GRAB A CUP AND READ THE MORNING REPORT FOR 2.17.14 >>>

The U.S. Navy would get the largest chunk of the additional $36 billion the White House is considering giving to the Pentagon for fiscal 2016.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of stonewalling in peace talks and called on Russia to push its ally to negotiate with opposition leaders.

Amid concerns that the current policy in Syria is failing, U.S. officials are developing new options to bring about an end to the three-year civil war,

Secretary of State John Kerry drove home a hard line on the threats of climate change Sunday, saying they rank as high as terrorism threats.

The Pentagon and the U.S. Congress have begun the tedious effort of reviewing decades of antiquated, cumbersome defense acquisition policies to speed up the defense procurement process and get more bang for the buck.

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un should face international justice for ordering systematic torture and mass killings.

Group shines a light on victim backlash in military sex assaults.

The Obama administration is making contingency plans to use air bases in Central Asia to conduct drone missile attacks in northwest Pakistan.

There's an invasion of drone flights far beyond the policing ability of the Federal Aviation Administration.

What do you do with a bomb shelter when you're no longer getting Blitzed by the Nazis?

45 things you might not know about the presidents.

What is human nature?

True Detective: The answer is there. Have you figured it out?

It's impossible for anyone to see the new season of Game of Thrones ... unless you're the president.

Preview the new season of Orange is the New Black, which returns June 6.

Michael Keaton says he has talked to Tim Burton about a possible Beetlejuice sequel. If Winona's in, I'm in.

Finally: Back to the Future, Firefly and Goonies action figures

And then there's this ...

THURSDAY, FEB. 13 2014 >>>

1. Forget Venus, Venice, Paris or any other word ending in -is that conjures up love-ish ideas: there's no better way to woo a would-be - or current - Valentine than with an evening of arts-related culture. And Mad Hat Tea Company has fired up its popular Valentine's Day arts show where poets, musicians, craftspeople and artists take tea drinkers to the furthest point from the half-off Valentine's bin at Rite Aid. Buy one of the local artists' pieces such as Fred Novak's collage works from 7-10 p.m., gift it to your date - along with a cup of Maureen's Mad Aphrodesiac tea - and you might just net a very warm and snuggly Valentine's night, indeed!

2. Local artist and Pierce College art professor Danella Sydow has eight pieces on display - including graphite on paper and reliefs - in the Fine Arts Gallery. Sydow is the recipient of the Mayor's Award from the Olympia Arts Commission. Check out her work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

3. In case you've been rightly avoiding entertainment news over the past month, LaBeouf has been embroiled in a controversy that began with him completely plagiarizing a Daniel Clowes comic called Justin M. Damiano for a short film he directed. Predictably, LaBeouf was immediately found out once he put the film online, and what has followed has been an exercise in lame, art-school-failure performance art, and acts of privilege and delusion so mind-boggling they'd make Justin Beiber wince. Interested in seeing a young, preciously untainted Shia LaBeouf? His adaptation of the beloved Louis Sachar novel, Holes, will be screened at the Moore Library at 3 p.m. If you hiss every time his dumb face shows up on screen, though, you'll never make it through the movie.

4. There's not much better than sharing something you love from your childhood with the next generation of kids. There's not much worse than beloved literature being remade into something unrecognizable in the name of "modernization." The House at Pooh Corner currently at Olympia Family Theater allows you to revel in your nostalgia - provided your childhood bears were more "fluff and stuff" than gruesome killing machines. There are a couple elements that are new, a pseudo "who's on first" type of schtick with the characters Early and Late and a Christopher Robin who is more petulant than the sweet boy from Milne's and Disney's classic stories. Additions aside, OFT's production is charming, funny and quite adorable. Read Joann Varnell's review of the show, then catch it at 7 p.m.

5. Rudolph Valentino found his definitive screen image in the 1921 rape romance The Sheik, as a dashing desert vagabond who captures a tempestuous English girl. The film was so popular that a brand of prophylactics was named after it, a rare distinction indeed. Did Rudolph Valentino's silent film The Sheik help shape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East? You decide as you watch the silent flick backed by vocalists Connie Corrick and Hugh Hastings at 7 p.m. in the Washington Center.

LINK: Thursday, Feb. 13 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

GRAB A CUP AN DREAD THE MORNING REPORT FOR 2.13.14 >>>

Series of prison breakouts across Iraq have freed hundreds of militants who have joined radical Sunni groups operating in neighboring Syria and in Iraq itself.

Afghanistan released 65 detainees despite evidence that they killed or wounded Afghan and coalition troops, the U.S. military command there announced.

Senior US officials and lawmakers are sending new signals that a fledgling cadre of military spies is a done deal, despite no real substantive public debate.

The top commander in Afghanistan is being asked to explain why his staff attempted to diminish the findings of the government watchdog overseeing billions in construction projects there.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James shared her observations from her visit with airmen across the ICBM community following revelations of a proficiency-test cheating scandal at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont.

Google's robot army will live in a military hangar.

Odierno pushed back against the idea of downsizing the military because the wars of the past decade were ending, saying it's hard to predict future conflicts.

The federal government may have shut its doors due to weather conditions - but the guards tasked to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier aren't so quick to abandon their posts.

Video of crashed drone hit with rocks by Afghan villagers.

Can you spot the sniper hiding with camouflage in this picture?

Nuclear fusion breakthrough: More energy out than in.

The new movie Mirage Men‘s subtitle is: "How the US government created a myth that took over the world."

The final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars will debut on Netflix.

Speaking of ... Star Wars dresses.

Watch the trailer for Melissa McCarthy's new movie, Tammy.

America's best dine-in movie theaters

Aaaahhhhh...

About Last Night is a photocopy of a photocopy. Adapted from the '80s Rob Lowe/Demi Moore vehicle, About Last Night..., which was itself an adaptation of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, this new iteration seems to have morphed its initial premise to the point of abstraction.

About Last Night... boasted an uncommonly honest portrayal of what happens when a one-night stand is extended far beyond its shelf life. Moore and Lowe fell into a relationship that was largely based on sexual chemistry, and because both were too decent to own up to that fact, they found themselves in a fundamentally incompatible relationship that was doomed from the beginning. It didn't help that the two lovebirds were incessantly hounded by their respective best friends (Elizabeth Perkins and Jim Belushi, in what may be his last watchable performance) giving destructive advice.

In 2014's About Last Night, Lowe's bland-yet-handsome character is filled in by Michael Ealy, and the increasingly unavoidable Kevin Hart takes Belushi's boorish lout. Joy Bryant and Regina Hall have the Moore and Perkins characters. While the best friends are still exhausting busybodies, the dynamics here are a little different. While Belushi and Perkins were bitter rivals, Hart and Hall are an item - presumably because Hart couldn't be quite as believably repellant as Belushi was.

What may end up being the most intriguing element of this remake is its writer. A woman is offering a solo take on Mamet's Sexual Perversity (About Last Night... did have Denise DeClue, though she cowrote it with her husband, Tim Kazurinsky). Leslye Headland, herself a playwright turned screenwriter, may end up giving the material's admittedly somewhat dated exploration of romance the jolt that it needs to enter the 21st century. Only time will tell.

About Last Night... was a rarity: a mature romantic comedy that balanced sexiness, humor, and gender politics with mostly deft aplomb, which is far from an easy feat. This new iteration has a lot to live up to.

See Also

A Nerd Alert has been issued for the South Sound

TUESDAY, FEB. 11 2014 >>>

1. You can't swing a microphone cable around South Sound's spoken-word poetry scene without hitting William Kupinse. Now the poet, Tacoma's first Poet Laureate and associate professor of English at University of Puget Sound, is teaming up with composer Greg Youtz, professor of music at Pacific Lutheran University, in the performance Poetry Above the Roar: Erin Calata Sings Songs of Gregory Youtzin the Mary Baker Russell Music Building at Pacific Lutheran University. Calata, mezzo-soprano and 2008 alumna of PLU, will sing a cycle of 10 pieces of music composed by Youtz, with words from Kupinse's collection of poems Fallow (2009, Exquisite Disarray). The words should, er, sing around 8 p.m.

2. Kill Your Darlings is the feature directorial debut from John Krokidas. The film focuses on the complicated college days of famed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe). Ginsberg's writing talents earn him a place at Columbia University, and he has a bright, if a bit controversial, future ahead of him. He gets to wile away his undergrad days in the company of Beat Generation wunderkinds such as Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster). Heck, his best friend is Lucien Carr (Dane Dehaan)! Ginsberg is also a homosexual in an era when it is both dangerous and illegal to be so, and he's in love with the malevolently manipulative Carr, who takes advantage of him to further his own ends. Then there's that issue of Prof. David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), being murdered in Riverside Park. Read Jared Lovrak's review of the film here, then see it at 1:45 and 6:30 p.m. in The Grand Cinema. 

3. Though often unfelt, the South Sound experiences earthquakes often, raising questions of preparedness for the inevitable "big one." You can never be too prepared or too alert when dealing with earthquakes. Geologists Brian Atwater and Pat Pringle will discuss how to prepare for earthquakes, and volcanoes, at 7 p.m. in The Triad Theater in Yelm.

4. Quick! Tell us who played Violet Bickerstaff, Screech's love interest, on three episodes of the television show Saved by the Bell? If you said "Tori Spelling," then going to a trivia night might be for you. There are trivia competitions all around the South Sound on a Tuesday night, where you can unleash your inner Ken Jennings. Two of our favorite Tuesday night trivia are at Fish Tale Brew Pub in Olympia and Farrelli's Wood-Fire Pizza in Tacoma, both start at 8 p.m.

5. The 1230 Room probably has you at "$4 lemon drops," but you also may be interested in the downtown Olympia club's Tuesday deep, tech and progressive house night "Deep Tuesdays." It launches at 9 p.m. with drink specials, no cover and resident DJs Alex Bosi and Evan Mould.

LINK: Tuesday, Feb. 11 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

Courtesy of your friends at Omni Consumer Products, this is Nerd Alert, the Weekly Volcano's recurring events calendar devoted to all things nerdy. I myself am a Star Wars fan, mathlete, and spelling bee champion of long standing, so trust me: I grok whereof I speak.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 12: ROBOCOP

My colleague the Rev. Adam McKinney saw fit to neglect Wednesday's reboot of RoboCop in last week's Nerd Alert column, and I imagine it's because - like me - he doesn't think it'll be any good. Some movies don't need to be remade. The trailers make this new version look like a borderline-competent, dare I say interchangeable, action movie, but they don't show a hint of satirical wit. That was what made the '87 original stand out. God knows it wasn't all those obscenely gory squib hits; it was the worldview that demanded them. Director Paul Verhoeven, as subtle as a brick in the eye, reveled in violence and amorality with a wink so obvious even teenagers could tell he was kidding. I know the difference between violence and ironic violence is a subtle one, but the problem here is, it might be so subtle the reboot's director, José Padilha, didn't realize it was there. On the other hand, he did study English literature at Oxford, so maybe I'm selling him short. In other words, perhaps I'd buy his movie for a dollar after all. I mean, it's not like any of us thought The LEGO Movie would be worth a flip.

TUESDAY, FEB. 18: DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF D&D

Because I don't have HBO and I'm not a shameless scofflaw, today's Blu-ray and DVD release marks my first opportunity to watch Season 3 of Game of Thrones. I have successfully, one might say miraculously, avoided all spoilers. Ergo, all I know is some people will be killed, red is not the luckiest color in Westeros and nameless wenches will bare their breasts. Like, a lot of them. All the damn time.

If you're a geek of a certain age, chances are you spent many if not most Friday nights tossing 20-sided dice, absorbing Domino's pizza, and pretending to be a 10th-level Elf Druid with your friends. Yes, I'm talking about Dungeons & Dragons, the role-playing fantasy game you came to know and love as D&D. Unfortunately, I was a Jehovah's Witness at the time, and we were forbidden from playing the game. (Apparently it opened our minds to demonic attack by making us want to be thieves or assassins for a living. I know. That didn't work out, largely because it's hard to major in assassination and/or thievery in college. Phoenix online college doesn't count.) Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered the game's co-creator, Gary Gygax, self-identified as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

That's just one of many thousands of interesting factoids in Playing at the World, a book by game enthusiast Jon Peterson - and it's buried in a footnote, no less! This nautical anchor of a tome offers the definitive history of D&D and its wargaming forebears, then contextualizes it by recounting the study of game simulations since chess.

I'm not a book critic. I'm a theater critic. I don't want to be a book critic. I write books myself, so the last thing I want is to unload the uric acid of skepticism into yet another pool in which I myself am swimming. (That's called a metaphor, lads.) But when the publisher of this August 2012 release offered me a copy to peruse, I was too big a nerd to say no. The fact is it's like reading a doctoral dissertation. On the minus side that means it has the mass and density of a neutron star. Not a detail is missed. But on the plus side, not a detail is missed!

This guy really does know his stuff. After three weeks of intense effort I'm about 100 pages into his 630-page book, plus appendices. It won't make you or anyone else a better RPG player. It won't teach you strategy - though it does touch ever so briefly on modern game theory - but it will fascinate you for hours on end. It includes, for example, a thorough retelling of the early history of published science fiction and fantasy, during which Peterson makes a compelling case for the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island on early genre fiction (by way of H. Rider Haggard). But I digress! Bottom line: if you're an RPG fan, Playing at the World will be an indispensable addition to your nonfiction library.

Until next week, may the Force be with you, may the odds be ever in your favor, and may the Rite of Rebirth bestow blessings of Bahamut upon you. I have a plus-seven against dragons and wyverns!

GRAB A CUP AND READ THE MORNING REPORT FOR 2.10.14 >>>

Car bomb in the Afghan capital Kabul killed two United States contractors for the international security force ISAF today.

The Obama administration is considering lethal force against an American citizen overseas who has allegedly been working with al Qaeda.

The U.S. and South Korea announced plans Monday for two annual spring military exercises, which come amid questions of whether Seoul will assume wartime control of allied forces as planned next year.

The Senate will vote this week on whether to repeal the $6 billion cut to military pensions that was included in the December budget deal.

The White House and Pentagon, after weeks of back-and-forth debate, appear ready to expand the Defense Department's budget starting in 2016.

North Korea paid a fine Saturday for trying to ship undeclared Cuban arms through the Panama Canal, possibly in violation of UN sanctions.

An ammunition plant, three installations, and three environmental teams recognized for their outstanding environmental and sustainability program achievements with Secretary of the Army Environmental Awards for fiscal year 2013.

A San Francisco-based developer of solar and wind power is the latest company to join to the U.S. Army's multi-billion-dollar alternative energy program.

Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh met with deployed service members and received Regional Command (South) mission updates at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.

Service members from around the world converged on the Kaiserslautern Military Community to train international partners from Africa for Central Accord 14 Phase I.

After more than a year of modification maintenance, the newly created AC-130J Ghostrider took to the sky for the first time as a gunship.

Ten Soldiers from the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program watch Russian history at Sochi opening ceremony.

Sgt. 1st Class Steven Janotta pitches idea for Army Retirement Medal.

A fired executive from one of New Jersey's red-light camera vendors contends in a lawsuit filed in Arizona that the company provided lavish gifts and bribes to government officials in 13 states - including Washington - to secure new contracts.

Watch a 15-minute preview of the new season of Game of Thrones.

Preview the new HBO comedy from Mike Judge, which stars T.J. Miller.

What happens when you plug in the locations from Kerouac's On the Road into Google Maps? You get this free manual of driving directions.

22 Things the New York Times Has Called a 'Guilty Pleasure.'

Will Ferrell has challenged the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith to a drum battle!

Have you visited the "Dumb Starbucks"?

Eight of the most fascinating items from Carl Sagan's personal archives.

Finally: A movie about beavers that are zombies and eat women in bikinis.

Writer's note: This will be my last installment of recommmended films you can find at local libraries. Enjoy.

If you still wonder why Iron Man 3 felt like a movie straight out of the '90s (this film opened with Eiffel 65's "Blue" and dressed a character as Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction, for starters), I'd ask writer-director Shane Black. The author behind the Lethal Weapon franchise and (at least to me) the ultimate Schwarzenegger vehicle, Last Action Hero, brought to IM3 his trademark witty dialogue and penchant for setting Christmastime crimes in warm climes. And he must also like Robert Downey, Jr. (who doesn't, right?), since both appeared in an earlier Black film, 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Read more...

FRIDAY, FEB. 7, 2014 >>>

1. Barney Rubble belted it in the bath. Spongebob stole Squidward's thunder by singing it underwater. And most famously, Bugs gnawed his way through several rounds of "Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!" in the toon classic, "Rabbit of Seville." Between its easily followed romcom plot and a score made universally familiar by the aforementioned pop culture references, Rossini's The Barber of Seville is an ideal introduction to opera. Tacoma Opera's presentation will follow the exploits of Seville's self-celebrating barber, Figaro - a character who literally sings his own praises - at 7:30 p.m. in the Rialto Theater. Everybody shares secrets with their barbers, and this barber is only too happy put what he learns to work.

2. As part of its salute to Black History Month, the University of Puget Sound will screen Pariah at 7 p.m. in the Tahoma Room at Commencement Hall on its campus. Directed by Dee Rees, Pariah, follows the journey of Alike, a young African-American woman struggling to embrace her identity as a lesbian.

3. Two of our Tacoma sons return for a 7 p.m. show at B Sharp Coffee House. Dylan Treleven and Colin Scott Reynolds are touring with their new project, The Silver Dollars. Born out of Treleven's desire to write his own material while out on lengthy tours in other bands, the Silver Dollars feels like a natural extension of what began back at SOTA. Read Rev. Adam McKinney's full feature on the Silver Dollars in the Music & Culture section.

4. Casey Anderson grew up in Montana surrounded by wild animals and spaces, and was nicknamed the "animal magnet" as a kid. After college, he became a trainer at wildlife parks from the United States to Africa. Then a grizzly bear named Brutus was born in an overpopulated wildlife park and Casey rescued him from being euthanized. He went on to build a sanctuary for Brutus that became Montana Grizzly Encounter, a rescue and education facility he co-owns and directs, and the base from which Casey and Brutus teach park visitors about grizzly anatomy and conservation. An enthusiastic and passionate advocate for wildlife as well as an entertaining and thoughtful presenter, Casey Anderson will share the lessons he's learned living and working with wild animals at 7:30 p.m. in the Washington Center.

5. Mozart, Schumann, Infanté, Strauss, and a selection of modern and classical composers will provide the music for the next Jacobsen Series concert at 7:30 p.m. in Schneebeck Concert Hall, which falls a week before Roman mythology's blindfolded Cupid sets to work.

LINK: Friday, Feb. 7 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

Before we get started, I think it is my duty to urge you to fall into the deliriously insane rabbit hole that is the movie Foodfight!. Set in a Toy Story-aping world of sentient corporate food mascots, Foodfight! is a fascinatingly inept failure of a movie. Almost certainly conceived as some sort of long con, the animated film cost $65 million dollars to make (though it looks cobbled together from an old Windows Movie Maker demo reel), stars a cavalcade of voice talent, and was released in 2012 after sitting on a shelf for the better part of a decade. It may have a legitimate claim to being the worst film ever made.

Foodfight! never left my mind while I watched the trailer for The LEGO Movie. Because LEGO has no mythology of its own, The LEGO Movie assembles a roster of pop culture icons in LEGO form - Batman, Wonder Woman, God and Abraham Lincoln all make appearances - to surround a plucky no-name as the lead.

It's a head-scratcher trying to figure out just who this movie is for. Of course, there are legions of LEGO fans out there, and the recent LEGO video games are apparently quite charming, but one could easily make the case that The LEGO Movie is some sort of meta-commentary on the state of franchise adaptations in an age of withering creativity. In which case, I totally see what you did, there. But, the sad truth is that this is likely a result of that withering creativity, not a commentary thereof.

So, what we are left with is an oddity. Though this film's pedigree handily outranks that of Foodfight! - as almost everything must - it doesn't take much to see a kindred spirit shared by these two films. The biggest difference seems to be that Foodfight!, shameful disaster though it may be, will always be remembered for its awfulness by fans of shitty cinema. The LEGO Movie's legacy is less clear.

My guess is that Foodfight! will be the "burn out" to The LEGO Movie's "fade away."

LINK: A Nerd Alert has been issued for the South Sound