The middle of three lists of movies for October.

241. Exporting Raymond (2010)
I must be the exception that proves the rule that Everybody Loves Raymond, but I did very much enjoy this documentary of the attempt to adapt the American sitcom for a Russian audience. Thanks for that recommendation, Randy.

242. Mean Girls (2004)
This was the movie that launched Tina Fey into the popular consciousness. It's not a bad teen comedy, but it's not an outstanding teen comedy, either. (Teen comedies, romantic comedies, and Frank Capra movies: if you've seen one, you've seen all of them.)

243. Blind Alibi (1938)
A sculptor interested in recovering some sensitive documents hidden in some art decides to pose as a blind man and buy a seeing-eye dog so that the museum will give him 24-hour, unfettered access to the museum collection. Yeah, it could happen.

244. Black Swan (2010)
Every shot in this film was a close-up of something, making the whole thing feel hideously claustrophobic. I thought this approach was odd in a movie set in the world of ballet, an art I typically associate with plenty of open space. I'm filing this in the category of "good movies I never want to see again."

245. Bewitched (2005)
The first of 3 television-to-movie adaptations that I watched this month (not counting the documentary mentioned above), and the least artistically successful of the three. This film spends so much time paying homage to the source material, it never really establishes its own identity as a separate story. It just sort of... is.

246. The Tuxedo (2002)
I caught this movie almost accidentally one night while trying to meet a deadline at work. Given its rather bland action scenes and broad humor, I would have expected it to be made for children except for the frequent sex jokes. Maybe it was meant immature adults. That's a pretty large audience, I guess.

247. The Great McGinty (1940)
A very enjoyable send-up of big city city politics. Highly recommended.

248. This is Cinerama (1952)
Cinerama was a precursor to Imax. This documentary promoting the concept leads with its strength, a roller coaster ride (specifically the Atom Smasher from Playland at Rockaway Beach, NY, which was dismantled in 1985) then limps through another hour-and-a-half of opera singers, landscapes, and tourist footage of Cypress Gardens (that closed on September 23, 2009, to be replaced by Legoland Florida on October 15, 2011). The film is generally booor-ring, but obviously I find the amusement park connections interesting.

249. Contraband (2012)
Mark Wahlberg stars as exactly the kind of character you expect to find Mark Wahlberg cast in a film that was somewhat better than I was expecting. There are no "good guys" in this film pitting bad guys against bad guys. I don't know if this is an endorsement, but I'm sure my father would like it.

250. I Spy (2002)
Ever seen Shanghai Noon? Replace Jackie Chan with Eddie Murphy, bring the movie into the 21st century, and you've seen this movie. I think it's weird that this movie is more like another movie than the television series it was based on, but I guess this is more loyal to the source material than Starsky & Hutch. Maybe Wilson should just stay away from tv-to-movie properties.

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I wanted to see if I can double my goal and reach 300 new-to-me movies on the year, so I stepped-up my game in October. Today is just the beginning of the October list.

231. Drillbit Taylor (2008)
If I told you to imagine a mash-up of a Seth Rogen movie, an Owen Wilson movie, and a John Hughes movie, this movie would be exactly what you would expect. (Which reminds me that I was trying to describe Career Opportunities to someone last month and couldn't think of its name. Those two movies have nothing to do with one another, but in a way, they do. There's something very... "John Hughes" about them.)

232. Shadow of Doubt (1935)
I set the DVR to record this movie, thinking it was the Hitchcock noir film. Turns out that movie is Shadow of A Doubt. What I got instead was a light-hearted whodunnit in the Thin Man vein that I much enjoyed. (The gambit used to reveal the murderer at the film's conclusion results in the death of another, entirely innocent man, and the assembled characters act like that's just the cost of proving the culprit. Bizarre.)

233. The Sitter (2011)
This really is Adventures in Babysitting for the 21st century. Does that mean that in another 10 years, Jonah Hill will be in a movie where he falls in love with an alcoholic trying to drink herself to death? One can only hope.

234. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
Nic Cage, if you keep making movies, I'll keep watching them. Clearly neither one of us cares how bad they are any more. Bring on Leaving Las Vegas 2: Really Leaving This Time!

235. Key Largo (1948)
Moody crime drama that was really roaring along until the closing scenes on the boat. I was reminded of the tacked-on ending to Fight Club, where it also felt like the story had backed itself into a corner, needing to be "rescued" by an improbable conclusion.

236. Saturday's Hero (1951)
A seriously cynical look at college football that must have been the inspiration for Disney's The Program forty years later.

237. Meet John Doe (1941)
Golly gee whiz, Capra made only made two types of movie, the screwball comedy and the satirical comedy. I think the only Capra film I haven't seen that I may still consider watching is Lost Horizon, which I have heard was a colossal bomb. That sounds like a Capra film I could get behind.

238. The FBI Story (1959)
I'd seen small clips of this before, but not nearly enough in any sitting to figure out what the narrative was. Personally, I would have like to have seen more Dragnet-style action and less of Jimmy Stewart's domestic problems, but I can still endorse this film.

239. Malibu's Most Wanted (2003)
Even given that this was a Jamie Kennedy star-vehicle, there is far less to this movie than I was expecting. It's Bullworth with even more racial stereotyping and terrible rapping crammed in.

240. Rat Race (2001)
I mentioned before that I don't like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the movie that this film used like carbon paper for its plot. The worst part of the movie is the ending, which is almost a punishment for watching the preceding 90 minutes.

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In the past three days, I've lost two jobs, and my brother has told me he's considering marrying someone he's known for less than 3 months. But Georgia just beat No. 2 Florida, so I'm going to consider the week a success.

Update: The Dolphins also beat the Jets in New York. Thank you, football.

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Attention, please. The Kickstarter campaign I urged you to donate to just 3 days ago has been canceled.

A conflicting opinion about the direction in which we should develop the game grew up between Cellbloc Studios and our development partner, and it became apparent that the best solution was for us to part ways. So we did.

Cellbloc canceled the Kickstarter and plans to take the current game design back to the drawing board to make it the game we want it to be. When my mother heard the news, she gave me a hug and said, "now that you're not doing anything, how about you go outside and blow the leaves off the patio." Thanks for your support, Mom.

Thanks for everyone's support, in fact. I hope that you will consider renewing your pledge to us once we have re-tooled our game design and relaunched our Kickstarter campaign early next year.

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Listen up, people. After a few months work, we've finally gotten our project up on Kickstarter. We put a lot of work into this so far, as our handful of pictures and brief movie will attest. Hopefully, we can generate the $60,000 we need to get our video game off the ground and start earning some real revenue.

For those of you who don't know, Kickstarter is a crowd-funding platform, where people with ideas seek many small donations from a large numbers of backers instead of (or in addition to) large donations from a small number of backers. If you've never been before, I'd advise you to take a look around after you throw a few bucks my way. But be sure to throw a few bucks my way.

(Consider a donation as a reward for me for all the hard work I've done over the years in entertaining you with this blog. Football recaps, deer conspiracies, and poodle cartoons. Surely they've got to be worth something.)

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At 10:15AM, Friday, October 19, 2012, Big Tex burned to death. For those of you who don't know, Big Tex has been the 52-feet tall fiberglass mascot of the Texas State Fair in Dallas for the past 60 years. Obviously, this is big news. Just take a look at a sample of today's awesome Google image returns for the search string "big tex":

But my favorite picture is this:

Everything truly is bigger in Texas, including body bags. But don't fear; Big Tex will be rebuilt. If the World's Largest Turkey can rise from the ashes like a phoenix, a new, improved Big Tex can't be far behind.

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Coca-Cola has announced that it intends to soon start selling "beauty drinks" in French pharmacies. The new, yet-to-be-named product will be made primarily from mineral water, fruit juice, and "nutritional additives" will be marketed as enhancements that "help strengthen hair and nails, embellish skin, lose weight and improve vitality." Why does that sound so familiar?

Oh, that's right. It's because when Coca-Cola was a new product, it was advertised as a "brain tonic" and "nerve stimulant" that cured headaches, hysteria, melancholy, and improved vitality. Of course, at that time, Coca-Cola contained extract of the Coca plant as a nutritional additive.

Those crazy French! They'll drink anything!

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Here in Newnan, GA, there has long been an intersection at the edge of downtown where two one-way streets meet head-on. (This is at the edge of cemetery, because the Newnan city planners, although corrupt and inefficient, are not stupid.) Not too long ago, the state of Georgia, responsible for all U.S. highways in its territory, stepped in to renovate the intersection. This renovation including replacing the aging traffic signals with a new pole and removing all the signage telling motorists which lanes would end up on which roads. As you might imagine, this has turned into something of a fiasco.

The biggest problem is that the former red traffic lights have been turned into red traffic arrows. In the state of Georgia, it is legal to turn onto a one-way street once you have come to a full stop if the signal is a solid red light. However, the same action is illegal if the light is a red arrow. Other intersections with red arrows tend to have signs expressly noting that turns on red arrows are illegal, but as I said, in its infinite wisdom, the state has taken away all but the street name signs. It doesn't help that the locals have been turning on red lights here for decades.

The local police didn't realize there had been a change, so the local paper ran a story telling us all it was okay to turn on the red arrow. Someone from the state didn't like that and told the local police that they had changed the lights and that turns on the arrows were illegal. The police petitioned the state to restore the red lights and in the meantime were not ticketing people who turned at the intersection after a full stop as they always had done before. It seems that the state has finally had enough of that, too.

There is now a sign at the intersection, but it's just a temporary flashing sign warning us not to turn on red arrows. I'm sure so far as the GA Department of Transportation is concerned, the problem is now solved. At least now while waiting for the light to turn, I some something to read.

I also have plenty of time to think about how I used to be able to turn here. Sometimes the Good Old Days really were better.

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Last year I went to the Coweta County Fair, and I failed to post the pics I took of it. For example, I took pics of the Chicken-N-Dressing competition -- a 4H Club beauty contest featuring chicken in costumes -- but you won't find them on this website. Now that I've lost those pics, I don't think you'll ever see them anywhere. This year, I won't make the same mistake. Presenting my photos of the 2012 Coweta County Fair (taken Wednesday, September 26):

Even Mom loves the fair.

It's the temporary barricades that make it safe.

I waited for 5 minutes just to get this picture.

Why is a giant swing ride decorated in biohazard stickers?

The classics never go out of style.

But what would pictures of the Coweta County Fair be without barnyard animals dressed in silly costumes:

The winner of the 1st annual goat dressing competition (and his boy)!

P.S. Mother wants me to make it clear that the goat in that last pic is supposed to be wearing a dragon costume. Goats, it turns out, are no more fond of playing "dress up" than chickens.

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