The Jack Bauer Rundown

Since the beginning of the 6th season of 24, I've been keeping track of some key statistics. We're already 13 episodes in, so I'm a little behind the times, but we'll get everything up to date here and then there'll be weekly updates.

24 can pretty much be boiled down to two major components:
1) Jack Bauer laying waste to mortal men
2) Someone (usually Jack) saying (usually screaming) "DAMMIT!"

Because these two factors are so important, these have been my statistics. I've been keeping track of Jack's kills and instances of "DAMMIT!" Additionally, there will be season averages presented: JBKpH - Jack Bauer Kills per Hour, DpH - "DAMMIT!"s per Hour and JBDpH - Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour. It was difficult deciding whether extra kills should be awarded in extremely awesome situations; say, for instance, Jack tears a man's throat out with his mouth (first episode, baby!). I decided to say a kill is a kill and keep it simple.

Without further ado, here are the statistics so far:

Total Jack Bauer-caused fatalities: 10
Total utterances of "DAMMIT!": 15
Total Jack Bauer-uttered "DAMMIT!"s: 7

Which leaves us with these season averages:

JBKpH (Jack Bauer Kills per Hour): 0.769
DpH ("DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 1.154
JBDpH (Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 0.538

With Jack accounting for less than half of the "DAMMIT!"s, I'm left a little astounded. We'll see what happens. Other than that, I have no idea what to make of these numbers.

300

I saw 300 yesterday and it was pretty decent. Not fantastic, not a huge letdown. The battle sequences were very well done, particularly the long tracking shots with crazy dynamic zooming and speed-shifting. My brother Nick heard that they did the zooming stuff by shooting with three cameras at the same time on a special rig, which just sounds way neat. The visuals were all really well done. I think this might be my favorite stylized (as opposed to realistic) CGI achievement yet--yes, I think it looks cooler than Sky Captain.

Other than a gag-worthy inspirational speech by the Spartan Queen, I thought the movie was altogether pretty good, but someone should give the guys that made the trailer an award.

Zach's Facts!

Cockburn is the worst last name ever.

That is all.

They may be on to something here

Like most other creatures with a Y chromosome, I am eagerly awaiting the release of 300 next week. Battle sequences, slow motion, screaming "Sparta!", slow motion, wicked-looking visuals and slow motion all just tug at my innermost caveman impulses. It looks so insane I want to see it opening night with a lot of people there--which, if you know me, you know I never do.

It wasn't until I was watching Leno last night and I heard the women screaming as Gerard Butler (who plays King Leonidas) walked on stage that I realized that the chicks are going to dig this movie too. The movie is full of half-naked Spartan man candy. Who cares if it's all slow motion battles, right?

This movie is going to gross more than Titanic.

If the movie does suck, though, other film distributors should take note and hire the folks that did the trailers for this one. Now that's a trailer.

A Grave Injustice

Ghost Rider's weekend box office gross: $51.5 million

What is wrong with you people?

Nuts.

Well, my boy Sean Michel didn't make it through tonight's American Idol cuts. He made it through the first series, but got axed during the group sing thing. Didn't even get to see him sing. Nuts. Anyway, here's a link to his band's myspace page. I guess that's almost as good.

Smash a teenager in 20 steps!

I caught the end of Final Destination 3 (3!) last night and as I was watching, I hashed out the plot for a prequel movie. It occurred to me that the convoluted deaths in these movies are just like the Rube Goldberg machines we made in physics class in high school, except in this case there are no coins flipped but sometimes somebody might get a sheet of plate glass dropped on them.

(I am fully aware, of course, that the Rube Goldberg idea is not new [probably because it's so dang obvious], as a Google of "final destination" "rube goldberg" turned up 920 hits. I'm not trying to claim originality here.)

So here's my idea: Rube Goldberg dies in 1970, at the ripe old age of 87. When he gets to the pearly gates, he gets hired on by the Angel of Death as the Traveling Assistant to the Angel of Death. The movie could be about Rube's coming of age as the Traveling Assistant to the Angel of Death, with all sorts of hilarious hijinx naturally following as Rube learns his job. At first, he resists the job, claiming he just wants to flip light switches. He'd have to bear heckling from Death's other assistants about his bizarre methods and then get a pep talk from St. Paul about perseverance. By the film's end, of course, he'll be much better than the Angel of Death at getting the job done. So every time Death screws up and people get away, Rube gets up off the bench and takes care of business.

Just think about that next time you're watching Final Destination and you witness another Goldbergian demise: Rube's up there, pulling the levers and figuring out how to smash a teenager in 20 steps.

Eccentrostatic

It's so dry here in these sub-zero temperatures that today at work I was brutally shocked on the lip by a cubicle wall. That'll teach me.