The crowds around Penn State’s campus were bustling, but manageable. The fried food selection was excellent, and volunteer were taking donations as they handed out free hot dogs and r/w/b cake before the big show. In the distance you could just make out the large black canisters that held the ammunition.

Wait…were those gunshots?

Yep, that’s right. Vintage uniformed men with muskets. It was hard to tell from the distance if these were revolutionary era uniforms or civil war uniforms, but I’m thinking it was the former since there could have been a fight with all the rebel-flag wearing Nascar fans.

Now, for the show…or if you want you can view a high res version that could take a long time to download.

One of the new “features” available in professional fireworks packages is the “VIP” seating area. You can just make out a few flashes along the bottom of the screen showing the area where VIPers saw a special ground-show of characters and low fireworks.

And now for something completely different…

I have more Central Pennsylvania posting coming up, but I came across this video of our cat, Dani, drinking from the water fountain. Always makes me go “Awww…”

Still in love with the Wii Fit, and logging in faithfully almost every day. Sadly, none of my Wii buddies love it as much as I do (or maybe, my Mii is just really boring?)

Yes, I am a couple days behind thanks to Tivo, but \/\/()\/\/…

I give credit to Bunim/Murray for making reality TV an accessible reality, but Mark Burnett is unquestionably the master. Many of you abandoned “Survivor” after season one, and while even I have spent a few seasons only half watching while I blog and surf, you missed out on a big whopper of a show. The girl power bonanza of season sixteen — Fans vs. Favorites — delivered an all female final 4, 3 non-tribal-council health-based removals (2 excruciating physical, 1 whack-a-mole mental), 4 amazing car-crash blindsides, and a major volcanic jaw-dropping hand-off of an immunity necklace at tribal council. Then to top it all off, Burnett’s editors had me fooled into falling in love with the girl who eventually placed second. Congratulations to Parvati, but I still think Amanda and Cirie were more deserving.

I can’t wait for next season. It is improbable to be as exciting as this one, but seeing Gabon in HD alongside the “Survivor” microcosm of Dawinian competition should be stunning.

Becky and I caught a few films at Tribecca Film Festival. Here’s the scoop on our favorite:

My guess is the marketing for a US release of Fighter will focus on the excellent fu choreography but chop-heads should read the fine print before rushing out to see this Danish film about a teenage Muslim Turkish immigrant girl who just wants to practice martial arts. The core of the film is a story as old as Footloose, Aicha loves kung fu more than anything else including boys and school but all her father cares about is the family’s image. Her brother is trying to get engaged to a woman whose father is a man of means…well, more means than Aisha’s family has. Just when her father tells her to quit fighting and prepare her grades for med school she is offered a spot to train with the best kung fu team in town.

Natasha Arthy (director), Master Xian Gao (fight coreographer, and actor), and the actor who played the movie’s foil were in attendance. They discussed the parallels of Copenhagen’s growing right wing conservatism (and its impact on the Turkish immigrant community) alongside the Muslim ideal of family honor. Master Gao answered questions about his coreography and the wirework that was used sparingly in the film.

In Danish and Turkish with a little Mandarin and English, the film is an excellent cross cultural story about identity and girl power. (Becky can’t wait for the chance to take her BBBS mentee to see it.) The fight choreography is amazing. Master Gao commented that this was the first film he worked on where the fight scenes were really integrated into the story line, and I agree that the fight sequences were well mixed with the family drama and coming of age storylines.

The film’s star was simply perfect for the role, equally believable in poignant scenes with her father and in the numerous scenes where she is kicking serious ass. She is an untrained actress (studying to be a pahrmacist — wth?!?) with a blackbelt in karate. She should give up her dreams of dispensing pills, but I don’t know how profitable the field of action film acting is in Copenhagen.

There are certainly better kung fu movies, but this is a great mixed genre film with some fantastic moments.

I know this is targeted at tween girls, but I know more than a few rhythm game lovin’ people who would want try this out.

…and I’m probably fey enough to want to play it, too. Then again my wife accuses me of being a tween girl at heart.

SBCG4AP is rumored to be headed for a small home in Portland, Maine. The owner of the home, Kevin Photiades (52), had this to say “No, TVs and Wiis have no place in my home.” Despite the utter super badness of Strongbad in his own video game Photiades denies any desire to purchase a Nintendo Wii this summer. He continued, “I don’t care about the awesomeness of Strongbad and his bleeding edge Mode 8 graphics. I will not expose my son to that ridiculous filth.” Nintendo’s plans to forge new ground by releasing a video game from the very popular but strange hipster webcomic only through online distribution falls on deaf ears at the Photiades household.

FOAF Brian Bushwood is host of a new media web launch and, typically for him, it’s not the most well-behaved of concepts. I’ll let him describe it.

Ever wanted to learn a trick that would absolutely explode your friend’s brains? Want the secrets to scamming free drinks when you’re at the bar? Ever just want to screw somebody over, just to laugh at them? Then welcome to Scam School: the only show dedicated to social engineering at the bar and on the street…

…I’m Brian Brushwood, your surly, hungover professor.

Here’s the deal with scam school: each episode, we teach you a usable bar trick, street con, or scam. These are hands-on episodes with real people we find at the bar… If Harvard offered a PhD in deceit, this would be it. We’ll make YOU an expert in social engineering at the bar (or anywhere else)… and you’ll never pay for a drink again.

We’ve already shot 16 episodes, and will be releasing one every day this week (after which the show goes to a weekly release schedule).

There’s a lot of things to discuss with TAL lately. Even though TSOTAL only yielded a couple dozen episodes, I remain an ardent fan. I’m preparing for the second TAL Austin Brunch Club, and just as I return from a vacation in The Big Apple, a live TAL theater event will be broadcast around the country. Most recently — just this morning as a matter of fact — I’m pondering episode #353: The Audacity of Government.

Ira and Jack Hitt take us through a number of disturbing events in the government/legal realm of late, and it reveals a disturbing trend. Repeatedly the Bush Whitehouse has decided to sign away laws, create rules that don’t exist, or ignore the rules altogether. What were formerly binding agreements with the US, are now worthless. Why does any foreign country trust us, except their obligation to our massive financial powers…and what will they do when that goes away? (Sidebar: Yes, Alex P Jones is a nut but you should listen to what he has to say about our flailing economy and follow the trail of Alan Greenspan’s investments outside the US.) Where the Justice Department once relied on the justice system, now they invent their own rules when necessary and redact the ones they dislike. How can the people of this country trust the JD when the say “we can decide to do whatever we want without explanation on our part or recourse on yours”?

Jack and Ira spend the last few minutes of the episode discussing the fact that the now meaningless boundaries of the legal system are the real issue of this election year, and how the potential candidates have responded to Bush’s abuses. I feel it is not enough to have the lip service of the candidates. Watching Horten Hears A Who today I felt immense empathy for the poor Whovillians — helplessly tossed about in a world they can no longer control. We must stand together in the face of our government and make as much noise as possible.

We are here! We are here! We are here!

Horton Hears A Who is not the return of Toy Story days, but it is very well done and quite funny. Be careful that your children don’t see it or they may start to question authority.

p.s. Is it silly to lay the seriousness of our dire political situation alongside the animated adventures of an elephant? Dr. Suess, the Lorax and even the Onceler would say it is not.

p.p.s. Do we refuse to vote for John McCain because he will carry with him many of the same advisers that have stolen justice from us in the last 8 years — a form of punishment to show the GOP that what has transpired on their watch is unacceptable? or do we trust that he is somehow the anti-GOP within the GOP that will return it to a path of sensible government FTPBTP?

During the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year at college I worked at Watertown, USA. Late on Saturday nights as the park was approaching closing time, someone would volunteer to drive to the nearest liquor store and grab a box full of bottles. We would bury them in the ice machines, slip the occasional sip, and by the time we closed the gates and drove away, we were all three sheets to the wind¹. I worked the “canteen”, earning my tan from a massive burger machine with flames shooting out the ceiling during the lunch and dinner rushes, and I had a crush on the hottest little lifeguard with big brown eyes and the kind of mechanically straight hair you could only find in the 80’s. One night, high on Boone’s Farm, I told her I loved her and she gave me the “your sweet, but creepy” look. When she ran away at the end of the summer² with a wanna-be biker, I was ready to move on.

The Wackness may be set in 1994, but it touched a place in my head that reminded me of that summer, and several other times in my life where I was in love with a girl who would just give me the time of day, but nothing more. (It, also, reminded me of a year or so of my life _¡ when I was invincible _¡, smoking inappropriate things at inappropriate times without a care in the world.) Josh Peck (formerly of Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”) makes a clear break from his family-themed roots, playing new high school graduate pot dealer, Luke Shapiro, in NYC who trades some of his stash for counseling sessions with Ben Kingsley’s psychiatrist character, Dr Squires…who is, also, the father — step father — of Olivia Thirlby’s Stephanie, the girl that Shapiro is in love with. Everyone is performing at Oscar levels here, including all-too-brief cameos from the lovely Jane Adams, and excepting an all-too-annoying cameo from Mary-Kate Olsen. It is especially nice to see Thirlby step out of Ellen Page’s (va)ginormous shadow, achingly portraying the enigma that is blossoming young women. The story is beautifully, slowly paced (as any story should be when they smoke as much as Shapiro and Squires do) with several brief moments of hilarity (see previous parenthetical statement). I am betting that Sony Pictures holds onto this Sundance-buffed gem until closer to Oscar Season in hopes of snagging the annual Little Miss Sunshine media frenzy. Try not to forget about it, because it is worth seeing.

Oh!, and the soundtrack is a great mix-tape of 1994 rap cornerstones from the Shapiro character with classic rock from the Squires character. Oh, baby !you!….you got what I nee-eed…

¹ Keep in mind: this was the late ’80s. 18 year olds could buy alcohol in Louisiana, and it was _¡ ok to drive drunk _¡ .

² That girl — how sad is it I don’t remember her name — had an older brother who really was a biker, and he called and threatened me because he found my number pitifully written down on a scrap of paper but never called. There was something twisted going on that Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer would’ve made money from, but when I left for college I decided to let that story go.

³ There is no footnote 3, btw. I’m just learning how to use them…inappropriately…so I thought I’d add another one.

Yeah, I’m one of those Austinites who came here _¡ all the way back in 1992 _¡ and I was sick of “SouthBy” before it even started last week. You wouldn’t believe how many skinny boys in pencil jeans with 80’s hairdos were wandering around downtown yesterday evening looking so much cooler than me. Still, if you are doing that kind of thing this weekend I am obliged to recommend some shows that friends are involved in that are noteworthy.

The kid who taught me how to beat¹ Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is all grown up and playing “four-string guitar” for Chris Denny who is in the Billboard showcase tonight. Denny is, also, on the new cover of Billboard magazine which some might say is a pretty big deal. If you go to the showcase, throw your panties or boxers at this guy on the right.

Wednesday night I attended a screening hosted by Chicken Ranch Records — run by my college radio buddy, Mike Dickinson — of J.D. Wilkes’s premiere film Seven Signs. It’s a top notch indie doc that is a perfect parallel to the eclectic kind of neo-anything-revival bands that Mike likes to sign. His regular showcases have already happened, but you can still catch his day party at Bull McCabes tomorrow from 1-5pm.

¹ This lesson on the original 8-bit NES set the stage for learning patterns in a way that I previously had never seen/grasped in video games. If not for the young Chris Atwood, I would never have completed future Zelda, Mario and other games…much to my wife’s chagrin.

Baghead has been making the festival rounds since Sundance and it may be the perfect festival film. There are a few brief moments where things don’t work quite right, but overwhelmingly this simple independent film works perfectly. It is one of those movies that you will be glad you saw “cold” (without any ideas about what it is or what you might compare it to) and if you love independent film — any kind of independent film — you will love this movie. If I say any more I might spoil it for you, so I’ll leave you with the plot outline from IMDb:

The Duplass Brothers explore the minutiae of relationship dynamics in this in-depth study of a group of desperate actor friends. And a bag […on] a head.

Stephen Chow is one of my top 5 favorite directors (and actors), as much for his effervescent delivery as the diversity of stories he has overlaid with his kung-fu parody base. From celebrity chefs and wanna-be actors to soccer training and twisted 1940s dance-sequence versions of Seven Samurai, his consistency of laugh-out-loud frivolity and heart-warming characters is unmatched in cinema world-wide, not just Hong Kong. His new movie CJ7 is another step into unfamiliar topics and genres wrapped in his comfortingly familiar trappings. As an uneducated dirt-poor father of a young boy he struggles to pay for his son’s private schooling, picking the bulk of their food and lifestyle in their airy hovel from the garbage dump. When he brings home a green rubber sphere from the trash heap in hopes of compensating for not being able to buy the latest electronic robo-dog, it reveals itself to be an advanced dog/toy/tool from outerspace. Conflict, hilarity and even a little bit of kung fu ensues much to the viewer’s delight.

It is difficult to market foreign family/children films to the US because of the breadth of cultural differences and acceptances, not to mention that, if American adults are so afraid of subtitles, how can they be expected to teach their children the joy of foreign cinema. With words like d—-head and bull—-t spelled out clearly in the subtitles (once for the former, twice the latter), some parents will find themselves having to define/explain them…hopefully after the movie. However, with the introduction of Ni Hao, Kai-lan maybe we are seeing a shift to accept even more cultures into kid-fare entertainment and more parents will want to expose their children to warmth of this touching movie that is, in the end, better than most US family fare.

Is Iron Man the movie that the Conservative Hawks were trying to force Hollywood to make? Maybe, but it certainly looks like it kicks ass.

Sony (Eu) has made some really cool ads lately (that totally kick the ass of that creepy little girl with the box of mirrors for Mitsubishi). You can check more out at their site but since Becky loves bouncy balls so much I wanted to preserve it here for her repeated viewing pleasure.