10/17/08

You may have noticed I didn’t have anything to say yesterday. I tried a few times to get a rant started but then gave up and deleted it all. Well, I closed Word without saving actually. But anyhoo, last night I bought a Model 1911 .45 caliber automatic. John and I went to the shoosting range and squoze off a few rounds. Ok, I put about fifty rounds through the thing and I think John did about the same with his gun. I need more practice with the point-and-shoost aiming but I was within an acceptable ring when I took time to really aim. I may have to adjust the sights up a bit as all my shots fell lower than my aiming point. Yeah, I know gravity effects everything and I should compensate up. I still put lead in a lethal place virtually every shot. About the only time I was “out of control” with bullet placement was when we tried shoosting “Gangsta Style” with the gun clocked ninety degrees from level. I don’t know if I even hit the paper with those three rounds. But like I said, my spread wasn’t too bad when I took time to aim, duh. It was a lot of fun, I'll be going back. Oh, they had a couple Taurus Arms Judges there for sale! I still want one of those. The cutie patootie (which, by the way, might become George’s license plate: QT P2T) behind the counter was telling us that they love it when someone comes in to look at those because they like to fire the things. She showed us two targets so we could see the spread of #6 bird shot at nine and twenty-one feet range. The nine foot spread covered the torso in a pretty even peppering with most of the lead making contact, the twenty-one foot spread, not so much. There was quite a bit of shot in the white portion of the paper and I'm not convinced shot that small would have much penetration at that distance. I'm not going to volunteer to stand 21’ away and have someone test that theory though. I think if Juan were to load every other chamber with .410 shotgun shells and .45 caliber Long Colt slugs, then if the shock and surprise of the report and peppering with shot didn’t take the fight out of the opponent, a slug from the next trigger pull surely would. Of course if I kept a Judge in the car as an anti-carjacking weapon, I'd probably opt for all shotgun shells. If I had slugs in there, I might be tempted to put one I a guy’s back as he ran away with a face full of buckshot. Not that a carjacker doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment, I just wouldn’t want to have to ‘splain why I kept shoosting the guy… in the back… as he ran. Anyhoo, so after we finished shoosting and gun shopping, we went downtown to see a movie. We were there at a point where we’d have to wait until 1900 h or so before anything we wanted to see was to start. We went to eat at Razoo’s. Back at the theater, I told John what I was not interested in seeing which left us with two or three options. John chose the Shia Lebeuf abomination “Eagle Eye.” Wow. That was not a good movie. I didn’t hate it, because it was pretty funny, albeit unintentionally. It just goes to prove that Hollywood is totally bereft of ideas. Here come the “spoilers” so if you want to be “surprised” by the “twists” you might want to skip ahead a bit. It was nothing but another “super-computer tries to take over the world” movie. I will give it props for one thing; the reason for choosing the “hero” was something I had not seen before. At least not in anything I can think of right now. Needing the twin brother to override the facial recognition and voice-print lockout was, well perhaps not “genius” but unique. I did like that bit. Of course, V.I.K.I. or W.O.P.R. or H.A.L. or A.R.E.O.L.A. or whatever the computer’s name was, didn’t really appear to need that since she had already put most of the plan into action before ever getting the override. But I'll go ahead and suspend disbelief on that point, especially since I had to throw everything else logical out the window to make it through this flick. I was sort of taking it almost seriously until the dude got killed by the power lines. By that point the “total global control of everything from one central location” conspiracies just got overwhelming. I actually began to laugh out loud at some of the wackier bits. Oh, and don’t get me started on the close-ups! I did not need to see Billy-Bob Thornton’s pores that closely! And Shia’s greasy face is not easy on the eyes in a long shot, much less up close. The chick did have a certain “Liv Tyler” appeal I didn’t mind though. Oh, and why didn’t the computer just send the necklace with the explosive crystal anonymously to someone who would be in attendance and generate the detonation tone through the House sound system? Why the elaborate ploy with the Liv Tyler lookalike and her son? Oh, and I know I would have noticed something blocking one of the pipes of my trumpet as soon as I tried to warm up for the performance. And at least get a kid who plays the trumpet for the close-ups of the fingering! It has been at least twenty years since I last played and I could still tell that that kid had never played a trumpet in his life. For crying out loud, there are only three valves on a trumpet! It is so very friggin’ obvious when you don’t know the fingering! A saxophone, sure, you can fake that. A flute, I'll give you that one as well. Hell, a piano is easily faked if shot from the right angle and the arms are at least in the right area at the right time. Ok, I'll stop. So, what should we take away from this “review”? “Eagle Eye” is not a good movie but it is somewhat entertaining if only for it laughably contrived nature. After the movie we hung out in front of John’s house for a while and were joined by his wife Samantha. We talked until a million o’clock and I finally went home. So there you have it. I guess I'll talk to y'all again Monday.