeded at only that.

But there are hints of intelligence scattered throughout. The film opens in New York City, circa 1888 or so, then flashes back to Arizona Territory some ten years earlier.

Here's something I hate: When a movie's screenwriters plainly do not know anything except what they've seen in other movies. For example, if I say "set a scene in Arizona Territory," what is the first thing that pops into your head?

Iconic sun-bleached landscape, mesas. Badlands and Goblin Rock. You know. The crap you see every time you see Arizona.

So I was happy when this movie showed me a forested area of Arizona, in winter, where they had to break the skin of ice on the water-troughs to let the horses drink. See, the writers actually decided "People have seen the same goddamned three cliches about Arizona six thousand times already; let's maybe show Arizona in winter, in the hills."

It's not enough to make this a great movie, but it's nice that somewhere here there's a working brain.

Another thing I liked was the "Predatory City," something that is wholly novel (to me, at least). A walking city, moving across the landscape on huge "legs," mechanized pylons, moving from city to city to attack and conquer.

I actually didn't get nearly enough of that, but again: Hey, sure is nice to see something new for once. This is science-fiction, right? Things are supposed to make me go "Gee whiz," right?

Well, nice to see that for once.

The plot is mostly dead-simple -- save the princess from an impeding forced marriage to a ruthless, murderous thug! -- but it's a fun ride.

The final battle does not take place at the Predator City. Why? I do not know. You'd have to ask the writers why they ate Stupid Pills when putting together act three.

But I liked it. Fun sword & sorcery stuff (or, "sword and planet," they call it sometimes).

Nothing really objectionable for the kids. Some blood is shed, but mostly of Tarks, and that blood is blue, and you don't see much of it anyway. I don't think any human blood is prominent.

One fun thing is that when John Carter is killing a lot of Tarks, the bodies start to pile up, and the frame clearly references one of those Frank Frazetta Conan covers, where piles of dead men lay at his feet. But cool as that is, they do it rather bloodlessly, Disney style. Still, kind of neat.

Posted by: Ace at 04:46 PM | Comments (194)
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Primary results for the Republican Presidential race here. Results should start trickling in shortly after 8pm EST.

Results for congressional seat fights are here.
Sadly, we must say goodbye to the very brief era of the Illinois Republican-majority congressional delegation:

**Updated- With exit polls coming in, Romney carries the state. Huge surprise. Calling it at 17:05pst** more...

Posted by: CAC at 02:35 PM | Comments (443)
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I'm beginning to think that maybe we don't have a genuine problem with real poverty, or something.

Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city canÂ’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content, reports CBS 2Â’s Marcia Kramer.

Glenn Richter arrived at a West Side synagogue on Monday to collect surplus bagels — fresh nutritious bagels — to donate to the poor. However, under a new edict from Bloomberg’s food police he can no longer donate the food to city homeless shelters.

It’s the “no bagels for you” edict.

“I can’t give you something that’s a supplement to the food you already have? Sorry that’s wrong,” Richter said.

Apparently the edict requires agencies to turn away food if they don't have full information on its nutrition content. A thoroughly stupid bit of bureaucratic idiocy, as usual. Bloomberg himself (noted to be a "salt-a-holic") appears embarrassed by the nanny state he's created and suggests maybe it's not such a good edict.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (449)
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Erin Burnett is "annoyed" that the RNC used her words against Obama. She "called out" (you'll understand the reason for quotes in a moment) Maher for his own misogynistic slurs, and the RNC included those words in an ad about the Democrats' War on Women.

Video and story here.

Here's the thing:

Every liberal wishes to fake-denounce this stuff. They're not really denouncing it. They're fake-denouncing it. They are only mouthing the words to inoculate themselves against a charge of hypocrisy or double-standards.

But they don't mean it, because they actually do believe in the double-standard. They just don't want to be on the record about it, or required to defend/justify it in public.

Now, to Burnett: If she said those words, presumably she believes them, yes? And would like them transmitted? In order to achieve the goal she supposedly stands for, a cleaning-up of language directed at women on the public stage?

Wrong. Like Yasser Arafat, her words were meant only for one audience. Just to get it on the record that she did not have a double-standard.

But she gets "annoyed" if people quote her, in the mistaken belief that those words were seriously intended -- because of course they were not.

Her words had one intended function only: To inoculate her against hypocrisy and double-standard charges, and worst of all, from the rebuke, hack.

Her statement wasn't intended to be anti-Maher. It was only intended to be pro-Burnett. And if you use them outside of that intended function, she gets.. "annoyed."

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (182)
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See if you can spot where he runs a red light and crashes into a bus.

He's trying to pretend that Democrats stand for liberty, contrasting himself with Santorum's statements which he'd characterize as anti-liberty.

Is this pro-liberty? Mostly, it can be argued. But watch for it.

Rick, if you're against pornography, then don't watch it.

You see how that works? Let me give you some more examples.

If you're against contraception, don't use it.

If you're against abortion, don't have one.

If you're against Moslems, don't become one.

If you're against gay marriage, don't have one.

If you're against unions, don't join one.

If you're against universal health care, just keep your distance from doctors and hospitals.

If you're against homosexuality, then feel free to limit your sexual interest to the 3 billion human beings of the opposite gender.

What I'm basically trying to say to Rick Santorum, and everyone like Rick Santorum, is this: mind your own business.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

Politico, which published this, didn't even notice, of course.

A case could be made for many of Grayson's statements being, essentially, pro-choice.

Until he gets to universal health care -- a top-down, mandated-enrollment, government-controlled, no-escape-clause dream of the socialist left.

And there? There is his recommendation is, essentially, don't go to doctors or hospitals. In other words, never get sick.

You don't have to be a libertarian. But don't pose as pro-liberty and then smuggle in your support for socialized, statist government control.

Mark Oxner is taking on this shaved gorilla.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (214)
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I think the Gingrich and Santorum supporters might think it's funny.

I think it's so-so. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (115)
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Daryl Issa tweeted this picture:

That's Chu, conservin' and stuff.

Testifying to Congress, he perjured himself by awarding himself an "A" for his efforts in keeping gas prices down at about the level they are in Europe.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel Tuesday that he’d give himself top marks when asked to grade his policies’ effects on energy prices. Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked President Obama’s top energy official if he’d grade himself with an “A minus” on “controlling the cost of gasoline at the pump.”

Chu responded by saying heÂ’d give himself a better grade than that.

“The tools we have at our disposal are limited, but I would I say I would give myself a little higher in that since I became Secretary of Energy, I’ve been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions,” Chu said.

There is, of course, a pattern to this administration. Although they fail constantly, they give themselves great grades (Obama gave himself a B+; later, he suggested he was among the top four presidents in history) for failing, because, they claim, circumstances are so arrayed against them that failure is actually success.

They averted catastrophic failure, they say. And that should therefore be praised.

The vibe you get from Obama, and from Chu, is of men who have never worked in a tough environment before.

Does Obama think it was easy to govern the nation after 9/11?

Apparently he does, because he, and Chu, and Biden, and the rest of the Give Me A's For Failure brigade seem to think they're the first men in history to ever face difficult problems.

And they fail, and fail, and fail at solving those problems, but they want their A's, because Hey!, no one's ever been asked to solve problems before! Problems, it turns out, are hard!

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 AM | Comments (211)
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Well, that's kind of boring, if you mean "what would it look like from space?" Everyone can quickly imagine that.

More interesting: What would the rings look like from the surface of the earth?

I'm on a sci-fi kick lately (never touched the stuff before, really, except for like Ringworld and Blue Event Horizon) and I was wondering.

Anyway, this video shows the answer.

It's kind of awesome. The shots-from-earth photoshops start exactly one minute in.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (195)
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