Dave Easterly’s Bravo Sierra Blog

Facial Paralysis Update

Well, an AWESOME thing happened this morning…  I’m starting to get some movement back on the right side of my face!!  Yesterday Carrie noticed that the right side of my mouth was sagging less and I noticed that when I said “P,” “F,” or “B” sounds (the sounds that require you to sort of hold your lips back against your teeth) they didn’t sound nearly as bad.  So today when I got up to brush my teeth first thing in the morning I was doing the facial exercises suggested by my neurologist and I realized that the right side of my mouth actually MOVED!  It’s not fully functional, but it isn’t sagging and I can wiggle my cheek and turn the corner of my lips up just a little into a sort of “half smile.”  This may explain the headache I felt yesterday directly behind the right ear where the affected nerve passes out of the cranium and behind/through the ear.  I’ll take a little all-day headache to regain movement!  The only thing that hasn’t significantly changed is my right eye, but I’m sure that’ll improve over time as well.  I’m tellin’ ya…. I’m a VERY relieved!  I was afraid it might take months to make this much progress.  So long as it maintains and continues to improve and doesn’t relapse, I’ll be a really happy camper.

Woohoo!

Just Saw X-Men 3… Left With A Serious Case of “WTF?”

Despite my misgivings about the local theatre owners, I went and saw X3: The Last Stand. It had lots of action, lots of unexpected stuff, and some really great new characters (new to the movies, not to long-time X-Men fans). I don’t think anyone in the world could have played Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast, besides Kelsey Grammer just like noone else could have played Xavier other than Patrick Stewart.

WARNING!! POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!! READ BEYOND THIS POINT ONLY IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT SPOILERS!!!

OK, last things first… Stay through the end of the credits. You have GOT to see what they do to leave the door open for yet another sequel. You too will leave saying “WTF?” (In reality, I left saying “You’ve got to be shitting me!” rather than “WTF?” but noone would get “YGTBSM!” without explaining it.)
Be prepared with a hankie if you cry when movie characters die because they drop like flies in this one. The truth is the characters’ deaths (and there are several, including key characters) in this movie are handled so ham-fistedly that it’s really hard to care about them. Of course anyone who knows anything about the Marvel Universe knows that death is rarely a permanent condition. It certainly wasn’t for Jean Grey.

So let’s talk about the characters -

Logan is still the tamed, watered down Logan we’ve all come to expect from Hugh “The Boy From Oz” Jackman… no berzerker rage and no more attitude than the average minivan commercial.

Halle Berry as Ororo is still beautiful but this time she finally gets to kick a little ass as opposed to the previous two movies where she was mostly an ineffectual bit of window dressing with the worst lines imaginable. This time she gets to kick Callisto’s ass much like in the comic when Storm became the leader of the Morlocks. This is what led to Storm’s “badass” period complete with mohawk haircut. Maybe if there’s a fourth movie she’ll get to be a badass!

Cyclops still sucks, but this time he sucks as the brooding and morose Mister Melancholy rather than sucking as Mister Melodrama. I liked Cyclops in the Marvel Universe but between James Marsden’s shitty ultra-wooden acting and the horrible way the character has been written in ALL THREE movies I almost cheered when it was implied he was “probably” dead — without ever actually producing a corpse, of course. Again, applying typical Marvel Universe rules regarding Death, I’m quite sure he’ll (unfortunately) be back… but it’s nice to dream.

Kitty Pryde – Sprite or Shadowcat or whatever she is this week, Pitr Rasputin – Colossus, Marie – Rogue, and Bobby Drake – Iceman are there for teen appeal. Colossus gets exactly zero character development and Kitty’s only function (other than a little comic relief when she squares off against The Juggernaut) is to create some teen angst jealousy for the obviously-no-longer-in-her-teens Rogue.

Hank McCoy is exactly as anyone who has followed him in the Marvel Universe would have expected. We meet him hanging upside down in his office reading, just like you’d expect to see him. You get the obligatory “My stars and garters” and such, too. And when they go into battle… well… then he REALLY kicks ass! Just FYI, my little brother has an awesome tattoo of Beast on his back.

Pyro is still a dick and Magneto is still a pompous poofster.  (Does anyone else see a little “Spartacus” tension, there?)  I really regret their choice of Ian McKellen for Magneto for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that he is far too great an actor for the role as it was written. He just can’t pull of the necessary degree of evil, either. He’s just too.. damned… English! And the Marvel Universe Magneto is a buff, muscular badass even in his silver-haired old age whereas McKellen… well, he just isn’t. I know there’s a whole “gay is to straight as homo superior is to home sapiens” undercurrent and that’s perfectly cool as far as I’m concerned but it doesn’t justify making such a huge change to the world’s greatest mutant villain mastermind. In this installment of the series, it’s more of the same from Magneto. Even when he abandons the remarkably hot Rebecca Romjin (apparently she shape-shifted the “Stamos” off her last name) after she loses her powers after being shot with “the cure” it really does nothing to emphasize how evil he is – After all, anyone who can just walk away from and leave a “naked and lying on the floor” Rebecca Romjin… well, they just can’t be hetero, can they?

The real treat of the movie, even though she doesn’t really get to act much is Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey/Phoenix. She’s just SO MUCH HOTTER as The Phoenix! Her hair is longer and redder, and she practically oozes sexy. She just kind of scowls most of the movie, gets a little doe-eyed whenever the old Jean peaks through, and then just kicks inordinate amounts of ass once she goes all “Dark Phoenix.” The special effects for handling her unfathomable power as the Phoenix were amazingly well done. She kills LOADS of people, human and mutant, good guys and bad… It really captured the aloofness that went along with the madness that came with the godlike power of the Marvel Universe’s Phoenix. Some reviews have been negative about this but I think it’s mostly people who didn’t really understand the whole Phoenix saga. I think it takes as much talent to know when to underact a role as in this case as it does to know when to NOT overact, kind of like the notes a drummer DOESN’T play says as much about their technique and style as the grooves he DOES play.

There are loads of other bit players of little note (appropriately referred to as pawns by Magneto). The story moves fast and the action is pretty much nonstop. It moves so fast that it leaves character development back in the opening credits wondering where the rest of the movie went. Best character development scene: Literally the very beginning of the movie when a pubescent Warren Worthington, III is shown trying to cut off his wings because he’s afraid of his ultra-conformist, obviously republican father’s disapproval. For someone who doesn’t know all the other characters like Callisto and Leech from the Marvel Universe, it probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense since there’s no background story on anyone other than Angel.

All in all, I found the movie fun and entertaining but not worthy of the X-Men legacy. Of course that’s pretty much the way the rest of the movie franchise has been.

I’d say 3.5 stars out of a possible 5.

Now This Is Some Messed Up $#!+ Right Here, I Tell Ya’….

My face is all screwed up. For real.

The right side of my face is freakin’ paralyzed. It’s called “Bell’s Palsy” according to the doctor. Fortunately they say it’s temporary. Apparently an inflamed or pinched nerve in my neck or somewhere is causing the main nerve that controls the right side of my face to just not work right. If I laugh, only half my face moves. I can’t wink with the affected eye but if I blink they’ll both close. If I push the eyelid closed, it won’t even stay shut unless they’re BOTH down which is messed up because now that eye is watering and acting all freakish. On the upside, I can make some pretty amusing faces. The downside is that I have to drink with a straw (something I hate) and only on the working side. Anything that gets on the screwed up side just falls out of my mouth. Needless to say, this is not in the least bit attractive. And when I talk I sound like I just got out of a dentist’s office appointment that went all “Fear an Loathing in Las Vegas” before it was done. How’s THAT for messed up?

I’m lucky, though. Carrie took me to the doctor for the second time in two weeks, picked up my prescriptions, called my work, and took care of me even though I was a drooling, worthless, Marlon Brando-sounding waste of space. She’s the most awesome woman in the world and I am by FAR the luckiest dude. But so help me, I keep picturing some ex-girlfriend somewhere with a wax doll, a lock of my hair and a “Voodoo for Dummies” book…

Updated Stuff

Well, I finally updated my drum kit configuration to reflect some new gear I got and some I gave away to Lael being removed. Next time I set it all up, I’ll take a new photo or two. The updated config is at http://www.mvlinux.net/gallery/Drums/updated_drum_kit?full=1 if anyone wants to see. In other news, I added a new 250GB hard drive to my MythTV rig. Thanks to the wonderful magic of Linux’s LVM2 logical volume manager, I was able to migrate all my videos and stuff onto a volume on the new drive, then convert the old /video partition to an LVM partition, join the two physical volumes into a single logical volume, and then through the magic of /usr/sbin/xfs_growfs I now have 453GB of disk for videos, TV, music, and such.

[mythtv@localhost ~]$ df -h

[mythtv@localhost ~]$

I guess that’s all for now… Except for one excellent quote I found:

Silence can be the biggest lie of all. We have a responsibility to speak
up; and whenever the occasion calls for it, we have a responsibility to
raise bloody hell.
– Herbert Block

Being Sick Is “Teh Suck”

Man, it really blows. Friday night I was feeling a little run down so I crashed out pretty early… Probably before 9:00PM. When I woke up Saturday morning I was shivering with the chills, had a fever of about a million Kelvin, and was aching like I’d been in a BAD barroom fight. My back, neck, and shoulders ached like the time a guy broke a pool cue over my back in a bar fight. But that wasn’t the end… Oh no. Couldn’t be that lucky, could I? Let’s just say that between coughing violently and “bi-directional gastrointestinal distress,” I wasn’t sure if I was about to implode or simply turn myself inside-out. Thank goodness that Kash was at his grandparents’ that day because I would not have wanted him to be around if I was contageous. Carrie had to work all day but when she got back to town she took care of my pathetic behind, making me a grilled cheese sandwich (the only thing I could keep down or in that day) and bringing me cold washclothes to help with the fever. During the night my fever broke and my stomach settled. Sunday I had to take Kash to his little cousin’s fifth birtday party at Shoshone Falls park. The falls were running fully open and it was beautiful.

The kids were having a great time and so we stayed until the very end. All the running up and down those hills really took a toll on me, though. Every time I got up to move around or coughed or anything I hurt like I’d taken another beating. By now I was really sore all around my back, ribs, and chest. After we left and night came I was still feeling pretty rough. Carrie asked if my chest hurt (she’s always afraid the least little thing is a heart attack) and when I said yes she insisted I go see a doctor. I, being the usual bull-headed and stubborn jerk that I am, said no. She even called the “Ask a Nurse” line from our insurance company and tried to get THEM to persuade me to go in. I finally caved and went to the Emergency Room where this creepy old doctor who reminded me of shorter and thinner Fred Gwynne, a.k.a. Hermann Munster, ordered up a couple of chest X-Rays.  The diagnosis: A whoop-ass case of bronchitis.  He said I was lucky because it could have turned to pneumonia if I didn’t get it under control pretty quickly.  He prescribed an antibiotic and because he could tell my muscles all around my chest, ribs and back were all torqued out of whack he also prescribed some Vycodin since he said I’d probably hurt for a week even after my lungs cleared up.  I could only imagine how bad it would have been if I hadn’t quit smoking all those months ago.  The upside is that he told me I HAD to stay home for at least 1 or 2 more days so I’ve gotten to hang out and play with Kash a lot.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Stephen Colbert Rocks Harder Than Slayer! Film at 11:00!

I remember when Stephen Colbert left the Daily Show to get his own show and I thought to myself “What the hell are they thinking?” And the first three episodes left me feeling pretty vindicated, too because they were pretty week. But Stephen found his rhythm eventually and the show got better and better as time went on. Now Stephen’s satire is nearly as brilliant as John Stewart’s sarcasm. But this past weekend Stephen was the final speaker at the White House Press Corp Dinner and he was BRUTAL!! Everyone there was mortified but Stephen who, to borrow a Bushism, “stayed the course” in spite of the icy glare coming from those in the room INCLUDING George Dubya HIMSELF. It was, to say the least, FREAKIN’ AWESOME. See for yourself here, here, and here. I watched probably half a dozen times or more, not believing my eyes. It was the absolute pinnacle of awesomeness.