Good movies!

Over the past few weeks I was able to see two outstanding movies!

Smoking Aces! A really fun, gun crazy crime movie (I'm always a sucker for this type) loaded with tons of character actors. No play by play here, this isn't a professional review, I'm just a guy. This movie isn't Pulp Fiction or Goodfellas...BUT it deserves a serious look. It's funny, violent and well put together. No it's not Oscar material, but so what, I enjoyed it.

Children of Men! Is a very serious visionary story of a possible future. It's Sci-Fi of course but if you are not turned off by that this was probably the most interesting Sci-Fi movie in years. It reminded me of Blade Runner or Gattaca, it's an very good movie and I wish it luck going into Oscar season. Clive Owen is a very good actor and he needs more work. There are also shots in this movie that are pure genius, Alfonso Cuarón is a amazing director ( I never heard of him before). I highly recommend this movie and will

view it again and again.

WAKE UP AMERICA...WE'RE LOSING IT!

That's right freedom of speech, slowly but surly we are being more and more censored. The recent crackdown on entertainment radio such as Imus, and Opie & Anthony is just the beginning. I have XM Radio and I enjoy it very much, the openness of it the seemingly endless music tracks so free. It seemed so different than regular commercial radio.

Unfortunately Management has decided to suspend Opie & Anthony to prove they are in control of the show and don't mess with them. I don't understand the logic (business wise). XM is a subscription network, customers pay to listen, some channels like O&A have commercials. XM management decides to flex and suspends O&A, what are their advertisers doing, I wouldn't pay top dollar for ads on O&A and not have O&A on. Currently they are playing Ron & Fez, which at best is third class at best. Those advertiser and the public cannot be happy. XM has also upset the thousands if not millions of fans who like me need their O&A fix for the drive to and from work. I tried to contact XM to tell them as a paying customer I was very unhappy and would like a reduction in my monthly act. But the website is jammed and it won't give you contact numbers. It's just as well, I predict that I will have to close down my subscription once they merge with Sirius, nothing good can come out of that union for the customer. I also can't see O&A coming back in 30 days. I think that's just a ploy to keep the listeners listening and a lame hope the fans will accept another show, in the mean time. That didn't work when Howard left the K-rock network, I stopped listening to the local station until O&A turned up their too.

I understand being upset because someone said something or a show is making fun of your race, gender, or religion. But what happened to just not listening to them, I hate Rush Lemburg and MR.No spin zone but I don't try to have them taken off, I just don't listen to them. And I'll take my advertising dollars eslewhere, and use another merchant. This PC crap is becoming our doom. You can't say what you want, or listen to what you want, soon you won't have any freedoms left. It's sad.

SPOOK'EMS

This past Saturday morning my family lost a dear friend. Spook'ems was a very unusual cat. He got his name because he would be scared of almost everything, I mean most cats are somewhat high strung, but he was really high strung. If he was concentrating on something, you know how cats get, he would sometimes scare himself and jump three feet in the air. It would be both sad and funny at the same time. I remember when we first got him he was so small, he was in a cage with about six other kittens, most crying, he was just sitting there. I told Eda to stick her finger in to get a reaction, and he playfully bit her. We knew he was the one. Trust me he was the pick of the group. The first night Eda had to hold him all night, he was crying so much. We would spend hours playing what's in the box or chase the string. He soon developed a play toy; "string monster" a gnarled up roll of shipping string. But he loved it, they became close friends for a long while ... until string monster disappeared one day. (we never found it either). Eda use to carry Spook'ems inside her sweater when she went to get the mail or to do laundry, no one would notice him. In Cali we had to fight ear mites, fleas and eventually him going into heat. One of the hardest things I had to do as to take him to the vet and hand him off to the tech so they could have him fixed. He looked at me so, I felt so bad. Spook'ems would lay out in the hot California sun or on top of a black rubber bench in the sun and just cook. A black cat on a black rubber bench in the Socal sun. He would make you sweat just looking at him.

Later in life Spook'ems once spent about two hours making Eda, Kevin and myself laugh so hard chasing after a computer mic. Good that was such a good time. It seemed like he didn't do much and later it might have seemed like he was forgotten but "Boo" meant alot to everyone who knew him. It's been less than a week since he passed away, but I really miss him.