Good Blogkeeping (Session 2)

I've been told by many a reader that my blog posts are a little lengthy. They sardonically tell me that if they wanted to read a novel that they'd join a book club. What am I to do at this point? I could shorten my blog posts. But then the terrorists win. I could tell them to Shut the Hell up and mind their own blog. Oh, wait, they don't have one because they are functionally illiterate and can't handle more than a few paragraphs at a time. But that doesn't endear readers to oneself. Or I could just embrace the novelette format of this blog and give them a Table of Contents. So here's what today's session of Good Blogkeeping is going to discuss (feel free to skip what you don't want to read:

1. The Lush Life 5: I'll discuss what's new of note in Ray's life since the last session of Good Blogkeeping
2. Bucket List Update: I'll discuss how Ray's Bucket List is going
3. 40 Movies Update: I'll discuss how Ray's movies selections are doing with an emphasis on The Roommate and Source Code
4. Where Do I Go From Here?: I'll give you a preview of future blog posts

 The Lush Life 10

So, it's been a long time since I've talked to some of my readers. Here are the ten biggest developments in my life since the last Good Blogkeeping on March 2nd.

5. I got an Alyssa Leona original. I've never been a person who cared for fancy things or non-essential luxuries. But I always thought that it would be nice to have expendable income and buy art. I don't need art, but I surely do appreciate it. I will often walk through the Burbank Art Festival and see several swank pieces, be they canvas or sculpture, while I think would look nice in my pad. So imagine my delight when I received a meticulously crafted via my Federal Express provider. Alyssa sent me one of her paintings from an occasional endeavor that she undertakes called Canvas and Cocktails. It's a business with multiple locations in the Denver area (I think multiple is 2) where people can get together, get drunk, and paint some pictures. This just sounds like a snazzy idea. She was explaining it to us recently and Nick and Erin started brainstorming how to rip off the idea and bring it to other cities (Brushes and Brews, Art and Ales, Watercolors and Winecoolers [my contribution]). Nick might even franchise a similar venture in Puerto Rico under the name Cervezas y Colores. To the right is the painting that will adorn my new apartment.

4. So...Osama Bin Laden died. It's not necessarily news that is overtly relevant to my life...unless I'm allowed to bring mouthwash on airplanes now. But it's big news that means a lot to a lot of people, so I'll discuss it. I'm not normally not one to rejoice at somebody's demise...so I didn't go out and cheer in the streets. But this guy needed to go and without question I think that our world is a better place without him in it. However, what I had really hoped would happen is that we'd get to see some of that American spirit that shone so brightly in the wake of 9/11. I knew that it wouldn't be the same and that it wouldn't last as long, but I just wanted a little of that sweet "compassion for your fellow man" afterglow. Osama's death was announced on May 1st in America. Could we make it one month with this new sense of unity that our President was hoping for? No...we couldn't make it one hour. Unity is a natural human reaction in the wake of of tragedy and hardship. We need to lean on each other so we do. In the wake of victory humans are afflicted with something that Bill Simmons has referred to as "the disease of more". As soon as the announcement was made there was widespread Twitter and news reports pointing fingers and patting backs in regards to who was responsible for bringing Osama to justice and who's fault it was that it took so long. Democrats started blaming Bush and lauding Obama for 2012, which put the Republicans on tilt forcing them to dispute the role of Obama's administration. It was going really smoothly for a brief second. Boehner and McCain had congratulated Obama. Obama had thanked Bush for his contributions. And then things got too chirpy on the interwebs so each side had to bring in Olberman and Palin to ruin things. But as long as we're hoarding credit for Osama's death, I'll tell you who is responsible for bringing down Osama Bin Laden: the homosexuals. That's right, I say that the gays finally got him. Doesn't it seem just slightly too coincidental that after over nine years of looking for this man, we finally got him within a measly few months after repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. I think that once our fighting servicemen were able to admire architecture and neighborhood gentrification without fear of reprisal...that compound stood out like a sore thumb.

3. I got invited to the Blake Johnson / Jennifer Downing nuptuals. I'm going back to Cincinnati later this month to witness Xavier Senate's very own Czar Downing get married. No matter how good of friends I am with a person I never take it for granted that I will be extended a wedding invitation. I was very honored to receive this invite to their special day and can wait to get back to Cincinnati. I was worried that I might get blackballed from the wedding list because I was the Senator who gave Jen a "Sexy Men of Xavier Senate" Calendar for Christmas which featured all 12 male senators posing in underwear (or less). And rest assured that if I had not been ridiculously behind the times 5 years ago when I took these photos with a camera that requires you to develop film...you would see a picture of Senator Shigeki Tanabe wearing nothing but a well-placed map of the world accompanying this post. God damn you, Ray, for being a late adapter. However, due to shitty flight schedules by Delta (who owns CVG airport for all intents and purposes), I will have less than 36 hours in Cincinnati and will be making it in on a red-eye only about 4 hours before the ceremony. So, I've got my work cut out for me when it comes to planning my time there. However, I am thinking that Max & Erma's chicken tortilla soup, a Kelli haircut, and a podcast with some Cincinnati friends all have to be on the agenda. I also have to get the happy couple a stellar wedding gift. I'll surely get them something off the registry, but you can't follow up a "Sexy Men of Xavier Senate" Calendar with something as bland as a waterproof/fireproof safe or a set of 12" stainless steel woks. There needs to be a kicker for the gift...so feel free to shoot me ideas.

2. I went to Denver. And it was thebomb.com/yourmom. It is truly one of America's great under-rated cities. I don't know that it's going to crack my Top 5 American cities yet...but it surely cracks the Top 10. I had one of the best weekends that I've had in a long time. Rosie and I flew in from LA and Nick flew in from Puerto Rico to visit Alyssa, Glen, Erin, and Ben. We were also joined by Alyssa's friend from Minnesota, Angie. I got into Denver at about 2AM Saturday morning after numerous flight delays, and shortly after that "shit got real". Whatever that means. Seven hours later we were at an IHOP enjoying steak and eggs and a clown was making us sweet ass balloon animals. I was debating between a scorpion and a penguin while the clown was still well out of earshot and decided that scorpion was the way to go. When the clown came over she asked what I wanted and when I asked for a scorpion she responded, "I'm scorpion-impaired...how about a penguin." Holy F-ing ESP, clown lady! There is no way you heard me talking from over 50 meters away while you were making some other couple an alien. Then we proceeded to the Coors brewery tour in Golden, Colorado which is one of America's great untapped resources. It's a free tour, which is now done by audio. This means that it lasts anywhere from 3-45 minutes (your choice). And at the end you get four free beers. However, since the tour is free and can only last 3 minutes if you briskly run/walk through it...what stops you from just getting new wristbands all day and blasting yourself to oblivion on free beer? Anyway, thanks to some pre-Coors Coors at Alyssa and Glen's apartment and a lot of Coors Coors at the brewery, some people got a little blitzed and may have made some intentionally and unintentionally hilarious inappropriate comments that left me actually crying on the floor with laughter and may have been found particularly offensive by some members of the Golden, Colorado community. Whatever. Worth it! The big loser on this trip was Nick's liver. Thanks to all day and night drinking followed by waking up for morning mimosas and drinking some more...I think that he at least was buzzed for at least a period of 60 straight hours. Whatever. Worth it!

1. I am a bone marrow match for some guy. This is an exciting yet scary development at the same time. It's something that I really hope I get to do, but I've also done my research and I am aware that the process is no picnic. There are two ways of collecting marrow cells. The first one usually involves only a one day recovery, but requires you to give blood out of one arm, have the marrow cells filtered out in a machine, and then have some blood returned to you intravenously through your other arm. And to avoid me vomiting and being scarred for life...I'd rather they just knock me out, go into the bone surgically, and I'll deal with the two week recovery. I might even get to miss a day or two of work to catch up on my blogging. Speaking of blogging, I think that my mom is proud of the fact that I might be a marrow donor because she wants me to blog about it...on another blog! Blasphemy!! This is her way of saying that I should have good writing samples on wholesome subjects for employers to peruse when I try and switch over to a writing job. But you guys know that I would never cheat on you, right? I'm not going to try and trick people into thinking that I'm a good person, so posts about the bone marrow donation process will go right here and be surrounded by posts about porn, immigration and Christmas specials. And that's the way it should be. I want to donate marrow to save somebody's life because it's the right thing to do and that's the way I was raised. But let's not pretend that I'm not going to be getting anything out of this whole deal. My self-satisfaction will go way up and I might even have your respect now. And I haven't even really let the horny area of my brain think it over yet, or he'll start preparing for his seven day window for pity sex. So...Now that I threw away all of that uncomfortable respect that you might have been developing for me, let's talk about how the process has gone so far.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by some lady with a Minnesota area code saying that I was a potential match for a man with some sort of lymphoma leukemia. I had originally registered for the Bone Marrow registry when I joined Xavier Senate and the Community Affairs Chair ran a registration drive for a local fire fighter who had cancer. They tested my swab and wanted to get a blood sample from me for testing. No sweat...I gave a small sample and was sweet for the next couple weeks. Then I got another call telling me that I was indeed a match. They had my fill out a survey to ensure that I didn't have a debilitating heroine habitat and that I hadn't had sex with strangers from Central Africa in the last 3 years. They were confident that my marrow would work, but they wanted another blood sample to ensure that I would be the "best possible match". This sounded like so many a job interview that I'd been to. How many times have I heard: "We like you, but we have to look at a few other candidates first."? A lot. And the job never comes my way...so we'll see if bone marrow is any different.

So I went down to La Palma to give some more blood. I was told that I would be giving 100ml which isn't too much to sweat, but it turned out to be 350ml and that sucked. That's basically 2/3 of a pint. And my hematologist was a 4' Vietnamese woman who barely spoke English. I was pricked in at least seven different places because they couldn't find a vein and they had to actually drain me from two different points because the blood wasn't flowing very well. I have given blood over half a dozen times and I have never had the perfect hematologist. My friend Jessica Hummel always asks for the best and thus has gotten some great ones. I don't have a sense of entitlement that allows me to ask for someone other than who I'm given...so I have never had a spectacular one. All I want is a hematologist who meets all of the three C's (and yes I know that one of them is a K). I want a hematologist who is kind, competent, and cute. Competent is the most important one. I want you to stick me one time, find the vein properly, and ensure that it's done as painlessly as possible. Kind is the second most important. I want them to put me at ease and not call me a pussy because I can't look at the needle. This also encompasses a good bedside manner which means being attentive to me as I'm donating and not freaking me out by telling me how cold, clammy, and pale I am. And cute would just be a bonus. However, it's probably best that they not be too good looking because I don't want the vein in my arm to have to compete for blood with other parts of my body.

So, I'll know in 5-6 weeks if they need me to give up some marrow and I'll update you from that point on.

Bucket List Update

Items That I've Crossed Off Since We Last Chatted:

• #21: Have business cards. That's right, I have business cards. Not from my employer, who I won't besmirch by naming here, but rather for this blog. Just ask and I'll give you one. 
• #58: Visit my Denver friends in Denver. I technically did this during the first week of February, but it was while I was en route moving from Cincinnati to Los Angeles so it was rushed. However, I went back and it was legendary. I'm already planning another trip for July.

Items That I'm Closing In On:

• #30: Purchase something at a live auction. So, Burrows lost a bet to me over a round of golf that we played (of course he did, I'm money!). Since he lost he has to help me complete a Bucket List item within 18 months. This is what we've chosen. So if you know of any good live charity auctions, let me know. Because Burrows and I will be rolling with some straight cash.
• #31: Make the perfect omelette. I've already given it multiple attempts with dozens of different ingredients and during the last trial run I made an important breakthrough: the perfect omelette definitely contains cumin. I'm coming for you, perfect omelette.
• #88: Donate an organ. I know that bone marrow is not technically an organ. But the point of this Bucket List item is not to go through life with one kidney...it's to try and save somebody's life. So, I'm counting it. It's my Bucket List, so I make the rules.
  

Items That Are Next on My Attack List:

•  #16: Be published as a reader's letter in a magazine. TIME, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and MAXIM should all get ready to receive letters me. Hopefully some of those thoughts will be coherent enough to make the cut. 
• #54: Reach my sex weight (estimated to be 190). I can't say that I'm closing in on this one because I was spotting my sex weight around 50 pounds. However, I've made a good dent into that recently. I'm eating healthier, exercising more, and I think that I can get close to my goal within a year. 
• Go geocaching. And find a 5/5 cache. So apparently this one is significantly more difficult to achieve than I thought when I put it on the list. Apparently 5/5 often involve scaling mountain faces with ice picks and trekking through chupacabra-infested jungles. However, I welcome the challenge and I'll be warming up with some 3/2 and 2.5/4 caches in the coming weeks.

40 Movies Update

Certified Awesome (So Far) -- These movies all have the Ray O'Brien Thumbs Up

Unknown

Gnomeo and Juliet

The Adjustment Bureau

Rango

Cedar Rapids

Paul

Hanna

Scream 4

Source Code

Certified Lame (So Far) -- These movies have made Ray O'Brien concede a Thumbs Down

The Dilemma 

The Roommate 

Sucker Punch

The Jury Is Out (For Now) -- These movies will require further investigation (i.e. watching them) from Ray O'Brien

No Strings Attached

Take Me Home Tonight

Your Highness

The Conspirator

[Please NOTE: Ray O'Brien will be discussing in greater depth two of the above movies and why one wasn't very good and why the other was. So this is your official SPOILER ALERT! for THE ROOMMATE, SOURCE CODE, SUCKER PUNCH, and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE]

The Roommate - A Critical Review

The Roommate was a film that I thought had promise. I feel pretty damn positive that most people looked at this movie and knew that it would be a whole lot of nothing special. And even when it came out to very underwhelming reviews I thought that it would be a movie that could be enjoyed simply for the massive amount of sexy that was injected into it. However, having seen it I will concede that it fails as a film and I'll tell why. This was a film that I was heavily leaning on the fact that it was going to be sexy as hell. It starred Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester, and Daneel Harris. One of these characters was playing a lesbian (Harris) and another one was basically playing a lesbian without it ever being explicitly stated (Meester). It took place in college, which in Hollywood films means a Mecca of drugs and sex. All of the pieces were in place for this to be a sexy movie and it decidedly wasn't. They would continually walk in the direction of being sexy and then at the last second they would swerve away or change shots. That was the true horror of this film.

I recently saw an interview where the films of Quinten Tarantino were discussed. Tarantino apparently has a large foot fetish and includes gratuitous, lingering shots of women's feet in several of his films.  Since these shots aren't of breasts most people who don't have a thing for feet will barely notice them. So they won't offend or weird out anybody who isn't already offended by Tarantino's gratuitous violence or racially insensitive dialogue. But if you have a thing for feet (which I'm finding that a surprising number of people do - men and women) that would endear Tarantino's movies to you. It was estimated that he pulls in probably an extra 1.5 million dollars per movie just on people who know that if they see his movies they are going to get some solid foot action. So why don't more movie makers take advantage of this. I'm not saying to go overboard. I'm going to notice if you're trying to please the golden shower community. However, I feel fairly confident that you could work blood, inter-racial coupling, feet, guns, midgets, handcuffs, or mud (yes mysophilia means sexual arousal towards mud and dirt) into your script without creeping out mainstream America as long as they don't use them in an overtly sexual way. This brings me to the largest paraphilia in America which The Roommate failed to properly capitalize on: girl-on-girl.

Let it be stated here that every heterosexual man is attracted to girl-on-girl. Any guy who says that he isn't is either lying or has brainwashed himself with some heavy moralizing and actually thinks that he isn't when his body is telling him that he is. You might think that this is small-minded of me and that's fine...but girl-on-girl turns on straight men with almost no exceptions. Of the female population in the 21st Century, there are three categories. The first is made up of girls who are aroused by girl-on-girl. I'll estimate that to be at about 10%. The second is girls who are severely offended by girl-on-girl portrayals in the media. I'll estimate that to be around 15%. The other 75% know that it turns men on and that they have to live with that and will abide by it on their screens as long as their kids aren't around. My mom doesn't like it when two girls make out on screen but if she's enjoying a movie and it happens...well, she stopped changing the channel when I was 15. Most women will live with it. So play to your percentages, Hollywood. Sex sells. And you really didn't in The Roommate. The opportunities were there and you blew it. You had a 2 Girls 1 Shower situation and instead of getting soapy and horny, the only thing of note that happened was that one ripped out the other's naval ring. Which, to be fair, probably did arouse some guys with stigmatophilia. However, it almost made me vomit (which would have aroused other people with emetophilia). And let me just add that this movie also criminally underused the beautiful and talented Daneel Harris.

The second problem with this movie was that for a ridiculously unrealistic horror movie, the production value was too high. Many critics said that it was poorly-made and lacked suspense. This wasn't true. The suspense and direction was fine. They were just dealing with an unrealistic, not very punchy script that fell flat and took the viewer out of the movie too often. When you have a premise that is not very believable you have to beg for the audience's suspension of disbelief in advance. And The Roommate did not beg for my suspension of disbelief at any point. This begging should start pretty early on, usually in the film's trailer. Any movie trailer that begins with with the phrase "In a World where..." is begging for your suspension of disbelief. Sometimes it rewards you (i.e. Children of Men), and sometimes it rips you off like a big fat Ponzi scheme (i.e. The Postman). Movies that are campy, or off-kilter and let you know that they are going to be that way beforehand oftentimes get a pass with plot-holes. However, this movie asked to be taken seriously. So when non-observant characters made dumb decisions as though they were wearing blinders all movie until the convoluted ending that employed a couple ridiculous deus ex machini (is that the plural?)...it was just too much for my suspension of disbelief. Get Zombie Don La Fontaine to do the voice-over for your trailer and then I'll spot you some of your absurdities.

You also have to know what you're competing against. Your movie is going to be compared to other movies of it's ilk. If you're coming out with a war movie you had better be prepared for it to have to go toe-to-toe with Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Saving Private Ryan. This movie knew what it was up against and it failed in surpassing similar films or even adding anything to the conversation on almost every level. This film was a rip-off of Single White Female in so many ways and that was generally accepted. However, it needed to realize what made Single White Female a success and build on that while advancing the formula for such a film. It did neither. It copied certain scenes from SWF almost ver batim. Killing your roommate's kitten instead of her puppy doesn't really count as switching up the formula. And other shockers from the original were stretched in ridiculous ways. One of the earlier creepy moments from the original is when we find out that Jennifer Jason Leigh got a haircut and dye to mimic the look of her roommate Bridget Fonda. Well, you can't really do that in this movie because you cast two girls who look remarkably similar in Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester. The only casting decision that would have made this plot device less plausible is if they cast Amy Adams and Isla Fisher (seriously...the same person). So, the only thing that they could change that was along the same lines was to have Meester's character get the same tattoo that Kelly's character has of her dead sister's name on her chest. And that just skips the whole subtly creepy thing that SWF was going for and jumps into obviously psychotic too quickly. Try the "slow burn" approach, The Roommate. It's the backbone of great film making.

The ending was also infuriating because it was predictable and ridiculous at the same time. Obviously Cam Gigandet comes to save the day at the end, but they never really address how he knew the day needed to be saved. It just seemed like dumb luck that he happened to be in the neighborhood when shit went down. I'd understand if he happened to be trying to see Sara (Minka Kelly) and just happened to show up at her dorm because she's his squeeze, but there is literally no reason for him to find his way to Irene's (Daneel Harris) apartment unless there was a deleted scene that I missed. And SWF didn't have the obvious good-looking love interest save the day. They went with the sleazier character played by Steven Tobolowsky who had tried to sexually assault Bridget Fonda earlier in the film. This role could have been filled by Sara's philandering professor (Billy Zane). Seriously, how do you have Billy Zane in a movie and use him to as little effect as The Roommate did? He's awesome and makes every movie better, so if you have a crappy movie...layer in some more Billy Zane scenes. Sara's closing line after she stabs Rebecca (Leighton Meester) with the box cutter is also pretty lame. It pales in comparison to Amanda Seyfried's classic line "This is a box cutter. It's for cutting boxes." right before she stabs Megan Fox in the vagina during Jennifer's Body. When you can't even write the best "Teen Girl Stabbing Another Psychotic Teen Girl With a Box Cutter" line of the year...it's time to pack it up and go home. This coupled with the fact that Sucker Punch wasn't really good and just ripped off Terry Gilliam's Brazil means that this is going to be a very disappointing year for sexy films.

Source Code - A Positive Review

So, I finished up work earlier today and headed over to West Hollywood to go to dinner and a movie with Rosie at The Grove. And let me tell you that Source Code is a real winner. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. However, if you are pondering this recommendation because you haven't already seen it: STOP READING RIGHT NOW. And please proceed down to the Where Do I Go From Here? section of this blog to avoid me spoiling this movie for you.

So a few paragraphs ago I expressed my opinion that suspension of disbelief is something that a movie has to ask for in advance. Sci-fi and time travel films are somewhat exempt because you know that when you walk into one of these movies you are surrendering your adherence to a few of Newton's Laws as soon as you purchase that ticket. There are two major missteps that most time travel movies can take at this point. The first is to fall head-first into time travel paradoxes (I'll explain these at length in a post in July...but you probably are already aware of what I'm talking about.). Film makers play fast and loose with time travel and don't realize that when all of the dust settles there narrative makes no sense. Films like The Time Machine and Back to the Future were marginally successful at explaining these away by taking liberties with the rules of time travel but at least addressing them allowing audiences to enjoy the movie. The Bill and Ted movies just decided to be so campy and ridiculous that if you criticized their use of time travel...you were really missing the point. Other movies lack a coping mechanism for time travel and therefore lose the more intelligent half of their audience. The second misstep is to over-explain your time travel so that it makes perfect reasonable sense to middle-America. However, by doing this you've boxed yourself in to an explanation which while it sounds plausible, now has clearly defined holes and every physics professor in the theater starts sobbing at how you're misinforming America. Source Code fell into neither of these pratfalls. They used very light scientific explanation about human brain chemistry, afterglow, and short-term memory. They addressed the potential paradoxes and eliminated them efficiently via the multiple universe theory (Way to work in some light string theory!). And then they didn't box themselves in by never really fully explaining how the Source Code works or showing you the whole apparatus. So now with their scientific credibility intact...they just had to proceed to make a sweet film.

Because it appeared on the Hollywood Black List, I knew that Source Code was going to have a good script. The question was how the cast would mesh with that script. I think that the casting job was superb. Jake Gyllenhaal and his sister are clearly in a battle of wills to see who will be the best Gyllenhaal actor. And the competition is heating up. Jake took the early lead with the cult classic Donnie Darko and the phenomenal Brokeback Mountain. However, Maggie responded by getting frisky with Heath Ledger in her own way and joining her brother in the "I should have been in a Best Picture if the Academy had any balls" Club when she starred in The Dark Knight. However, this might put Jake back into the lead. He plays the role well, using a good deal of range to show why he is a sought after leading man for both action films and romances. The guy also has an unbelievably good track record. Some might choose to debate on films such as Prince of Persia and Love and Other Drugs, but I would like to state that I think that his only two really "bad" films are Bubble Boy (2001) and Josh and S.A.M. (1993). That's pretty good for somebody with his body of work. They also had me from Day 1 when they cast Michelle Monaghan. This former Top 5 member of the Hot 100 will get me into the theater to see literally anything that doesn't contain the words Human Centipede or Hard Candy. I would watch a three hour film of her doing the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner. And she showcases her usual charm in this film. If there's one problem with her performance, it's that she plays Christina as unrealistically perfect. Some people may have had a problem with the fact that Colter (Gyllenhaal) is besotted with her after only a few eight minute runs through the Source Code. They might find that unrealistic. However, I don't see how you couldn't be. She's the perfect girl by almost every conceivable matrix. And Vera Fermiga continues her streak of fine acting. She now has at least five great films to her name and has showed me her very nice breasts in over half a dozen films. So it's only fair that I stop confusing her with Famke Janssen who hasn't done anything for me since the X-Men movies and only showed me her breasts briefly in one episode of Nip/Tuck. No word yet on whether I'll stop confusing Michael Keaton/Kevin Bacon, Amy Adams/Isla Fisher, Jamie Lee Curtis/ Sigourney Weaver, and Renee Zellweger/Mickey Rourke.

I'm not really going to re-cap the premise here because if you're reading this you've seen the movie. Because clearly I told anybody who hasn't seen it to skip this section. Despite the fact that this was a great movie, I still have a few comments about questionable plot points. I just can't enjoy nice things! (Ask Mike and Ike Red Rageous about that...more on that in a later post.) First, I'd like to know why they were so sure that the bomber was one of the passengers on the train with Sean Fentress. They seem to know very little about the bomber. They don't know where the bomb is on the train, they don't know what the motive is, and they don't know where the next target is. However, they seem to be betting all of their chips on the bomber being a passenger on that train. I realize that the bomber had to be on the train at some point to plant the bomb and that they thought the bomber was close enough to the explosion to time it for when the train was passing another train. But if I was placing a bomb on a train...I like to think that I'd get off more than one stop in advance of the bomb actually detonating. Shit could go haywire. Also, how did they know that Sean Fentress wasn't the bomber? It's going to be pretty hard to find the bomber through investigation if your host body is the bomber and the bombs are simply set to timers. When I was trying to anticipate the twist ahead of time I thought that Sean may have been the bomber.

I also was a little confused with the whole present reality time vs. Source Code time throughout the movie. Goodwin and Rutledge were getting very perturbed with Colter when he would ask questions claiming that he was wasting time when he needed to be going back into the Source Code to find the bomber. However, when he complained that there were over 100 suspects on the train, Rutledge told him that he could eliminate suspects 1 by 1 if he needed to. This led me to believe that his 8 minutes in The Source Code must be only a few seconds in the current reality...since clearly they were acting as though there weren't 800 minutes to stop the next bombing or evacuate Chicago. However, during Colter's final trip into The Source Code we can clearly see that there is an analog timer with 8 minutes on it counting down the time until the train is set to blow up. This means that eight minutes in the Source Code is equal to eight minutes in present reality. So Rutledge is basically just being a whiny bitch when he chides Colter for trying to get a little background information in present time.

And while I applaud them for fully addressing the neglected aspects of the multiple universes theory, they did leave out one important revelation when it comes to his host. I was worried when Colter went back into the Source Code for the final time that he was going to somehow save Christina from the train explosion and save himself from his helicopter accident and everything would be honky-dory. And I knew that to do this he was going to have to invoke some convoluted deus ex machina which would completely rupture the well-established rules of the Source Code. It turns out that my fears were unwarranted and he realized that this was futile. He basically said the following: "Fuck present time Christina and all of those people on the train. And fuck present time Colter Stevens and his dismembered torso. I fell in love with Source Code Christina so I'm going to spin off my consciousness into that new reality and live happily there. I realize that hundreds of people will still be dead and thousands will still be suffering in my original timeline...but I don't really care about that anymore because they're not my problem. My consciousness is in a happier place." And isn't that what multiple realities time travel is all about?

However, they never really addressed what happened to Sean Fentress's consciousness in the Source Code reality. I didn't feel that bad for him when I thought that it was just an afterglow of the current reality because his alternative was that he was already dead. However, once we established that you can spin off an alternate reality through the Source Code...you realize that Sean really gets the short end of the stick. His consciousness/soul either was a) completely obliterated, b) died and went onto the afterlife, or c) was trapped in a body that was hosting Colter and was forced to live as a back-burner consciousness with no control over his speech or movements for the rest of his life. All of those kind of suck. But at least if he's rocking option C, he'll probably get to see Michelle Monaghan naked on a regular basis. So...whatever. Worth It!

I also want to pat Source Code on the back for a very crafty cameo which absolved them of any sort of creative rip-off accusations while failing to take anybody out of the movie except for me and a couple hundred other super-nerds. There was no question that the plot for this movie borrowed heavily on the physics of a little show called Quantum Leap. Every super nerd in the theater knows this and some of them are probably a little miffed that this has not been acknowledged and will not be appreciated by the movie-going public. So when Colter calls his dad within the Source Code...who is the voice on the other end of the phone? None other than Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula! The man who played Sam Beckett for all of Quantum Leap's five seasons. Nice shout out, Source Code.

Where Do I Go From Here?

I'm very much excited for some future blog posts that I have coming up. I've already got some fun ones planned well into the fall, along with some format changes that I think will spice up the blog. However, I'll just clue you in on some of 7 the upcoming posts that will arrive during May, June, and July.

The Ray Way: Weddings - Ray will tackle how he would like to do his wedding

Mr. Fix-It: Economic Whoas!  - Ray will discuss his plan for fixing the economy

No Man's Land: Questions with No Consensus - Ray will discuss hot button issues that people are deeply divided on

HBE Confidential - Ray will perform a PI-style noir-themed investigation into seedy subject matter

The Season of Getting - On Ray's half birthday, he'll give out ideas for those who think he's hard to shop for

Better Know a Ray's Friend: Matt Burrows - Stephen Colbert will sit down with Matt Burrows for a one-on-one interview

Guest Blogger: Chris Swietlik of Notes From the Narrator - My friend Chris Swietlik will lend his services to this blog (hopefully exclusive content)

Thanks for reading. See you next time.