Jim Goings

Michael Knight is now a James Bond type character, except he’s like 25 years old (or looks it).  I didn’t buy one minute of his attempts at being suave.

Our first view of KITT is in his “attack mode” configuration.  This means that he has ground effects, spoilers, and some ridiculous looking blowers on the hood.  So much for subtle.

KITT is now a mustang… or a F150 truck, or probably anything Ford makes.  I expect next episode KITT will go into “stealth mode” by turning into a Ford Taurus.

In one scene, the two heroes jump into the bed of KITT truck and it transforms into a car while they are shifted to the front seats somehow.  It looked as ridiculous as it sounds.

KITT is struck by a missle that has some chemically enhanced napalm or something on it that prevents the flames from going out.

Despite the fact that KITT is now going 377 miles per hour in CITY STREETS, the flames continue to heat up the car, threatening the lives of Michael and Sarah.  Oh noes!

What do they do?  TAKE THEIR CLOTHES OFF.  Sarah tells Michael to not get excited and that it’s “just the heat of the moment”.  Ugh.  KITT confirms that taking their clothes off is a good idea. (it’s a bad idea to remove the insulation between your body and the heat)  Fireman don’t go into fires in speedos for a reason.

Meanwhile, back at the Knight Industries command center, there are literally tons of people moving around, pushing carts, sitting at computers, and generally looking very busy and concerned that Michael and Sarah are about to die.  It all looked ridiculous.

When KITT makes it back to the command center (after a ridiculous scene involving oxygen removal to put the flames out), our two heroes are unconscious and need to be revived with special blue glowing gun things.  They awake instantly and are back in action.

We are introduced to two new characters, a tech geek who portrays every geek stereotype and valley girl hottie Smith Cho who speaks 9 languages and enjoys taunting the geek with her body and saying things like “we should make babies” and then laughing at him.  Ugh.

KITT spent too much time analyzing hormone levels and discussing the love relationship between Michael and Sarah (his sidekick apparently).

There were several driving scenes where the green screen was poorly done.  Also, Michael spent a bunch of time driving while looking everywhere else but the road.  I suspose KITT could have been driving, but why were Michael’s hands on the steering wheel then?

The cliche lines were over the top.  Here are a few choice ones:

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way” (villain says to Sarah while threatening her with a syringe of glowing green liquid)

“KITT, we’re bringing you in hot!” (referring to the fact that KITT was on fire at the time)

“Mike, you have to get his thumb back at all costs!” (referring to a severed thumb that contained DNA they needed to unlock an encryption algorithm)

Oh, the good points about the show

Val Kilmer as KITT is pretty sweet actually.  His performance as KITT is panned online by most reviewers, but I actually liked it.

The CGI on the transformations wasn’t as good as the Transformers movie, but darn good for a TV show.

Talk about a double-header!  Sonata Arctica and Nightwish together in one concert is a recipe for explosions of awesome.  It tasted great.

Sonata Arctica was fairly new to me - I’d only heard a couple of their songs before.  Their keytar player had me jonsing to go though!  That guy rocks!  The lead singer has a great voice and knew how to work the crowd.  Excellent songs (for the genre) and good stage presence overall.  A+ (just as good as Nightwish’s show)

Nightwish entered with the same epic fanfare as the last show (a few months ago iirc), but it still worked like a charm.  These guys are some of the best musicians in the business - they have perfected their craft and just have fun on stage.  I love the new singer, but wow did she choose a poor wardrobe and hair style for this show.  She wore some sort of spandex that had a really low crotch which just looked weird and was quite distracting.  Her hair went from long and black to short, feathered, combed back, and dyed two or three colors.  Blech.  She’s a great singer though and a wonderful replacement for Tarja.  A+

The roseland is a venue with a mixed review.  One one hand, it’s small and offers a very intimate experience with the performers.  On the other hand, the sound system is crap.  It’s usually too loud - to the point of being distorted.  The mix is usually crap, with drum bass overpowering everything else.  Vocals are often hard to understand and guitar solos are often drowned out.  The best venue in the NW that I’ve been too is the Clark County Ampitheater which had awesome sound quality.  The roseland however does not.  Boo.  D+

Chibby and I went to see Hancock earlier today.  It was pretty good, but the first half was way better than the last half.  I wasn’t a fan of the plot twist and thought the movie lost focus.  Charlize Theron is easy on the eyes though.

On the way back, we stopped at Home Depot to get a much needed sprinkler for the front lawn.  After I mowed the lawn, the kids played for a bit.

30 years after making mixtapes for your friends was all the rage, muxtape enters the scene with the new simple, digitial way of doing the same thing.

My muxtape has some tunes that I think are interesting and worth a listen.

Chibby has told me a few times about how great Rhapsody is so I signed up tonight. For $12.99 per month you get streaming access to a veritable limitless selection of music. However, as a mac user, I can’t download the songs so I have to stream them. Not a big deal since I’m rarely without Internet.

However, in my two hours or so of goofing with it off and on, I have found several major mistakes in their database. For example, Scala, a European girls choir is listed under techno with a bio that clearly belongs to a different group. A search for “disney” takes me to Christian praise and worship songs. I found countless other small issues that really take the glean off of an otherwise terrific idea. There were also a lot of web site bugs (links that don’t work, things that should be links that aren’t, etc). Overall, I give it a 8/10.