The tenative "Batman Begins" cast up to now

BATMAN/Bruce Wayne........Christian Bale ($ confirmed 9/11/03).

Alfred Pennyworth.......Michael Caine ($).

SGT. and LT. James Gordon........Gary Oldman ($).

Asst. Dist. Atty. Rachel Dodson........Katie Holmes ($, BOF).

Ra's Al Ghul.......Ken Watanabe ($, BOF).

Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow.......Cillian Murphy ($).

Henri Ducard........Liam Neeson ($).

Mob Boss Carmine Falcone........Tom Wilkinson ($).

Lucius Fox........Morgan Freeman ($).

Mr. Earle (acting head of Wayne Ent.)........Rutger Hauer ($).

Dist. Atty. Finch........unknown.

Joe Chill........Richard Brake (*).

Judge Phelan........unknown.

Det. Flass........Barry Dowden (*).

Commissioner Loeb........Colin McFarlane ($).

Barbara Gordon........unknown.

Thomas Wayne........Linus Roache (*).

Martha Wayne........Sara Stewart (*).

Young Bruce Wayne........Gus Lewis (*).

Sorry, it's been a long time.

You're Sai!


Gundam Seed Character Quiz
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Sorry I haven't posted in so very long. First I've been lazy, and I was in Cali for a week. I'm promising to rededicate myself to this journal... Tomorrow. I'm bushed.

I finished a several hr project... i made a 2001: A Space Odyssey song w/ some mixware on my computer, and it's kinda cool. It inadvertantly told HAL's demise, but hey, it makes it even better. You probably should have seen the movie to understand the remix, but it's not fully necessary. Leave a comment or email me if you want to hear it.


Egg Roll House has the biggest soup bowls. WAY too much Spiced Sour Soup. Craziness.

Saw "Day After Tomorrow". A very good script to use in a class on the subject of scriptwriting: It's popcorn movie style blatantly points out so many literary devices and corniness. It was an exceptional movie, don't get me wrong. Had its cliches, had its "give me a break" moments... but it's the suspension of disbelief. And you moveon.org people, stay away. If I see you I will take your flyer and light it, not because I'm a republican, I'm as moderate as moderate can be (almost to the point I'm frustrated w/ myself), but that's shit. Keep it in the Senate.

Well, I went to a few graduation parties yesterday and a the day before. Talking to Mr. Atwood and other people, and it sounds like there are going to be some improvements to the school in the, he said probably the next 16 months. Where there are leaky ceilings and stained tiles they'll probably get fixed and painted, there's a proposal for AC, Mrs. Wilson is wanting to talk to the Frauenthal guys and other places to scare up new lights (For a Tech Crew guy like me that's monumental... now if we had side bars in the aud...), some bathrooms in the school system (probably high school and St. Francis) are getting fixed), and rumor has it there's carpeting in talks. w00t!


Oh, and did you guys know Devitt's the new MS Principal? I didn't know that. Now we only need to find an elementary principal (or two).

-----------

Unrelated: I'm gonna really miss Jen... She was so wonderful, we all had great times this past year. Now, I take her place, and I have people from my class and whiny underclassmen to take care of in my section,unless G-Rob pulls a loop on me and moves me to Bass, thus making Lisa the section leader of my former Marching section. But, that'd put me in probably the sax section, with Trier (augh!!!!! Noooooooo!)... or maybe I'd be Clarinet leader but play Bass.... I don't know.

Well, I opened this up to say something very important, but I can't remember what it was now...


Well, in other minor news, schools out. Plus, I have to miss all of my best friends' graduation parties because of our damn trip to Cali and because of work.


And at one time I was very excited about summer vacation. Now it's "Work, go on a trip, camp, work, another camp, work, work, work, summer reading, work, get school stuff, then back to school"


I honestly think I'll have no free time this summer.


It's been 3 days now I've come home and turned on Buffy and slept till almost six. I'm dying.

Sorry for the lack of updates... It's been shitty having no woohu access at school.


It's been a weird end of school this year. Some seniors that left this year have been staples in my life for year or more, including Pat, Mike, Melissa, Katie, Alexa, and of course two of the most profound people I have ever known, Justin and Scott (Not just sucking up because you are the only two people left in the world who read this thing. I'm serious) Last year's Senior class... they were acquaintences to my lowly frosh self, but even the leaving of Julie, Erin, Jon, Megan, Trey, and others was a loss. This year, more and more it's hitting me... It's just that I thrive on the prescence of others.

It's been a part of me since I was young... Imagine moving halfway across of the country, and never talking to your friends again. Sure, I was in fourth grade, but you gotta wonder how they are now, whose doing well, whose lives have gone on a turn for the worse, who's with whom, who's moved away... My friends, both from my original class and the class I was moved up into the year before I left, It's not that often that I don't think about them and how they turned out. I miss Pittsfield, even though the town was going downhill from the day we left, with the PCB scandal, a rising unemployment rate, and much more... I miss the town, I miss my house (56 Concord Pkwy, Pittsfield, MA), and even though the few people I've divulged this to say, "You were young then, friendships then are easy to end without much pain. If you had moved in Middle School it would have been harder" I still think how my life, my experiences, my friends might have been different if I were still there.


Danny DeMarco, Eric Girard, Blake Davis, Collin O' Brien, Kathryn Wojyk, Cameron Kreuzel, Ben Bianchi, Kris and Kyle Mcgargle, yes I have trouble with spelling... oh, shit, I can't remember anyone else's names...


Any of you, if you happen to read this, I want to talk to you again. Remember me, Andrew, the kid who moved away when you guys were still at Sacred Heart? It's me.

My Weekend.
Well, after the car wash on Saturday my dad and I hit the road down to Indy... the trip down there was uneventful except for the fact that one of those obnoxious Shrek balloons on the tops of Burger Kings (Don't toy promotions for movies usually start BEFORE it comes out? This was a week late. But I'm not complaining.) but the head was not inflated properly, so it looked like we had a scene from Sleepy Hollow going on with a balloon on the roof of a Burger King. I tried to get pics on the way back today but they had taken it down by then.



We arrived in Indy at about 5:30 their time, and we hung around my uncle's house for a while, watching TV and reading movie reviews. Turns out reviews for Day After Tommorrow are mixed everywhere, not poor, just mixed. (The liberals and conservatives on the radio station my dad was listening to argued about how much the movie sucked and how both sides are using it in the political scene... Come on world, take it as an adventure/disaster movie, stop using it as a political mudslinging fest and just look on the bright side, for it's not as bad as the movie "The Day After.")



We then headed to dinner with the Vogels at Applebees a few miles from Mr. Vogel's mom's house. It was good. We went back to Tony's house and hung around, checked the weather.



There was supposed to be rain from 9-10 the next day.



No worries, they'll dry off the track by 11 and they'll start the race on schedule. We got up early the next morning and headed to our assigned parking space, then walked a mile to the racetrack. After going through the tunnel underneath the stands on one end we got into the center oval where we saw a small Chevy auto show going on. I tell you, Chevy's got it going on with some of those new models: The Cobalt SS, the SSR, and some others are really cool. We found our seats (Right behind the pits, about 50 yards from the starting line. We were behind a Redbull pit and the Subway pit) and it promptly started to rain. We waited it out, got some food, and went back to our seats and watched them dry the track with cars just driving really fast on it to heat it up, plus some trucks with trailers attached that had jet engines blowing down. What the idiots should have done was continue with the prerace ceremonies while drying the track. Instead, the parade of celebs, the like four singers, the invocation, and the parade of princesses all waited until the track was dry. So when the race should've started at 11, it started at 5 to 1.



The celebs in the celeb parade were mixed. Morgan Freeman (who drove the pace car), James Garner, Gary Trudeau (he got some boos), Godsmack, Jane Pauley, Florence Henderson, Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, Levar Burton, Jared from the Subway Commercials, Lee Ann Womack, And a bunch more I can't even remember.... So they did there thing, and by then everyone wanted the race to start so not even the reality show watching women (Reality people) or teenage boys (Jessica Simpson) cared anymore. But I did get to see Jessica Simpson. She was like 50 yards away from me. didn't beat my dad tho... he was walking around taking pics and she walked right in front of him across the red carpet. Ergh, i should have gone with him.



Now to the pinnacle of the weeked: The race. 33 cars entered. 11 did not finish the race because of crashes, mechanical difficulties or forfeiting, so it was a very eventful race. Another rain delay stopped the race after 25 out of 200 laps for about 1.5 MORE hours (each lap is 2.5 miles. 2.5 x 200 = Indy 500). After that we started up again. There were six Yellow Flag periods during the race for crashes, some of them were right in front of us near the pits. The one that was in front of us involved a car who like lost control of his steering when going into the pit, got rear ended by another car, and proceeded to smash up a third. From 0 to about 120 laps it was pretty interesting, sometimes tedious, but interesting. There were fair numbers of leader changes, the pit stops were eventful (Some guys couldn't restart their cars, others got done so fast they actually moved up in the rankings by taking a pit stop, and still others got hung up by running over equipment laying in the pit...). I kind of adopted a car during the race: The XM car, driven by Bryan Herta. He started at the 22nd position, made his way to the top 8 in the first 15 laps, and constantly held in the top 8 for the rest of the race. He was at #5 for a LONG time, and he worked his way up to 4th, then 3rd, then because of a pit stop by the #1 & 2 guys he took the lead, only to have to make a pit stop himself a few laps later. But, he regained his status in the top 5 until the race was called at lap 180 by the rain, and impending tornado warnings, right in the vicinity. This is where a day of waiting a total of 4 extra hours for a race we were there 3 hours before for and would take 3.5 hrs to run (IE it was basically a too f***ing long wait) turned into chaos.



So, we all bolted, no celebration by anyone, none of the ritual climbing of the fence or milk drinking, everyone was ordered to evacuate the premises. Mr.Vogel needed to get to the car a mile away as quick as possible because the touched down tornadoes in the area of Indianapolis were right near his mother's house, where his mom and two kids were (in fact it damaged a building right next to the applebees we were in the night before), so we fought the crowds and 20 minutes later when we got there, it started to pour, and his family in fact had heard the sirens and already reached the basement. It poured, traffic was backed up for miles, it flooded, and a tornado was heading our way. So, Mr. Vogel wants to head to the area where his mom lived, because eyewitness reports said it was a block from her house. So naturally we drive right into toward the tornado. Because it's the safe thing to do. When got within 5 miles, it got really still and stopped raining. Needless to say I was really freaked out. The rednecks were standing outside, just waiting for it to blow toward them. We were the only car we could see for those 5 miles. We got to his mom's house, no damage in her neighborhood, and the tornado had travelled on and dissipated. But we stayed at his mom's house for 30 minutes in that eerie calm, tornado sirens blasting, dark clouds condensing into loose, not-yet-spinning vertical shafts nearby. Finally, we got to leave the place, and got on the highway.

Halfway back to Tony's there was traffic backed up for some reason or another, so my dad took a detous or his own device:



(i.e. That means we ended up in a hick town where every other building was a church (the others were either grocery stores, shacks, or religious paraphrenaila stores) called Zionsville.)



We got out on 106th street, which took us right back near Tony's. We got inside, grilled chicken in the storm, lost power for 5 minutes, played with the chinchilla and watched the race replay. Sunday, we drove home.

That was my weekend. Fun, exciting, kinda scary at times, kinda boring at times, but well worth it.

I wish i could be there for her right now, but I see her very rarely throughout the day.

And when I do see her, I never have anything to say, and to sit there just keeping her company feels like I could do more.

Makes me feel bad that I can't do more. All i really can do is stand apart and sympathize.

I feel like I'm not good enough a friend, know what i'm saying?




**Mental Note: Let the feelings stand, Andrew, but remember that this is HER time...**

"Mop Tops are happy when they feed you..." ~ "Can't Stop" RHCP
My mop (or semi-mop) has been cut.


It's kind of a sad day.




It'll take me till probably 4th of July to get it all the way back out... It grows really fast for 2 weeks after its cut, then it like stops growing, but then at about 5 weeks my bangs and the back of my head start to creep out longer, and soon it's like I have a Charleston plus the workings of one of those 90's-white-trash-tails growing in a thin strand down my neck onto my shoulder blades...



*shudders*

Gundam Seed... :-/
I watched Saturday's episode of Gundam Seed. Despite my initial complaints of the sterile feeling and colors of the partial-cell animation of the show, which still stand, I'm getting into the rather sparse story. It seems like the first 4-5 episodes that they've shown have relied on the idea that you have read up on the character's backstories... or maybe it's designed that way, like you're thrown into a conflict you know little about and encounter the drama. I mean, the one girl in the pink who got rescued off of the capsule... you know like nothing about her yet she's all over the episodes as a whiny, needy brat. the commanders of the ship are not much more than people who narrate the battle scenes and tell Kira every episode, "YOu need to protect this ship because you're the only one who can fly the Gundam." Athrun's fellow Coordinators haven't provided much drama yet, and Raww le Klueze does not provide as much of a masked nemesis as Zechs/Milliardo, Schwartz, or Char have in previous series... That may be just the way they're doing things. Plus, the Gundams are cool with their different modes and big-ass guns, but it hasn't been explained why they turn gray when not in combat, or any real backstory or info about them. Maybe that's coming up... I definitely think the first 4-5 episodes I've seen are less gripping than Gundam Wing or even the original MSG, but they have beaten G Gundam in the "What's the point?" category.



Ah, k. I know most of you reading this don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but it's a fanboy thing. Let me be a geek once in a while. Gundam is one of my favorite series.

Another Bizarre dream (this one school related, sort of)... In Technicolor!
Last night I had another bizarre dream... this one I remember less of then the last one I talked about a month or two ago, but here goes:


Well, basically there was this guy who reminded me of the fat guy from Office Space who was killing people at my school (as usual in my dreams, at least, some people are non-descript, as in I can't put names to them, but the fact remains they were my classmates) and was hiding them around school grounds, which was in a differerent place; this location reminded me of along the Hoositonic back in MA... It was on the edge of a steep embankment leading down to a gully with a small stream. So anyways, the first kid he killed he placed in the parking lot under a 40' by 40' square of the fake grass you see as doormats at old people's houses (The body didn't leave a lump though). But anyways, my sister and I just happened to notice this obvious sqare of plastic nobody else was seeing in a concrete lot, lifted it up, and found a body.


Then I woke up. SO I go back to sleep.

The police are there... They're looking over the crime scene, and though the 'me' walking around talking to them hasn't seen the murderer in his life, it's like he saw him kill them like I myself had (you know, like a movie, where you see the killer do it but then you watch the investigators try to figure it out for themselves... well the dream 'me' I was watching somehow saw the killing how the real 'me', the viewer, saw it. Way too wordy, eh?) Anyways, so I tell the cops this unnamed guy did it, but they said he wasn't a suspect because he had an alibi (as if they had checked already?!), which was he was at the comic book shop. Okay, so this dream is dramatic as I'm having it, but the 'me' in the dream bursts out laughing, because the murderer to him looks like the Comic Book Guy with glasses.


This is where it fragments into something unrelated:

So the story progresses, and I run back to this underground cave with Mark, who appears out of nowhere, and we access it by a manhole in the hallway of Reeths-Puffer HS. Mark, Dominique and I train other people in our class how to do something (The longer I am awake the less remember) and then all of a sudden some black half scorpion half batlike monsters crawl in the manhole. Almost cinematically my view of what was happening scrolled across Mark's, Domonique's, Gary's (?), then my face as we scream. Loudly. Then it cuts back to what have should have been these hybrid monsters, but its like a mob of parents, telling us to go vote at the Board Meeting.


Wha? Huh?


So back to the murder scene with the neon green astroturf/doormat material. I wander around to the back of the school, and I look down into the chasm, and there's the murderer/comic book guy planting azaleas in a REALLY DEEP (6 feet) hole. Then, as I'm frozen there, I watch him bust open one of those 20 lb bags of mulch with a knife, but inside it's another one of those nondescript kids from my class, bloody and decapitated. He plops it into the hole and starts acting like he's planting azaleas again. I run to get the cop, yelling something like this like on Scooby Doo (can't remember the exact words... again the longer and longer I'm awake...): "It was the _______ all along, right ______?!"... So the guys run down the hill while a jeep materializes out of thin air, does a rollover on the edge of the hill and proceeds to roll down the hill sideways after them. Then it disappears again, and the cops apprehend the guy. Then who shows up with a bouquet of flowers for Mark, (who didn't do anything with this murder investigation besides walk out of the woods and hand some handcuffs to the cops): my cousin Matt