Now that's interesting...

Just had a chat with my uber-bearish (and very straight) second in command at work.  He'd been telling me that his son from his first marriage (who he'd not seen for 18 years) was making a visit this week and he hoped to re-bond with the young man.

Today the other shoe dropped - the son is 21, gay, and was tossed out of the house by his biological mother when he came out.  (I'll skip the diatribe on cruel parenting and idiotic actions taken in the name of religion)  Life in semi-rural Oregon must have been doubly hard as a result.  The kid had to quit college, where he was doing quite well, and get a job in retail to support himself.  Sad situation.

Second-in-command and his current wife want the kid to consider moving to SoCal, move in with them, go back to college, and get back into a more normal life.  Current wife, who works in a corner of the medical trades where gay folk are in abundance, wants to introduce the kid to a more accepting gay community.  I gather a trip to Hillcrest is in the schedule among other gay-centric activities.

Diametrically opposed views, no?  On the one hand, a mother who is biologically and legally obligated to raise her son, has cast him adrift.  Whether he lives or dies doesn't concern her.  And on the other, the isolated father and his wife willing to give of themselves, their home, and their love to see that this young man, who is effectively a stranger, have a place he can call home.

We live in a strange, strange world...

Worst Made for TV Movie Contestant

I've always had a special love of science fiction movies.  Day the Earth Stood Still, Contact, and many others have given us reason to step back from our daily lives and look at our world differently. 

And then there's the made for TV movie I viewed this weekend, Earthstorm.  Starring Stephen Baldwin (of the Baldwin family acting conglomerate), this clunker, if the Academy categories existed, would be a clear nominee for:

Worst Special Effects
Most Derivative Plotline
Numbest Acting

and the big kahuna...

Worst Movie Ever

The, ahem, plot - Earth's moon gets struck by a wicked big, undetected meteor ("It's a big sky, we missed it") which cracks the planetoid, raining moonchunks all over our dear old innocent planet Earth.  The fault threatens to split off a hunk of the Moon which would then fall onto the Earth, destroying mankind.  Sound like Armageddon?  Deep Impact?  I thought so too.

Baldwin plays the world's best demolition expert who gets pressed into service because he's good at blowing up things (see Bruce Willis's shameful role in Armageddon).  Add in an unknown actress who's acting ability ends with her lovely strawberry blond hair (and who's name I didn't bother to learn) as a brilliant outcast woman scientist .  Of course, her recently deceased scientist father (see Jodie Foster in Contact) just happens to have proposed a theory which just happens to be identical to this scenario but was laughed at by the scientific community led by Dirk Benedict's (see A Team) scientist who just happens to be the President's scientific adviser sent to oversee the save-the-dear-old-innocent-planet-Earth effort.  Space shuttle, nuclear devices, quasi-scientific jargon, you get the idea.

Oh yes, the special effects...  In one scene, moonchunks fall on Mexico City.  Why Mexico City?  Because few are familiar with the skyline and won't notice that it's not Mexico's biggest city in the backdrop.  How do we know the chunks hit?  Because a corner of the screen turns yellowish-red and there are lots of sparklies!

I kept hoping for some redeeming value and so watched Earthstorm to its demise end.  Turned out that it was a perfect movie to divert you from the boredom that is folding laundry and doing housework.

Would it have won the coveted Worst Movie Ever Academy Award?  Only if it didn't compete against 10.5.