The Empirical Manifesto

As my children are in Kansas for Spring Break, I had the unique opportunity to spend a full, uninterrupted hour in the bookstore listening to the largest selection of film scores I've ever come across. I must've listed to snippets of ^3/4 of the tracks on something like 25 albums, and I learned a few things:

1. Alexandre Desplat is quite prolific


2. As a rule, I don't care for Alexandre Desplat

I ended up with a delightful score by Simon Boswell to a movie I've recently purchased but have not yet had a chance to see, Tin Man a Sci-Fi original movie retelling The Wizard of Oz staring the sister of the star of Bones, Zooey Deschanel (the last thing I saw her in was the chic-flick Failure to Launch) and a guy I absolutely adore but never see enough of, Neal McDonough (having last seen him in the Kevin Costner film, The Guardian).



Tin Man was the most viewed show ever for
Sci-Fi when it premiered December of last year.

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I have been reading Stardust and though I'm really enjoying it, its a very minimalistic book. Like creating the two-hour movie Forest Gump from the 78-page book of the same name. And though this book tells a little different story than the movie, I'm finding I'm enjoying it just as well. I've read a lot of novels, and while my heart races when I finally get to the conclusion of an intricate interweaving plot by Peter Straub or Arturo Perez-Reverte, or laughing my ass off at the well-planted humor of John Irving, or dropping my mouth at the unexpected twist of Daphne du Maurier, if I wrote novels....If I wrote novels, I would want to write like Neil Gaiman. This is my first time reading him, and I want more.

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And lastly, falling in the category of, "I'm the funniest guy I know," drax0r and I found ourselves in GNC Friday afternoon. As we entered the store, the General Nutrition Center employee came around from her desk to greet us as I walked past 5-gallon jugs of protein powder and other bulking items and asked, "Welcome to GNC, what brings you to us today?"

"We're bodybuilders, ma'am." I replied.

Later, in the car, drax0r said, "To her credit, she kept a straight face...."

And then Saturday, in the "green" Wal-Mart (with the solar panels, wind turbine, and natural lighting) I was walking down a refrigerated isle where sensors power on the displays as you pass them (to save energy by turning off if no one is there) and as I walked in front of my wife pushing the basket, as the displays lit up on both sides of me one-by-one, raised my arms above my head an announced in a loud, deep voice, "LIGHT!" Just as a man turned the corner at the other end.

When we passed I asked him, "How was I?"

"Impressive." he quipped.