There's a new craze that's slowly been sweeping the country recently. Everyone is familiar with the concept of "going green" and the associated desire to take care of the environment. A group of people in Rhode Island decided they were tired of being forced to hear about "going green" everywhere they turned, and decided to do something about it. According to co-founder John Warrick: "Why should we deprive the planet of toxins? It's like our immune system...if we didn't ever encounter germs, when we finally do we will get sick extremely easily. By being exposed to germs on a regular basis, we develop antibodies so we don't get sick as frequently. Well, the same is true for the Earth!" John started the "going red" movement out of his garage, and now the red logos are becoming a familiar sight around Rhode Island:

The (now international) "Go Red" logo

"We're helping protect the planet too. And more people are catching on. We hold lots of events like random tree burnings, car emission contests, leaving our refrigerator doors open for hours, turning on lights in any room we encounter, etc. It seems to be pretty effective. This year I'm leaving up my Christmas lights all year round, and I have the Guinness world record for Christmas light power consumption in a single day!"

Some convert their cars to run on vegetable oil, John made his run on newspapers, magazines, phonebooks, etc.

More information on the "Go Red" movement can be found at their website, www.JustGoRed.com

This week's episode was exceedingly dull. Often that happens when there's action being setup for a future episode, but in this case it felt like nothing more than an effort to kill time. And to exacerbate the situation, there were still several ludicrous plot holes, mostly pertaining to security once more. Why has this whole season been full of horrible security on supposedly secure sites? We already saw the laughable security at the White House, but now at the Starkwood base, where there's supposedly 1500 mercenaries, they expect 12 to be in the warehouse with the weapon and 2 to be guarding that warehouse? And regardless of how many they thought there would be, they could only send in 3 helicopters of FBI forces? Has everyone forgotten there's a SWAT team? This is the best that can be done on the highest priority threat to the country? And I like how Larry just strolls up to the guys guarding the warehouse without wearing any kind of armor like the rest of the FBI guys. Also, if Greg was so key, why didn't they leave him in the helicopter? Also, I found it hilarious when Greg "saved" Tony and then gave him his gun, leaving him unarmed, while they left the guy Tony knocked out on the ground with the gun in his hand (and Tony had unarmed Greg go down the hallway first!).

Much of the storyline was also laughably predictable. They threw in some twists, but they made them so obvious ahead of time that none of them were really surprising. Tony didn't get killed (in fact, it looks like he was barely tortured), Greg switched sides (but you could tell from how obviously shady he was behaving that he hadn't really switched sides), the FBI went to the wrong building (this was obvious from Hodges face and the 2 guards outside), Jack turned out to be fine (they tried a new twist saying he's still infected, but he can't die so that can't be true...maybe they'll come back next week and say the test was wrong or something), Larry's team got trapped, etc. Allison is getting pretty annoying (I hate her overacting) and she forced Aaron to stay at the White House.

See spoiler note below.

I just hope next week is interesting and not more filler. I can already see I will be annoyed by Allison again as they have her make out with the press guy. This week's episode has me annoyed enough that I can't even be bothered to change the picture :P

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 16. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

This week's episode was crazy, centering mostly around Jack and Tony trying to get to the bioweapon before the Starkwood goons. There were a couple of other distractions as well. Ethan and the Taylors continued their ridiculous drama, with Ethan sayhing he was resigning and admitting he had authorized the release of Jack Bauer, who it now seemed had gone and killed Senator Mayer. Olivia seemed to be acting oddly when she was heaping on the praise for Ethan, but it was to buildup for the twist...she's screwing Ethan over! She's having that reporter run the story about Senator Mayer getting killed by Jack, and blaming Ethan for the whole incident. Hmmm...that can't possibly come back around to bite her in the ass later. Also, she seems to be the new Janis because she annoys me and Janis didn't have any lines (thankfully!) though it looks like she reappears next week (dammit!). The other subplot involved Larry realizing that Renee may have been right about Jack after he found some evidence at Senator Mayer's house that didn't support the theory that Jack killed Mayer. Renee filled him in on the details and he even got invloved more when Jack contacted him later on.

In the meantime, we get to see more of Hodges and the whole Starkwood operation, which turned out to be pretty boring. And again they've gone in-your-face with that gigantic Starkwood logo. Have they heard of subtlety? But Jon Voight is cool and I was amused by his dialogue/acting.

Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight) plotting more doom and gloom

And finally, the main plot...Jack and Tony trying to recover the bioweapon that Starkwood is picking up from the shipping yard. First off, it was apparent from that security guard's initial phone call to his pregnant wife that he wasn't going to get killed. But then they went over-the-top again with him explaining the situation in completely unnecessary detail to Tony and Jack in the guardhouse. So of course, Jack blows their element of surprise in trying to save the guard's life instead of concentrating on recovering the weapon which Tony was trying to convince him to do. And sure enough, it went wrong when the Starkwood guys managed to get the shipping container on a truck to get away. Jack made it onto the truck, but ended up leaving Tony outnumbered and eventually captured. But at least he got the bioweapon right? Wrong, he did manage to call Larry and explain what happened, and also stopped a toxic gas leak, but he exposed himself to whatever chemical was in there, and he got ambushed by a helicopter and SUV. The bad guys managed to quickly remove the weapon from the truck and airlift it out while Jack was forced to take cover, so now he had to call Larry and tell him it was gone. But how convenient...it was going to a nearby military base! What if they had flown it somewhere else? Jack and Larry were somehow positive they would take it straight to the military base, but had the bad guys taken it anywhere else, Larry and Co. would be headed for the wrong place.

From the looks of next week's preview, Starkwood's base gets attacked (though I'm betting even a million FBI guys can't get in without help from Jack) but Tony is their hostage and getting tortured for some information. And Jack is waiting to find out what he's been exposed to. They can't kill him, right? And there's plenty of episodes left, so could Starkwood pull off an attack?

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 15. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

My last story about hating the Chicago police was posted a little over 3 years ago and was starting to get a little stale. So how about a refresh? This one's about parking meters - how I got a ticket that makes no sense, and also how everyone in Chicago that ever uses a parking meter is about to get screwed.

Let's start with the one that affects everyone...parking meter rate increases! Apparently the parking meter rate in Chicago hasn't gone up in 20 years! So how about making up for that by double or quadrupling the rate at all meters?!? It's true:

Here's how the hourly rates will breakdown according to the city:

Loop: 2008 = $3.00/hour 2009 = $3.50 2010 = $4.25 2011 = $5.00 2012 = $5.75 2013 = $6.50

Non-Loop/Central Business District 2008 = $1.00/hour 2009 = $2.00 2010 = $2.50 2011 = $3.00 2012 = $3.50 2013 = $4.00

Neighborhoods 2008 = $0.25 to $0.75/hour 2009 = $1.00 2010 = $1.25 2011 = $1.50 2012 = $1.75 2013 = $2.00

WHEN DO PRICE INCREASES TAKE EFFECT?
Happy New Year's! January 1 is when the new meter pricing will go into effect. However, it will take a long time to change over 36,000 parking meters. Think about it. Weeks if not a month or so to get all meters changed over.

$6.50 an hour to park downtown? What the crap?!? It costs me $0.25 for an hour right now where I live. I can't wait for that to go to $2.00! Oh, and what about those Sundays where you don't have to feed the meter? Or the holidays? :

Seven Days A Week
As of January 1, all meters will have to be fed seven days a week. This means saying goodbye to not having to feed your meter on Sunday. It also means no parking meter holidays (New Year's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas).

So with that fantastic bit of news, on to my meter story. Basically I got ticketed as if I was in a metered spot even though there was another car in the only metered spot on the block. Here's what the block looks like:

Click to expand There was another car in space 1 (at the meter) and I was in space 2, not overlapping the yellow curb marking for the hydrant, marked 3 in the pic. I got a ticket that said "Park Outside Metered Space". So based on that stupid description, should I have plowed into the car in front of me so I'd be in a metered space, or erected a meter in the open space I parked at?

Of course I contested this nonsense and probably won't hear anything for months again. On the plus side though, it did lead me to find this amusing website: The Expired Meter. It's some Chicagoan that's had numerous run-ins with tickets and has a lot of experience contesting them. He also knows some contacts on the inside, so he gives people advice on how best to contest tickets in different situations, or tells them if it isn't worth their time to do so.

In what is apparently the first time a sitting president has appeared on a late night talk show, Barack Obama will appear on Leno this Thursday (11:35 ET on NBC).



I wonder how they handle security and the topics they can cover considering Obama is actively president and not just a presidential nominee like he was when he appeared back in December of 2006.

This week's episode was hot and cold. Almost the entire first half was awful because it combined the worst over-actors in their worst over-acting. Renee, Larry, and Janis tried their hardest to make you groan. If that wasn't enough, the Ethan-Olivia nonsense was even more over-the-top. Thankfully, the episodes are a full hour and the second half made up for all the nonsense. Jack had taken Senator Mayer "hostage" though it seemed like he was unclear on what he was going to do. In fact, he supposedly didn't know anything about Starkwood until Renee filled him in, so why was he so confident Mayer had the information on them and a connection to Juma?

At any rate, Jack and Mayer had a back-and-forth on justice and what is acceptable, and ultimately led to Jack acknowledging Mayer's position by agreeing to trust him to handle the police (they're going after Jack and they don't send FBI/SWAT?!?). But in a complete surprise (seriously, I thought Mayer would be able to deal with cops, and Jack would learn he didn't always have to be extreme, so I was caught off-guard), Mayer opened the door to find Quinn, who promptly gunned him down. I liked Jack's "Nooooooo!" before he started running. And of course, Black Ops-trained Quinn couldn't hit Jack even though he ran in a straight line through the patio door. This led to a crazy chase through the dark, and eventually Quinn entered a mobile home expecting to find Jack, but Jack used a bulldozer to tip the whole thing over. Umm, wouldn't Quinn have heard the bulldozer running? They're not exactly silent, particularly in the dead of night. Quinn escaped through the top and Jack lunged at him, and they had a fairly short battle without any weapons. But then Jack launched some sharp object that got Quinn in the heart. As Quinn died Jack managed to get one last piece of information...the bio-weapon he thought was being shipped was already here. Then, in some more stupidity, it turned out Quinn had the exact location in plain text, not encrypted or anything, on his cell phone. Really?? Seriously? You're planning a highly illegal and massive attack and you have the details sitting right on your phone and readable by anybody? That was pretty ridiculous.

Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight) plotting doom and gloom

So Jack calls up Tony, who has been sitting on the sidelines listening to the FBI band and hearing everything going on because that's apparently what he does in his free time. Jack says he needs his help and to meet him at the port where the weapons are. And now Hodges and his lackey are worried that since Jack has escaped he may connect them with Juma and stop everything. We still don't really know why they're planning to do the attacks, only that they are serious about doing them.

Next week's preview primarily focused on Jack and Tony at the port, but they also showed quick shots of all the other characters in this week's episode, so they'll likely continue some of the stupid drama from this week.

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 14. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

For those that haven't been following it, Jon Stewart originally called out CNBC as a whole regarding their unfair reporting and advertising, stating they claimed and advertised to be providing sound financial advice while knowing that the advice they provided wasn't the full story and in some cases was blatantly wrong. Obviously when making predictions you can't be right 100% of the time, but his issue was with how the information was presented and how some facts were knowingly misconstrued. There's plenty of back-and-forth that went on and NBC, not just CNBC, started framing it as Jon calling out Jim Cramer and his show Mad Money specifically, though Jon had been talking about CNBC as a whole.

Jon decided to run with this "Cramer vs. Stewart" even though it wasn't the original direction he was going, and finally it came to a head earlier this week when he announced Jim Cramer would actually be on. I figured it would be a softball interview where they both agreed the whole thing was blown out of proportion and not much would come out of it. But I was surprised to find it was quite the opposite. Jon used it as an opportunity to get Jim to admit that their reporting was incomplete and disingenuous to viewers, and that they should be doing a better job of investigative reporting rather than pandering to Wall Street insiders trying to get rich in the short term while harming long-term investors.

The best part was he got Jim to agree that he should go back to reporting on the fundamaentals of the economy and to investigate and report on all the facts. They split the interview into 3 parts, all embedded below:

Jim Cramer Pt. 1



Jim Cramer Pt. 2



Jim Cramer Pt. 3


I like this better than Jon's infamous Crossfire appearance because it seemed like Jim Cramer genuinely realized what he was doing was wrong and why it is harmful, and he pledged (on behalf of CNBC) to do a better job.

Back on schedule this week! This week's episode was pretty good. And that was mostly all due to the last 15 minutes, and also due to the president's daughter totally slamming Ethan in what was going to be a stupid conversation, where either Allison would be so happy Ethan gave her the job in the administration, or would not accept the job and would leave. Instead, she tore Ethan a new one, saying she thought he had full responsibility for all the corruption in the administration and that she would get to the bottom of it. Ethan always seemed shady and kind of evil from the first hour, but he came around and it seemed like the worst he'd ever do was constantly disagree with the president. It'll be interesting to find out if he's actually more involved or not in the day's events.

I'm saving the best for last of course, so on to the other things...the president reconciling with her daughter was intentionally cheesy, as was Allison's interaction with Aaron though Aaron is so cool it's fun to watch anyways. Larry and Renee's bickering is getting annoying (actually, it was always annoying). It was sad to see Bill die, though I like how he was in the narrow doorway of a giant explosion that threw people in the next room to the ground, and yet he is not only intact, but somehow ended up back in the room where the explosion happened! Jack stares at him for such a long time that Renee comes back to talk to him. Didn't anyone tell her Jack Bauer has no feelings? Those aren't tears for Bill, he got shrapnel in his eyes! Now lay off, Jack's got work to do! But Larry detains him because he's so effective without Jack's help. Renee goes over his head and gets Ethan to order Larry to have Jack interrogate Ryan Burnett because they believe that someone else was pulling the strings and there will be another attack on the president.

Bill hangs out with the other hostages

In the meantime, Jon Voight (I think his name is Hodges) is having some guy sent to kill Ryan, and he's going to take care of Jack too! He takes care of Jack by paralyzing him and killing Ryan, and framing Jack. Jack comes to before Larry and Co. can bust in, and he escapes. He calls Larry to explain his innocence and what happened, maybe hoping Larry will understand the situation.

Next week's preview looks crazy, with Jack chasing down Quinn (the guy that killed Burnett), Renee getting busted by Larry, Morris (yay!) getting blackmailed, and Jack having a showdown with Senator Mayer.

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 13. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

I'm late on this week's 24 because I was on vacation. But here at last, is the review for the double-episode! This week's episode was a mixed bag...equal parts action/suspense and glaring plot holes. Overall I enjoyed both episodes, but the episodes were quite predictable, and there were so many major problems with the whole White House situation that it was also kind of comical. An early sign of this came when Renee got on Juma's boat (that alone was like a Jack Bauer blooper reel, with her losing her gun in the water AND damaging her cell phone with water) and she starts flipping through the map Juma was looking at after Juma and Co. all conveniently left the boat. She flips through several more complex maps, and you knew she was going to figure out they were attacking the White House, so it seemed like she might recognize one of the diagrams. Instead, she flips the page and there's a gigantic drawing of the front of the White House. I cracked up at that. Then, Dubaku Jr. is somehow still on the boat but didn't hear her loudly shuffling through the map until after she got to that 5th page and stared at it. So of course he goes after her but he can't shoot for crap and she runs away and eventually finds a police officer. As she frantically explains the details, I couldn't help but think that Dubaku Jr. would appear and end up shooting the officer, and Renee would get away again. Sure enough, 10 seconds later that's exactly what happens.

On a similar note, the main theme of both episodes was extremely crappy security. The orederly in the hospital kills Dubaku with ease and gets away easily too. Renee chasing him down on her own was stupid, as was the fact that Larry and the FBI couldn't get to the warehouse for at least 10 minutes?!? Juma is the number one most wanted person in the country and they know the building he's in, and they can't get a supersonic jet to go after him? They can't track where they're going via satellite? This is their top freakin' priority! Instead he goes on a leisurely and scenic helicopter ride. Apparently they also can't radio in the SWAT team to swarm a warehouse that was a 5-minute boat ride from the White House. And Juma is wanted by everyone but he doesn't cover his face so Renee was able to recognize him. If she hadn't, they may not even have gone after him. And in a similar situation of dumb lack of urgency, the President suspects Jack might be right about Ryan being a traitor, but they can't just pull some call logs to verify if that was true or not? She's the President, and it would take Chloe 5 seconds to find out. Instead they turned the whole thing into more moral debate about torture (which by the way, is starting to get really annoying...first Renee, Jack and Larry debate it, then the President and Ethan, Jack and Bill, etc.).

Then, Juma breaks into some weird laser security tunnel, where they just hit a switch and the lasers turn off. And didn't they blow up a wall to access that tunnel? One would think that would have set off those lasers. So they basically get into the White House though there surely would have been more sensors to detect a break-in, and that is where things start getting really ridiculous. They manage to catch every security guard off-guard, none of the White House guards appear to have automatic weapons, Juma and Co. stroll down the freaking hallways and there's ZERO cameras seeing that?!? Aren't there dozens of people monitoring White House cameras (which are *everywhere*) at all times? And aren't the guards sharp shooters and always alert? Absurd. At any rate, Bill runs a distraction route by grabbing the president's tracker and running a different way with it (rather than making one of the few remaining useless guards do it, which would have been much smarter) and inevitably getting caught.

Janis comes to bother Chloe in Macintosh Central

Juma is somehow surprised to find that the President made it into the lockdown room. What about secret underground bunkers? That lockdown room didn't look secure at all. Conveniently, the prez's daughter is in the White House so Juma just has to find her and he'll have leverage to get the pres (and Jack) out of the room. Aaron tries to help her escape, but he gets shot in the shoulder, and she's supposed to be shining flashlight morse code out the window (which she was stupidly doing without moving the curtain out of the way) and she gets caught, seemingly before she can finish the signal. It also took the media way too long to report on the fact that the White House was under seige...surely there would have been reports something was going on as soon as all the agents poured out of the building. The President's message to the people earlier was also ridiculous, to say there was a threat and to remain calm. People are stupid, and saying there was any kind of threat would definitely create a panic, but the President doesn't want to "hide the truth". The people can't handle the truth! Also, we see the VP and it turns out he's a real douchebag.

Ultimately, Jack had to open the door because Juma was going to harm the President's daughter, so now he and Bill are going to have to conspire to overtake Juma's thugs somehow. Next week should be interesting!

This was a review of Season 7, Episode 10 and Episode 11. Here's my previous 24 reviews. And here's the character countdown.

The movie Watchmen comes out Friday, and I highly recommend seeing it because it looks like it'll be really good. Really, though, I'd suggest reading the graphic novel which is truly awesome. Apparently some diehard fans are not happy with some of the changes that have been made to the movie, but this always happens because a movie is always pressed for time. Supposedly the director's cut goes a little ways towards fixing that and simultaneously pushing the movie closer to the 3+ hour mark, but that may or may not appear in theaters at a later date (if not, gotta wait for the DVD).

At any rate, this trailer is cool, and I suggest watching it in HD: