Now confirmed by Reuters (I held off until a slightly more legitimate source had it).

Saudi security forces killed three suspected militants holed up in a house in northern Saudi Arabia on Sunday, state television said.
Al-Ikhbariyah television quoted local governor Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdul-Aziz as saying another two wanted men were wounded in fierce fighting around the house in the town of al-Ras, 180 miles northwest of Riyadh.

More at Riehl World's link above.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (5)
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On his way now; an email just said he's three hours from landing.

I'd like to do the whole "Congratulations! Good for you!" thing. But you all know damn well I wouldn't mean it.

This dirty bastard is going over to Lebanon to take part in the Cedar Revolution and meanwhile I'm thinking about "Pizza-Blogging" at a Chucky Cheese in Schennectady, New York.

Posted by: Ace at 12:25 PM | Comments (16)
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Soxblog recounts how he tipped me that the FDU fired-Nazi story was almost certainly (in his estimation) an April Fool's Day joke, and how he got excited that this could be his mini-Rathergate.

I remember asking him, "Yes, but how do we know it's a hoax?" And then we both began actually -- get this -- fact checking and shit.

My only gloss on this is that I really do understand how investigative reporters get swept up in a story, and want a story to be true. This was such a minor little thing -- at most, we'd be able to say "Ha-ha, Kos and Atrios are idiots," which isn't exactly bringing down Eason Jordan -- and yet we both wanted this to pan out. We both wanted this tiny insignificant scoop.

Fortunately, we actually did have a bit more sketpicism than, say, Mary Mapes, and refrained from going with an unconformed story -- an uncomfirmed suspicion, really -- until we'd gotten the sad news that we had no scoop at all.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (8)
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So, as I'm buying soda, I notice a black guy in a baseball cap and leather jacket buying hot dogs and popcorn. I also notice his bombshell blonde of a girlfriend. It's Ice-T, and his girlfriend, who I might say looks like she could be a porn-star, and of course I mean that in the best way possible.

I've seen them around the neighborhood once before. The first thing you notice is, "Hey, that's Ice-T." The second thing you notice is the girl, and you keep noticing her for a good long while. I think he's dating her primarily so that people don't recognize him.

Ice-T and his girlfriend gave me their own brief review of Sin City. More on that later.

Sin City is one of the most cinematically-gorgeous movies I've ever seen. Black and white is used to startlingly evocative effect, and the camera does a great job of capturing the stark and melodramatic compositions of well-drawn comics. Color is dabbled onto the canvas here and there, and that looks lovely as well, but I think the black and white itself could easily have carried the day. The colorization is a bit gimmicky, and we've seen it before... all the way back in that dumb Elton John video.

This movie has made it safe to shoot in black and white again. Expect there to be more black and white films. And they'll look amazing.

The credits are odd: the film is "shot and cut" by Robert Rodriguez -- have you ever seen that credit before? -- and directed by "Frank Miller [the comic's author] and Robert Rodriguez." Plus, a special "guest director" named Quentin Tarrantino. Tarrantino hasn't shown me anything since Pulp Fiction, but whatever he contributed here is good, because it's all good.

The film is ultraviolent, as you might expect, but in a fun way. A lot of people have described this film as having no "good guys." That's not really true. There are three genuine heroes, even if one is a violent monster of a thug suffering from psychotic hallucinations, and one is an ex-murderer (who, in a bit of one of the film's problems with repetition and similar characters, also apparently is prone to psychotic halluciantions). And then there's a genuine moral heroine in Jessica Alba, and a minor heroine in Brittany Murphy, who's really more cute and spunky than a genuine heroine, but whatever.

And of course Bruce Willis, playing a non-wisecracking version of John McClane.

Basically, the movie is a mix between Pulp Fiction -- violent vignettes lightly connected in entwining storylines -- and L.A. Confidential. In fact, an awful lot of the characterization is taken from L.A. Confidential. But whereas LAC featured three distictive heroes -- Jack Vincennes, the sleazy cop who develops a conscience; Ed Exley, the smart and ambitious tight-ass; and Bud White, the hulking, brutish thug who sees it as his personal mission to protect abused women -- this film also features three heroes, but all of them are Bud White.

Mickey Roarke is a hulking monster, looking a bit like Quasimodo before the first coffee of the day, who cannot abide the abuse of women and uses brutality and mayhem to save them.

Clive Owens is the handsome cypher with a dark past who also cannot abide the abuse of women, and who also uses brutality and mayhem to save them.

Bruce Willis -- turning in another fine performance -- is the One Good Cop in the dirty city, about to retire (the film claims he's "pushing sixty," which provoked chuckles from the audience), who also, get this, cannot abide the abuse of women -- or at least one specific woman, a little girl he saved years before -- and who also also uses brutality and mayhem to save her.

Repetition is the only real problem with the film... we see an awful lot of hands being chopped off, and at least three instances of villains having their genitals either shot off (or, in one grim scene, ripped off by hand). Mickey Roarke goes on a suicide mission to save a woman from a creepy farmhouse guarded by corrupt cops; and wouldn't you know it, an hour later Bruce Willis goes to the same creepy farmhouse guarded by corrupt cops to save another woman.

That said, the film is a hell of a good time. The dialogue (60% of it narrative voice-overs) is over the top noir-speak, sometimes ludicrous, but the spirit of the film, and its inherently gonzo nature, makes it all work. There are dangerous men and beautiful (and also dangerous) dames -- more dangerous dames than dangerous men, actually, as the "Old City" is controlled entirely by what appear to be covert-ops trained whores -- and there are gorgeous shots of long twisty LA-ish coastal highways, cigarettes being lighted left and right, driving rain and driving in the rain, and it's always nightime, sometime around 3am it seems...

It's basically every noir film you've ever seen turned up to 11, or actually about three notches above 11. Sort of the Raiders of the Lost Ark for violent pulp noir.

One thing: Don't expect what I was expecting, the "team up" between the various heroes, as occurs at the end of LA Confidential. My one disappointment was that Clive, Mickey, and Bruce didn't all get together for some serious ass kicking at the end. Their storylines remain almost entirely separate, save for the fact that they see each other in the same bar from time to time. They never actually talk to one another or interact in any way.

Highly recommended.

Anyway, back to Ice-T.

He was in the next row over, and we happened to get to the aisle at about the same time (I timed it a little, yeah), and so I introduced myself as a reporter and asked for his review.

He said it was interesting though he sometimes found it confusing (I imagine he means the Pulp Fiction-esque unclear chronology), but that he really got into it once he began to understand the city and everyone in it. He says it's a breakthrough role for Mickey Roarke, and that "Mickey is back." I think he may be right about that.

I suggested that Roarke was soooo hulking in several scenes that I thought the might be using digital effects to enlarge him, and his girlfriend said, "Yes, I was just saying that!" But Ice-T disagreed, saying it was just his head that was big (he wears a lot of facial prosthetics) and pointing out that Roarke is a boxer.

I think the girlfriend is right. I've seen Mickey Roarke, and while he's beefy, he ain't a hulking monster.

Both were surprisingly friendly and enthusiastic about talking about the movie with strangers. So, okay, Ice-T might have a shitty attitude about cops, but he's not an asshole personally.

And his girlfriend... well, she's hot enough to be a bitch and get away with it -- easily -- but she's not. She really was pretty damn friendly and nice. Plus, I could see about 80% of her boobies, which sort of won her bonus points.

So, there you go. I said I was a reporter, and I didn't lie. I interviewed a subject, remembered what he'd said, and reported it.

I am now ready for my media exemption to the coming FEC rules governing non-reporters.

Coupla Other Points I Just Thought Of: If you hate Elijah Wood -- and, let's face it, who doesn't?; if I had heard that freak say "We really were a genuine Fellowship" during his LOTR publicity blitz I would have hunted him down and killed him like an animal -- you'll be shocked at the audacity of his casting in a role as a heavy, and how well it actually works. I won't give away the surprise, but let's just say if I described his character and his, erm, combat abilities, you would just laugh at me. But it works.

I'm always down on CGI, but here it's used to good effect, and is only mildly obtrusive a couple of times.

Lotta people in the cast -- Nick Stahl, Rosario Dawson, etc. -- and all pretty good.

If I had to guess which part Tarrantino directed, I'd guess it was the Old City super-ninja commando-whores sequence, because he's been peddling that conceit of his for more than ten years-- from the first introduction in Pulp Fiction (Mia was in the pilot for "Fox Force Five") to the chhhorible Kill Bill abortions. Come to think of it, that part was the dumbest and most juvenile of the film, so yeah, I'm gonna go with Tarrantino on that.

The three main heroes seem to correspond to gonzo versions of classic noir heroes. Roarke is the thuggish and fascist Mike Hammer, this time made into a physical monster (as Hammer had been, arguably, a moral monster); Owens is the smooth and deadly Phillip Marlowe, with a touch of Marlowe's trademark of fighting on behalf of causes for reasons which seem a mystery to both the reader and himself. And Willis-- well, I can't think of a classic noir hero who's the One Good Cop in the dirty city, but, for crying out loud, there must have been hundreds.

Is This the Blonde Bomshell? Update: Allah wants to know if this is the woman I saw with Ice-T. (Not quite safe for work.)

I'm pretty damn sure it was. She looks better than that, though. That's a pretty harsh shot of her.

And Allah also tips to her website, "Coco's World" (definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK). Well, whatever I can do to help a fellow blogger and movie-buff out, right?

Ooops... for some reason that website doesn't seem to want to, ahem, load. Perhaps she just can't handle an Ace-alanche.

Posted by: Ace at 02:37 PM | Comments (205)
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Reader Andrew noted to me that two of three lions for freedom of the eighties had died within the space of a year; Reagan and now Pope John Paul II.

As he remarked, let's hope Baroness Thatcher has many good years left in her.

The Sort of Goodbye I'm Just Not Capbable Of: ... is provided by All Along the Blogtower:

These fears would soon be heightened, as the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet Empire appeared to be expanding, and no one seemed to be willing to stand up to it's evil march. "Coexistence" was the foreign policy buzzword of the time. The elite's laughed at those naive fools who thought that Democracy and Liberty were a more perfect order of things. They further laughed if you expressed the belief that Liberty and Freedom were not just assumed right's of man, but were instead right's granted by a loving Creator to all mankind.

And then three amazing things happened in quick succession. Following the Pope's ascension, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. And then Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States.

Suddenly, the friends of freedom had a "mortal holy trinity" of their own.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (8)
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...from blogging. Got stuff to do.

1) Get haircut. Damn it all, this time the Korean lady who grooms my lush tresses had better goddamn make me look like Nick Rhodes from the Girls on Film video. I've given her eight chances to get this right, and apparently when I say "Nick Rhodes in Girls on Films" her difficulty with the English languages causes her to hear "Danny Bonnaduce when he had the most distressing body-issues in the most awkward phase of inchoate puberty."

I've prepared this time. I'm bringing photos and my prized copy of Duran Duran's early videos, Dancing on the Valentine. Do I have to draw her an f'n' map? I want a haircut that goes good with black mascara and fingerless lace gloves. Is this such a difficult trick?

If I come out of there looking like I'm ready to play bass in bell-bottoms, there are gonna be problems. I'm still pissed off about Chosin, and this woman is definitely flirting with my personal Danger Zone, as so eloquently immortalized by Mr. Kenny Loggins.

2) I, I, ah-ahh-I, am gonna see Sin City. Wasn't sure it was opening this weekend, but a 40ish black woman in the bodega where I buy coffee was raving about it. She'd seen it yesterday morning, and she was delighted that the movie "followed the graphic novel so closely."

So, she's a comic book geek, obviously. Even I haven't read this particular comic book. (They call comic books "graphic novels" when they want to show boobies and and pooter and then charge your $4.95 per twenty-page issue.)

I think there's hope for our society. Issues of race and gender will continue to divide us, but they are, after all, only superficial traits.

Geek goes to the core. Geek is what can unite this country.

And I'm proud to be doing my part for the cause.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (6)
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Obviously, I don't want to jinx things; but then, I also don't believe in jinxes. In any case, this is pretty topical.

Riehl World has put together a digest of the rites and procedures following the death of a Pope.

And... Video of the Vatican press conference on the Pope's deteriorting health.

More... Andrew sent me a link about these rituals and procedures last night, and I was just composing a post about them before Riehl World went first-to-market.

But Andrew highlighted a couple of cool details I didn't see in Riehl World's post. From his link:

Immediately on the death of a pope the cardinal camerlengo who, as representative of the Sacred College, assumes charge of the papal household, verifies by a judicial act the death of the pontiff. In the presence of the household he strikes the forehead of the dead pope three times with a silver mallet, calling him by his baptismal name.

Andrew digests the next steps in his own words:

After that, they take his Fisherman's ring, which is I guess a seal of office, and smash it. At that moment, control of the Catholic church goes to the Conclave of Cardinals, who have to get together and choose a new Pope.

The mallet thing is done in front of lots of people- High dignitary types. Obviously this is to avoid any sort of funny business. They want to be sure the man has left this world and isn't being railroaded.

Definitely interesting stuff. Unfortunately, of course, we'll soon be seeing this on cable news.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 AM | Comments (9)
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Remember when blacks were forced to travel into space in an alternate astronaut program? Well, neither do I, quite frankly.

And neither did the producers of the this mockumentary, and so they just made shit up, left and right, about the old negro space leagues. I haven't even watched it yet, but I'm linking it unseen, because there's no way someone could think up a premise that good and then fuck it up.

Well, actually, I'm linking Ken Wheaton, because that's where I found it. He's got the link, and also a funny ongoing series on the fires and tortures of Hell itself dating which you should check out if you haven't yet.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 AM | Comments (12)
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...at least when the question states it's "voluntary" and also mentions the money would be invested in "stocks and mutual funds." Which seems a fair way to describe it, as that is, in fact, the plan.

Why does this poll indicate that personal accounts are popular, whereas other polls indicate they're not? Well, obviously, this is a Fox poll, and the other polls are run by liberal outfits. But more specifically, Patrick Ruffini thinks:

What's wrong with how other polls ask the question? Their results are skewed because they go out of the way to mention a cut in guaranteed benefits -- which is interpreted as a cut in benefits.

More at the link.

As Ruffini notes, the Dems might have uncorked their champagne too early.

Thanks to The New Editor.

Posted by: Ace at 03:48 PM | Comments (24)
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FDU's student paper reports the firing of a viciously anti-semitic and anti-black Nazi-supportin' professor:

Jacques Pluss, an adjunct professor at the Metropolitan Campus, openly discussed his March 21 dismissal from Fairleigh Dickinson in a 44-minute interview on a website of the National Socialist Movement designed with swastikas and a picture of Adolf Hitler. Pluss said he was "removed" from his classroom duties when he received a brief phone call at 5:30 p.m. from the department chairman who, he said, told him he was being released "for the convenience of the university" the following day. "I was stolen away in the night," he said. Pluss reported that he will be paid his salary through the end of this semester. He also said he will retire from "the academic world" and devote himself to the cause of the White Aryan Race Nation.

The professor speculated that he was dismissed because of his work with the National Socialist Movement on the internet, adding that the university "followed the typical Jewish, lawyerly, Hebrew line." He suggested that a "watchdog group" may have alerted FDU about his activities beyond the classroom. During one segment of the conversation, Pluss said the university did not want adverse publicity while its Division 1 basketball team was in the NCAA playoffs. He said the players are "n--- to the core" and "sit in the back of my class with CDs and earphones" listening to "ghastly rap music." Earlier in the same broadcast, Pluss referred to the "browning of America" and called FDU a "heavily Judaized institution" with a large minority student population. He said those students are "floating their way through school on taxpayer dollars," adding that it (FDU) is "not just browned, but singed." He also discussed attending a recent "gathering" of the White Aryan Race Nation in South Carolina, commenting that he had been gratified by the turnout.

I saw this story via Daily Kos. I thought it might be an April Fool's Day goof story, as college papers are wont to run, but it seems to be all too real.

Now, I certainly think this asshole should be shitcanned. But if we're not going to tolerate this form of vicious hate speech, please explain again why we're tolerating Ward Churchill's? Why does the left continue to enjoy the benefits of this absurd double-standard?

Either free speech on campus is absolute and sancrosanct or it is not. I'd prefer, actually, that it not be, tenured professor or not; I don't think a university should be forced to keep Nazis on the payroll.

And neither do I think they should be required to keep "professors" who suggest ways that their students can conduct actual violent terrorism against this country.

But again: Absolute and sancrosanct or not. And if it's not: Fire the left-wing terrorist-sympathizer and agitator Ward Churchill along with this Nazi.

The "National Socialist News Service" Notes His Firing... and whines about the chilling of dissent.

Again, I don't think Nazis and virulent racists have any place on campus... but, but, but: lefty-leaning colleges can't cry "absolute and untrammelled free speech" to protect a shitheel like Ward Churchill and then fire Nazis.

"Absolute" does not mean "sometimes absolute, when we sympathize with the person making the disgusting statements." See: that's not "absolute." That is "contingent" and "limited."

Posted by: Ace at 02:42 PM | Comments (31)
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