Who's this St. Patrick guy, anyway?

Ah, yes, March 17th - when the Irish (and reasonable facsimilies) get together to celebrate and honor St. Patrick, who... uh...
Just who is this Saint Patrick fellow, anyway?
Well, almost fifteen centuries ago, a Gaelic family relocated to Britain, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Their child was baptized Patricius, which meant "noble".
Patricius seems to have lived fairly comfortably until he was sixteen - when he was kidnapped. He worked as a slave until he was 22, herding sheep (which, as slavery goes, could have been worse...).
Having had enough of sheep, apparently, Patricius (ohhhh, let's just call him Patrick and get it over with) escaped, and eventually returned to Ireland to do missionary work for the Church. For the next forty years he traveled the countryside, preaching the faith and establishing churches and schools.
Legend has it that Patrick used the lowly shamrock to demonstrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity to the Irish. As God is three persons but one God, so then does the shamrock have three stems in one plant.
The word shamrock, by the by, is derived from the Irish seamrog, which means "summer plant" in Gaelic.
Another legend has it that Patrick drove the venomous snakes out of Ireland by beating on his drum (I've heard Irish bands that bad, myself). To this day there are no vipers on the Emerald Isle.
Patrick is alleged to have died on March 17, 493. He was later canonized upon confirmation of two miracles attributed to him, and became the patron saint of Ireland. To this day St. Patrick is a national hero to the Irish, who have embraced him and his symbol, the shamrock.

Oh, and lest I forget...

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797

Saturday Morning Watchmen.

There're a number of cute bits in here (like who saves the Comedian from a fall). Check it out.

Who watches the Watchmen? Well... me, for one.

Well, looks like we've all seen the Watchmen movie now, judging from the different blogs out there.

I apologize for the late post, considering that I saw it Friday night at 7. didn't have access to the Internet before now...

I showed up pretty early before the show, a good twenty-five minutes, and went into Theater 15 at South Barrington. Now, I like South Barrington AMC - mainly because it's 30 theaters and that's it. No arcades, restaurants, or other distractions to cause the kids to hang out. If you go out to South Barrington, there's NOTHING there but movie theaters (yes, Brass the bar/restaurant is closed). It just attracts a different sort of crowd - the kind that comes out to see MOVIES, dammit! :)

So. I've been out here a lot in the past several years, but I never had the opportunity to go into Theater 15. It was freaking HUGE. Took up most of the middle part of the building, probably.I got into the front row of the "angled" seats (there were still eight rows in front of me, but they were "flat" on the ground - I was up high right in the middle, and happily waited with my F&%$#! expensive popcorn and drink combo (the ONLY thing I don't like about the AMC) for the movie to begin.

Wow.

Just... wow.

The opening sequence alone was worth it (kinda makes you wonder why Rorshach was all over the Comedian's murder, but Silhouette gets killed and nobody seems to care?).

I loved the movie. Never felt the time drag (except when Dr. Manhattan was talking :) ). I had been a little nervous, considering the Chicago Tribune gave it only 1 1/2 stars - and for the reasons the critic had offered. Bad martial arts in the fight scenes (really?! I thought they were terrificly brutal and had a style all their own!), Silk Spectre's lack of acting skills (didn't notice, but that might have been the latex costume), "confusing" timeline (What? I followed it, and hadn't read the graphic novel for twenty years! Give us some credit!) and constant references to the novel (supposed to be too confusing for normals, seeing as they didn't know what to look for, but hey, I followed it just fine!).

All in all, I found it to be a brutal (oh, I am SO sorry for those kids the grown-ups dragged to the movie in Jim McClain's report - didn't notice any in South Barrington) and honest film, with its own internal logic that it seemed always to follow. I found the story pretty much straightforward and even a little predictable (since I am a fan after all) but they really pulled it off - from the Gunga Diner to the newstand to the Comedian's weapons locker to Mars to Veidt's Antarctic hangout, the sets were absolutely spot on. PER-fection.

The actors were pretty good. Manhattan was New-Age-Pontificatingly-Annoying, Rorshach was a genuinely frightening sociopath (but I loved his apology to Nightowl!), Nightowl was sufficiently nerdy but could get the job done, Silk Spectre was sexy and a badass fighter too... Comedian was perfect, just the big jerk I had expected but with some heroism behind his attitude.

No one's going to win an Oscar for this thing (I don't think Rorshach was THAT much of a stretch or THAT good of an acting job - sorry, Jimbo). But then again, no one HAS to.

To play off what Jim McClain wrote yesterday, we saw the Watchmen and it was good. It would be nice to have everyone ooh and ahh about it, but probably not with that amount of blood and sex (people seem to be funny about blood and sex and making it with a superhero in their super-vehicle).

Still.

WELL done, sirs! WELL done!

KC

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day!

No, I am not kidding.

Today Chicago celebrates one of the American Revolution's heroes, calvary General Casimir Pulaski.

True, he's celebrated in towns with large Polish communities (he was Polish, by the by) - Chicago, Buffalo, Grand Rapids (which celebrates with a week in October), the state of Kentucky.

Then, too, there's the Pulaski Brige in New York City, the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey, the Pulaski Bridge on I-65 in Indiana, and even a village in Wisconsin.

So doff your cap to one of America's heroes, without whom General Washington wouldn't have had a calvary (or at least, a very poor one) - General Pulaski!

Good Morning, Americans...

Paul Harvey passed away yesterday.

Granted, he was 90.

And his wife and partner had passed on last July.

But Paul Harvey was known as the voice of middle America, for good reason.

Based out of Chicago but wintering in Pheonix, he had long been the one to whom millions of Americans turned for his 15 minute takes on the news. His delivery, use of pauses, and friendly demeanor won people over.

I am really going to miss Paul Harvey...

Good day.

Batter Up!

Baseball season is here again!
Yaaaaayyyy!
Arizona is filling up with major leaguers, ready to get out and play ball! I understand that within about a twenty minute drive there are several ballparks, allowing one to truly enjoy the game if one so wished.
Ahh, it's springtime in Arizona (still bitterly cold here!). Couldn't be better.
I like football, and enjoy the occasional hockey game (go Sabres!) but I LOVE baseball.
Might even get out to a few Cubs games this year...

KC

Winners... and...

Last night while clicking around I passed the Chicago Bulls on television.
Remember when the Bulls used to be good? I mean, they dominated the league at one time, didn't they?
Same with my Dad's favorite football team, the San Francisco 49ers. It wasn't all that long ago when they were on top of the world. Now?

Feh.

Just sort of slipped into a pattern of... I don't know, mediocrity.

It's not just sports teams. Circuit City, big store on the block, gone for good. Bombay Company, Bennegin's.

Not just retail - banks like Washington Mutual. National City. Big, strong names. Kaput.

Sometimes... it seems like someone pulled the drain plug on life, and all the things we've always had, are going down that drain.

Ford, GM, Chrysler - no matter what some people say, they didn't build bad cars. I've had Chryslers for nigh on 20 years and would be very happy to buy another - if they're going to be around, that is. Some people come down on them for building trucks and SUVs but let's face it, it's what we bought. What we wanted.

The car companies' problem was that they thought and acted like the good times were going to go on forever.

As did I. As did many of us, I expect.

I still recall when Grant's went out of business. Grant's was kind of like a smaller-scale KMart type store, but it had always been there, in Camillus Plaza... until one day it wasn't.

I had bought fish for my aquarioum there, I had bought 45 records (tells you how long ago this was). But I still felt... I don't know, abandoned?

I know a couple of dozen people who've lost their jobs recently, at some pretty big name places. Seems like everyone's cutting back.

I don't know, exactly, what I'm getting at, here. Just commenting on a very sad state of affairs.