Discoblog - Live Free or Die Hard

Crap its been a while and I guess it means that its time for another post.

As always, with this blog, as each day passes since my last post I feel a sort of growing pressure to post something new. I have no idea why this guilt emerges, only that it does. And with that in mind - a post.

Gwen and I haven't really traveled anywhere exotic since the Dublin trip. Sure, we went to the local base a few times for groceries and such, but that hardly qualifies. Our next big trip is off to San Diego, but that isn't for a few weeks. After that we're tentatively planning a trip to Croatia (home of "STUP") for the end of August over a 4-day weekend. But that too is over a month away. Aside from our small but significant travels of late its been mostly work, work, work.

Work has been busy lately, and I've been spending just about every other weekend in the hospital in some capacity, either as the "day call" or as the "night call". I spent the week of the 4th on call, running around the hospital while most of the clinics were intermittently shut down. We still managed to have a solid fourth of July - even here in commie Germany - with a back-yard BBQ, Guitar Hero, and drinking croquet. (See Gwen's more frequently updated, more efficient, better written - hell just plain BETTER blog regarding this.) When not on call, the clinic has been nuts with increasing numbers of "walk ins" (read: from the war) and also I'm one of just two permanent party internists currently at Landstuhl because of the PCS season (which means that docs are transferring posts). We have a high turnover this summer, and so as the old docs pack up and leave and before the new docs (one of which will be Pete - which rocks) formally arrive, the clinic capacity shrinks. The patient demand for appointments doesn't change, however, and one result of this is that I'm constantly booked to the hilt. And after every day I find growing numbers of dreaded T-cons (telephone consults - docs reading this will know what I mean - basically its just more work) waiting for me. I think I'm averaging like ten t-cons a day right now.

But for all the bustle at work, summer in Germany has been pretty cool for the most part. There's lots of light, for one thing. I swear the sun is up before I even get up to pee in the "middle of the night" some nights (damn prostate). And, at least in June, daylight was lasting until well past 10 o'clock. The weather has been on and off, with the occasional week of showers, but overall has been pretty solid. Certainly this summer's weather beats that of my last summer - where'd I spend that one again? It's not quite as hot here. Also, summer is the German Fest season, and so every little town has little beer fests or other cook-out celebrations on certain weekends (this Saturday I hope to see YOU at the Qeidersbach Chicken-Fest), making for a generally festive atmosphere. (Fest/Festive - get it?) Between all these fests and the increased light, even the typical surly German can be caught smiling on rare occasion - let's say once every two to three weeks.

Gwen, Pete and I have caught a couple of movies lately. The summer movie season is here, apparently (though its all downhill after Transformers, which I haven't been able to see yet. YET I said - it looks like I'm going this weekend).


We caught a showing of "Ocean's 13", a Steven Soderberg vehicle which specializes in heavily winking at its audience. My favorite joke (one in which I'm beating into the ground by the way) is that it stars George Smarmy and Brad Smug. This joke also sort of sums up my opinion of the film. Clooney is at his head-down, eyes-up acting best and he and Pitt spend a solid chunk of time trading knowingly sly glances with half-cocked smiles like they were competing in some sort of high level smug-off. That said, the movie isn't unenjoyable. It moves and flows, despite the wink-fests, and Al Pacino, playing the villain, is always fun to watch. Fun but forgettable - that's how I sum it up I guess.

We also saw Die Hard 4 about a week or so ago, which was a classic piece of summer action-filler. It was - as expected - unintentionally hilarious in multiple spots. Here are some of the highlights - there WILL BE SPOILERS, so stop reading here if you don't want to know that Bruce Willis thwarts the bad guys in the end.

I'm doing this bullet style - here are the things I enjoyed:

-Bruce Willis. His semi-lithe body of old - think 'Moonlighting' or Die Hard (the first) - is long gone. He looks like a retired fullback now - like a white version of Lorenzo Neal - with his bald head and bunched up neck and shoulder muscles spilling everywhere. He's not steroid cut, just growth hormone bulky - maybe he's gunning for Barry's home run record, I don't know. This grizzled and lumpy version of Bruce Willis - who still has that same bunchy-cheeked pursed lip smile- is just amusing to me. Not sure why.

-Bruce Willis destroyed a hovering helicopter (hovering = in mid air), loaded with machine-gun firing bad guys, with a car he launched off of a concrete ramp right after he rolled out of it at some ridiculous speed. Please re-read that sentence. This, of course, was after he was being chased through the city by the same helicopter (he's still in the car at this point - and the car is still on the ground). Prior to destroying the chopper with his car-missile, and during this chase, he managed to take out one of the chopper's side gunners by running over a fire hydrant and having the water stream knock the guy out of the bird - an event which he calculatingly planned during the high speed chase. These two events happened in fairly rapid succession. Bruce Willis: Two. Bad Guys: None. (Actually Bruce Willis was already sporting a solid lead by this point.)

-The villain. Die Hard had Hans Gruber. Die Hard Part Two had some disenchanted ex-military guy. Part three had Hans Gruber's cousin - or brother - or something. THIS Die Hard brings us the wormy, anal-retentive, pissed-he-just-missed-a-sale-at-the-Banana-Republic uber-yuppy computer guy. Isn't THIS guy supposed to be one of the the bad guy's posse members? He can't possibly be the sole villain mastermind, right? Wrong. He is. And he's hilarious. He's no match for Bruce Willis. None.

(Note: Bruce Willis is reaching Chuck Norris like fame in my mind and on my keyboard. I find I can't type "Bruce" or "Willis" alone - it can only be "Bruce Willis". Back to the post.)


-The scenes that are out of control with realism issues are numerous and beyond belief and they are all highly entertaining - every single one. One of my favorites is when Bruce Willis drives into some Asian chick (who's also the resident martial arts bad-ass of this film) doing at least fifty with a truck. Far from injured, Superman, or I mean this Asian Chick, managed to not only not get hurt, paralyzed, or killed, but she managed to grab onto the ledge between the hood and the windshield and hold on. Then, to escalate the conflict, Bruce Willis continues driving, and accelerates the vehicle into an elevator shaft at an even higher speed. (This move doesn't make any sense, but are you gonna argue with Bruce Willis? I didn't think so.) Asian Chick, still hanging onto the hood, but with a good portion of her torso draped over the front of the truck, manages to ride this scenario out no problem - keep in mind her body is between a concrete wall at the back of the shaft and a speeding truck. Rather than being severed in half or utterly crushed from enormous high-velocity trauma, or be subjected to any other serious injury that a human being would surely have, she grunts and takes it, coming out fine. So fine, in fact, that she's able to continue hand-to-hand fighting Bruce Willis a moment later in the now dangling-in-the-elevator-shaft truck. When she later falls to her death in that shaft, I half-expected her to arise from a flattened liquid metal puddle not unlike the T-1000 terminator. I'm pretty sure they'll have that scene in the director's cut.

-Another high comedy moment is when Bruce Willis, now in a 18-wheeler, takes on an Air Force harrier jet. After wormy bad-guy fakes the pilot out into thinking Bruce Willis is the terrorist and authorizes "kill by any means necessary" force (he does this by "obtaining the Go-codes" - hilarity in itself. When ever any villain wants to do anything in this movie, they make 8 keystrokes into their lap top and have instant access to whatever they need), it becomes a show-down of the ridiculously maneuverable jet and Bruce Willis in the truck. The jet is armed to the teeth, and though its various missiles and explosives keep taking out large chucks of freeway, concrete bridges, and overpass, Bruce Willis manages to simply ramble on with his fist in the air and a gritty pursed-lip smile on his face. Finally the jet comes in closer for the kill - I certainly didn't realize these things were this maneuverable - as it rises vertically and opens fire with its main guns (which launch 5 meter metal rods), Bruce Willis luckily ducks (literally gets his head below the dash) as the top half the truck is reduced to metal shreds in seconds. Good thing he ducked. Then, Bruce Willis keeps driving - now he's on some sort of elevated clover leaf, like a parking garage circle that keeps wrapping up and up, only its in the middle of the freeway for some reason. The jet keeps taking out chunks of this massive structure with various weapons and Bruce Willis is barely making it away until finally the jet is in the wrong spot at the wrong time and its wing is clipped by a crumbling piece of freeway. At this point the whole structure is crumbling, which has the effect of increasing the incline Bruce Willis is driving on - adding more drama in the process. With a wing clipped, the pilot ejects, but with the jet still hovering, Bruce Willis leaps out of his truck, which by now cannot get traction on the increasingly sloped pavement. Bruce Willis lands ON THE JET, before rolling off it onto a different piece of moving rubble, and finally he slides several stories down some other pavement to safety. After watching that scene, I just sat there in disbelief thinking "what the hell just happened?" I had to shake my head a little to clear up my vision. What? Anyway, just a great scene and if my description doesn't make sense, then I don't know what to tell you because seeing it probably wouldn't help either.

-There's several classic moments where Bruce Willis is horribly injured and then 22 seconds later is completely unaffected by that injury. Those first 22 seconds post-injury provide gripping, blood-spitting, limping drama, but after that, the injury becomes so much useless baggage. For instance, when Bruce Willis does his car missile trick (oh, its a good trick), he rolls out of the car, which is going 60 mph, at the last second, onto more pavement, doing his best rag doll impression. After the chopper is destroyed, and Bruce's sidekick (not in the car for the missile launch) comes running up. Bruce Willis is sitting up now, nestled against another car, spitting up blood, breathing heavily, and looking half-alive. A tender moment of "Wow - you did it - you rock!" ensues and the effects of rolling high speed onto pavement from a moving car are in full effect for old Bruce Willis. Well, about 23 seconds later, Bruce Willis no longer has time to be hurt and he can be seen sprinting through tunnels without the slightest bit of wear. No big deal, of course - he's f@cking Bruce Willis. This sort of thing happened about 12 times.

-Now that I'm swearing, I'm trying to figure out exactly how many times during this movie I turned to either Pete or Gwen and said, "Bruce Willis just f@cking schooled that guy". I think the count was about 119.

-And more. So much more. I really enjoyed this movie. Was it good? I don't know. Probably not. Not that good, in fact. But Bruce Willis can hold a camera - he has charisma I'll give him that. He's also indestructible - something tells me this is where the title comes from. And you can tell the whole theme of this flick was "Bruce Willis - he's just an analogue cop in a digital world". And they played up every element of it. It was computer braniacs with lap tops and unlimited access to the entire universe vs. Bruce Willis' fists and one-liners.

And you know what? I'll take Bruce Willis every f@cking time.