I’m thinking Monday may just be Buddhapuss day. And now we bring you the furry guy.

The Omnificient Master Zen BP
Again, I thank you for your wise and just thoughts and comment. As for your (I am sure your impertinent human’s writings) comment regarding my friend and companion, for many years; “Kitty”, the escargot loving German Shepherd (synomynous with Alsatian)
“As for the snail eating German Shepherd that is a tough call. As you know Alsace-Lorraine is a region whose sovereignty has been disputed by both Germany and France since the reign of Bismarck. To you, I pose this question - how does the dog smell? That’s your first clue as to the kind of company it keeps as well as where it sleeps at night. Meditate on that and get back to me.”
‘Kitty’ smells no more. He succumbed quietly in his sleep beneath the bed, where he slept almost every night. He preferred White Zinfandel after dining on escargot. He did like Leibraumilch, for a while, but the dominant, cat of the house, ‘Puppy’ did finally consume larger and larger quantities of the wine and poor ‘Kitty’ was relegated to consuming lesser quality wines like Moet and Cold Duck, consequently leading to his unfortunate and untimely demise. I can say even twenty years later. I miss the crunch I still find myself toasting poor “Kitty’s” memory.
Your grateful friend, humble and obedient servant,
Rutreau

Dear Rutreau,
Your letter has caused me much concern. While you have shown signs of progress on your first steps to enlightenment, your tendency to serve cats and dogs alcohol might be seen by some as at the very least negligence and at the very worst, cruelty. Especially if you sentence them to imbibe trashy wines like Cold Duck.
Perhaps you are trying to skip ahead of your life path, thereby bypassing some of the process. A word of caution: do not approach the ways of Zen lightly. I shall meditate on your situation further and post more in the coming days. In the meantime please run spell check on your correspondence.
Yours in pats,
Buddhapuss

Revenge is the theme of the week, first Kill Bill 2 and now the Punisher. The Punisher is a spin off character from Spiderman. He’s an ex-FBI , ex Special Forces operative who is out to avenge the murder of his entire family.

It’s very important to keep in mind his origins and history as a comic book character because the direction and story pay homage to the series. It also means that the scope and tone of the film are more comic book like than Hollywood. More grit than gloss. If you’re hoping for a cool action flick, look elsewhere.

Three props

1) Thomas Jane is a good Punisher. He looks and acts the part.

2) The character is close to the series to it’s credit.

3) Despite his behavior at the end of the day the Punisher is pretty likable and humorous.

Three flops

1) Parts of the premise are ridiculous. The FBI and the mob are looking for him, but no one sees him lurking about exacting his revenge until it’s too late to stop him. Uh huh. This needed to be addressed.

2) John Travolta = Dr. Evil. Whether it’s a tribute or a rip off, it’s blatant, obvious and irksome.

3) Take away Thomas Jane and John Travolta and it’s one nasty sea of fugly actors. And I do mean fugly.

It’s definitely worth a matinée, DVD or video rental.

Remember his credo - “This is not revenge. This is punishment.”

This is the second and last installment in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill epic. The basic premise is that Beatrix Kiddo is out to avenge the death of her fiancee and the attempt on her life during a dress rehearsal for her wedding four years earlier. In Kill Bill 1 Beatrix settled the score with 1/2 of the hit squad. Now she’s going back to finish the job and kill Bill, the mastermind of the murder operation.

Here’s what works really well about this film.

1) The music - not only is the soundtrack excellent on it’s own right, the score works perfectly with every scene.

2) The character development - Quentin Tarantino has come a long way in this regard. 10 years ago his character development hinged on long rambling tracts of dialogue. What differentiated one character from another in his earlier work was what they said - or their particular approach to an argument. But this time out he developed a number of very memorable and discrete characters. It’s more subtle but welcome.

3) Acting - the acting here is top shelf. He’s never gotten better performances out of his actors.

4) Cinematography - again he’s progressed tremendously. The camera moves where and when it needs to.

5) Fight sequences - the martial arts work is great.

6) Basic premise - he makes the revenge motive work here and develops it credibly.

Here’s two areas that missed the mark

1) The final confrontation is almost anti-climatic and at points unbelievable. This detracted from the ending.

2) Before the final confrontation there’s a very distinct moment where the entire movie jumps the shark. It’s a big painful lurch when the action should be building up to a strong finish. Unfortunately the film never recovers from that moment.

I’m ready for a my weekly nap, which I missed yesterday since we went on a hike of doom. The purpose of the hike of doom is to get fresh air and exercise, and make it back to the car before the sun sets. Doom enters the picture when reality confronts the body with the following edict : this 4.5 hour hike must be done in 3.5 hours, because that’s all the light that’s available.

Now the wife is off at an orchard picking some kind of weird and possibly satanic fruit with a friend from high school. Meanwhile in a move to combat today’s less temperate weather, Oedipus has burrowed underneath the comforter. I’m not sure where the wife’s cat is, but it’s probably wedged itself in a shoe rack in the closet.

So that’s a clear sign I need a nap.

In more exciting news work continues on Velocity. I beat the first 50 pages ( out of 220 ) into submission. It was a rough task, but I wanted to make sure the first 50 pages rock. We’re getting there…

Hey,

Tech guy here. If you’ve been following the site this past week you might’ve noticed a few minor, but important changes. sam wants me to explain them.

1) Karma ratings - at the bottom of every blog is a karma bar, indicated by the phrase Current Karma. This is your chance to tell sam what you think of the blog by assigning it a positive, neutral or negative karma. Like the blog? Hate the blog? Think it’s whatevery? Click one of the links in the karma bar to let sam know. The karmic rating updates in real time and displays to the left of the bar in parentheses.

2) Categories - in order to make it easier to find blogs, we added a category selection. At the bottom of every blog, just below the karma bar is the category. Click that link and to see all the blogs for a given category, sorted by date.

3) Search - the search results now show the category of the blog, as well as the current karma. Give it a whirl.

In the coming week or so, sam wants me to overhaul the reader ratings page so the karmic results are more interesting. Right now its just a long list sorted by karmic rating. That’s kinda beat, I know.

Laters,
Tech guy

Dear Buddhapuss,
I want a Buddhapuss t-shirt. Where can I get one?
Naked in Ohio,
Mark

Dear Mark,
To Zen your nudity is irrelevant, but the laws of this society state quite clearly that mediating while nude is unacceptable. Never fear, enlightenment is near. A few weeks ago I spoke to sam, anticipating that there might be some kind of demand for a Zen Master t-shirt. sam called Spike our graphics guru.
Now despite my lack of oversight from that spark of brilliance, sam and Spike managed to come up with a pretty spiffy shirt design featuring me, Buddhapuss. However, for some reason, they depicted me as a bit more robust aound the waist than my material presence warrants.
Anyway, look for these shirts soon.
Yours in pats,
Buddhapuss

The follow up to Nia Vardolos international hit, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla arrived in theaters last Friday and died on arrival. It was so bad Uma Thurman may as well have jumped off the screen of Kill Bill 2 and killed the producers and studio.

Let’s step through the math and compare box office, shall we?
MGFGW 353 worldwide gross - 24 million costs = 329 million profit

Man, that’s a nice tidy profit. And that number excludes video rentals, DVD sales and the TV show spin off. Now compare MBFGW numbers to Connie and Carla so far.

Connie and Carla gross 3 million - 37 million cost = -34 million << OUCH!

My math’s kinda fuzzy but one of those bottom lines don’t look like the other. So sam, what the hell is your point? I don’t like math blogs, you’re saying. Here’s my point, follow ups in the wake of smash hits are very difficult animals. Judge not Nia, is all I’m saying. Anything that comes after a tsunami like MBFGW comes with the baggage of very high expectations. But I only have the expectation that the movie is in color and costs me 9 bucks to see. And you never know, it may pick up steam over time. This Friday I’m going to see Connie and Carla. If it’s still playing.