Wouldn't you bloody know it. There's no NASCAR race today, so I've got nothing substantive to write about. The preacher had something interesting to say at church today, but I've lost the bloody bulletin and the notes I'd written about it. !@#$

Happy Leap Year.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 07:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Three points:

1. Bugger, Matt Kenseth won. !@#$
2. Hee hee, Dale Jarrett blew his engine. That's the Roush-Yates axis for you.
3. Ward Burton did OK, garnering a top-10 finish. With that team, it's probably as good as a win. Same can't be said for Chevrolets in general or my other favorites in particular.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Dale Earnhardt, Jr., won the Daytona 500. Blast it, Biggs! Enh. At least it wasn't a Ford. Those blue-oval bozos had me worried there for a while, but the bowtie triumphs. Heh heh heh. I still don't like him on his own merits. If he'd grow a mustache and act like his father instead of a third-rate hip-hop type, I'd like him a lot more.

I'm pleasantly amused at the fate of the Roush-Yates engine alliance's products. Take that, Cat in the Hat.

Final shot: As far as I'm concerned, it always has and always will be Winston Cup.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 06:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The IMDB is reporting that Star Wars and its two sequels are going to be released upon 21 September 2004 in a box set. This is a good thing, right? Absolutely wrong.

It's going to be those bastardized remakes from the 1990s which incorporate annoying things like a revised sequence in Jabba the Hutt's palace and Greedo shooting first at Han Solo in the Mos Eisley cantina. No, I didn't like "Jedi Rocks", either. I never thought I'd agree with Nicholas Meyer (who reportedly hates directors' cuts) but it seems that Lucas should have left well enough alone.

Why am I so ticked at the Greedo shoots first thing? Well, here's why: In the original Star Wars, Greedo was a bounty hunter for the as-yet-unseen Jabba the Hutt, and I thought Han was in a pickle. Greedo jams a blaster in Han's face and maneuvers him to a booth, where the latter eventually starts arming his DL-44 blaster. This culminates with Greedo's "I've been waiting for this for a long time", which Han punctuates with "Yeah, I'll bet you have", and a shot under the table. Greedo's head then thumps down on the table, and an unruffled Solo flips the barkeep a coin in apology for "the mess".

In the revised version, Greedo shoots first. He shoots first and misses. He's got a blaster no more than a foot or two away from Solo's face, and the shot misses. I understand that Greedo's a Rodian and has funky eyes and maybe his depth perception's off, but at that kind of range, you can pick which eye you want the shot going through. Jed and Owen of Boots and Sabers or John of Argghhh!!! are the pistol mavens and would know more, but that's ridiculous to miss at that range.

The justification I heard reported was that George Lucas didn't want to encourage violence and wanted to make sure that Han acted in self-defense. Hello? A pistol in the face and a threat to kill you don't constitute grounds for some sort of deadly force response? Good grief!

I don't know if/when I'll buy these. I've been a Star Wars fan since the 1970s, but I've been left flat by the last two movies, and there's just not a lot of enthusiasm left for me in the franchise.

UPDATE: It seems that others have the general idea and had it ahead of me; once again I'm a day late and a post short. TFB! Anyways. A Small Victory has posts on this subject, here and here. Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Comrade Commissar for sending me in the direction of the other posts with his humorous and somewhat disturbing take on the thing.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:58 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Gah. I hate when Ford drivers win. On the other hand, at least it wasn't one of those stupid Gillette "Young Guns". I've been following NASCAR goings-on in three decades, and it's getting more and more lame all the time.

I miss the good old days of Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, the Allisons, and Dale Earnhardt.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I was playing Robotech: Battlecry for the PlayStation 2, and one of the missions unlocks interviews with the voice actors/actresses responsible for the game. In many cases, these folks are reprising roles performed for the original 1985 television program.

So anyways, I unlock an interview, and it's of Melanie MacQueen. Most Virginians have seen her at one point in time or the other, because she serves as the Virginia Lottery's mascot, Lady Luck. I figure, "Hey, cool. When I see Lady Luck at something, I'll mention to her that I enjoyed the work she did in Robotech: Battlecry," because it's not every day that I get to talk to a voice actress in a video game that I've got.

So I'm watching this and she mentions getting the part of Lisa Hayes. I got very suspicious all of a sudden, because there wasn't any footage of Commander Hayes in the game. But, I reminded myself that it was Reba West who provided the voice of the old sourpuss.

Curiousity won out, however, and I checked the IMDB entry for Melanie MacQueen, and sure enough, there it was. She had provided the voice for Lisa Hayes and the Zentraedi ace Kiyora in Battlecry. I scrolled down the page and nearly fell out of my seat. Why? Melanie MacQueen had been the voice of Lisa Hayes twenty years ago.

I'm very rarely in a position to be knocked over with a feather. Be it cynicism or world-weariness, not too awful much gets a tremendous drop on me, but this did. I sat there in my apartment saying, "I've talked to Lisa Hayes. Holy [expletive deleted], I've talked to Lisa Hayes!" I'd met Lady Luck at some Virginia Lottery promotional function that was going on, and had decided to say something pleasant to the mascot. At the time, I had no idea that I'd been talking to the voice behind one of my three most favorite characters in the Robotech series. (For the record, the other two are Commander Roy Fokker and Max Sterling.)

Call me crazy, but the next time I see her, I'm getting another autograph, and I've got to tell her that I appreciated her work as Commander Lisa Hayes. It's grand to live in Virginia.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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