Taken: Movie Review...Sort of

This might be considered behind the times, but it's not so much a movie review as it is a personal observation.  And since Taken is currently playing on TV, now's as good a time as any.

During my time at Tennessee Tech, the campus ministry I was a member of went to the movies.  When A Stranger Calls was playing, as was a kidnapping movie.  I do not recall the name of that film, because we did not go see it.  Over the vociferous objections of the entire group, we watched the former film.  Why?  Because our campus minister said he can't watch kidnapping movies.

He said as soon as I had children, I would understand.

Of the many things that he said, the majority of them were profound, wise, and/or knowledgeable.  But when he missed the mark, he missed it by a mile.

And in a side note, we did at least get to see Camilla Belle with a wet shirt, so all was not lost.  And while her character may have been jail bait, she was, in fact, 20 at the time, so there was no need to feel creepy about it.

Admit it, any college guy would go to jail for this.

Taken is in my top ten movie list, and has only gotten more firmly planted since the births of my two girls.  In a related note, I think my Die Hard collection would stop at III if I wasn't a father.

To some extent, Taken is a recounting of the same story any given responsible father will face a kerjillion times starting around...oh...three months after the birth of a daughter.

Act I:  Father tells Daughter not to do something stupid.

Act II:  Daughter does it anyway.

Act III:  Father bails Daughter out.

This real-life formula is combined with another potent story archetype that every boy who does not get beaten into a effeminate weakling with the cudgel known as "civilization" holds dear to his heart:

Act I:  Once upon a time...blah, blah, blah.

Act II:  Danger looms.

Act III:  Danger gets a face-full of righteous anger in the shape of something pointy.

Lian Neeson's character, Bryan Mills, is the most single-minded character I've seen.  Once his daughter gets grabbed, he has one goal:  find her.  He's not out to rid the world of sex traffickers, not out to rid the world of corrupt officials, not out to save the all the girls, not even really out for vengeance.

He's single-minded to the extent that you find yourself almost disgusted at times.

***Spoiler alert***

First, when his daughter and friend are being kidnapped, Mills only threatens the kidnapper to get his own daughter released, not her friend.

Next, he tracks his daughter's trail to a prostitution ring that drug girls up and cram them into a trailer on a construction site for whoever happens to feel the need.  Being consumed with a simple goal of finding his daughter, he has no qualms about leaving the drugged-out girls behind, saving only one who he believes has information about his daughters whereabouts.

After a little more digging, Mills ends up in the traffickers' apartment building where he engages in some decidedly un-white-hat-ish combat, backshooting and bushwhacking guys in a totally ruthless manner.

After taking one captive, Mills spends a few minutes torturing him until he coughs up what he knows.  Then Mills kills the guy in cold blood, mostly because that's what he told the guy he would do if they didn't let his daughter go.

Finally, when he finds a trail of corruption leading to an old friend, Mills quite coldly shoots his (ex-)friend's completely innocent wife in the arm to get the last bit of information he needs to find his girl.

Yeah.  He goes there.

He finally kills his way to the man who purchased his daughter.  When the man, holding her in front of him at knife point, offers to negotiate, Mills shoots him between the eyes.

I just killed your entire security team.  Why should I negotiate?

***End spoilers***

Movie body counts, a website I never knew but always hoped existed, puts the body count at 35, but they note that they only count stabs, gunshots, and clear broken necks.  I'd put the number closer to 40-45.

Anybody with a little knowledge of human anatomy and physiology know that getting hit in the throat with enough force to render one unconscious would also kill the person unless they received prompt medical intervention.  A little more medical knowledge would also let a person know that getting bludgeoned hard enough to render one unconscious is also hard enough to likely cause death by intercranial hemorrhage, again, assuming that the victim did not make it to the ER within an hour.  Given that everybody who might call 911 is also dead, this is doubtful.

Plus, any idiot knows that stunned/unconscious people do not swim well, so pitching an uncoordinated guy into a river counts as a kill.

Sure, dirty cops get outed, a human trafficking ring is decimated and a lot of girls are implied to be freed, but at the end of the day, Mills doesn't care about that.  Taken 2* does not see him investigating who knew about what, or going out to finish off the cartel or become a grief counselor for his daughter's fellow captives.  If the guy at the start had let his daughter go and only taken her friend, Mills would have just sat on his side of the pond and not slaughtered his way through Paris.

He's not a hero.  He's a daddy.

He just happens to be a highly trained daddy.

*A "meh" film, by the way.  Entertaining, but without the heart of the original.

Parking Wars

While I truly miss, and always will miss The Flying Dodgeman, since purchasing her replacement, the as-of-yet-unnamed Toyota 4Runner has proven to have a distinct advantage.

I would never have been able to pull this off with The Flying Dodgeman.  While the rear of the 1999 Dodge Intrepid was not nearly as large as that of the 1993 Dodge Intrepid that I learned to drive in, she still had a sizable trunk.

And then, yesterday:

Now, the resolution on this image is pretty atrocious.  The double-parked SUV there on the left is a Porsche Cayenne.  No, I do not know who owns it.  The important part, however, is that there is plenty of room between it and the SUV on the left of it.  There was no reason he needed to park that wide.

So, in case the owner is reading this, I have two observations.

#1.  Ownership of a Porsche does not entitle you to two parking spaces.  Incidentally, neither does ownership of a Bentley, BMV, or Lamborghini.

#2.  Even if it did, the Cayenne is not even a real Porsche anyway.  It is a CRV with a cooler logo.  I do not care what the dealer told you, real Porsches start with "9."

22 in a 55

Or, “Get your [redacted] [redacted] scooter off the [redacted] road, you [redacted] [redacted].”

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with me knows that I hate scooters.  Really, really, hate scooters.

A little history, first.  In 1928, the RNC ran a campaign promising, “A chicken in every pot.  And a car in every backyard, to boot.”  While Black Tuesday the following year made this particular promise a tad bit harder to live up to, politicians the world over continued to tout universal mobility as the mark of prosperity.

Enter the fascists.

When you nationalize the automotive industry in a nation, you can go a long way to providing cheap vehicles.  Of course, it’s only cheap because your neighbor is helping pay for it, but those thoughts are far away when you look at the sticker price.  Here, however, is the difference between German engineering, and Italian engineering:

Hitler’s family car:

Mussolini’s family car:

Somehow, through the wonders of advertising, the Vespa scooter has survived in some form for the last 70 years.

Blame it on the Vespa girl:

On a side note, the ad raises an interesting question.  Does anyone really think a Vespa could climb the Italian Alps?  And does anyone really think you can ice skate outside in shorts like that?

Now, a woman that good-looking can drive a Vespa if she wants.  If you are a man riding one, you are pretty much missing some equipment.

And if you are if you are a bloody 250-pound man on a 25cc scooter, going 20 mph up a hill on a 55 mph highway with 5 vehicles stuck behind you, you are a traffic hazard as well as sub-optimally equipped.  And if I am one of those vehicles, I can assure you that you are not only a unequipped traffic hazard, but a much maligned one, as well.

A coworker once told me that in some states, scooters can be used without license, and are therefore the go-to vehicle for people with suspended licenses due to DUI's.  That would explain a lot.  Presumably, the thought process is that an irresponsible driver is far less of a danger to others on a 150-pound vehicle than he is in a 2000-pound one.  Either that, or they figure if he's too drunk to drive, he'll just fall over with only 2 wheels.

However, given that swerving for dogs is known to cause fatalities, I'm pretty sure a guy falling down on a scooter is at least as dangerous.

So, from now on, I will assume that scooter drivers are all drunken hazards to the well-being of all drivers.

Now to decide, does that mean I need to avoid them, or do my best to remove them from the pool of drivers?

That's low

In 2008, while in the middle of my hematology clinical rotation, I heard an interesting announcement on the radio.  Georgia wants to move the border with Tennessee north in order to access the Tennessee River to provide water for the Atlanta area.

Right.  That’s gonna fly.

Personally, I did not exactly enjoy my time in Chattanooga.  The hospital part was cool, but all I could afford was to crash on the floor of a house in a sketchy part of town with a bunch of college students that smoked enough weed that I’m probably lucky I never got pee-tested.  That said, it’s still part of Tennessee.  It’s still family, it’s just the uncle no one ever talks about.

Fast forward to this week.  I saw a front page article in a Georgia business paper that said Georgia’s Attorney General has threatened to sue Tennessee in the Supreme Court if they don’t sit down by April 2014.

Come on.  You’re bringing lawyers into it now?  Weak, Georgia, weak.

Yeah, we’re gonna sue you!

The story from the south side is that this feud has been running for 195+ years.  Which is, of course, why no one on the north side had ever heard of it until five years ago.

The GA AG claims the real reason they've got their panties in a wad is that Tennessee has not been taking them seriously.

Manbearpig is real!

The really disturbing part, though, is that they’re saying Tennessee refuses to negotiate.  Well, what precisely is Georgia giving up?  In the words of a late president, “We cannot negotiate with those who say, ‘What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.’”

Here’s a novel idea:  try buying the land you need.

Tennessee is a pretty capitalist state.  In order to access the Tennessee River, Georgia only needs a 1.5 mile section on border moved.  How about ponying up a few million or so?

And that’s another thing.  The river has Tennessee’s flippin’ name on it.  Where does anyone get off claiming it’s part of Georgia?

They may have missed their chance, though.  In 2011, Tennessee posted its first budget surplus in years.  $19.9 million.  This year, the projected surplus is $540 million.  Still, stretched out over the next 5 to 10 years, coughing up a billion would probably work.

Still, most of the water they want is for Atlanta.  Ballpark population:  7 million.  You charge all of them $10 a month for a year and you've got $840 million.

Just a thought.

But if there's another plan, and they intend to go all "Peach Dawn" on us, I have one world for them:

WOLVERINES!!!

$2275.75

Next week, Geico will be handing my a check for $2275.75.  I will be handing them a piece of greenish paper and some keys.  They will load a 1999 Dodge Intrepid onto a tow vehicle and I will never see it again.

I should be thankful.  There's no way I could have ever gotten that much trying to sell her.

I'm not thankful, at all.  Not yet, anyway.  Because she's not "a 1999 Dodge Intrepid."  She's The Flying Dodgeman.  And she's mine.

When I got her, she had 49,000 miles.  Now, she has 169,000.  In those 120,000 miles:

She drove from Cookeville to Knoxville to Mississippi.  On one tank.

She took my wife and I on our first date.

She drove me to Austin Peay and back.

She got me from Chattanooga to Clarksville to home when I was falling asleep at the wheel.

She saw 110 mph outside of Athens, TN.

She drove my wife and I home from our wedding.

She made absurd numbers of trips from middle Tennessee to northeastern Tennessee as we moved from our first apartment to first house.

She brought both my girls home from the hospital.

For that matter, she brought my two dogs home.

The state of Georgia uses buycrash.com to give out police reports.  When searching for the pertinent report, I ended up having to punch in the other driver's VIN.  The result was a list of three.  Now, because of a driver who in the last 2 years has been in at least 3 multiple motor vehicle collisions:

She will not see 200,000 miles.  She was shifting hard, but I think she would have made it.

She will never see Lake Superior.  This August, she would have.

She will never see another country.  This August, she would have.

She will not be there to drive our next child home in.  I'm not sure when that would have been.

She will not see 120 mph (officially).  I intended to eventually take her to a street legal drag strip someday and try to peg out her speedometer.  I suspect I did it when I wasn't looking on the way to Mississippi.

So here's to a heck of a car.  She was faithful, even when I wasn't.  Sure, she shifted hard.  Sure, you couldn't roll the driver's window up straight.  Sure, her lights could do funny things.  Still, she got me from point A to point B far more times than she didn't.

This girl survived Chattanooga's drivers.  One of my fondest memories was dropping the hammer in an intersection one early foggy morning when an oncoming driver decided to go straight instead of turning left.  She roared to life, and pulled me through just before the moron could hit us.

She just couldn't survive Atlanta.

I hate this town.