Pacificapocalypse

Well here it is:

Mark Adkins, President, made the announcement at 2:15 – as of 2:30 this afternoon, San Francisco Chronicle management is in negotiations with the union to start making emergency cuts in expenses to try an stem a $50m operating loss.  Partial from the memo by Frank Vega, Chairman and Publisher:

First and foremost of these cost savings will be a significant reduction in force across all areas of our operation affecting both represented and non-represented employees. We will shortly begin discussions with union leadership on proposals. Our current situation dictates that we accomplish these cost savings quickly. Business as usual is no longer an option.

If we are unable to accomplish these reductions in the immediate future, Hearst Corporation, which owns The Chronicle, has informed us that it will offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether. We know these are painful times for everyone and we face difficult choices. We share in the sincere hope that we will reach agreement with all parties involved on the concessions needed to continue to operate and provide the Bay Area with a quality newspaper.

And here we are. Dammit I think I might be losing my job.

Random recent picture of me and Court in her studio.

Spotted over on MissionMission.

Opportunistic? Sure, but do you really think Lux would’ve minded?

I’m phenomenally pissed and depressed right now.

Lux Interior died last night.

I can’t even begin to explain how I feel right now. The Cramps were such a part of me when I was a teenage snot bag trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I never quiet figured it out, but Lux and Ivy made the not-knowing better. Then came the annual pilgrimage to Wolfgangs in the city, every Halloween, to see them play live. I don’t think I missed a show for like, five years running. This sucks.

We Watch Movies: Taken

The trailer sold me. In the maybe 3 minutes of scenes, they set the entire film.
No spoilers here.
Badass ex-CIA dude is making nice with his daughter. Daughter gets kidnapped. Badass ex-CIA dude does scary monotone soliloquy over phone to kidnapper. Kidnapper basically tells him to fuck off. Swift and mind numbing violence ensues.
See? No complicated relationship? No comedic element. Just badass ex-CIA dude kicking ass and taking names. A little gunplay, a little car chase, some hand to hand. Maybe a twist or two, but we’ve see this movie a couple of times now (I’m looking at you Man On Fire and Ronin) and sometimes I just want to be entertained.

Except…

Along the way to being entertained, I was a little let down. Don’t get me wrong, the bad guys were bad, the good guy was good. The car chases and fight scenes were about what I expected. Just not quite. It felt like the director was holding back and that there was soooo much more that they could have done. It felt conflicted – SPOILER ALERT There’s a tense scene with badass ex-CIA dude and an dirty official of a foreign intelligence agency. They’re at the dinner table. Foreign dude’s wife and kids are there but they don’t know that there’s a conflict. Ex-CIA dude needs information from foreign dude, but he’s not getting it. Things pop and ex-CIA dude shoots the wife. I mean he just turns and shoots the wife. It’s cold and effective and unexpected. I wanted more of that! But then we’d have scenes that just felt like there was more graphic content missing.

Over on calguns we were going back and forth on this and someone suggested that there was a European Directors version that filled in these missing scenes. I wasn’t so sure:

I wonder if there really *is* a Euro version. If there is and it’s more graphic, I’d be mad; hey man this is America, we INVENTED violence in movies. Heck we practically invented VIOLENCE.

Ok so maybe not invented it, but we’ve damn well almost perfected it.

And I let it go at that until this:

Come on man! Seriously?
Damn Europeans.

We’ll watch it again of course. Won’t feel right until we do.