Stupid People Part 3

I read this on Yahoo News and could not stop laughing. Check it out.


Panda Bear attacks college student who tried to give it a hug.

BEIJING – A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) -high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten in the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clear-headed, he said.

"Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger, but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.

The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep.The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.

I am still laughing after reading and re-reading this. Liu, congratulations, you are this months winner of the dumb ass award. You, are officially retarded. If I was the panda bear I would have first taken a swipe at your head to try and shake your brain back into place before biting you but even then I think you would have thought, "Oh he's just an angry little bear." I hope they banned you from the zoo and if I really was presenting you with an award, I would have a trained Panda Bear present it to to you then, after you accepted it would bit you again just as a reminder that PANDA BEARS DO NOT LIKE HUGS. Especially from humans! If a trained Panda Bear was not available I would have a guy dress up in a Panda Bear costume, have him present the award to you then punch you in the face, then stomach, then face again. This is not the sneezing Panda Bear from you tube, even that bear would have bitten you.

Liu, thanks for the laugh.

30 Down ??? To Go.

I was not planning on writing any notes or blogs today but when facebook points out that I am no longer in my 20s and am still single...I tend to find that a little personal. Upon logging in today, I found new advertisements reminding me that I am no longer in my 20s. "Happy Birthday from Facebook, Xavier. Take a look at these websites, here you can meet women or men that are between the ages of 30 and 39. The love of your life is just one click away! They even offered a website called "Professional Singles USA" or something like that. Why would I want to date a "professional single"? Those two words should not ever be used back to back. By the way, what is a "professional single"? That sounds pretty bad to me and I don't want to be affiliated with any "professional single" Sounds like all the dating websites sorted through their membership databank, found the oldest members, and tossed them into this new databank, and created a website which should read, "Single For Time and All Eternity or Till Death."

How about this ad, "Click hear to purchase music that will being back nostalgic memories from your childhood. We have the greatest hits from the 70's and 80s. Do you remember where you were the first time Michael Jackson did the Moonwalk on live television? With these classic hits you will be taken back to that historic moment in pop and r&b history."

Great thanks for pointing out the facts that I am 30, single, and was alive in the last decades of great original music and to answer your question, yes, I do remember where I was when Michael Jackson showed the world the Moonwalk on live television. Not that I am complaining, I love oldies. The music today is nothing but crap. Everything sounds the same. I was recently reminded of my age when some co-workers and I watched Karate Kid 1 and 2. I stated, "Man I remember watching that movie in theaters." Then I realized that the year that those movies came out, was the year that some of my co-workers were born. Again I am not complaining.

"Xavier your half way to 60!" is that the best you can do. How about this and I have to give credit to my father for this one. "I can count higher than that, how about this one? In one thousand years, I will be 1030. How bout them apples?"

With all that said, Sorry facebook, I beat you to the punch. I don't need your 30s+ singles website. I have ldssingles.com....not that I ever use it and I have a plethora of 80's music plus another 10 cds worth of 80s music that a family member has.

Maybe in another 30 years I'll write another note and talk about the "good old days when cars ran on gas and oil instead of electricity or alcohol, and good music was Paul Simon, Michael Jackson, and Paula Abdul, and good video games were Bomberman, Pac-man, Frogger, and Dig-Dug I'll reminisce and mope about all this while sitting on my porch sipping lemonade listening to a band known as Led Zeppelin sing about a "Stairway To Heaven" on an old portable cd player while giving the bird and fist of fury to the "young whippersnappers" speeding down the street in their automobiles and motorcycles.

Havasupai Trip

This past week has been one of the best weeks of my life. I spent the majority of last week at Havasupai which, for those of you who don't know, is located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon just outside of Kingman, Arizona. The following people went, my brother Shad, my sister Lori, her husband Brady, and all of his brothers, the wife of one of his brothers, and two of his best friends.

At first I was kind of hesitant about going but in the end I am glad I decided to go. We left on Wednesday July 23rd. Before we left we took my other sister to Tucanos for her birthday which, was fun. I love Tucanos. Anyway after lunch we took my sister back to work and we met up with the rest of the family and in-laws bought food that we would need for the road and food that we would be eating while camping. We then started the long drive from Orem, Utah to Kingman, AZ. The drive was pretty fun, we stopped in Saint George to drop off some electrical items at my brother-in-laws grandparents home then continued the drive. The next stop was at Wal-Mart in Henderson, NV to get some drinks, water shoes and a few other things and then it was back on the road. At 4 am, we finally pulled into the parking lot where the entrance to the trail that would take us to Havasu Village. We loaded up our backpacks and began the 8 mile hike in. It was still dark and the sun was about an hour away from rising so we used flashlights for the first few miles.  

The sunrise in The Grand Canyon, was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. It was so quiet and the only only noise were the bats flying over head and one of Brady's brothers and I conversing. Occasionally we would see a guy from the Havasu Tribe ride past us with a team of mules and horses and as we got closer they would tell us how much further we had left.  At one point we saw a guy asleep on a boulder.  My guess is he slept there overnight though, I doubt he was comfortable.







 

I finally realized how close we were when small streams started appearing.  These streams eventually turned into rivers and required bridges to get across them.  Finally about three or four hours later from the time we started hiking in, we entered the village.  We checked in and paid for the campsite and then hiked about another mile. We finally knew that our hike was at an end when we saw Havasu Falls, and let me tell you it was a beautiful site. After taking in the site and taking a few pictures, we went and found our campsite, set up hammocks, tents, and then changed and ran back to Havasu Falls and played in the water.  

I have never seen water so blue and so clear in my life it was amazing. Jumping into the pool of water was even better.  The water, to our surprise, was actually colder than we expected but moments after diving in it was all better. We jumped off boulders, and went behind Havasu Falls and jumped from a cove behind it, directly into the waterfall which was pretty cool and kind of frightening at the same time. There were some  water falls that were smaller than Havasu Falls that we jumped off as well. After playing in the falls for a couple of hours we headed back to our campsite, had lunch and then some of us took naps and some went back to play in the water again.  I was one who took a nap. When I woke up it was time for dinner.

After dinner we played card games and just conversed. I was pretty tired so I went back to my hammock and went back to sleep. I woke up at around 3 am to aching legs and an aching back.  The way I had set up my hammock was not the best position for my legs and back to be comfortable.  I rolled out of the hammock and while doing so almost fell into the river that was right next to me but I managed to catch my balance.  I then saw a dog that had fallen asleep close to my hammock. I guess my stumbling around woke him up to cause he stood up and watched move from the hammock to the table.  When the dog saw that I had moved to the table he walked to the table and laid down next to it.  I sat down and started playing the dog. This dog was pretty cool.  I played with the dog for about an hour and a half before sleep returned and I laid down on the table, covered myself from head to toe with my blanket, and went back to sleep.

The following morning my sister and her husband Brady, made pancakes for breakfast. They turned out pretty good but then again, I could eat pancakes anytime of day. After breakfast, we cleaned up and walked about 5-10 minutes to the start of the trail to get down to Moony Falls.

That trail will most likely go down as one of the most narrow and steep trails I have ever and will ever been on.  This trail was so narrow that only one person could go at a time.  The trail was so steep that you would have to hang on to a long chain and pieces of steel that the tribe had placed along the trail.  What was even more nerve racking, was the way back up when the trail was wet due to peoples wet shoes.  We had to wear shoes while in the water because a lot of the rocks were sharp.  That trail, at least to me, reminded me of life and how hard it can be. How one slip no matter how big or small can end up seriously hurting or killing us physically or spiritually. However we do have guidance.  The chains and steel grips that have been placed to help us on our journey down the narrow path can, in way, represent the gospel of Jesus Christ. As long as we  hang on to the principles of the gospel and trust in it and Him, we will make to the end of the trail no matter

how steep,narrow,or scary it maybe.

When we got to the bottom, there was this little island between two streams, we walked to the island and placed our lunch, cameras, and shirts, there and went swimming in Moony Falls.  There were some people who were climbing up the side of the falls going a good 25-30 feet above the surface of the water and jumping in. Moony Falls is 100 feet higher than Havasu Falls so the current it made was a lot stronger and made getting behind the waterfall almost impossible. We had to find  hand and foot grips along the cliff wall to get behind both Havasu and Moony Falls. Once behind them, it was almost impossible to see or hear anything and at some parts, hard to breathe due to the heavy water sprays. I honestly don't know what to compare that feeling too. After playing in Moony Falls we had lunch and then floated down the river and jumped of other significantly smaller waterfalls.  We eventually came to a rope swing and played on that for about 30 minutes.  At one point I almost seriously injured myself. Off to the left of the rope swing were some sharp rocks that were sticking out of the water. I swung out and left gliding over those rocks barely missing them. If I had hit I would have had several gashes on my legs and torso.  After playing on the rope swing, we were going to head to the next waterfall which would have been Beaver Falls but then we heard it was 4 miles away so we headed back to Moony Falls and played in that for about another hour and half. When we were done we literally climbed and pulled ourselves back up the narrow trail and went back to camp for dinner. Dinner that night, Friday, we had soup and stew which was pretty good.  After dinner I went back to the trail entrance of Moony Falls and took some pictures. I would have gone down the trail again but, seeing that I was alone, I decided against it incase I somehow slipped and fell.  There was no one at the bottom of the trail, no one playing in the waterfall, or no one at the top of the trail. I took a few pictures and headed back to camp.  It was there that also learned how the transport the full portapotties out of the camp grounds. Helicopters fly in and wench them on and fly them out and then then fly back in with new ones. I had never seen that before.  That night I slept in a tent and slept a whole lot better than I had the night before. Before heading to bed, my sister told us that when the moon is out Havasu Falls glows in the dark. So we went out to Havasu Falls but we went to early and there was cloud cover so we did not get to see that.

The following morning, Saturday, my brother and I made Oatmeal for breakfast and then we packed up camp and went and played at Havasu Falls one last time. When we were done there we hiked out to Navajo Falls which was the last waterfall we would visit on our trip.  Navajo Falls was amazing as well. To the immediate left of the falls was another waterfall, this one also had water running down a rock the emptied out into a pool that connected to Navajo Falls.  I walked up this rock and behind it was this awesome grotto.  I hung out there for a little while watching the waterfalls and then went back to where the rest of the group was and watched some of them jump off Navajo Falls.  





The plan was to hang out at Navajo Falls till 5 pm but for some reason people thought that we had enough cloud cover that would protect us from the sun during the 8 mile hike out. I was against hiking out at the current time which was noon.  I was out voted 2 to 8 and the hike out began after a quick lunch.  The cloud cover disappeared as we began the hike out and the skies became perfectly clear.  We looked for a spot to change out of our swim attire and ended up changing into our hiking clothes behind this huge boulder. 

When we reached the village we drank our water and refilled. I had a 1.5 liter bottle. I drained that once and refilled it and began hiking out again.  At the entrance of the village, there is a store where you can buy canned food, water, Gatorade, and all kinds of food stuff and it is not over priced. As we passed this store I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to buy two 32oz bottles of Gatorade. I stopped and then looked at my full bottle of water and thought, "I'm just being paranoid I have enough water."  I kept on walking.  Two of the other guys from our camp raced ahead and had something that we would need but not have later.

I walked with two of my brother -in-law's brothers. About an hour into walking I had not yet drank from my bottle of water and we came across a stream.  We were all pretty sweaty and hot from the burning sun so we dipped our heads in the stream and drank some of our water.  The next time we stopped is when the hard times would begin.  We kept on walking and making out way to the entrance. We stopped about 45 minutes later for a water break. It was there that we learned that one of the brothers had lost one of his water bottles somewhere along the way and the other brother was nearly out of water. By the next stop they were both out of water and I willingly shared my water with them but it was not nearly enough. We ran out faster than we expected and the guys who raced ahead had a water filter that we needed to filter water from the stream. We by the time we got to the top of the first switch back we were all dehydrated and on the verge of passing out. We did not know what to do. We started offering to buy water off of people that passed us but they were either out or had only a few swallows left. We found a shade spot and rested under there. The rest of our group with the exception of the two guys who raced ahead and were now at the entrance were behind and we did not have the strength to go and look for them. We asked each other what we should do.  

We all agreed that we need water but there was none around.  We decided to pray. We knelt down and prayed for water and that the rest of our group would soon catch up and we could figure out what to do at that point.  Not more than a couple of minutes passed by when out of no where, this man from the Havasu Tribe walked around the corner carrying two cold bottles of Gatorade and a cold bottle of water. We bought those from him and started drinking the gatorade. I was almost in tears when I saw this man come around the corner and my faith in the power of prayer was increased.






The rest of our group that was behind had not caught up yet and we were sure that they would be out of water as well so we saved the bottle of water for them.  About 30 minutes later, the rest of our group caught up and sure enough they were all out of water.  We gave them the bottle of water and then ended up buying a second from the guy who appeared out of no where.  He at that point was sitting on his own looking off into the canyon. The rest of the group asked if two other people from our group had passed us and we said only Matt and Dave (the  guys with the water filter) but there were two others who were still way behind and if we all had run out of water, we knew that they were out as well. Brady took charge and sent two of his brothers up to the entrance to get Matt and Dave and then he and my brother took the unopened water bottle and began the hike back down to find his other brother and his brother's wife.  My sister was scared because we were all drained and did not have enough water for four people. She began to cry and Brady comforted her. I hate seeing my family cry so after he and my brother went in search of the last two, I placed one of my arms around my sister and did what  I could to calm her down.  During that time another guy came running up asking if he could buy water or gatorade off of us. Between my sister and I we had almost no water and a 3/4 full bottle of Gatorade.  The guy said his girlfriend was dehydrated and was about to pass out.  We gave him the bottle of Gatorade. About 20 minutes later, my bother, Brady, and his brother and his brother's wife appeared. We sat with them for an additional 20 minutes. Then 3 guys from our group returned from the top with bottles of water. We drank those and the 3 guys relieved the weakest people in the party of their backpacks and we finished the hike out. At the top we bought more water from some people and then packed up our gear, took some pictures and started the drive back to Orem.  

The sunset was one of the most amazing sunsets I have ever seen. We stopped and gassed up about 50 miles from the trail entrance and we ran into people who had just finished the 8 mile hike as well. We were all sore and we were all limping.





 

We stopped at the first town we saw had dinner at Whataburger and Subway. I love Whataburger, I wish they were more spread out.  They are all located in Texas except for one in Arizona and one in New Mexico. Eating there was like a little slice of home. Anyway from there, we drove across The Hoover Dam, had to take a detour in Las Vegas because the lane to go to Salt Lake City was closed on the interstate. That detour took us through the roughest parts of the Las Vegas ghetto. Luckily by that time it was about 2:30 am so everyone was pretty much asleep. The saddest part of the detour was going down this one street and seeing countless homeless people some with blankets some without, sleeping on the both sides of the sidewalk. Our drive that night ended in Saint George, UT where we slept at Brady's grandparents home.  

The next day we woke up and went to sacrament meeting there in Saint George and then had lunch with Brady's grandparents before starting the last stretch of our drive back home. The drive back was ok, I slept most of the way and in the end was glad that I ended up going on this trip. I love Havasupai and would go back again in a heartbeat. 

Finding Myself, My Purpose, and My Destiny

The past month, month and a half, I have been isolating myself not only from friends but from family as well. I apologize for that but here is the reason why I have been a ghost lately. During this time of isolation, I have been doing a lot of thinking. Here I am nearly 30 and what have I accomplished in life? I graduated high school, I am an Eagle Scout, and I have only one semester of college under my belt, and I work at a video store. I don't mind the video store, I have worked there nearly 5 years however I do not want to be there the rest of my life. As I have been contemplating these things, I have also been looking at other job options but don't see them being fruitful. A friend wants me to apply as a driver for an armored car service, and another friend wants me as a pistol instructor. As much as I would like to teach people how to shoot I don't see that happening for reasons I will not mention on here. I have always wanted to just pack a bag of clothes in a duffel bag and hit the road and see where it would take me. However, what would that do to help me progress in life and become a contributing member of society? It simply wouldn't. Hitting the road would not earn money for college nor would it help me get a better job. As I left work today I was feeling kind of down because when it comes down to it, I have nothing to offer the world. I was in deep thought in maybe an almost mental prayer like state. I was asking for guidance and direction in my life, I was asking what my purpose in life was.

When I looked at the road there were two Army recruiters walking towards me. Usually I hate confronting military recruiters but, I had this overwhelming feeling like I needed to talk to them. They walked up to me and introduced themselves and we started conversing. At one point in the conversation they asked if I was going to college. I told them no. They asked if I would like to attend college. I said "of course who wouldn't?" Then they said that college students who decide to enlist in the Army to have the government pay for college can have an option of not being deployed during their 4 years of school as long as they are continuously attending college. On top of that they offered 1,350 a month so that I would not have to work and can just focus on my schooling and to pay tuition. On top of that, there is the usual $20,000 enlistment bonus cash. I know I don't get it all up front. There is a 4 year commitment to the military and as an soldier in the Army reserves, I would only be required to go to training one weekend out of every month.

Upon hearing all this I actually felt really good and it was not because the recruiters were doing their recruiting script. I have always felt that I own a debt to my country and I have always in some way wanted to serve my country. I called up my Dad and he gave me his full support if I decide to enlist. We talked about the seriousness of the military. My father tried to enlist so he could fight in Vietnam but could not due to a very minor medical condition with his eyes. I told him that I know the risks and sacrifices that are involved and that I was not afraid of those risk and sacrifices. I feel like this is where I belong, this is what I am supposed to do in life. I served God for two years straight and though my debt to God will never be fully paid, I feel that it is now time for me to serve my country and repay it for all the blessing and success I have had so far.

Tomorrow I am meeting with recruiters in Provo. However due to seriousness of the commitment that is involved in being apart of the military, I am not going to sign any contracts, until I have had more time to think about this and make sure that this is my path and destiny in life. I plan on spending at least one month of thought before making any final decisions. I want to be sure that this is what I really want to do and not have any regrets later.

I will update this blog after the meeting with the recruiters tomorrow.

Independence Day Weekend 2008

This year I took a break from what I have done almost every year on Independence Day since living here in Utah. Usually the way I spend Independence Day is hanging out with one of my best friends and his family and watch the Parade then get some good Barbecue and then head out to the Stadium of Fire which, if you have not been, is pretty much one of the best firework shows and concerts you will see. I abstained this year due to the fact that I was invited to spend the day with my sister, my brother-in-law and his family and also because this years main performer was none other than Hanna Montana. Come on Provo, the majority of the city is not made up of 13 year old girls. Last years show was amazing, I mean really when it comes to country music, there's no one better than Brooks & Dunn who were last years main performers at the above mentioned event.



Even though I know I would have had fun with the Halladays, I wanted to try something new so here is what went down.I got a phone call yesterday (Thursdays) from my brother -in-law and my sister asking if I would like to spend Independence Day with them. It was something new so I said sure. We ended up going to Kaysville which is about an hour and 15 minutes north of Orem/Provo. There, they have their annual parade and then a huge community water fight between the parade floats and the parade spectators. This was by far the biggest water fight I have ever seen. Even the fire department and other city water trucks were in on it. They would spray the spectators with their water hose and the citizens would run up to the trucks and dump huge buckets of water into the firetrucks drenching the driver and anyone else inside. I took a few pictures and missed getting drenched by a huge bucket of water by inches. I stepped forward to take a picture just as someone flung the water in their 5 gallon bucket at me and it barley missed me and mainly got splashed on the legs from the water hitting the street. This water fight went on for two continuous miles. However the water fight was broken up due to some minor injuries. A couple of boys got their legs and feet slightly run over by a float. Everyone thought that one of the boys had been run over the torso so life flight was brought in as a precautionary. Thankfully they were just very minor injuries and the boys were released later in the day.



After the water fight, we headed to a park and played volleyball and Frisbee. Then we all went back to my brother-in-laws parents house and played badminton and barbecued. The badminton was fun. We played till one team reached ten points. One game lasted till the final score was 15-14. The following games final score was 10-0...I was on the losing side but it was fun. Following that we watched the firework show and then caught the tail end of the movie Independence Day. My brother would have joined us but he spent the day at Bear Lake wake boarding. Following the fireworks we pretty much called it a day, and my sister and brother-in-law dropped me off at my place before heading home. When I got home I reflected on the Founding Fathers and the great sacrifices they made and the sacrifices that our armed forces make as they serve and put their lives on the line so that we may continue to enjoy the freedoms that we have and more than often take for granted.



I think next year I will be more prepared for the post parade water fight. There were people who had lined the beds of their pickups with tarps and filled them with water. Others had rented trailers with high walls , lined them with tarps and filled them with water as well. It was pretty insane. I am looking forward to next years water fight.


On Saturday, I mainly chilled at home and got caught up on much needed sleep. Around noon I got a phone call from one of my best friends and was invited to hang out with him and his family at his uncle's house. His uncle lives about a mile from me so I headed down there around 8pm and got to visit and see Jake, his wife Lynn, and their new baby Annabelle, who by the way is the cutest, coolest, most awesome and chill baby I have ever met. I also got to visit with his parents. I really am grateful for Jake, his family, and my friendship with them. They have done so much for me.

Sunday I went to church and then spent the evening playing Risk with my brother and my brother-in-law. My brother and I formed an alliance against Brady ( my brother-in-law) because every time I attacked him, he kept on rolling pairs of 6 which meant that I lost the battles. So in order to even things out, my brother nuked Asia which is where a lot of Brady's men were stationed and then he attacked and wiped out most of his men in Africa. I caused minimal damage to Brady and ended up coming in last in the game. Over all it was a pretty fun weekend. I think one thing I learned from this weekend is that I need to be more social. Last Saturday was pretty fun too. I went to dinner with Andrew and his wife, Jolyn and then my brother, my sister, and her husband Brady, met up with us at a park in Provo and we played baseball for a couple of hours. It was pretty sweet.

Indie Film Is Dying--Unless It Isn't

The following is an article that my uncle sent to over email. I found it interesting enough to post on here. It is from Salon.com

BEYOND THE MULTIPLEX
by Andrew O'Hehir

Indie Film Is Dying--Unless It Isn't.

All winter and spring, people in the independent-film business have been murmuring politely behind their hands and pretending not to see the 800-pound walrus in the corner of the room: The indie industry is undergoing a sudden and largely unexpected meltdown, or in the business-speak recently employed by Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, "a periodic market adjustment."

Nobody's ignoring it anymore, not after Saturday's address to a Los Angeles Film Festival conference by Mark Gill, CEO of the independent production and financing outfit the Film Department and former president of Miramax and Warner Independent. Gill's speech, entitled "Yes, the Sky Really Is Falling," was followed by a thoughtful Sunday column from the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey, cataloging everything that has gone wrong for small films, and the companies that make them, in the last six months.

It's a short but bloody history: Warner Bros. shut down its Picturehouse and Warner Independent subsidiaries and slashed the staff of New Line Cinema by 90 percent. Paramount Vantage, another "studio specialty division" that was born just two years ago, is being reabsorbed by Paramount Pictures. ThinkFilm, a true independent distributor, is being sued by vendors who say they haven't been paid and is under fire from documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who claims the company botched the release of his Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side." Think's future is in doubt, as is that of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, which has reportedly downsized itself by half. According to Gill, who ought to know, at least five other indie distributors "are in serious financial peril." (I could probably guess who three or four of those are, but it's indecent to speculate about other people's livelihoods.)

At the big winter-spring marketplaces of Sundance, Berlin and Cannes, the apparent indie boom of the last few years turned awfully tepid, awfully fast. There were lots of terrific smaller-scale films at those festivals, but hardly anything that looked or felt like an international art-house hit on the scale of "Pan's Labyrinth" or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- the movies that enable indie distributors like IFC or Miramax or Sony Classics to take chances on riskier fare. And as Rickey details, it's been a relatively weak year at the box office, with expected hits like "The Counterfeiters," "The Visitor," "In Bruges" and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" failing to cross over to mainstream moviegoers (or at least not in sufficient numbers).

Perhaps your heart does not bleed overmuch, amid the general economic and spiritual turmoil of our country, for a few middle-sized motion pictures that failed to meet expectations -- or for a few dozen movie-industry executives forcibly ejected from the corporate suites of Manhattan and Burbank. First of all this isn't really about them, although most of them are decent and knowledgeable people who care more about movies than about money (or they wouldn't be working on the weedy intellectual fringe of the entertainment industry). It's also insufficient to retreat to some 2002-style panegyric about how a digital democracy is dawning and these old-school gatekeepers must perish in the tar pits of economic history for a new model to emerge.

That argument has a pseudo-Marxist ring of historical inevitability about it, but it's mostly wrong. Nobody in the film business questions that the current mode of distribution for independent film -- in Rickey's article, Emerging Pictures CEO Ira Deutchman calls it the "post-studio, pre-Internet era" -- is somewhere between transitional and dysfunctional, and that some version of electronic home delivery is likely to dominate the marketplace within five to 15 years. But as God is my witness, we need gatekeepers! If anything, we need them in the digital era more than ever. At least in the short term, the current marketplace implosion is likely to have a highly undemocratic effect on both filmmakers and film lovers, delivering still more practical control over what we watch and when to a shrinking group of ever-larger entertainment conglomerates.

Even as the potential moviegoing public has become distracted by an explosion of electronic options and devices unimagined a generation ago, the marketplace has been swamped by a poisonous glut of new movies. As Gill explains, in 1993, the Sundance Film Festival received roughly 500 submissions. For 2008, that number had swollen to more than 5,000. The reasons for that are various: The cost of producing a small-budget motion picture has fallen sharply in the digital age, and the success of a handful of indies in the late '90s and early 2000s drew investors large and small to pour countless billions of dollars into filmmaking.

It hasn't turned out to be a sensible investment. Gill calculates the odds of losing all your money on an independent film at 99.95 percent. Most of those 5,000 movies, in his words, are "pre-ordained flops," made by people "who forgot that their odds would have been better if they'd converted their money into quarters and taken the all-night party bus to Vegas." First of all, there's the simple fact that the market can't support more than 10 percent of those movies in a given year, and probably a much lower ratio than that. In 2007 a reported 603 films were released theatrically in the United States, the vast majority of them coming and going almost unnoticed. Everyone in the business agrees that number is unsustainably high; a more reasonable level might be 250 to 300.

Then there's the fact that while enthusiasm, access to technology and an eagerness to become famous may be widespread, talent and craftsmanship are not. As anybody who's ever served on a film-festival selection committee learns the hard way, most of those movies should never have been made in the first place and definitely should not be inflicted upon the public. There has indeed been an explosion of ultra-low-budget filmmaking -- just try to wade through the self-produced movies available on YouTube -- but so far it has not revealed a nation full of unheralded Orson Welleses in embryo. If anything, it has produced a deluge of abysmal crap that makes the genuine discoveries harder to see. As Gill acidly observed: "The digital revolution is here, and boy does it suck."

Is he just an old-economy pterosaur cynically trying to fend off the evolutionary trend that will make him obsolete? Sure, maybe. But that doesn't make him wrong. However independent films will be distributed in the future, I suspect a two-tier economy will be involved. There will still be a professional film industry that produces and distributes a relatively small number of movies that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whether they reach you in theaters, through a cable box, on your computer or iPod or through some other pipeline not yet devised. There will also be a purely digital universe of films that cost almost nothing to make and almost nothing to watch -- sort of a purified, film-school version of YouTube, minus any dreams of media stardom or celebrity coke parties.

There are two contradictory ways of looking at the current crisis, and as is customary with these things, they're both partly accurate without quite grasping the big picture. On one hand, this rapidly snowballing market crash seemed to come out of nowhere. Indiewood movies, meaning those distributed by the studios' specialty divisions, have dominated the Oscar nominations for the last three or four years. Just last fall, Miramax and the now-defunct Paramount Vantage shared the production and distribution of "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," the year's two most acclaimed American films. You might have heard about a little Fox Searchlight release called "Juno," which approximately everyone in the country saw twice. It looked as if the mid-level quasi-independent film was conquering the adult moviegoing market, turning the big studios into teen-oriented sequel factories and driving smaller, more adventurous art-house cinema to the margins of the margins.

On the other hand, even if nobody saw this coming, we should have seen something coming. The national economy has slipped into what looks like a protracted recession, the supply pipeline is clogged with crap, the future of film distribution is literally up in the air and the audience is distracted, distraught and fragmented. Newspapers, broadcast TV, the music industry and other media have suffered precipitous downturns. What a great moment for dark and quirky motion pictures! Seen in that light, a market crash was an enormous duh, and perhaps a necessary correction, as they say in business school. Maybe all that stock-market money had to go down the toilet to get the industry focused on making fewer and better films, a solution that would make many of these problems go away.

Of course my judgment, like that of Mark Gill and Carrie Rickey, may be clouded by my desire to make a living: If independent film disappears as an economically viable industry, I'll have to find something else to write about. Be that as it may, I'll sign on with their guarded optimism; as the president always tells Congress during the State of the Union address, the "economic fundamentals" beneath the whole enterprise remain strong, and down cycles give way to up cycles just as surely as rain produces flowers. Gill cites marketing data suggesting that 10 percent of the public tell pollsters they prefer independent films to mainstream fare, which if anything is a historic increase. (Indies traditionally account for 5 or 6 percent of ticket sales.)

Does that polling data actually mean that one in 10 Americans would rather see Werner Herzog's new Antarctica documentary (doing very well in limited release, thank you), or revisit Kieslowski's "Three Colors" than stand in line for Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick? Or does it just reflect a momentary semiotic uptick in the number of people who want to appear hip and sophisticated? I think we know the answer to that question, but there's a trickier one out there: How does the economic, social and cultural climate surrounding filmmaking affect the work? And in the age of the iPhone and the Wii and the whatever else, are there still budding Fellinis and Tarantinos interested in creating spellbinding visual narratives that demand your full attention for 90-plus minutes?

Sure there are. Sony's Tom Bernard told Rickey that the obituary for art-house movies "appears every 17 years, like the locust." The indie booms of the '80s and '90s crested and collapsed in their turn, but the best filmmakers always survived -- and without fail every year moviegoers turn some totally unlikely release into a big hit. As far as the old-fashioned movie experience is concerned, Gill is probably right that in a few years we'll have half as many films released in half as many theaters. This will be a sad transition for many of us, sure. But the movies weren't killed by television, they weren't killed by VHS and DVD, and they can't be killed by whatever's happening now.

― Andrew O'Hehir

Stupid People part 2

I don't know what it is about people that visit the video store I work but on some days, we get the some of the dumbest people on the face of the earth and I'm talking about people that are dumber than a bucket of rocks. The following is a word for word conversation between one of those kind of customers and myself. This took place Monday night when Brett and I were working.

Customer: Hey I rented this game (Ghost Recon:Advanced War Fighter 2) and it says on the back that its supposed to play in HD but it doesn't do you know why?

Me: Well, how is your Xbox set up?

Customer: I have it plugged in and running through my VCR.

Me (trying not to laugh): You need to have it plugged directly into your television set. You do have and HD television set right?

Customer: No, do you need one for games to play in HD?

Me: Ummmm, yeah you kinda do.

Customer walks away then says to his friend, :Hey bro, we need an HD TV bro.

People like this prove that God has a good sense of humor.