Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

OK so last night I found myself scrolling through the free OnDemand movies. I stumbled across this "gem." Punched play and away I went.

I realised something might be really wrong when David Hasselhoff's name popped up. My first thought was no please tell me they didn't....... Not that Hasselhoff is a bad actor, He just wouldn't have been my first choice for Nick Fury.

So over all yes it's a bad B grade TV movie. The script/plot is a generic Hydra threatens the world with destruction unless they are paid "One Billion Dollars." Nick Fury is called back from "retirement" in the Yukon. His retirement seems to be using a pick axe on a cement wall in an "old mine." (If he's supposed to be mining gold how about having him digging on a cavern wall?) A badly CG'ed "hovercraft?" flies in with Agents to tell him he's been reinstated.

While at first the thought of David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury, it seemed to be the dumbest thing ever. But as the movie progresses he's not half-bad. Sadly he's not half-good either as certain parts of the script he overacts, though I have a feeling "The Hoff" never took this movie seriously, given the script, production values, and the list of "no-names" used to fill out he rest of the cast and who could blame him. Though, I'd be the first to say, if they could get a good script and a decent cast & production team around him Hasselhoff could be a good Nick Fury.

Let's take a look at the rest of the cast.

Hey look it's a who's who of bit-part, B-Movies, and cable TV show guest stars. Funny thing is most of the cast seems to have appeared on Stargate SG-1 at least once. Everyone seems to have been instructed to overact their cookie-cutter parts.

Lisa Rinna - the woman Nick left behind at S.H.E.I.L.D., still has feelings for Nick (and vice-versa) (token babe)

Sandra Hess - the psychotic daughter of Baron Von Strucker who orgasms over her own power.....and when she kills someone. (token babe part 2 )

Neil Robert - the n00b agent who graduated at the top of his class and is so eager to please Nick that he screws up every time. (token younger beefcake for the one or two women that will watch the movie)

Gary Chalk and Ron Canada - Nick's oldest friends and long time agents, always concerned about their friend Nick. Will say at least once, "Think you can still do it Nick?"

Tracy Waterhouse - the ESP specialist, there to provide "clues" to move the terrible plot along. (token babe part 3, my personal babe choice)

Tom McBeath - overbearing, bureaucratic idiot in charge of S.H.E.I.L.D.

Scott Heindl - the psychotic son of Baron Von Strucker, has about 5 minutes of screen time......maybe 7.

Adrian Hughes - One of Nick's best friends ever, best agent ever trained by Nick, Stud-muffin, killed in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

Campbell Lane Baron Von Strucker's dead body for most of the movie....until the very end.

Stellina Rusich - Interpol agent, standout performance....screams while wrapped in plastic.

Bill Croft, Roger R. Cross - who and who?

At the end you find out it's a Marvel Studio's production, which explains a lot. The movie has it's moments, but they are just to few and far between. The Nick Fury character and S.H.I.E.L.D. have potential for a good movie. Sadly this was made before anyone cared about making a good movie based on a Marvel character, that would come four years later with Spider-Man. If you are curious to see this movie....do not pay money, and make sure there isn't anything else on that you could be watching.

Morn the Loss of Album Artwork?

Years ago I read a magazine article about a man lamenting about the loss of LP album artwork. He was morning the fact that as CD's became more and more popular all the album artwork was shrinking. Gone were the big bold album covers of yesteryear. At the time I thought really nothing of it. To me the CD's still had the album artwork, you could still see it. So it really didn't bother me, he just sounded like an old man morning the loss of the past.

While editing the tags on some MP3's of songs I just ripped from my CDs it occurred to me, with the future of music (and movies and books for that matter) moving more and more towards the digital download distribution, what becomes of the album artwork?

The reason this popped up in my head is often when I download a song from a band's site and more recently off eMusic (I finally joined a paid service) or when I rip a CD, I often have to add the album artwork to the MP3's tag. The MP3's are just files, 1's and 0's on a hard drive. LP's, cassettes, and CD's all have always had artwork, but through the digital distribution process, artwork seems to, so far, have been lost.

Is this the future? Music and artwork always seemed to go hand in hand for me. Part of the reason I finally broke down and got an 5th gen iPod was it it would display the album artwork while the song played. When I listened to CD's I would often look at the cover or go through the booklet. When I was a kid listening to LP's or cassettes I would do the same. So far most of the music I've downloaded through online services (MusicMatch, eMusic, band web sites, MySpace, etc.) have rarely had any artwork. iTunes has artwork for now, mainly because the songs they are selling also come out on CD, so they can package it with the file. In the future will they too not have album artwork if there is no longer a physical means of music distribution?

I hope not. I mean, like I said music and art go hand in hand to me. I can listen to a song and picture it's artwork in my head. Or vise-versa I can see an album cover and have the songs pop into my head. To further the music going hand and hand, who can hear Yes and not picture Roger Dean's artwork? Iron Maiden and not picture Derrick Riggs' artwork. KMFDM and not picture Brute's artwork. These bands rose to fame and so did the artists that did their artwork. They became semi-entangled as one would make you think of the other, mutually benefiting each other and working off of each other.

So I do hope that album artwork does not go the way of the Dodo. It would be a sad world with out it, to me at least. Or maybe I'm just an old man, morning the loss of the past.

Sunday at Work/Lazy Afternoon

Me
Originally uploaded by Lord Moon.

Well I have no theme or rant or whatever to say today. Just decided to write some stuff while I have some down time at work.

First off I got a haircut. I got a buzz. I looked at myself in the mirror and decided it was time to finally give in and do it. My hairline has receded enough that trying to grow it long looked ridiculous and I really couldn't do much with it short either. It's taking a lot of getting used to, it hasn't been this short since basic training.

Mother Nature is not fair. All my life I always wanted long hair. While growing up though I got the "while you live in our house you get a haircut" speech from my folks. Then after I graduate high school I join the army , no chance of long hair there. The before I got out of the army I noticed the hairline starting to receding.

Sigh

I getting excited to go back to Wisconsin to visit family. I haven't seen anyone back there in forever. Gonna stay at my grandmother's place, can't wait to get some home cookin'. I'm also going to visit a friend in Chicago, we're gonna get some good Chicago deep dish pizza. Hopefully there is some good snow when I get there. I haven't seen "real" snow in years Seattle occasionally gets "snow," but the most I've seen is like a foot & it was gone in a couple days.

I've discovered flickr.com & it's sort of reawakened the photographer/Photoshop artist in me. I bought a digital camera & have been playing with Photoshop more lately. I'm actually posting this blog through flickr which is a neat little plus.

My wrist is bothering me a bit more as fall settles in. It's giving me dull soreness on some rainy days. On cold days I've discovered that my right hand will be cold, colder than my left. I think there might be some circulation or nerve or something else wrong. I've been dealing with it, my roomate made me a wristie to help keep it warm.

So life is good and things move on.

Maya just kicked my ass.

I used to be fit once...I used to be in the army, but I got out of the army in '93. Since then my workouts have consisted of using the stairs instead of the elevator.

For about the last 4 years I've been thinking about doing something. My doctor telling me I need to lose some weight kinda popped that into my head. Mostly I thought about it, but did nothing. 5'11" 210 lbs. I'm only about 30 lbs. over-weight and everyone tells me I look fine.

The clincher hit me last October....literally. Oct. of 2005 I was riding my scooter to the store when a guy ran a stop sign and hit me. Thankfully I only ended up with a broken wrist, it could have been so much worse in a busy intersection (coincidentally they installed a stoplight there recently).

Anywho, after my physical therapy for my wrist, I discovered my shoulder was having problems. It was determined that the casts I had worn had tweaked the muscles around it. So I had a new battery of exercises to help my shoulder, including push-ups.

The dreaded push-ups.

Back in the army I did push-ups practically every day. In a 2 minute period I would knock out about 70 - 80 something push-ups, no problem.

So here I was getting ready to do push-up to help my shoulder. Sadly I could barely knock out 10. Even worse the therapist suggested I change to "girl" push-up, instead of on your toes, on your knees. (Nothing against girls or women that's just what we always called them in the army.) (As a side note I'm also a little unsteady doing them with my wrist as it does not bend enough anymore, I use "handles" now)

So after my shoulder got better the therapist told me to continue working the shoulder and game me some surgical tubing to use as "weights." Well that lasted all of about a day.

Flash forward to yesterday. I'm wandering around my local video game store, what do I find in the used bin? Yourself Fitness. I had seen it before, thought about buying it before. Something about this time said buy it. For those that are not familar with it, it is a workout program that you can play out of you Xbox (or PS2 or PC). It can design a workout & meal program tailored for you. A lot better than video workouts on DVD or VHS, because this you can adjust the workout on the fly. You can also track your progress. If you want more info here's a link; http://yourselffitness.com

So today I popped it in. Originally I was going to wait til Monday to start, but decided no to put it off out of fear that the game might become the next dusty piece of exercise equipment I own.

The evaluation part winded me, I'm a bit worse than I thought.

I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't select the techno music and the lack of rock or metal music, but that's splitting hairs. ;) Plus I can get the techno music as a reward for keeping my workout "appointments." So I went with 80's (funny I don't remember any of this music from the 80's) Some of the exercises I have the complete "can't dance syndrome." I did my best to do the V step, mostly I just kept moving. The rest I picked up after a bit. There was a bit of a glitch, I saw a break coming, but it skipped right to the next exercise.

At some point Maya said water break, oops. Pause, run up stairs, swipe my roommate's water from the fridge (I'll get her another, she won't miss it) run back down & continue.

In the end I was sweating, breathing hard, a slight dizziness, but feeling good surprisingly. Something about this I think I can stick with. Though I need to clear a larger area to work out in. ;)

Wish me luck.

Sigh

Someone wanna give me about a million dollars? Or how about $50,000 that should cover my bills, fix my car, and take care of most of my student loan.

How about free rent?

Winning Lotto numbers?

I hate feeling like there is no end to my bills. And I did it all to myself.

Sigh, I'm just depressed a bit right now. But I never seem to make any headway financially.

Any advice before I find myself moving back in with my mom?