An evening at the theater with Lee Camp

This evening here in big ole Bozeman, Montana at the legendary Equinox Theater, we enjoyed the comedy and political observation of the very funny Lee Camp (leecamp.net).

The guy is gaining a following via his activity on Facebook, his Moment of Clarity series of rants, and he also has a book and some comedy albums out as well (fair warning: explicit language).

He is, in short, a very funny guy who is well read and has a keen perspective on the global village we’re all partaking in these days, from corporatization of government and the resulting corruption to consumerism to the gross negligence we see with childhood obesity and the education system. He can take these very serious subjects and not only make them funny, but give you the sense that it’s not entirely hopeless. There just may be something that we can all do to make things better, while laughing about it along the way of course. If you get the opportunity and he’s in a city near you, I’d strongly recommend checking him out. Also look him up online.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the opening by Katie Goodman of Bozeman’s own Broad Comedy troupe (since all grown up and relocated to NYC). She is also hilarious and puts on a terrific show, so keep an eye out for her as well.

Old school epidemic flick

This film predates my birth by a few years coming out clear back in 1971. The only wear that it’s really worse for though is a bit of tech. The computers are a bit old, but fortunately for The Andromeda Strain, the story holds up pretty well and the acting was pretty good here.

This movie, based on the Michael Crichton book of the same name, follows the actions of a group of specialists after the return of a satellite doesn’t go quite as planned. The recovery crew rolls into the town of Piedmont, New Mexico, finds that the residents appear to all be dead, and are shortly thereafter not heard from again themselves. A secondary recovery crew heads in a bit more cautiously, retrieves the fallen satellite, then begins the painstaking process of figuring out just what sort of organism it brought back from the depths of space. Whatever it is seems to spread very easily and is very quickly lethal. The confusion is compounded by the survival of two residents, an old drunk and a hungry and upset baby.

The pacing and the tension are kept up well, and hokey 70’s feel aside, it was a pretty good flick. I’d recommend it.

And now for something different

You really need to go to this guy’s site to appreciate what’s going on here. This is Rex Rosenberg from Kansas standing next to his ChewBaru, a 1995 hail-damaged Subaru decorated with all manner of dental-related paraphernalia, including used tubes of toothpaste, dentures, uppers, lowers, casts, retainers, actual teeth, and many assorted dental tools and toothbrushes and such (and I’d best mention the wallpaper made from old dental catalogs).

We saw this beauty and talked briefly to Rex while he was enjoying the farmer’s market here in Bozeman, Montana, on his way west. He enjoyed talking with people and getting their reactions to his arguably disturbing creation, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy.

For those who are curious, he claims no degradation in gas mileage, and no discernable increase in wind noise either.

Rain and movies

We had a fairly lovely week followed by a rather dreary weekend during which outdoor work and/or play just wasn’t very appealing. So… we rented a batch of movies.


First on the list was The Woman In Black (alternate title: Harry Potter grows up, becomes a muggle, and makes a living dealing in scary real estate).

I’ll quickly add a disclaimer here. I do not routinely watch scary movies, so when I do, the bar doesn’t have to be set very high to provide a suitable experience for me. I wouldn’t personally describe this as terrifying, but it definitely gave me some good jolts (even when I knew they were coming), and I was surprised (likely due to my lack of de-sensitivity) that this was rated PG-13. I feel very comfortable saying that my kids would not have done very well watching this.

So…the movie. Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is a young employee at a law firm who has been dealing with personal tragedy. The firm is understanding, but, he’d best start performing. He’s assigned the final paperwork of the Eel Marsh House after the demise of its owner. He travels there to a village in the daily throes of recurring personal tragedies and begins piecing together the history of the house and its occupants.

Most of the mood is in the music and the minimalist approach where you’re allowed to use your imagination, a style that was not lost on me anyway. Complaints I’ve heard were that “it just wasn’t scary”, and so your mileage may vary. I for one found it scary (there, I said it), I thought Radcliffe’s character was engaging, and I had a fun (if nerve-wracking) time.


This one had the beginnings of a disaster. Unbeknownst to me, this was directed by McG, and had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with This Means War because the same guy did the Charlie’s Angels movies. I’ll allow that a very precise demographic probably liked those, but personally I thought they were way cheezy and utter rubbish.

War started off that way. The opening sequence is quite cheezy, I was immediately filled with dread, and I thought wow…what a waste of actors I so far had liked. Fortunately it picked up considerably.

Best friends…bffs really…FDR (Chris Pine) and Tuck (Tom Hardy) are two of the CIA’s finest operatives whose cheezy intro sets up a revenge scenario by a bad guy later in the film. This backstory is VERY minor. Through some crazy coincidences, they both (unbeknownst to each other, but totally knownst to us) end up dating Lauren (Reese Witherspoon). Once FDR and Tuck realize this, they establish some basic ground rules and then it’s basically a game of let the best man win. Whoever she ultimately chooses, no hard feelings. We’ve all been there. They then proceed to misappropriate all manner of government resources to spy on and/or sabotage each other’s efforts while both solidifying their relationships with Lauren.

The result was a pretty fun film. We enjoyed this one as a family. The violence is kept to a minimum, and the sex-related stuff isn’t much more extensive than an episode of Big Bang Theory. The acting and dialog was more than sufficient for the premise, and I’d recommend it if you like a good action/romance/comedy.


John Carter suffered from marketing problems. And perhaps overused source material. This film is based on the book A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, published back in 1917. Back in the day, it had some things going for it, like people not actually knowing for certain that there wasn’t life on Mars (which, yeah, seems so “duh” now, but with the many other sci-fi goings on, this seems like a minor quibble).

At any rate, elements of this story show up in some rather famous other movies (say, Avatar, and Star Wars). It is in many ways a quintessential interplanetary adventure/romance movie. John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) is a decorated cavalry man from Virginia who has suffered much personal tragedy and who is basically living out his existence hoping to find and get rich off of a hefty gold strike some day. He no longer wants anything to do with taking up anyone else’s idea of a noble cause. Through a series of unfortunate events, he finds himself transported to the surface of Mars. Events unfold which draw Carter into a civil war on another planet.

We (again, as a family) really enjoyed this one as well. It’s set on a pretty grand scale, the action was regular and exciting, character development was pretty good. If anything, parts of the movie could’ve been stretched out. They capped this at just over 2 hours, but it could’ve been another LotR type at around 3. If you like epic adventures, give this one a look.


I had zero expectations going into Machine Gun Preacher. No real idea what it as about or anything of that sort. Just expected a mediocre action flick I suppose.
The result was better than expected, but overall a pretty depressing story. Turns out in a fresh take on 300, Gerard Butler, preacher, kicks a dude in the chest, yells “THIS! IS! SPARTA!” and then blazes away on the guy with his machine gun! No? Ok, I’ll try this again, but my next attempt won’t sound near as exciting.

This is the non-documentary story of Sam Childers (a real person, played here by Gerard Butler) who is a drug using hillbilly biker dude who has anger management and law enforcement problems. He gets out of prison and over time, through the encouragement of his reformed ex-stripper-wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) discovers God and a higher calling. He needs to get involved and go help out over in Africa (I think he starts out in Uganda). And sure, he’s helping people in serious need of help, but he catches wind of much bigger problems up in southern Sudan, and it’s there that he feels his strongest calling. He then perseveres with the process of setting up an orphanage to provide refuge for kids away from the ravages of war. Needless to say, this is not a light topic for discussion. His burning passion to save these children very nearly destroys his own family (already on the edge from his aforementioned drug issues). The do an effective job of portraying some of the ravages of war, and it’s quite a sad tale, if a bit inspirational about the effectiveness of one dedicated man.