Fireball Caught On Video

Some kind of meteor blazed across Canada’s western skies the other night. Experts think it exploded in the air, and the search is on for its debris.

Here’s a video, taken by an Edmonton police officer on early-morning patrol:

Here’s another one:

A lot of people on YouTube and elsewhere are calling this a UFO sighting, which it technically is: it was indeed an unidentified flying object. But that gets so out of hand. I saw lights in the sky outside just now, and I couldn’t tell you if it was the air ambulance helicopter, a small plane, a passenger jet or a saucer full of big-headed probers. That makes it a UFO.

I saw an actual flying saucer once. When my brother and I were kids, we were outside and saw a silvery object — it looked like two pie plates glued together — wobbling across the sky. We called or mother, who came and watched it with us. We couldn’t really tell how big it was or how far away it was; it might have been six inches across and 15 feet in the air, or a mile across and 100 miles in the air. Whatever it was moved really slowly and kind of wobbled.

Later, I went through a UFO phase where I read all those books about Roswell and Area 51. You know, like Above Top Secret and that sort of thing. But in the end, I just kind of wrote it off to hysteria/ball lightning/illusions/hoaxes, or maybe secret US government technology.

Here’s the weird thing: I once mentioned that UFO sighting to my brother, and he remembered it vividly, although we agreed it was likely some kind of homemade kite, or a weather balloon. But then it got weird; we said something about it to our mother, and she got all prickly and not only denied it had every happened … she got mad at us for making something like that up. Mental tampering? Memory reprogramming? Or just common sense?

The truth is out there.

More Star Trek Posters

Okay, I wasn’t crazy about the first black-and-white Star Trek movie posters, featuring big-haired Chris Pine looking like he’s doing a bad impression of Christian Slater doing a bad impression of Jack Nicholson (as Marius pointed out), and Zachary Quinto with his weird polyester hair.

But the next two are out. And they’re warp speeds beyond the first two.

First up, we have Zoe Saldana as Uhura. Remember when the tinted teaser poster came out a few months back, and people bitched about why a “minor character” like Uhura was on a poster with the big 3? Well, it’s starting to appear that Uhura is a major player in this new film, and Saldana is getting a lot of attention for (a) the scenes that have been played for the media and (b) that bra thing in the trailer.

Looking at her here, I see a classic ’60s sci-fi woman, beautiful, mysterious, wise and talented. And look at those lashes!

And then we come to Eric Bana as Nero. The chewed-up ear we got a hint of earlier is in full view, as are his tattooes and the overall strength of his menace. If he’d only looked this fierce as The Hulk … no, that movie was destined for a certain level of suckness the minute Ang Lee signed on.

Eric Bana is a fantastic actor who hasn’t really yet had the opportunity to cut loose on a Hollywood project; his performance in Munich was perfect in its understatedness, and apparently he’s a brilliant comedian in Australia.

But Nero scares the crap out of me. There hasn’t really been a frightening Trek villain since Khan … wait, no, Alice Krige’s Borg Queen had her moments. I suspect the combination of Bana, that makeup and this story might launch Nero into the upper echelons of movie villainy.

Are there more posters coming? Nobody’s saying. But I like this round, and I hope any new ones succeed like this.

Today’s Moron: Possibly Inbred Smoker

Today’s Moron is the young lady I saw this afternoon at a department store.

My five-year-old and I were there buying a birthday present for one of his friends, who is having a party tomorrow (we picked out a Matchbox space adventure set, with alien and moon rock). After paying, we were leaving when we encountered three women in their early 20s standing in the store’s entrance, between the outer automatic doors and the inner automatic doors. They weren’t dressed for the cold, and were clearly just trying to warm up.

One of them, though, was smoking.

Smoking indoors is illegal in Ontario. And with that smoking ban came a distance rule, too; you can’t smoke within three metres of any entryway. That’s about 10 feet, give or take. This young lady, though, was ignoring that, puffing dirty blue stink into the enclosed air of the foyer.

I want to take a moment to describe her. I normally do not ever judge people by their appearance, but in this case it’s important to the story. She was morbidly obese, and wearing Britney Spears-type clothing in November in Canada, so her bare belly was moving around on its own, and was also chapped and red. She was wearing pink Crocs and no socks, and she clearly had not bathed in ages. I got the distinct impression there weren’t too many branches on the old family tree.

But she was all there mentally. Her loud, honking voice was carrying through the entrance as she told her two friends about the job she’d just applied for. “It’s mystery shopping. You go in any store you want and buy shit and then tell about the service you got.”

“Coooooooool,” one of the friends said through the haze of smoke.

A cashier was right behind me as my son and I passed the unholy trio. “You can’t smoke in here,” the cashier told the girl.

And this strange smoking hillbilly said something absolutely perfect: “What? That’s ridinkulous.”

Ridinkulous. You can’t make this stuff up.

So I’m torn. She’s a moron for smoking, and she’s a moron for smoking in a department store, and she’s a moron for wearing pink Crocs in the cold. But she coined a word I’m just going to have to start using.

Best Music Video Ever

When it comes to bad music videos, I could fill your hard drive. I have a list.

But this … okay, it’s a terrible song, a piece of novelty trash metal. But when the time came to make a video, whoever made it really, really grasped the concept.

I feel the same way about this video as I feel about the bad movies and bad music I enjoy: The creators had no illusions about what they were doing, and when they showed up for work, they brought big lunchboxes full of what-the-fuckness. And then they had their fun.

It isn’t art. But it works.

Feast your eyes …

Kamikaze Cab Ride and the Vigilante Taxi Driver

If you're going to fight bad guys from your taxi, you need a certain class of vehicle. Or a minivan.

This just happened, so I’m telling you about it almost in real-time, and it was the best true adventure I’ve had in a long time.

I was without a vehicle tonight, so I cabbed it home from work at 2:30 a.m. I was picked up by a minivan, because at night, cab rides in this college town involve large groups of barfing made-it-to-last-call students. The driver was a tough-looking young guy with short-cropped hair and a neck the size of my leg; he was friendly and chatty and obviously happy for a fare, as it’s our first real winter week and the subzero temperatures probably meant a quiet night at the downtown bars.

We were about half a klick from my house when the dashboard radio started squawking. I could only hear a bit of it, but these guys speak the language of static, and my driver suddenly hit the brakes on a deserted street. I could hear now: “Help! Help! Guys! I got trouble!” He named a downtown intersection, the kind of spot where ambulances know to park and wait on weekend nights because there will be a fight, or maybe 10.

“Sorry, buddy,” my driver said, switching off the meter and spinning the wheel. The roads were icy, so we skidded a bit, but he handled that minivan like a Formula 1 driver. In seconds, we were roaring back into the city core at 120 kph (which is about 75 miles per hour American). I was slam-dancing back and forth as he weaved through a series of one-way streets and right through red lights.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Trouble,” he said. “You just got a free cab ride. Sorry about this.”

“Do what you have to do,” I said, glad I had my camera in my bag, because I am, after all, a journalist. I was also thinking about the stupid Jimmy Fallon/Queen Latifah movie Taxi, and maybe also Dukes of Hazzard. We were flying, I tell you.

We were nearing the intersection in question when the radio crackled again and someone said something. My driver hit the brakes, turning as we slowed, turned, and started driving, at a normal speed, back the way we’d come.

“Can you fucken believe that?” he asked.

“I couldn’t hear.”

“A sandwich. Guy got a sandwich thrown at him. Fucken guy. He calls us for that? I only called for help once, and that was when a guy had a knife back there.” He wasn’t lying. We had a cab driver get his throat cut from the back seat here a couple of years ago. These drivers know the dangers. But they stick together when they’re in trouble, like carnies crying “Hey Rube!”

Except for the poor sandwich-dodging driver who made the original call for help. “Fucken asshole,” my driver muttered. “He’s new.”

“Does this happen a lot?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “This guy, too, he’s training to be a cop. He’s only doing this until he passes. What’s he gonna do, if he’s a cop?” My driver shook his head, then put on a whiny baby voice. “Sergeant, the bad man looked at me funny! What do I do?”

I was laughing. “How many of you guys are out here tonight?”

“About a dozen,” he said. “But a lot of them just went off and they’d be heading back there, too. That fucken guy is gonna get RAZZED later!”

We pulled up in front of my house. I gave him the fare anyway, partially because I know how hard these guys work and partially because I haven’t had this much fun in a long, long time.

“Hey, you’re a good man,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

“Best time I had all day,” I said.

“Really? You should maybe try driving for us.”

Not a chance, I thought. I’m afraid of knives. Hell, I’m afraid of sandwiches.