Lack of campus parking complaints makes me wonder if students hold a college degree in “Bitching”

I’m what you might call a “career student.” I’ve set foot on many campuses over the years. So I know a thing or two about parking – and parking complaints.

Every college I have been to is like a tradition that the campus newspaper must do a story about parking for the first issue of the spring and fall semesters. The editorial decision is as predictable as a majority of today’s movies.

For a community college that specializes in education, maybe they should offer a new two-year degree called “Bitching” when it comes to parking. Hell, I am sure there a number of people out there who already hold a bachelor’s or master’s degree in the subject.

I am amazed at how I never heard anyone complain about the lack of parking when they go to Six Flags, a concert or a sporting event.

Nor do I hear anyone gripe about having to walk miles to get to the mall beginning the day after Thanksgiving through New Year’s having to park their car so far you have to make a mental note where you left your vehicle.

If there is one place I avoid during the holidays, it’s the malls. That’s why God invented gift cards and Walmart.

Oh, but I stand corrected. Those are places people go to for amusement. This is college. There is no entertainment here, right?

The only time I get irritated with the lack of parking on campus grounds is when construction sacrifices an entire parking lot. As a result, everyone is forced to park elsewhere. Therein lies where all the problems start.

Yes, I am aware administrators are always looking to improve the campus grounds adding new buildings but deciding to begin construction at the start of the semester is not a good idea. Construction should be done during March or spring break and continue through the summer when the campus is not bustling with activity.

When there is no construction, what burns me up are the single driver watch parties, or ‘stalkers’ who drive around in their vehicles watching people headed to their cars in hopes to claim that parking space the minute the other person leaves.

I am sorry but there is no rule that says when that lazy ass in their vehicle sits there waiting for me to pull out, I have to vacate the minute I get in my car!

You know what I’m going to do from now on? Anytime some ‘stalker’ sees me going to my car and wants first dibs on my space, I am going to take my own sweet time pulling out.

Perhaps I’ll take out the sub sandwich I just bought and chomp down right in front of the ‘stalker’ just to tick them off instead of pulling out.

Perhaps I’ll check texts on my cellphone.

Perhaps I’ll call my supervisor asking how many IT tickets are there, so I know ahead of time what I have to deal with when I show up at work later that day.

Perhaps I’ll call my sister. We never talk anyway except on holidays.

Maybe I’ll call 911 or campus police and tell them some annoying person is upset I’m not vacating my parking space while they sit and waste gas. Then the minute the police officers show up, I’ll drive away.

I am beginning to think if a campus newspaper DIDN’T draft a story or editorial about the parking situation, I’d get worried and wonder if students are happy with the facilities, which is as much a lie as President Obama’s promise that under his new health care plan, Americans can keep their own medical insurance.

The facts are these. Everything that goes on here regarding parking is the same at every college at the beginning of every semester.

Every college campus gets a slew of new incoming students who are either coming to register at the last minute or buy their books, depending on where the bookstore and admissions offices are. Because of their unfamiliarity with the campus, they are figuring out the best place to park and the quickest way to get to classes.

All this heavy traffic right now will cease before the end of September or as soon as students either stop coming to classes, drop one or all their courses, or find the closest buildings where their classes are taught and park near those areas.

At that point, the “bitching” will stop and come January, the vicious cycle will start up again. You will see the folks at your daily campus newspaper drafting another story and/or editorial about the current parking situation.

You people and parking! It never ends!

You know, with all the talk about health care and how obesity has become a national epidemic, it wouldn’t hurt, those of you complaining having to park so far away from the campus, to get out and walk to class.

I, for one, welcome walking as I know I could use the exercise. I am 110 percent certain, if not all of you could use the exercise.

Now if you excuse me, I need to put away my laptop and get my car started. There is someone behind me who’s been waiting the past 45 minutes for me to leave so he can claim my parking space.

©9/1/09

My Personal Worst Films: Halloween II (2009)

Halloween II «½
R, 101m. 2009

Cast & Credits: Sheri Moon Zombie (Deborah Myers), Chase Wright Vanek (Young Michael), Scout Taylor-Compton (Laurie Strode), Brad Dourif (Sheriff Lee Bracket), Caroline Williams (Dr. Maple), Malcolm McDowell (Dr. Samuel Loomis), Tyler Mane (Michael Myers), Margot Kidder (Barbara Collier). Written and directed by Rob Zombie.

I went to see "Halloween II" with an impending sense of dread. I had no love for screenwriter -director Rob Zombie’s unsettling version of John Carpenter’s independent horror suspense thriller, "Halloween" (1978). As a means of protesting how much I loathed the remake, I wanted to have Carpenter’s creepy musical score from the original playing at work when my phone rings at the helpdesk every few minutes.

Zombie’s version of Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) re-introduced the towering indestructible psychotic giant as a ticking time bomb with no regard for human life, not even for those who tried to befriend him. The one exception is his dead mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) whom he misses. I was convinced had Myers not murdered his stepfather and older sister, he could have successfully pulled off a Columbine or Virginia Tech style massacre and gotten away with it.

To quote the phrase, “too much information”, such was the problem with Zombie’s version. Carpenter’s original was so effective because we knew so little about the young kid in the clown costume. That made his impending murder spree as an adult all the more frightening.

"Halloween II" takes place a year after Myers broke out of the mental institution in the original and returned to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois to embark on a killing spree to mark the twenty-first anniversary of his rampage.

Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), the lone survivor under the care of a psychiatrist (Margot Kidder) and living with a foster father (Brad Dourif) and his daughter is still having nightmares thinking Michael Myers is still out there. I can’t blame her. She swears she pulled the trigger on the psycho that fateful night. Trouble is that police never found the body.

This isn’t the only grief she has on her plate. Upon reading an investigative tell-all book by Myers’ former psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), Laurie learns she is the murderer’s baby sister.

Whereas Carpenter’s Myers was indeed “the boogeyman,” Zombie’s Myers is Charles Manson reincarnated. The film exhibits the kind of unsettling violence you’d find in a Quentin Tarantino movie, except here, we get no memorable dialogue.

In an attempt to unite with his baby sister, Myers leaves a significant number of bodies in his wake. Night-shift nurses are brutally stabbed to death in such rapid succession not one of them has time to scream. Heads are severed from bodies. A guy’s face is stomped on by Myers several times until you can’t tell he was an actual person. A stripper is bashed headfirst into some glass several times before she is finally dead. A hospital security guard gets the ax, literally.

Even a dog isn’t spared the butcher knife as it becomes dinner to help settle Myers’ bloodthirsty appetite. If convicted killer Charles Manson ever escapes from prison, this is probably the kind of graphic mayhem he or his new set of followers would unleash.

Like his remake, "Halloween II," is not scary. It is not suspenseful. It is not fun. It is instead a disturbing, tragic take on what happens all too often in real life murder cases. The film is an echo on the life of twisted serial murderers and a tabloid take on how authors make money writing best-selling crime books about the subject without any thought for the victims.

Midway through the film when Loomis makes an appearance to promote his new book on the Haddonfield killings from a year before called The Devil Among Us, a victim’s father shows him a picture of his daughter, who Myers murdered. Modeled after that other infamous crime story about the Manson case, Loomis’ book is his "Helter Skelter."

Other than being disturbing, there is now one other word I can add to describe "Halloween II" and that is predictable. Like the first one where just when you think the prey killed the murderer, the psycho comes back to life, something we’ve seen happen in almost every mad slasher film, "Halloween II" is filled with that infamous horror cliché where the victim tells the person they are protecting, they will be right back. You know they won’t. Just like we know that Michael Myers isn’t really dead, no matter how many times Loomis tells reporters.

As unsettling as the premise was for these films, I do have to admire Zombie for approaching the material with some originality. Unfortunately, just like with his remake, he ruins it in "Halloween II" with a rip-off ending similar to the climax of "Psycho" (1960) where Strode boasts an evil smile similar to the grin Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates displayed while that great musical score from Carpenter’s Halloween plays in the background.

I have to give Zombie credit. "Halloween II" does have a cold, creepy, dark, depressing, eerie, lonely, macabre look to it. The best scenes are the dream sequences where Myers sees the ghost of his dead mother dressed in white like she is the Angel of Death telling him to carry out his mission and how it won’t be long before she, Michael, and Laurie will all be together on the other side. There is also a chilling graveyard sequence where Laurie dreams she is lying dead in a casket and suddenly wakes up frantically trying to get out.

Such shots show that Zombie is capable of delivering the stuff nightmares are made of when he puts his mind to it. I can’t help but wonder if in the coming years he delivers us a great horror movie as frighteningly memorable as "The Exorcist" (1972), as suspenseful as George Romero’s black and white classic, "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) or as humorous as "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) or even an edge of your seat thriller that Carpenter’s "Halloween" was. Perhaps these sequences are his way of teasing us while he secretly works on his private masterpiece.

As much as I loathed both his Halloween movies, I have to admit I am curious to see what his vision will be when he remakes the 1958 classic, "The Blob," that starred a young Steve McQueen.

©8/28/09

My Personal Worst Movies: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra «½
PG-13, 118m. 2009

Cast & Credits: Dennis Quaid (General Hawk), Channing Tatum (Duke), Sienna Miller (Ana/Baroness), Ray Park (Snake Eyes), Rachel Nichols (Scarlett), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Heavy Duty), Said Taghmaoui (Breaker), Marlon Wayans (Ripcord), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Doctor/Rex), Christopher Eccleston (McCullen/Destro), Jonathan Pryce (U.S. President), Lee Byeong-heon (Storm Shadow), Arnold Vosloo (Zartan). Screenplay by Stuart Beattie, David Elliot, and Paul Lovett. Directed by Stephen Sommers.

I went in expecting "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" to not be as bad as "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and on that level, the movie delivered.

Just don’t go mistaking that as a good thing. The only two positive things I can say about “Joe” is that one, at 118 minutes, the running time was satisfyingly less than what it took to sit through Revenge of the Fallen (150 minutes). Two, the film is not filled to the brim with sexually suggestive, vulgar, unfunny innuendos as the second Transformers.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t have some female eye candy to gawk at. This is for young boys above age 10 who have yet to be told the word defining their being sexually stimulated when they see a beautiful woman on screen is called puberty. Like Transformers 2 which had Megan Fox, "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" has The Baroness played by Sienna Miller who sports a black latex, leather outfit. The costume looks so tight around her chest as a corset that it looks like her breasts can’t wait to get free.

The two words that best describe G.I. Joe is “no imagination.” The film’s supposed $175 million budget is the equivalent of giving a kid a 5,000-plus piece exclusive Lego set that had to be special ordered. Without instructions, the kid would have no idea what to build.

The idea of Lego building is creating something out of one’s imagination. You would think the same goes for making movies. The filmmakers had $175 million to play with, and the most they could give the audience was lots of car chases, explosions, and the big payoff shot of the Eiffel Tower crashing down on hundreds of French citizens. It’s as if director Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy"-1999) was in competition with Revenge of the Fallen’s director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to see who can fill their film with the most visual effects. I don’t mind sitting through stupid, dumb expensive movies as long as they are fun. The filmmakers, however, left the “fun” out of this.

When G.I. Joe takes a break from the action, we are inundated with subplots echoing better movies, as individual characters recall fateful moments from their pasts, like the anti-heroes in "Watchmen" (2009) did. When a martial arts villain kills his master out of jealousy, the scene reminded me of what Daryl Hannah’s assassin character did to her sadistic instructor in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004). The final martial arts sword fight between Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and his villainous brother takes place above a chasm that looks like the shot was ripped off from the lightsaber duel between Liam Neeson’s and Ewan MacGregor’s Jedi Knights against Darth Maul in "Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace" (1999).

The plot? Well, like "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," there doesn’t seem to be much of one. The good guys, who I will call “the Joes,” are an elite army team led by General Hawk (Dennis Quaid in a role I could easily picture John Wayne doing since Quaid’s character is so patriotic) whose home base is somewhere out in the desert, perhaps Saudi Arabia. The bad guys reside in an underwater lair out in the Antarctic led by a military industrialist named McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), who threatens the world with some special missile technology that when fired, unleashes some mechanical bugs that eat steel. As to the reason why he wants to threaten the world, I am about as clueless as the President of the United States’ general staff is.

When the president (Jonathan Pryce) asks what the villain’s demands are, we get no answer.

As a matter of fact, when it comes to my knowledge of Transformers and G.I. Joe toys, I have to confess I am very ignorant. Like Transformers, I never watched the G.I. Joe cartoon series from the 1980s, much less read the long-running Marvel comic book. I have never owned a toy transformer in my life, not even a Star Wars one. The closest I came to even touching a G.I. Joe action figure was when I first moved to Texas and spent the first few weeks at my cousin’s house because the furniture hadn’t arrived yet. (He had G. I. Joe toys).

That was back when I had just graduated from grade school. The most I know about any “Joe” character is that Destro has a silver head.

Just about all the characters here are as soulless as the plastic ¾-inch and 12- inch Hasbro action figures you see littering the store shelves of Toys R’ Us. Like last year’s "The Spirit" (2008), G.I. Joe is nothing more than a big budget mass marketing toy, much like the action figures from Hasbro on which this film is based. There is not a single character we care about, loathe, or root for. The only thing interesting about the characters are the code names they are all given, and that is provided you already know who they are without looking at the end credits. Other than The Baroness and Snake Eyes, I have no idea who “Duke,” “Heavy Duty”, “The Doctor”, “Storm Shadow”, “Dr. Mindbender”, “Hard Master”, “Zartan”, or “Ripcord” are or what their role is in the “Joe” universe.

G.I. Joe does have one thing going for it and that is Sienna Miller. It’s no wonder the toymakers at Hasbro made an exclusive 12-inch doll of her character, The Baroness, that was available for purchase at the San Diego Comic Con last July. (You can get it for $69.99 on Amazon.com.)

Miller has a unique gift of uttering one-liners (“That redhead is starting to piss me off!”) any screenwriter could have written. If they had been uttered by anyone else, the audience would laugh at both their performance and the dialogue. The way Miller says her lines, she makes them sound believable.

Miller acts like she secretly knows just how ridiculous a film project this really is but decides to make the most of a lousy situation. She chews up the scenery, firing machine guns in both hands, struts around in leather boots or expensive black pumps, engages in catfights with a female redhead “Joe” named Scarlett O’Hara (Rachel Nichols), and utters lines like “Nice shoes,” as she throws a woman out of an elevator at a Paris mall. She’d make a great James Bond villainess should she ever want to venture into other action-adventure roles.

I wonder how Miller would react upon my telling her I didn’t agree with the comment she made to the entertainment media recently where she said "G.I. Joe is not going to be the best acting work I've ever done.”

©8/10/09

Where have all the lead male TV characters gone?

“Where are all the men?”

Such is the question I have thanks to the increasing number of so called made for cable “We know drama” television shows I have seen aired in recent years featuring Hollywood’s top actresses in roles once played by male actors.

Tinseltown, it seems, no longer cares about what the male audience wants to see in terms of TV shows. Their primary goal now is to make sure most, if not everything they air, pertains to women only.

I have found such recent programs as TNT’s crime drama, “The Closer”, starring Kyra Sedgwick and the medical shows HawthoRNe starring Jada Pinkett Smith, and Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie” starring Edie Falco might as well be called “The I am woman, hear me roar hour.”

Up until recently, I refused to watch “The Closer” thanks to the commercial promotions I saw last season. One promo, in particular, showed a few people confessing their sins to Sedgwick’s L.A. Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson from an overweight African American chowing down on donuts who tells her “My wife thinks I am on a diet” to the little girl who says, “My daddy cheats on his taxes.”

I got the impression the makers behind the show, and perhaps Sedgwick herself who also serves as co-executive producer, feel the series’ main selling point is that women and men get sexually aroused confessing their deepest, darkest sins to a take charge female, who isn’t afraid of beating the hell out of them if the situation warrants it.

The one word that came to mind watching a recent episode dealing with the murder of two Los Angeles police officers by a couple Nazi racists was “catfight.” I sat there wondering if Sedgwick’s Johnson, who oversees a department of all male detectives, would throw down and start trading body blows against co-star Mary McDonnell’s Captain Raydor whose job was to paint the criminals as victims and the deceased cops as the ones who started the shootings.

Sedgwick’s Johnson is like a dominatrix without the whips, leather, and black stilettos, though she does have the handcuffs. She doesn’t need a whip or a dungeon. She has that stern southern, no nonsense New Orleans accent of hers she can use to threaten any suspects with prison time.

"You don't need an attorney because if you get an attorney I plan to sit down with your fiancée and have a nice long chat with her about what you've been doing with your penis,” Johnson tells a suspect in one episode.

If the Bush/Cheney Administration had someone like her to carry out interrogations of terror suspects at Guantanamo or in Iraq, we would have never heard of water boarding.

Some of my favorite “male” fictional characters in past medical dramas were those that were egotistical, self-centered assholes like Mandy Patinkin’s Dr. Jeffery Geiger on “Chicago Hope,” William Daniels’ Dr. Mark Craig in “St. Elsewhere” and Paul McCrane’s Dr. Romano on “ER.” I just know I was the only one in mourning when McCrane’s character got killed off when a helicopter crashed on top of him.

Now those roles have been taken over by actresses like Jada Pinkett Smith and Edie Falco.

I just know females were rooting for Pinkett Smith’s head nurse on “HawthoRNe”, a widow and mother who pays more attention to her patients than she does her own family. In one episode I saw parts of, Hawthorne tells her daughter how she didn't ask for the job of teaching her how to drive. That job was supposed to be her late husband's.

"I didn’t ask for this particular rite of passage," Hawthorne says. "You know potty training; I filled that stupid chart with all kinds of gold stars. Riding a bike, I kissed every dang booboo. Your first bra I took you to Macy’s. I got you one of those training deals, which by the way you didn’t even need, but this right here, driving lessons? That’s not for me, that’s daddy’s gig."

Yes. Nothing like a mother, who when her daughter needs someone to teach her how to drive, the parent wants some "Me time" only. How will Nurse Hawthorne react when her daughter needs someone to talk to when she's in serious trouble? Perhaps she'll get one of her nurses to do it the way she asks one of them to teach her daughter how to drive.

Like episodes of “The Closer” where Johnson utters quotes that easily define male bashing like “I'm going to have to deal with some pompous, arrogant oaf who doesn't know thing one about investigating a murder”, the promos I have seen for “HawthoRNe” show scenes of male nurses being portrayed as incompetent and are mocked and scolded by the female staff.

I have no desire to sit through one complete episode of Pinkett Smith’s series to find out if I am actually right in my assessment.

At least the nursing community is not too happy with Edie Falco’s pill popping-Vicodin addicted, adulteress Jackie Peyton on “Nurse Jackie.”

"I almost fell out of my chair when I saw 'Nurse Jackie'," said President of the National Federation of Nurses Barbara Crane in an article by the New York Daily News dated June 9, 2009. "I found those things she did - forging a donor card, stealing money, throwing people's body parts away - extremely insulting. It makes me really sad. That's not who I am, that's not what I do."

“We’re not saying this is a show about nurses,” Falco said in the Daily News article. “This is a show about a nurse.”

Falco’s comments lead me to make a predictable conclusion. If Nurse Jackie were a show about someone going through real life issues at home and at the workplace that those in the nursing profession could relate to, no one would watch it.

“This is a show of fiction, and its purpose, first and foremost, is entertainment,” said Stuart Zakim, vice president of corporate communications in the Daily News article. “We are confident the viewing public will understand that and can differentiate between a work of fiction and a documentary, which this clearly is not.”

I don’t share Zakim’s confidence. I find a majority of television’s audiences to not be all that bright and that most actually believe what they are watching goes on in real life.

If the lead characters in “The Closer,” “HawthoRNe,” and “Nurse Jackie” are the kinds of females women aspire to be, they should start looking for some better positive role models.

There is no disputing that Sedgwick, Pinkett Smith, and Falco are as talented as they are attractive.

I can’t stop Hollywood, excuse me, “Hollyweird”, from waving its pro-feminist flag and offering more shows that feature women in take charge roles once held by male actors.

They cannot, however, stop me from shouting at the top of my lungs the line “This is a man’s world” from a classic James Brown song either when it comes to what I prefer to watch on network and cable television.

When it comes to the entertainment industry, there should be a rule that says when it comes to actresses taking on roles once held by male actors, “Don’t send a woman in to do a man’s job.”

©8/6/09

My Personal Worst Films: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen NO STARS
PG-13, 150m. 2009

Cast & Credits: Shia LaBeouf (Sam Witwicky), Megan Fox (Mikaela Banes), Josh Duhamel (Major Lennox), Tyrese Gibson (USAF Master Sergeant Epps), John Turturro (Agent Simmons), Ramon Rodriguez (Leo Spitz), Kevin Dunn (Ron Witwicky), Julie White (Judy Witwicky), Isabel Lucas (Alice). Written by Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman. Directed by Michael Bay.

I will not be surprised if "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" goes down as the number one worst reviewed film of 2009. The film deserves the honor, so much so that I actually hope it gets nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards at next year’s Razzies and wins.

The film is critic proof and wasn’t made for movie critics. The picture was made for dumb, slow-witted audiences who have no sense of adventure and imagination, and for kids whose idea of adventure is to watch a lot of things get blown up.

For 150 minutes, I sat there waiting for something interesting, if not exciting to happen, and I got nothing. Such a testament will not sit well with those who saw "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" opening weekend bringing in over $200 million to date. I just know they will all argue and tell me a lot happened over those grueling two and a half hours where a bunch of good and bad robots fought like a couple of slow-moving overweight sumo wrestlers. In the middle of it all are plenty of sound and visual effects loud enough there was no way I could possibly get in a twenty-minute nap.

Like 2007’s box office hit, "Transformers," once again I had a hard time figuring out which robots were good and evil. The only thing I could discern is that the good robots (all right kiddies-I’ll call them by their politically correct names because you are, after all, the ones who play with these things-Autobots) lead by Optimus Prime have bright colors (blue, red, yellow, purple, and green) with eyes that are the equivalent of blue light bulbs. The bad robots, called the Decepticons, are all grey with red lights for eyes.

The Autobots disguise themselves as various sports cars and 18-wheelers. The Decepticons arrive on Earth as giant meteors smashing into and sinking aircraft carriers and submarines before turning into mechanical prehistoric four-legged monsters or fighter jets.

When it comes to the cuteness factor, an Autobot named “Bumblebee” who disguises himself as a yellow Camaro and friend to Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) provides the film’s humor using quotes from movies and playing clips of songs as a means of communication. The thing even has feelings. In an early scene when Sam tells Bumblebee he won’t be taking him to college, the Autobot spews out what I assume is green anti-freeze for tears.

Then there are a couple of jive-talking robots named Skids and Mudflap disguised as a couple of red and green Chevy compact hatchbacks who bicker and fight with each other and admit they don’t know how to read.

If there is one thing positive, I can say about the film’s predecessor is that I don’t recall "Transformers" being as vulgar when it comes to foul language and sexual innuendos. When there is no chaos and mayhem going on, there are scenes of bathroom humor that take place at the Air and Space Museum, which got grins from everyone else in the audience but me. They did the same when John Turturro’s ousted government agent character drops his pants revealing a white thong. When Witwicky’s girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) and his college roommate (Ramon Rodriguez) get transported to Egypt where the final battle between the Decepticons and Autobots takes place, we see Mikaela lying face down on the roommate’s private parts.

This brings me to the subject of the entire cast itself, all of whom are reduced to nothing more than talking props. Their jobs are simple. LeBeouf’s parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are required to run for their lives when the robots start fighting. The armed forces, led by Josh Duhamel of NBC’s "Las Vegas" (2003-2008), are required to offer cover for the Autobots. LeBeouf’s Witwicky is required to do a lot of running for his life and trying to figure out why the Decepticons want what is inside his brain, some knowledge about alien symbols.

Finally, Megan Fox’s job is to offer drooling males, and females and young kiddies who have yet to be told by their parents about the birds and the bees, sexy shots of her in tight jeans shorts and boots, as she paints emblems on motorcycles. She is the film’s offering of soft-core pornographic eye candy minus the nudity; a slice of feminine cheesecake to go with that hefty dish of expensive visual effects.

Fox gets every opportunity to show off her feminine sexuality. At one point dressed in a leather outfit, she strips down to an above the knee dress and some white pumps. In another scene, Fox shows off a dominatrix side treating a little Transformer like it's her pet dog yanking it on a chain who instead of using a whip, threatens to put the robot’s other electronic eye out with a blow torch. When the little Transformer develops an attachment to her, it starts humping her leg.

As I browse over the past few paragraphs of this review, I have noticed I forgot to tell you about the plot. Well, that’s because there isn’t much of one, at least not one I can make sense of anyway. I know the Decepticons want revenge and want what’s inside of LeBeouf’s brain to use his knowledge to take over the world. I know the Autobots led by Optimus Prime need to stop them, which takes the cast to the pyramids of Egypt where the final battle takes place.

I have no idea what it is the Decepticons are so pissed off about. I don’t know why in order to win a battle against a Decepticon the Autobot must be a “Prime.” I can only assume such questions are answered in the animated television series from decades ago I never watched or the short-lived comic book series from Marvel I never read. I have never played with, much less owned a toy Transformer in my life. I don’t even buy the Star Wars Transformers and I still, to a certain extent, collect Star Wars toys.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a sad testament of how dumbed down audiences have gotten today. Audiences apparently don’t want a movie full of engaging characters or a good story like "Star Trek" (2009), for example, which exhibited a sense of adventure, even if the space battles felt as though the filmmakers were channeling the Star Wars movies.

The film is a true waste of celluloid junk movie making and deserves a rating far lower than the NO STARS rating I have given it. How I wish there was a lower rating I can give this movie the way my seventh-grade teacher thought up a new letter grade to give failing students that was lower than an F called an F+ or F-. Up until today, I never thought it was possible for director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to score making a movie as bad as their previous collaboration, "Bad Boys II" (2003), which sadly went on to gross $140 million.

I now stand corrected.

©6/29/09

Michael Jackson (1958-2009): Recalling the popstar's better days before the curtain came crashing down

Upon hearing the death of Pop star Michael Jackson June 25, 2009, at age 50 of cardiac arrest, brought about not surprisingly by a combination of prescription drugs the singer was likely addicted to, I did not do an imitation of his famous moonwalk dance as fans did.

I did not go out the next day like countless fans to spend hundreds on Michael Jackson CDs, magazines, and anything else they could get their hands on.

If I shed any tears for the singer, which will remain my secret and mine alone, I would have done it in the heat of the moment; the result of reading all the coverage on a variety of news websites that night, which almost completely overshadowed the death of actress Farrah Fawcett who had passed away hours earlier at age 62 from cancer.

What I did do after hearing that the King of Pop was gone, I began recalling several of Jackson’s hits from the early 1980s l enjoyed hearing like “Beat It” and “Thriller.” The one tune I could not get out of my head that day was “Billie Jean.”

Then there was the 1983 music video “Say, Say, Say,” I watched on www.youtube.com where Jackson collaborated with ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. The two played a couple of conmen named Mac and Jack who sell a magic potion “guaranteed to give you the strength of a raging bull.”

It was over twenty years since I last heard that song and it was a joy to see and listen to it again.

There is a certain kind of nostalgia that came to mind recalling those songs. That nostalgia was the ushering in of VHS video recorders and the arrival of pay cable television. Living in Chicago at the time and unlike most of my friends whose parents either had cable or owned a VCR, or both, we never got a video recorder until my grandparents bought us one for Christmas 1983, along with our first VHS owned movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), which back then cost $50.

Whereas everyone I knew got to see Jackson’s 14-minute dancing zombie video, “Thriller,” on MTV three weeks before Christmas in 1983, I didn’t get to see it until the summer of 84’ when it came out on video cassette. Honestly, my only interest in seeing it was not so much Jackson as it was seeing the singer turn into the undead and start dancing alongside several other rotting corpses.

Whereas I thought the song’s best selling point was actor Vincent Price’s ghoulish monologue near the end, the music video’s selling points were that it was directed by John Landis, who helmed “Animal House” (1978) and “The Blues Brothers” (1980) while the visual effects were handled by Oscar winning special makeup artist Rick Baker (“An American Werewolf In London” = 1980).

The fact I had seen George Romero’s 1978 horror sequel, “Dawn of the Dead,” a couple weeks earlier, however, increased my interest. The film was about four survivors who take refuge in a shopping mall from flesh eating zombies who have taken over the world and I assumed Jackson’s “Thriller” would have almost the same premise but set to music.

I admit, perhaps shamefully, that I owned one of Jackson’s greatest hits CD and sometimes had it playing in the car as I made my hour long drives to and from work at my former IT job.

As the pop star’s private life and eccentricities got stranger and more out of control over the years, however, I had a hard time comparing this talented dancer and singer from Gary, Indiana whose music videos from the 80s I saw on MTV (when we finally got cable) and heard on the radio with the person who in recent years was being accused of child molestation charges. By the time those allegations hit, whether he was guilty or not, or paid off his accusers to buy their silence, I decided that was it. I said to myself, “Jackson had crossed the line”, and I wasn’t going to listen to songs that were written by someone who might possibly be a pedophile.

Yet still, there is no arguing that the guy was not talented, much like John Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley before him who died giving in to the demons of illegal or prescription drug use.

The day after Jackson passed away, the pop star’s ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, who was married to the singer from May 1994 to January 1996, wrote in her online blog that the King of Pop told her that his death would echo that of her father, Elvis Presley, who died at the age of 42 on August 16,1977. Presley’s official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia and was supposedly attributed to prescription medications but never proved because the autopsy report was sealed.

"I promptly tried to deter (Michael) from the idea, at which point he just shrugged his shoulders and nodded almost matter of fact as if to let me know, he knew what he knew and that was kind of that,” Presley wrote on her blog. "The hardest decision I have ever had to make, which was to walk away and let his fate have him, even though I desperately loved him and tried to stop or reverse it somehow."

Perhaps the saddest revelation on whether Jackson, who was about to kick off a comeback tour of 50 shows in London in July ironically titled “This Is It”, was really happy with his success came from the singer himself when friend Uri Geller asked him if he is lonely.

The King of Pop’s response was “Uri Geller, I am a very lonely man.”

If there is any lesson to be learned here other than realizing how dangerous it is to rely on prescription medications is the notion that money doesn’t buy happiness.

My feelings about Michael Jackson are the same as my feelings for Elvis Presley. Sure, I liked some of their music, but I was never a fan of either one. Yet, I own “Elv1s 30 #1 Hits” on compact disc and have several of the King of Rock and Roll’s songs on my iPod.

I suppose listening to that CD is how I prefer to remember Presley. Not as that bloated, overweight, over worked, sweaty picture I saw of him in author Albert Goldman’s 1981 unflattering biography of the singer called “Elvis,” or watching him in a scene from the '81 documentary, “This Is Elvis,” in which he can’t remember the lyrics to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

I don’t know if I will ever download and listen to any of Jackson’s early number one hits again.

I will say that for a brief moment on June 25, I preferred to remember the Michael Jackson of the early 1980s over the Michael Jackson we had seen in recent years whose scandalous private life became the subject of jokes for late night talk show hosts and endless fodder for the tabloids, and who now, rest assured even in death, is not going to get a moment’s peace.

©6/27/09