The 40th Coolest Thing of 2009... "Sweet Thing" by Keith Urban
"When I picked you up for our first date baby, well your pretty blue eyes they were driving me crazy, and that tiny little thought they were so amazing they were looking at me.."
The above video is taken from a AOL Live Session... who even uses AOL anymore? Anyway, its a great song... got a fever pitch, fast paced, and its the first single from Keith Urban's 5th album, "Defying Gravity". The lyrics discuss "kissing on the porch swing" and having his woman "exit through the bedroom window while the whole world's sleeping"... of course, according to his Wiki, the lyrics were inspired by Urban's relationship with his Ford Mustang. But hey, this is the 2000s... who are we to tell him who to love?
The 39th Coolest Thing of 2009... "Taken"
What do you get when you put the smokin' hotness of Famke Janssen together with the good-lookedness of Maggie Grace, then pour in a heapin' helpin' of Liam Neeson as a bad mofo father who is hellbent on getting his daughter back, no matter what?
You get "Taken". Liam Neeson plays Ben, a divorced guy who is just trying to get along with his daughter, and his ex-wife, and is forced to allow his daughter to go overseas. When he gets a disturbing phone call from his daughter, who is then kidnapped, he becomes a Super Pimpdaddy and goes nuts on everyone to get her back. Its one of those kind of "I hope that I would do as much for Lorelei Addison as he does for his kid" kind of films.
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have is a very particular set of skills... skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." YEAH!!!
The 38th Coolest Thing of 2009... "John Adams"
From June 5th of last year... ...I wanted to talk about "John Adams", the HBO Mini-series that The Lovely Steph Leann and I have been watching. We finished part 2 of 7, and already, its magnificent. Its just a wonderful piece of film thusfar, with Paul Giamatti as the title character doing a great job. It might just stolen out from under him, though, with Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin, who is hilarious and perfect at the same time. The big surprise? How much I love the character of Abigail Adams. I already dig on Laura Linney anyway, one of my favorite actresses, but her take on the strained and sacrificial wife of John Adams is nearly flawless.
Even though it is a Hollywood production (from HBO), its pretty much unbiased in its telling of the American founding and its founders. Its remarkable to watch a group of men so passionate about what they believe to be right, so willing to give up everything they have for a country to be free of tyranny and rule from a land far away... and its important to remember that not everyone was for succession. Not everyone wanted to be free--many people wanted to stay right where they were, under rule, as it was comfortable and predictable.
I'll stop before I get on a rant, but here's some recommended reading from Rush Limbaugh Jr, the father of the talk show host. Its called "Americans Who Risked Everything." Yes we can!
The 37th Coolest Thing of 2009... The Video for "Fallin' For You" by Colbie Caillet
Here's what I wrote on October 29th, in a post called "Music and Magic"...
Here's what I love about this video... its just fun. And sweet. And nice. She's pretty, he's a nerd, yet she totally digs him. Its like The Lovely Steph Leann falling for me all over again, only without the surfing and the trailer. And the ending of the video is just precious. Yep, I said precious
My 20th favorite video of the first decade of the century, and the 37th coolest thing of all last year.
The 36th Coolest Thing of 2009... Debating Brad Latta
Everyone needs an antithesis. I'm not sure that Brad is mine, cause I am not really sure what my antithesis would even be, but perhaps he'll fit.
I believe what I believe, and I know why I believe it, but the good (and bad) thing about my friend Brad is he asks--nay, demands--that you know why you believe it. "Gut feeling" doesn't work with this guy... being the lawyer that he is, he asks you give the facts. Be it sources, facts, data, stats or whatever.
Though we are mainly on the same page about most things, we do differ in many ways, and sometimes our late night Gmail or Facebook chats/debates/wars can be heated... probably the biggest battle was recently, when our Congress passed the healthcare bill, and He Who Must Not Be Re-Elected signed off on it (not that He Who Must Not Be Re-Elected actually knew what was in the bill... nor most of our other Congressmen, one of which stated that they didn't have time to read any of it... but another discussion for another day).
But at the end of the day, I think we both have a mutual respect for each other, he for my passion on what I believe, me for his challenging me (and others) to have a reason to believe it. He thinks he's right and I'm wrong, I know I'm right and he's wrong, and we'll continue our banter up until and past the November election. My hats off to you, Brad.
The 35th Coolest Thing of 2009... This Picture
Taken at our few days in Walt Disney World, here's a snapshot of Amy McL, Tommy Mac, The Good Rev'rn Ty Sharpton Coffey and Yours Truly...
This picture cracks me up every single time I look at it.
The 34th Coolest Thing of 2009... "Star Trek"
From the Clouds review on May 7th, 2009:
I loved this movie. I loved how it started, I loved the story, I loved the effects, I loved how it ended, I just thought this flick was absolutely worth the wait and just awesome. I really enjoyed how JJ Abrams didn't take the movie soooo seriously... there are a lot of Trek fans out there, so he had to walk a fine line between telling a story that people who aren't necessarily Trekkies will enjoy and want to see, and not angering or upsetting those very Trekkies who, despite the fact some of them have never kissed a girl (by the way, I looked for that Shatner SNL skit, and couldn't find it anywhere...), have basically kept the franchise alive for forty years.
Abrams does a great job at walking that line... I think anyone who isn't familiar with Star Trek will just enjoy a good science fiction story, and anyone who knows the story will recognize some of the little salutes to the original that have found its way into the film. The officer who goes with Sulu and Kirk down to the alien planet--you know he's not coming back. We know this because we've seen the show. Bones yelling, "Dammit, I'm a doctor!" and Scotty yelling, "We're giving it all she's got cap-pin!" were lines that I cracked up on, as did many other people in the theater. Even the Kobayashi Maru training scene is a throwback to the original cast, and there's a slight shout-out to the interracial barrier broken by the original series (when Kirk and Uhura kissed on television. Gasp.)
Anyway, I can highly recommend this film to anyone who's ever had a remote interest in Star Trek, be it the Original Series, or the Next Generation, or Deep Space Nine or Voyager or Enterprise or Tribbletown or Space Babylon or Battleship Starlactica or whatever they've called the 87 spin off shoes... for any die-hard Trekkies, loosen up a little. JJ Abrams made his film in love. Its great.
The 33rd Coolest Thing of 2009... PTI
Its an irreverent sports talk show that has two hosts--usually Wilbon and TK, but sometimes sportswriters Dan LeBatard or Bob Ryan or a few others jumps in to substitute. Usually they go through the big sports topics of the day, including doing various segments with titles like "Oddsmakers" and "Email" and "Role Play" (which cracks me up). Its remarkable, though... I've never actually seen a full episode of the show. I actually try not to watch it when its on TV, because I know I'll be listening to it on the iPod the next day.
The 32nd Coolest Thing of 2009... "Avatar"
I did my Clouds review on January 4th, 2010, but I did see the movie in 2009... and here's a summary of that review:
"Avatar" was the absolute best use of 3-D I've ever seen in my complete, whole, entire life. The spectacle, the color and the use of 3-D was marvelous, the depth of the picture was unlike anything I'd ever seen. The movie simply comes alive as the picture goes on, and while you forget you are even watching it in 3-D, somehow you know it wouldn't be the same in 2-D.
The story was average. I mean, it was a good story, it wasn't boring, a few people died that you didn't expect to die, but you kinda knew how the ending would end. The acting is average, no one really jumps out, though I will admit that both Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana do a stellar job all dressed in the blue of the Na'vi.
By and large, "Avatar" is a magnificent film, if only for what your eyes will feast upon in every second. And to see it, do it justice and see it in 3-D. Don't wait for the dollar theater or do the "I'll see it on DVD" or catch a 2D show... this is a movie you just simply need to see in 3-D to understand. And to fully appreciate.
And now that its been a few months since I've seen it, I look forward to seeing it again, to see if I still feel the same about it. It lost the big prize at the Academy Awards to "The Hurt Locker", and I'm curious to see, after all the hype and the fact that its now the biggest movie in American film history, does it still hold up?
The 31st Coolest Thing of 2009... Ruminations
There was an email that went around that caught everyone's attention, and made me laugh so hard, I posted it in September. It had hilarious little bites like "I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die." and "Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you may know” feature on Facebook people that I do in fact know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?"
Well, Krista, fellow coffee drinker, informed me that the site belonged to comedian Aaron Karo, and the site was called "Ruminations". And its awesome. Its now a site I check three or four times a week, sometimes daily, depending on how busy I am. Saying then, "I will tell you that the site itself is not a bad site... it does have some Not Emmy Turnbow Safe language, but its very rarely anything than just worldy conversation, nothing dirty. Now, I could tell you to go on over to that site and have fun reading, and you might do that, but let's be real... I want you to stay here. Heck, I'm about half-a-thousand away from 30K, so I'd like to keep you on this very site..." Proud to say I'm about two half-a-thousands away from 40K now, so there!
Anyway, to end this, I'd like to give you some recent ruminations, including some I wrote (and were published):
**Only two things become important when stuck in traffic: a full tank and an empty bladder.
**Getting into a heated political debate with a casual acquaintance on Facebook is a great way to make things really awkward the next time you actually see each other
**When I drop my food, it isn't about how many seconds it was on the ground. It's about who's around me to see me pick it up and eat it.
**Hey customer service call center... at what point does your "higher call volume than normal" actually become normal enough that you will hire more people and not make me wait 40 minutes to talk to you?
**The fact that the recommendations for me in the my iTunes store include Debbie Gibson, the cast of High School Musical AND Nirvana makes me wonder who I even am anymore
**I'll go to great lengths to scavenge other devices for batteries, long before I'll even consider going out to actually buy new ones.
**How do I not know you, if we have more than 100 friends in common on facebook?
**A college diploma is just a big fancy receipt
**Maybe I need to set my alarm clock to go off before I go to bed and shut it off. This seems to be the only way I can fall fast asleep
**Some songs are impossible to describe over the Internet. Like that one that goes ooohh oh oooohhooh ooohh oh oooohhhooo ouoo
Alright... 30 to go before the Coolest Thing of 2009 is announced. If I'm lucky, I'll get to that before I give you the 100th coolest thing of 2010.... coming up... The Tucks... MZ & Starbucks... and later, a Barnett meal that sucks. Went with the rhyme scheme.
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