Blogging is something that comes in waves for me, and once I get out of the habit, it is tough to get back into it.  I enjoy it, but sometimes there’s just so much going on that it completely escapes me.  The last few months have been one of those periods.  So let’s start from the top…

I’ve been working on a new project recently.  Tweenky is a micro blogging client I am developing that is mostly used with Twitter, but also supports Identi.ca, and hopefully more micro-blogging services soon.  The concept behind it was the lack of any good web clients out there for Twitter, and especially ones that brought back the “track” feature that Twitter took away from us a few weeks back.  It’s still very much a work in progress and I just have to find the time to work on some of the new features and further improve stability.  I’m having a blast with pushing the boundaries of JavaScript and what it should/shouldn’t be used for.  So, if you are a Twitter user, go check it out, and if it is still requiring an invite code, use “derekville”.

So I just returned from a convention out in Santa Clara called Zendcon.  As a web developer, my primary language of choice is PHP, and Zend is the company puts most of the work into the PHP project, so this was kind of their little yearly shindig.  It was 4 days of 1-2 hour training sessions on all topics related to PHP and web development.  I saw some presentations from engineers and developers from companies such as IBM, Google, Mozilla, Digg, Yahoo, and tons more.  I met a ton of really interesting people too and had a great time at Yahoo HQ for Hackday ‘08.  (note to self: Don’t wear “Hackday ‘08″ shirt to airport, it leads to hacker questioning from TSA agents)

Vacation #1 was on the front & back end of the Zendcon trip as I had a few days before & after the conference to play around in San Francisco.  It’s such a cool city and I had a blast driving around in the Pontiac G6 convertible I rented for the week.  I’ve never had so much fun driving a car!

Vacation #2 is coming up next month with Katye & I flying up to Seattle where we’ll also head up to Vancouver & Victoria.  I haven’t been to Seattle in about 10 years, so I’m really excited as I love that city.  Everyone I’ve talked to raves about Vancouver too, so I’m pretty excited about my first trip north of the border.

If you are a web developer in the Kansas City area, you need to check out two emerging groups.  The first being DotNext, a group in the KC area that gets together every month or so to give sessions on anything web development related.  Last month was a series of presentations of Amazon Web Services.  This month is going to be on various database related technologies. The second group is Cowtown Computer Congress who is setting up a hacker space in North Kansas City.  For those not too familiar with what a “hacker space” is (myself included), it is a place for technologists to get together to work on  various hardware & software projects, share costs on equipment, and actually socialize (something most geeks never do much of).  So should be an awesome place to convene when it officially opens in the next couple months.

And finally, a new podcast from some rather influential people in the web development world has launched that I’d like to mention.  Open Web Podcast was created by Google engineer Dion Almaer (of the Ajaxian podcast as well), Alex Russell of Dojo, and John Resig of Mozilla/jQuery.  So if you are into web standards and JavaScript, definitely check it out.

Finally, I recently discovered the FX show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.  Hilarious!  Check out all the episodes on Hulu.

ccckc, dotnext, Javascript, openweb podcast, tweenky, zendcon

So a friend emailed today and says:

Gas $10/gallon? At least one analyst sees that in the next two years.

My Response?

Then that analyst is worthless & needs to be fired. Fear-mongering networks throw anyone on as “analysts” nowdays. It is just like anyone in the IT world is a “consultant” now days (raises hand). Seriously, a 70% increase in gas prices every year till 2010 (when it has been at an insanely high 20% over the last 5 years) is absurd.

So, before anyone freaks out, the economics of gas prices rising 70% / year doesn’t quite work out with inflation still at an average of 4%. If that actually did happen, being unable to drive my car would be towards the bottom of my list of worries, topping the list would be getting access to food and not being killed in the riots that would inevitably follow.

The price of fuel has to come close to mirroring inflation for the oil companies to maximize their profits. Entire business models & industries are based upon this assumption. The oil companies can’t increase their profit margins if the price goes beyond what people, and especially companies, can afford. It is quickly approaching that mark and we’ll see a pretty sizeable drop soon. For comparison, there was a 20% drop a little over a year ago, and within the next couple months, my guess is we’ll be back to under or near $3.

Longterm (the next couple years), the mortgage crisis will balance out, the economy will stabilize, we’ll be out of the middle east, fuel-efficient cars will be more prominent, and thus… gas prices will stabilize again. In two years, I’ll 100% guarantee the average gas price will be under $7, and I would expect to see it under $6.  Yes, oil will eventually run out, but that trend is something that will be felt over decades, not months.

This energy “crisis” is even more reason to tell McCain and his “no gas tax” to take a hike and quit trying to buy votes. Let this market fix itself. The more you muck with it, the longer it will take it to stabilize.

economy, gas, Politics

Well, I’ve been pretty silent lately, and that is due to a couple reason.

a) I’ve been working constantly

b) I got a new computer. A Macbook Pro to be specific and I hadn’t thought of getting a blogging client for OSX until now. So I’m trying out Ecto right now to see how I like it. So far, so good. =)

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• Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image – Dead on.  As unfortunate as it is for the families of the writer’s on strike, there’s no way new forms of entertainment don’t come out of a prolonged absence of our favorite TV shows and movies.
• Strike Chart: How Long Before Your Shows Go Dark?

Hooray!  Rackspace has power again after 3 hour power outage.  Back to work!

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I just noticed Google Docs has the ability to post to a Wordpress blog, so I’m giving it a test drive.

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Memelabs.com has a What’s Your Meme IQ quiz, check it out.  I got 37.  I was sad they forgot to mention Patrick Tribett.  Oh well Patrick, you can’t win ‘em all.  But, I’m sure you already know that.

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Because of this GoogleAir post way back when, I’ve always gotten a ton of hits for the search query “Google Air”. When those started flooding in, I wondered who actually owned googleair.com, and from what I recall, it was some random company that I don’t remember anything about. Well, fast forward to the present day and I was curious to see if Google had taken ownership of googleair.com, and it looks like they have. It doesn’t go anywhere right now, and Google owns tons of domains that they probably never use (for copyright reasons), but I did find it interesting considering Google is looking to buy a big slice of the airwaves when the FCC auctions them off in a few months, and we’ve been hearing tons of rumors of a GooglePhone.

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This is a response to the International Business Times’ report that the new soon-to-be-launched Microsoft Zune is going to hurt “Microsoft and partners more than Apple.”

Their take… there are two camps right now, one is Apple, and the other is Microsoft’s partners who sell music using MS’s WMA audio/DRM codec. Their belief is that the one who will hurt the most with the Zune is the partners, who are going to be squeezed out and it will just turn into a Microsoft vs. Apple battle.

My take… Yes, that is pretty much true, but do I see anything wrong with it? No, because would Microsoft be doing this had their partners actually competed with Apple? No. Right now Apple and it’s iPod hold a 72% market share of MP3 players while all of Microsoft’s partners combined carry the remaining 28%. To me, this is just Microsoft telling the little guys, “You had your chance, you failed, and now it is our turn.”

There is a reason Apple hasn’t put any innovative features into the iPod (I’m talking far beyond giving it a color screen and allowing it to play movies), because they haven’t needed to as none of the challengers had come up with anything innovative themselves. In it’s debut release, the Zune will alone have wireless capabilities, an FM tuner, & file sharing capabilities, things I don’t see the Apple introducing into the iPod anytime soon.

Don’t read this thinking I’m anti-Apple/iPod and pro-Microsoft, I’m just desperate for more competition to create more innovative products. When I was shopping for an MP3 player two years ago, I was really unimpressed with the offerings out there and eventually just settled a small Dell Axim PDA, not much bigger than an iPod, and that has given me far greater options and capabilities than a traditional MP3 player. Still, it’s limitations are enough to make me crave a true MP3 player, but I have nothing to settle that craving until someone offers something worth spending $250-$300 on.

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Yes! I found the evidence I’ve been looking for all these years. Now I am finally going to prove that Scott Stapp’s band “Creed” was simply living off the fame my band in junior high garnered around the greater Olathe, KS area.

April ‘96? The other Creed’s debut album didn’t come out until 16 months later. I’ll take my check anytime Scott.

(FYI, I’m the one playing drums)

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Feeding the Addiction

How much money can one give to Ticketmaster in a year? That’s what I’m apparently trying to test out. I don’t know why I’ve been going to so many concerts this year. It might be because over the last 18 months since I discovered ‘all-you-can-eat’ music subscription services (first Napster, now Yahoo), I’ve been listening to an insane amout of music. It might be that there are good bands rising up, and some of my all-time favs deciding to tour this year. It might be that for once in my life I’m not a starving college student and can actually afford concerts (can’t believe I missed Nine Inch Nails and Perfect Circle in college cause I couldn’t afford it). It’s probably a mixture of a lot of things, and damn it’s been fun so far, and I still have another few months of it left.

The lineup

- 2/20 – Nine Inch Nails

- 3/3 – Flogging Molly

- 3/10 – Dropkick Murpheys

- 5/10 – Depeche Mode

- 7/8 – She Wants Revenge

- 7/29 – Buzz Beach Ball
Highlights were 311, 30 Seconds to Mars, Rock Kills Kid, and Pepper. The former you’ve probably heard of, the latter, maybe not. Rock Kills Kid is a great LA band straight outta the 80s revival going on right now. And if you like Sublime, check out Pepper, it’s almost scary how much the singer sounds like Bradley Nowell. Sublime 2.0, and I love it.

- 8/05 – Reel Big Fish / MXPX
Two of my favorite bands of the 90s, and it was a great reminder that they still are.

- 9/11 – Rock Kills Kid

- 9/15 – Tool
It’ll probably be my 7th or 8th time seeing tool, but it never gets old. I still have a pair of GA/floor tickets that will probably end up on EBay if nobody wants them. Let me know if you are interesed.

- 9/28 – Gym Class Heroes
A great opportunity to seen an underground band on the brink of busting into the mainstream. I’m not too into hip-hop, but when it has the live, non-overly produced sound with elements of rock, I can really get into it. These guys are gonna be big.

- 10/14 – Less than Jake
Like Reel Big Fish, this band seems to come through every year, and their shows are a blast.

- 11/11 – Rise Against
I’ve missed this band the last few times they’ve been through KC, but I am really impressed with their latest album, so gonna have to check this one out.

- 11/18 – Alice in Chains
As one of my all time favorite bands, I am so pumped to see them live, even without Layne Stanley.

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With Google’s stock now topping $400, a community centric with no current business model website like Digg.com getting a few million in venture capital, IM client piggy-backing services like Meebo getting “smothered with requests to make an investment“, Bloggers making millions, and in general… the whole “Web 2.0″ revolution going on right now has led many to question the end result of this excitement sweeping the web nowadays. Did we learn from our lessons last time when the bubble burst, or is the Web 2.0 revolution going to see the same fate in 5 years? John Battelle ponders that very question in a recent op-ed article for the NY Times. His opinion? No bubble to be found.

Most companies this time around are taking the path of acquisition, finding homes at large, stable and profitable companies like Yahoo, Google, News Corporation or Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp. The era of the hot Net I.P.O. is over, and good riddance.

So sure, there are too many start-ups, and sure, some venture capitalists are trying to get in on as many as they can. In the meantime, far more companies are starting that just might change the world, or at least interesting parts of it, and thanks to the lessons of the past, we now have an ecosystem that may enable them to make a serious go of it.

That last paragraph goes nicely with my Nerd TV post a few months back, about geeks wanting to program because they want to “change the world.” In this new age of the internet, that can easily be done with a good idea. This current web revolution is customer & community centric, not business model centric. We are seeing sites like Digg.com just have a good idea, give people the stories they want, and give them the power to determine what is newsworthy, not editors.

With such a community centric idea comes accelerated growth because the best publicity is word of mouth, and with accelerated growth comes a business model as it is needed to support and expand the service. I’m sure Digg is losing money hand over fist right now as Google Ads cannot support servers and bandwidth at the rate Digg is consuming both. Kevin Rose (co-founder) has stated that since their VC money came, a business model is being developed and we will see it soon. I think all of us in the industry are following this one closely. If they can turn such a successful, simple idea with no business model, into something that does have a business model, and implement it without breaking what makes Digg so popular, that is good news for all of us and it is time to break out of the mold with some new ideas.

If the only thing you VCs want is eyeballs and pageviews, and you can invent a business model out of nothing, I’m game.

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For years, people have been hunting around for the “iPod killer” and it seems strange to me that we have been on the search for about 4 years now and turned up nothing. Well, the reason? The technology hasn’t changed at all, so there’s no innovation, meaning no reason to change. The subscription based services (Yahoo, Napster, etc…) are good enough to draw the die-hard music fans who want a wide-variety to listen to without paying $1,000 for songs, and we now have video capable iPods. But really, that is all that’s changed in 4 years for a device that is typically looked at as the cutting edge of personal electronics.

So let’s take a look at what is will take to displace the iPod. Let’s get the basics out of the way… it has to play MP3s and has to play video, duh. It has to be small enough to be portable and comfortable carrying around. It needs a comfortable, familiar, and easy to use interface (the current draw of the iPod). It needs to have Blackberry like email/communication capabilities. It needs easy access to purchasing a variety media (like iTunes). But most importantly, it needs some “must-have” feature that has a strong enough draw which apple cannot duplicate in the near-future. It will also have to come from a company with a large bankroll and a marketing machine behind it to be able to sell it to the average consumer.

Well, to me, all that points to one device. This device hasn’t been made yet, we’re pretty close to having all the features it needs hardware-wise, but everything is already there software-wise. Who makes it? Microsoft.

Huh? Microsoft isn’t really into the personal electronics biz? They are in it much more than you think. They build operating systems, and every electronics device needs an OS. Hardware is the easy, the cheap part, software is what really makes a device.

Here’s why the Windows Mobile platform will provide someone with the ability to knock off the iPod. First off, it has a very familiar interface as 99% of the electronics consumers are familiar with, Windows. I’ve been on Windows Mobile for two years with my Dell Axim PDA, and the interface is comfortable to use, probably because it is just so familiar. The PDAs and cell phones running Windows Mobile already have the ability to play a wide variety of media files, music and movies.

So we have the software portion already covered, so let’s take a look at some of the other features it is going to need. We’ve always heard about someone trying to make the ultimate portable electronics device that does everything under the sun. So what does the average iPod user have in his/her pockets/purse at this point? An iPod, a cell-phone, and a digital camera. Attempts have been made to integrate those, but the iTunes cell phone was a flop because of limited features, difficulty to use (compared to the iPod), and limited storage capability. Most of us have cameras in our cell-phones, but at this point most are low-quality still-picture cameras without a flash, and we have to pay insane fees to upload and share content on a mass scale. Not sure that an iTunes capable camera would spark much interest, so I won’t even bother integrating those two. What about an integration of all 3? Won’t happen anytime soon as they would have the inherent flaws of the dual combos.

So time to get back on track. How is someone going to build something that has the features of those 3 devices, plus that all-important “New way to experience media” that I mentioned above? We’ve got to have to go completely outside-of-the-box and not add features to existing devices one by one, but just throw everything under the sun, into one device, and make it so “cool” and especially easy to use, that people can’t live without it. Here is my feature list for a dream device…

- Good quality camera (at least 3-4 MP), with video and a flash. That’s what most people’s digicams are nowadays, and the average digicam is about the size (maybe a little larger) than your average cell-phone. So it won’t be adding size to someone’s pocket that kills the deal.

- ALWAYS-ON HIGH SPEED internet access. I capitalize those first two because they are extremely important and are both required. The cell phone networks are the only ones capable of providing that at this point, so they must come into play at some point in this equation. I emphasized high speed because another key to this equation is streaming video at an acceptable quality. To me that means at least 250kpbs and 20 frames / second. To decode that, it will require a decent processor for decoding (~300 mhz), something the cell phones don’t even touch at this point. So we aren’t looking at your traditional cell phone that may exist right now.

- Access to one, and preferably multiple sources for purchasing audio and video. iPods have shown that users are willing to accept one source for media, but to me, Apple is lucky. Look at the cell phone companies, especially Sprint, who is going nowhere with the Sprint Music Store. To me, Yahoo comes into the picture at this point as they’ve always strived to be a media company. They probably stream more audio and video from their servers at this point than anyone else. They already have the Yahoo Music Engine and store to purchase music from, and I don’t envision adding video to that as too difficult. Plus, if this is to be Windows Mobile based, Microsoft and Yahoo have been best buddies for years, so that is a logical partnership.

So here’s the all-important new way to experience media… instant access to any audio and video (podcasts, bands, radio, TV shows, IPTV, etc…) in high quality, at an acceptable cost, anywhere your cell phone has coverage. TiVo has given us the ability to experience TV without time constraints, how about this mythical device giving you access to every form of media without geography constraints.

So let’s sum it up and describe what we’re looking at… A windows mobile based device that has windows media player, also a good quality video camera and the capability to store a good amount of pictures and video, so it has a hard drive. This device also doubles as your cell-phone, providing you access to the internet and ability to upload your captured media to a variety of services like YouTube, Flickr, etc… Because it is Windows Mobile based, it has easy access to Microsoft Exchange servers for the business consumers and it will need to “push” your emails from your gmail, hotmail, yahoo accounts for the non-business users. People don’t want to have to rely on checking their email, that’s why Blackberries have been so successful.

The iPod will be replaced someday, just who will do it is the question? Now Apple being the “Microsoft PC” killer with the ability of OSX to run on Intel chips now, that’s a post for another time.

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One of the more recent coding projects I’ve been working on is the redesign of the our customer signup process at work. During this process, a lot of data validation & integrity needs to take place from the user entered information coming from the HTML forms. For a PHP/Javascript coder, this scenario has always meant, “Do I validate in PHP? Javascript? Both?” PHP gives you database access but it comes at the price of having to submit the page. Plus, you have to build in extra navigation logic which can sometimes be messy. Javascript is quick & easy, but can be unreliable (user can turn javascript off) and you do not get any access to a database. If you do both, then you split up the validation between specific fields and that becomes flat out messy.

So which route did I go to accomplish this validation task? None. Well, actually all of them, but not by the traditional means. Rather, the best method I found here was to use an AJAX method and split the display (HTML), trasportation (Javascript), and validation (PHP) layers up and keep them completely seperate. By using this method you have a lot of advantages;

• Because AJAX is as asynchronous, user does not have to submit the form (and wait for a reload). The less clicks for the user, the better.
• It makes the experience is as smooth as possible for the user
• Seperation of view (HTML), transportation (javascript), and validation (PHP) layers to make coding much cleaner.

Once I had an understanding of what I needed to build, here is the basic outline of the steps needed to design this app…

• Be able to convert the HTML form into XML
• Use the XMLHTTPRequest object to POST an XML string to a PHP script
• Within PHP, validate data using regular expressions and database queries
• Denote valid & invalid data values only by adding “valid” and “error_message” attributes to the element nodes and not altering any of the original XML data.
• Send the same (but slightly modified) XML document back to the Javascript
• Within Javascript, determine what (if any) errors the user may have with the data entered
• Inform user of errors

I also had the goal of making this validation process as portable/reuseable as possible and be able to add it to any form by only adding a “onsubmit()” attribute to the HTML form and the error message <div> to the HTML document. Aside from that, everything else takes care of itself in terms of XML creation, validation, error message(s) being displayed, and the input boxes being highlighted within the form.

So here’s a link of a stripped down version of what was built. It isn’t pretty and isn’t meant to show off my design skills. Rather is it designed to demo the functionality and behavior of the script, and then provide the source code (with comments) to build a much more useful app on top of the existing code. Play around with it, modify it, break it, & fix it. That is usually the best way to learn.

Post in the comments below or email me if you have any questions

(Update: I just checked the example page for the first time in a long time, and something is broken. I’ll update again when it is fixed.)

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Nothing in Google helped me find this, so maybe this will get indexed at some point and make the next person’s life a bit easier. So you want PHP5 on your 1&1 shared hosting account? All you need to do is add “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” to your .htaccess file, simple enough.

Have no idea what that means and still need PHP5?
What are .htaccess files?

After reading that, you’ll understand that you can set custom configurations for your web server outside the apache configuration files, and they are specific for that directory. So, either FTP or SSH into your 1&1 server and create the file. If you going the SSH route, familiarize yourself with a linux text editor (1&1 has vi & joe installed, google those). Once there, either create or upload a file with the text above, and viola, you are now using PHP5.

On the topic of htaccess files, this has been really helpful to me recently. If you need to create clean looking urls (i.e. www.website.com/page/how-to/php instead of www.website.com/index.php?a=page&b=how-to&c=php), check out this link.

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I couldn’t let Vin Deisel and Chuck Norris have all the fun nowdays with their own made up fact sites, so over the weekend I registered jackbauerfacts.com to commemorate the ultimate badass… Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland’s character from Fox’s “24″). In 3 days, it has already proven to be way more popular than I thought it would be. Oddly enough, right after I registered the domain and started coding the site, I was getting hits before I had even told anyone about it! People were just guessing the domain name apparently.

While it is one of the more useless sites on the internet (but then again… useless sites is mostly what the internet is about), I have some plans for it rather soon, ajax scripting, rating systems, and some other things as well. Should be a nice playground for me to try out some new things with web application coding. So anyways, check it out if you are in the mood for a few laughs.

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In his latest blog entry, bazillionaire Mark Cuban tries to talk some sense into the movie theater industry, who are worried about the theater to DVD window closing, or being elimitated entirely. “How sad is it when the Theater Owners don’t think they can create a better movie going experience than what we can see in our houses and apartments?”

read more | digg story

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Long story short…
- 2003 – Miami Football players make the brilliant decision to record a rap song (Streaming, MP3) glamorizing gang bangin’ bizzatches, or as one member of the 7th Floor Crew so delicately put it, “We ’bout to run a seven-man train all up in you.” I especially liked the reference to having sex with someone’s ear. Lyric Excerpts

- 2003 – 2005 – UM campus has good laugh, knowledge of this doesn’t spread much further.

- 11/05 - 19 yr old UM student & blogger Kyle Munzenrieder wants something to post on his blog and decides this song would be a good choice.

- 11/18/05 – ESPN.com “Manufactures scandal” with an article entitled “Rap recording could threaten Miami’s progress

- Muzenrieder takes down post at the request of the university, but audio file & other blog posts are already out there. Too late UM, sorry. Welcome to the internet.

- 11/17/05 – After recieving threats from UM football fans, Muzenrieder posts a fake suicide note. Cops show up, take him to dean’s office where a hilarious conversation ensued…

Article

It was a good-sized office, with room for what seemed like an awful lot of people. It had a side door, which was closed, and — rather disconcertingly — a photograph of UM football coach Larry Coker on the desk.

”Suicide isn’t funny,” Sandler said. Munzenrieder agreed that suicide isn’t funny, and that it was stupid of him to have made the post.

But, the 19-year-old noted, just that morning he’d taken two tests, in Computer Science and Ethics in Media. ”If I was going to do it,” said Munzenrieder, “there’s no way I would have taken two tests today.”

That argument, like most he made that day, didn’t go over well.

Sandler told him, ”I have the power to decide whether or not you go to school here anymore.” Munzenrieder was advised to withdraw from school. The dean called his parents in Naples and told his father that “your son has caused a big headache for the administration here.”

At some point, a psychologist emerged from the side door. ”I think you should go home,” she said.

”For how long?” Munzenrieder asked, seeing his college career flittering away. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. What do you think it means?”

“I think it means you don’t know.”

”Stop double-talking me,” she said.

- 11/17/05 – Kyle sums up his day with a post titled “A Run Down Of The Best Day Of My Life” which includes this nugget of wisdom…

I’m on the phone with my sister and I’m glad to know that at the young age of 14 she realizes what most people never do: “A lot of people are morons”. Of course most people never realize this because they are morons.

Kyle has since been removed from the dorm and it living in a hotel. He will only be allowed back for the spring semester upon completing a “psychiatric evaluation” by the UM medical staff which I am sure will deem him “unfit to continue studies at UM.”

Bottom line is the Miami administration just doesn’t get it. How is Kyle any more responsible for this than Pat Forde? The players were the ones creating the story & distributed the song. Kyle reported on this story two years after the fact, and then Forde reported on that story. Forde was the one who brought the “headache” to the school’s administration, not Kyle. There was no controversy until Forde created one, everyone just thought it was funny.

In conclusion, Forde’s article was about how the Miami football team had successfully transformed their old image of “Thug U” into a rather clean one and how that apparently was all thrown away with this creation of this song. Well Pat, sorry, looks like you were wrong. There are still thugs at UM, they just don’t play football.

Good luck Kyle.

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These blog entries of mine, they are really just things that I am thinking about throughout the day, or things I find interesting while perusing the web. Typically, when I post about a movie I just finished watching, it happens to a documentary. Why? Because those tend to be some of the more thought provoking ways I spend my time. You take in real life stories, process them, and if you did something right in that brain of yours, you typically get something out of it in return. Sometimes it is a life lesson, another time it may just be something you would never get the chance to experience directly, but regardless… you should come away thinking about something, anything. Not very often does a movie come along that has the same effect and it is not a documentary. Why? Because human experiences & emotions are so difficult to portray on film in a realistic manner because any thought provoking moment created by the director, writer, actor, etc… is typically drowned out by the need to appease the mass audience, so in come the explosions, the comedy, the tears, and everything that makes Hollywood… Hollywood.

About 6 months ago I heard an interview with Ryan Philippe about a new movie he had coming out. This interview was during a radio morning show on a FM rock station, probably stuck somewhere between prank calls and prize giveaways, so the content of the interview struck me as a bit odd, and now I know why. During the interview, Philippe tried to keep the discussion rather serious, while the host tried to crack jokes, and I vividly remember Philippe saying something along the lines of… “I’m trying to keep this serious because I need to convey the message of how important I think this movie is, and that it should be something every person needs to see.” My thought… “Sure, people HAVE to see it so then you get more money. Makes sense to me.” After watching his movie, I now agree with him, it is something everyone should see.

“Crash” is a movie so unique and so against the grain of what you typically find coming out of Hollywood that I wasn’t too surprised to learn that it really didn’t come out of your typical Hollywood studio. Lions Gate is a relatively small studio by Hollywood standards, but is also one of the larger independents out there. For only a $6 million budget, they were amazingly able to land Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris, Ryan Philippe, Larenz Tate and a slew of other notable faces. Bullock alone typically demands around $15-$20 million per movie, and Cheadle is one of the hotter names out there to cast at the moment.

This film takes half a dozen different stories in post-9/11 Los Angeles, intertwines them, and digs deep into the motivations & essence of each character. Some scenes were eerily reminiscent of a Quinton Tarantino movie, for example there is a scene where Ludicrous & Tate are walking down the street analyzing the problem of racial stereotypes and how incorrect they usually are, just prior to carjacking someone. Mostly the movie revolves around racial relations in a post 9/11 world and how each and every person can be affected in a large way by even the smallest of things.

The movie spends quite a bit of time reflecting back on how people respond to those racial issues. Some take circumstances of nature, and interpret them as acts of faith. Others, who may be the anti-stereotype, let their emotions fuel a rage that converts them into the stereotype for a brief moment. Some of the most racially ignorant characters end up doing some of the more commendable acts, while others just cannot let doing what is right get past their pride.

Honestly, I don’t want to go into the movie too much. Not that it is an edge of your seat thriller that would be ruined by a spoiled ending, but rather because I guarantee you every person comes out from this movie with a different interpretation. So, I’ll leave this one up to you to dissect.

If you are looking for some comparisons, I would liken this movie to Garden State for its low-key indy-vibe and American History X for its thought provoking racial theme.

Crash

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. – NFL owners voted Wednesday to tentatively award Kansas City a Super Bowl, largely as a tribute to owner Lamar Hunt, who gave the game its name.

It comes with one giant string attached: improvements to Arrowhead Stadium, including a rolling roof to keep out the February cold. The team estimates the cost of the roof alone at $100 million to $200 million — and that’s not counting $300 million or so the Chiefs say they need in stadium upgrades.

The approval is for a 10-year window, starting in 2011, but Hunt said the most likely prospects would be for the 49th or 51st Super Bowl, after the 2014 or 2016 seasons.

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