Mailbagsukidoji:
The Steady Leak
may not be so steady these days, but your letters have been, so I must
share them and answer them so that the wheels keep turning on this
crazy little bitch. Feel free to ask whatever about whomever or
whatever, and I’ll do my best to answer it. Letters in here might be
positive, negative, or indifferent and I’ll try to maintain a balance.
Please keep sending them in (SEND A LETTER), as it’s you who fuels this column.
I’m
doing a decent job of doing one or possibly two of these letters
columns a week, but I think it might be a little better if you guys
just ask random stuff instead of things just relating to the column or
the recent letters installments.
Provided
it makes sense and applies to entertainment in some fashion, send me
whatever questions you’d like! Also, since the Leak is less frequent
than I’d like, I’ll toss a few value added things in here from now on.
With that said, here we go….
Today’s Photo From Life:
Easily the best Ebay purchase of my young life.
Finally, a J.E. Freeman costume.
Adapting.
April writes:
sticker…I received an email with the subject line "Dubya T F" last week and it
took me many seconds to figure out what it was saying. Once my dull mind got
around to understanding the joke, I giggled for the rest of the day. So I
thought I’d share the fun. Here’s a
question for you: Do you think that when a movie is made from a published novel
that the storyline should be the same? As an avid reader, quite often I’ll see
the director or producer or whomever, change pieces of the story to fit their
own ends. A perfect example of this is Jurassic Park; in the book the boy is
the computer genius and in the movie, the girl is. I can see why the director
felt that this small insignificant change wouldn’t matter to the story as a
whole, and can handle these small tweaks but I find that when the end is
completely different, that’s where I get upset. An example of that would be the
Robert Ludlum thriller, The Holcroft Covenant that ended on the big screen very
differently than it did in the novel. Obviously the story contained in a novel
has much more information that a two hour movie can cover, and things will have
to be cut out and others shortened to fit into the allotted time. However, why
change the storylines? If you wanted to make a movie from your own script,
there isn’t anyone stopping you, but when you take a story that is available to
every tom, dick or harry, you run the risk of annoying your ‘ready-made’
audience. The only reason I could
come up with for why I should deserve that extra copy of Heaven Help Us is that
I’ve never seen this so called ‘stellar’ movie that you’ve seen at least 20
times.
Nick’s Reply: As someone who is involved in the book to film thing more closely than I ever imagined, I now realize that it’s impossible in some instances to do an adaptation of a book and expect the translation to work. In our case it’s because of what audiences are used to seeing and what might seem familiar all these years after the book. We’ve done something pretty special with our thing but because of the experience I feel a lot differently about adapting stuff. There’s no right or wrong answers, provided the end result is GOOD.
Anti-Religion?
Mark writes:
know, could have done without the anti-religion rant. I REALLY like your site
(been reading it for years) but man between having to skip Devin’s output in
toto (‘cuz he can’t help putting a little spin on everything he writes, ) and
today’s leak I have to ask: are you TRYING to drive people away?
Nick’s Reply: Skipping Devin’s output is dumb, as he’s the main writer on the site and most of the good stuff comes from his PC. I’m not trying to drive people away, but if I had my choice of people to drive away it just might be people who think evolution is bullshit. Anyhow, The Steady Leak is a catch-all column for me. It is me speaking my mind in a stream of consciousness sort of way. After getting The Panda’s Thumb and having to see BIG RELIGION try to force its way into our lives I had to act in my own little messy way. But I am not anti-religion at all. I think people, many people, benefit from it. I just don’t like when it’s FORCED and ILLOGICAL to me.
Of Apes and Men.
Andrew writes:
The idea that God created the world has been around for centuries.
Billions of people of all different races and creeds have shared this belief. I am not saying it’s true or untrue, I just wish you would let Christian believe in Creationism if they so choose to (AND allow them to teach it to their children) without being belittled by people who don’t even try to see anything from their perspective. you are not a Christian, so you will never "get it". Don’t assume anything about me either, I have read this site for 4 or 5 years and this is the FIRST time anything has ever offended me, Devin included. Your creationism rant in the leak sounds very ignorant and there are tens of millions of people in this country alone who would disagree with you.
Ps, I suppose it’s time for you either to pick apart every word I’ve said or click DELETE.
Nick’s Reply: There are tens of millions of people who died because their religion and another person’s religion were in contrast. Believing there is a God who created the world is one thing and following the Bible’s every nook and cranny as FACT is another. I can buy a Christian saying that he believes in a God but understanding that natural progression and evolution MIGHT JUST HAPPEN based on some divine plan. What bothers me is that as our minds supposedly evolve (compare man of say 1300 AD to today), some aspects get more primitive than ever. In a way I am ignorant. I don’t have the time or desire to know as much about your religion as you, nor do I consult scientists about their side. I choose to focus on different things with my time, but it doesn’t disallow me from having an opinion and sharing that opinion in my opinion based column on my site.
Highway to the Dangerzone.
Lenny writes:
to respond to something you said. In calling all religious people who believe
in heavenly creation narrow-minded, you forget one thing. The narrow-minded one
in that sentence is you. I am a religious person with at science degree and an
extreme love of everything biology. But I find it funny how people like
yourself, who is obviously trained in science only through your local media,
would have faith in a one-in-a-billion chance of mutation, multiplied by
billions of mutations that make us human, which is a random event, faith that is
as laughable to me as my believe in creation is to you. While you think science
is tantamount to "fact," that is in fact not true. The word comes from a Latin
root "scienter," meaning knowledge, which is not always the same thing. With
all these scientific studies every year disputing all the scientific studies
from previous years, it would be silly to take them with anything but a grain of
salt and a large dose of skepticism. My view of creation and evolution are not
mutually exclusive – I just believe that the architect of evolution is God
versus chaos and because I know the chances of both, my belief has never
wavered, just strengthened in the acknowledgment that the beauty and complexity
of our universe and our own selves could not have possibly been caused by
randomness.
Nick’s Reply: Lenny, the easy answer to this email would be to chastize you for your asinine comments on our message boards about how you literally cheat your way into movies and a query on how God views that, but it’s petty. What I will say is that I think you seem to think you have me pegged but probably don’t know how much religious study I’ve been involved in. Two years of Catholic school with DAILY study. Three years of Baptist school with roughly the same. I’m not some wank who just sees religion as stupid because I like watching football on Sundays instead of wearing a tie. I’ve read plenty, though I know that you take your religion seriously because I’ve seen you in the real world on Saturdays after your services. If you knew me better you might have seen the amount of books on science I’ve been reading over the recent year and a half in hopes of getting more informed. Also, tossing Latin words doesn’t mean shit to me because science has come a long way since Latin was a living language and the roots of words get corrupted faster than a Prom queen. I’m willing to concede that there may be forces beyond us in control, but I’m unwilling to think that people relying on centries-old religion are unable to accept certain bits of revelation and scientific discovery as more than just an annoyance. Anyhow, my rant wasn’t about people’s particular viuews that much except for the people who are trying to force Creationism into schools and stuff and how our current regime wields religion like a scythe. Imagine how the voting would have gone had President Bush not captured the gigantic church demographic in his quest.
Cookies!
Mike writes:
You are not the only one pissed about B&M stores
having no smaller releases. I go once a month 100 miles to my nearest best buy
and they never have anything anymore only BIG movies. Why have 60 copies of
boogeyman and only 15 sell? Why not get 20 copies of boogeyman and 5-10 copies
of some smaller films like the uncut version of Intruder which was released in
August but no b&m store has it yet, hell it took most b&m stores a year
to get Versus. But if I ever need 73 copies of darkness falls. Now as far as
buying online I try not to run my credit card up cause then it will just get out
of hand like the last time I went on dddhouse.com and spent over hundred bucks
then my wife gets pissed and I don’t need that. And cds I have not bought a cd
from a b&m in about 2 years I just order from Europe.
On to the other topics I don’t have time to
discuss creatism, it just is sickening that I have to share a planet with these
people. And speaking of religion my daughter also joined girl scouts, just like
Dakota Fanning, which is a religious org.
The Girl Scout Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God* and my country,
To help people at all
times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
maybe I should not of let my daughter join.
Anyway love Chud and the leak
Nick’s Reply: All they need to do is change God to Cookies and the creed is perfect!
Casting Pods.
Dave writes:in another Podcast sometime this decade. If you weren’t so goddamn funny, we
all wouldn’t be clamoring for them so badly.
Nick’s Reply: This coming Saturday, Justin and Steve and I are going to see Into the Blue, getting liquored up, and recording a Podcast. It may be the last one but it’ll be here within a week or so.
Never said I was a theologist.
Simon writes:
I’m having a difficult time formulating a
response to your "rising role of religion" rant. There were many arguments you
made which cry out for rebuttal, but I’m abusing my internet privilege here at
work enough as it is. As a result, I’m just going to try to
address the "Creationism is dumb" argument.
What’s truly dumb is the acceptance of a
belief system – any belief system – without using critical thought and
logic to test the underpinnings of those beliefs.
When I was in middle school and high
school I was taught that the earth was millions of years old. I was also taught it was formed from a random
Big Bang, which somehow also coalesced into primordial soup. From this amazingly diverse soup, millions of
years later, we eventually get people,
penguins and palm trees.
I did not question these things because
they were presented as scientific fact.
I was not told of the many problems with evolution theory: an inaccurate
Carbon-14 dating system, the irreducible complexity of the single cell, and the
troubling non-existence of transitional forms of animals in the fossil record,
to name a few. Not to mention the
ultimate “gotcha” – how did we get something from nothing to even set up the Big
Bang? Much of evolution depends on
assumptions we in the present are forced to make about the distant past. When did assumptions become hard science (i.e., "facts")?
Let’s turn your statements around a bit and see if you still agree with
them. You can have well-reasoned faith and still not buy a
theory that says, despite the thermodynamic law of entropy,
humans are actually reversing that natural regression by evolving into
more complex beings. Or, how about: You can actually be a smart, free-thinking
Christian and not discount the Biblical account of a global flood thanks to,
among other things (that pesky faith thing for one), an ever-growing
accumulation of geological and archeological
evidence.
It’s so
ironic that the most vociferous opponents of any challenge to the holy grail of
Darwinism pride themselves in avoiding "narrow thinking". Darwin’s theory
itself was a challenge to the established science of his day. Would IQ points
really drop through the floor like an ACME safe if students were presented with
challenging theories to evolution? Of course not. However, those
students might just mess around and do some critical thinking of their
own.
Lastly,
you made a comment at the beginning of your column that resonated with me as I
read the rest of it. You wrote, "…I don’t have time to do all the fact
checking and research needed to get to the root of my worries". That comment
described me not too awfully long ago. Thankfully I got around to asking some
tough questions and doing some research, and my eyes have been opened to many
truths I could not (or would not) see before. I just wish I had been pushed a
little harder in school to think through what I was taught instead of being
spoon-fed scientific theory disguised as absolute truth.
Nick’s Reply: Look, I didn’t present what anyone would consider a concise and definitive argument. This column isn’t about that. It was just a lashing out and the tightening of the Bible belt around my nuts. Science has a ways to go, but I do find that the extremes tend to ruin it for the folks in the middle. I’m much more in the middle, as are most good Christians. That said, I think that we have already pushed the boundaries of what should be considered reasonable school curriculum and if things continue as planned a lot of the Orwellian stories might come up short in defining us down the line.
Preach, brother, preach.
Christopher writes:
I have to kick in my two cents worth about the horror that Best Buy has become. My complaint is about their Reward Zone program. Last fall, my wife and I bought a big screen TV, and at the same time picked up a new, smaller set for my mom, who had just moved into a new apartment nearby. I usually keep away from any kind of promotion that costs me money, but when I thought about all of the DVDs that I could come up with for credits from this purchase and a couple of other ones that we were planning, I went ahead and joined. And promptly forgot about it.
Then, this spring, our printer quit working. I remembered that we joined the Reward Zone, so I thought that I’d cash my points in for a new printer. When I went to the website, I was surprised that I didn’t have any points at all in my account. My wife saves the receipts for everything, so I dug them out and called the helpline. After a couple of long waits, they told me that they had credited my points to someone else’s account. They straightened it out and told me that I’d get my certificates emailed in 2-4 weeks. After about a month, they showed up. Unfortunately, I couldn’t print them out (at work–my printer at home was still broken). Call the help center again–they tell me that they’ll resend them to me right away. In a couple of days, I get them again and try to print. Still, no joy. Call the help center again.
I find out that you can’t print from a Mac. Unfortunately, my home and work printers are all Macs. So, they tell me that they’ll mail them to me. I go over my address and hang up, to wait for my certificates to arrive in–you guessed it–2-4 weeks. After I month, I call up to check on them. The operator tells me that I have to go on line to change my preferred method of delivery–although they had already done it on line with me. Again, two to four weeks. In the meantime, I bought a new printer (from Staples) and went on a business trip to Japan. When I come back, there are still no certificates–but I got a letter reminding me to renew my Reward Zone membership. So, on Saturday, I called them and they told me that my change of address had just hit the system that day! The operator promised my that my certificate would arrive in two to four weeks.
Anyway, it’s been about six months, and I haven’t got squat. I’ve sent letters out to everybody at Best Buy, but who knows what will happen. In the meantime, Circuit City, Barnes and Noble, and Borders get my in-store video business. Best Buy still has the best selection around where I live (we don’t have any big video-only retailers), but they’re not getting any of my money until I get some certificates.
That’s my Best Buy rant. Take care–thanks again for all the movie passes that you’ve sent my way!
Nick’s Reply:
I went to Borders before our History of Violence screening last night (good flick!) and was really impressed with their DVD section. I have no problem paying 3-5 bucks more for a rare DVD at a bookstore instead of waiting for it to be shipped from an online vendor sometimes. Especially if it’s something I need to watch NOW, like Xtro.
Lon Chain-y Letter.
Lon writes:
one upset by this. I have resolved to not go there as much as I used to as well.
I went there looking for a copy of Old Boy and The Machinist before that. I had
them look them up. They could not find Old Boy in their database but it was on
their website. They didnt even know if they were getting it or not. Dont get me
started on The Machinist they didnt even know it was coming in and they only got
like two copies of the title which were gone by the time I went back in a couple
of days. What is more infuriating than this however is the seemingly random way
of raising the prices on their titles. I swear I Love Lucy went from 42.99 to
51.99 in a week and that was regular price (it wasnt even on sale!). I asked
them why and they said they dont know.
that I am no the only one who has become increaingly frustrated at Best Buy and
other bricks and mortar stores. I just wish they would keep it consistent. At
other times I am surprised to find a title there for like five bucks that no one
has heard of but I remember as a child and loving. It is the other times that
make me not want to shop anywhere but online. I like immediate " in my hands"
gratification you know. I like shopping. I like perusing the titles in front of
me instead of scrolling on a screen. I like the personal touch. Sorry I am
rambling. I just wanted to let you know you are not alone in your
plight.
Nick’s Reply: I’d see Old Boy and the Machinist.
Stuff.
Robert writes:
Plus, I’m in total agreement about the box art thing. Personally, I’d love to have the poster art, or at least the VHS box art for some of the movies I’ve seen. I know that it may be nitpicking, but to me, those posters deserve to be preserved for posterity and represent what’s on the dvd better than what’s currently on them.
But the main beef I have with ALL retail chains is the asinine obsession with stocking the shelves with roughly 80% fullscreen. To me, the theatrical aspect ratio is what sells a dvd to me aside from maybe the extras. I tried once to get a movie and couldn’t find a single widescreen for over a week and a half. Maybe
it’s a local thing here(east TN). I wouldn’t wish
this on any movie fan.
Well, I hope Meg’s going good for ya, and I appreciate each Steady Leak, as well as the letters and such. Take care.
Nick’s Reply: I can’t say a goddamn thing about Meg other than… Steve’s new version of the book is in stores! Buy a copy here!
SPAM OF THE DAY!
Nick writes:
videos,
shocking and exciting photos – learn the true life in Europe! They
They rape. Tons of
hundreds of pics containing shocking scenes, hours of female torturing and
sorrow,
members… great free tour make this site very attractive for dear surfers.
Mr. Grunt and Point’s Reply: I read these words to a beat and I have a bad ass rap going on. Get your beat box on and follow along with me:
"Outstanding rapes of… SCHOOLGIRLS CAUGHT ON TAPES!
Ill… I said Ill-E-Gal videos… SHOCKING AND EXCITING PHOTOS
(Here’s where the bitches come in with the soothing sonnet of ‘Learn the true life in Europe’)
They don’t talk… THEY RAPE! TONS OF EXPLICIT VIOLENCE…"
You get what I’m saying. That is dope.
Anyhow, I had to save the email because it’s the first one I’ve gotten that wasn’t from my wife with the subject line "Schoolgirls raped by big cock".