GRAB A CUP & AND READ THE MORINING REPORT FOR 1.17.14 >>>

Obama has presided over a huge surge in special operations, vastly out-pacing Bush.

The US Senate passed a government-wide spending measure that would give the Pentagon nearly $600 billion to buy new weapons, address readiness problems and fight America's wars. The final vote tally was 72-26.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel huddled with his top military and civilian leaders as the Defense Department puts the finishing touches on its 2015 budget proposal.

President Obama will announce today a major overhaul of a controversial National Security Agency program that collects vast amounts of basic telephone call data on foreigners and Americans.

Its Senate sponsors describe it as a "diplomatic insurance policy" that will help President Obama cut a better nuclear deal with Iran. The White House condemns it as a deal-killer that could put the United States on a path to war.

South Korea rejected North Korean warnings to call off scheduled joint military exercises with the United States and vowed "severe" retaliation to any provocation from Pyongyang.

Members of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq handed out pamphlets urging those in Fallujah to take up arms and back the militants in their weekslong fight against government troops as clashes raged on around the city.

As the U.S. economy gets back on track - unemployment recently fell below 7 percent for the first time in five years - the Pentagon's recruiting commands are bracing for potential challenges.

With the Army drawdown the question arises - what a smaller Army can do and what it can't?

The US Air Force's Total Force Task Force (TF2) is now the Total Force Continuum (TFC), to guide integration of Air National Guard and Reserve units.

Rock mysteriously appears in front of the Mars Opportunity rover.

R.I.P. Professor, Reuben Kincaid and one of the last surviving Munchkins.

The 5 most ridiculous ways studios spoiled their own movies.

Here is your soundtrack today, thanks to Henry Rollins.

Why are today's teens watching so much bad '90s television.

Mr. Potato Head Homer: Let's Play D'oh.

Enjoy Vladimir Putin playing the piano and singing "Blueberry Hill."

Ready for some football this weekend? The USO Northwest is ... and its also ready to host a Seattle Seahawks viewing party for Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers, airmen and families who want to watch the local team take on the San Francisco 49ers for the NFC Championship.

"We have a great relationship with the Seattle Seahawks, you could say we're each other's 12th Man. The USO Northwest is proud to cheer them on in this playoff game and we look forward to sharing our 12th Man spirit with those who come to our viewing party," said Meaghan Cox, USONW Communications and IT lead.

Admission is free and there will be food and drinks available throughout the game at no cost. The Seahawks and 49ers rivalry will be showcased on all three large televisions and there will also be a raffle each quarter, giving away prizes like iTunes gift cards, Halo Reach games for XBOX 360 and other DVDs.

The party will start 30 minutes before kick off at 3 p.m. Sunday in The Shali Center, which is in Building 1183, next to the passenger terminal, on McChord Field.

GRAB A CUP & AND READ THE MORINING REPORT FOR 1.15.14 >>>

The Senate Intelligence Committee singled out Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of exhibiting poor leadership and insufficient planning in their report on the Sept. 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Lt. Gen. James O. Barclay III, Army G-8, says soldier level could drop to 420,000 by 2019.

The head of the UN body tasked with removing and destroying Syria's chemical arsenal says the process has been slowed down by security concerns.

Even in the darkest, deadliest days of Iraq's War, you'd find people still hopeful it would all work out.

Sustainment costs are eating away at Army aviation and new approaches are needed to rein the costs in.

Thirty-four intercontinental ballistic missile launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., have been implicated in cheating on the ICBM launch officer proficiency test.

Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. John F. Campbell discusses SHARP and Army restructure.

The office of the secretary of defense has directed the US Navy to limit its overall buy of littoral combat ships to a total of 32 ships, foregoing 20 more of the small, fast and controversial warships.

Former US defense secretary Robert Gates said Britain no longer had the complete spectrum of capabilities, meaning its relationship with the US military was shifting.

The nominations for the 86th Academy Awards were announced this morning, and the snubs were as notable as the honors.

Mathematician calculates how to survive the first 30 minutes of a nuclear war.

It's true, the French really don't care if you cheat on your spouse.

Good news! The original Batman series with Adam West is finally coming to DVD!

Soon we'll be able to stream The Simpsons, but of course there's a catch.

Oh, those kooky Japanese!

Dear lord, it's another one. A scant two weeks following the release of Paranormal Activity's fifth perfunctory installment, The Marked Ones, a nation finds itself faced with the grim reality that there is yet another limp found footage movie to capitalize on our apparently continued fear of demonic possession. At least, this time around, the title's a pun, which is always more than welcome.

Let's start with that title, since that is surely what the writers did. Oh, how I would've loved to have duct-taped a camera to an oscillating fan for that pitch meeting.

"I don't know, what if it's about a demon baby and we called it Devil's Due?"

"Fred, you're a genius! Get me salmon pages by Monday!"

As for the trailer, well, it's exhausting. That's it. The main feeling I came away with after those two minutes was just pure exhaustion. Boy meets girl, boy films girl, boy never stops filming girl, reviewer wonders how they can ever approach anything even close to a normal life if one half of the couple just never stops filming stuff, girl gets possessed, girl gives birth to wretched freak of nature, blah blah barf.

A big upside to making these chintzy found-footage movies is that you save so much money on production costs that you can afford to do bullshit promotional stunts like setting loose an animatronic devil baby on the streets of New York to needlessly punish passersby for being compassionate. But what kind of assholes would endeavor to do a stupid and mean-spirited thing like that? Only the worst kind of person!

Ah, well, that settles that, I guess.

See Devil's Due in theaters! It's made by people who hate good samaritans and also babies and definitely cinema as an art form and oh why not they probably also think that global warming is a myth!

See Also

A Nerd Alert has been issued for the South Sound

Arguably the most dysfunctional culture of the past few centuries, North Korea is a cosmically mad movie waiting to happen.

In the meantime, FRONTLINE will go inside the Secret State of North Korea tonight.

Using undercover footage smuggled out of the country, tonight's must-watch documentary delivers a rare and revelatory look at the realities of life in a country where:

• Just being caught with illegal DVDs could mean immediate imprisonment, or even execution.
• Until recently, it was illegal for women to wear pants instead of skirts or dresses.
• As many as one in 100 citizens is a political prisoner.

Secret State of North Korea premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on KCTS Channel 9.

TUESDAY, JAN. 14 2014 >>>

1. You're exchanging trail mix recipes at 7 p.m. with the Mountaineers Club folks when this mellow, Spanish transcendental lullaby creeps through the club's doorway and swirls around your soul. Instantly, thoughts of Madrid at midnight lighten your spirits. You drop your pen and waterproof notepad, and like a zombie saunter out the door and float into the neighboring Slavonian Hall. Award-winning British classical guitarist Michael Partington strums his acoustic guitar, showcasing his innate rhythmic understanding and sense for tonal color to form some of the most memorable phrasing you have ever heard on the guitar. You slip away into another world. After an hour, you re-enter this world. You wander back to the Mountaineers, but your head is in the clouds capping Mount Teide. You've been Partingtoned, as they say.

2. Imagine this scenario: You're happy. You have everything you could really need or want and if things continued this way for the rest of your days, you'd call it a pretty good life. Then, early one morning, you wake up to discover a hydroelectric dam in front of your house. It's big, it's loud and it's totally unwelcome, (like Roseanne Barr, only made of concrete). Every aspect of your life is negatively impacted by this thing. Running low on groceries? Good luck getting to the store; the dam's blocking your car in. Want to do a little gardening or mow the lawn? Your yard's flooded. Need to feed your pets? You haven't seen Genghis Dog or Chairman Meow in days. God only knows what happened to them. That's essentially the situation with which the Inuit people of Canada's Hudson Bay live as documented in the film People of a Feather screening at 2 and 6:55 p.m. in The Grand Cinema.

3. Oh, who doesn't love secrets? From now until Feb. 14 Brix 25 in Gig Harbor is having a secret envelope giveaway. Every time you dine in the fine-dining restaurant, you will receive an envelope. Don't tear it open! Upon your return visit between Feb. 15-April 15, the restaurant staff will tear open the envelop at the end of you meal to discover your discount. Prizes vary from $15 gift cards to $500 in value.

4. If hearing the sound of your own cackling voice echoing off the walls of your shower stall has you craving the sound of something a bit more harmonious, check out the local songbirds at Victory Music Open Mic at the Antique Sandwich Co. from 7-10 p.m. It's guaranteed to be jam-packed with gorgeous sounds and humbling verses, as the South Sound's greatest up-and-coming acoustic musicians bare their souls impromptu-style.

5. The Place Isn't So Bad and Walter & Perry rock Le Voyeur at 9 p.m.

LINK: Tuesday, Jan. 14 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area

When you have eliminated the impossible, 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.

FRIDAY, JAN. 17

Which movie character has been portrayed by actors who also played Lamont Cranston, Dr. Richard Kimble, Matt Murdock and Jack Frost? If you said CIA Deputy Director John Patrick Ryan, Sr., Ph.D., CPA, USMC (Ret.), KCVO (Hon), give yourself a hearty pat on the back. Of course, before Ryan was all those things, he was junior analyst Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit; his latest movie opens this week. Chris Pine joins a club whose officers emeritus are Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. His latest installment is a reboot from an original screenplay by the guy who wrote, of all things, The Wings of the Dove. Ryan's sent to Moscow to match wits with Viktor Cherevin, a baddie played by the film's director, Kenneth Branagh. Ordinarily, when a film gets pushed back from Christmas to January, that's a bad sign, but this episode may surprise us. That's because Paramount moved Shadow Recruit to clear a slot for its own Oscar contender, The Wolf of Wall Street. Also, Branagh directed the surprisingly effective Thor, so he knows from both acting and action. Opening Friday as well (but not as good): two Ryan-fodder thrillers, Devil's Due and Reasonable Doubt.

I, on the other hand, must delay catching up with Agent Ryan, as I'll be at Tacoma Musical Playhouse for its premiere of Shout! The Mod Musical, a celebration of female musical artists of the 1960s. The show's song list includes such classics as "Downtown," "Son of a Preacher Man," and "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," so I bet I won't mind the wait.

SHOUT! THE MOD MUSICAL, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through Feb. 9, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, 7116 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, $20-$29, 253.565.6867

SATURDAY, JAN. 18

As Mia Wallace once opined, "Beatles people can like Elvis, and Elvis people can like the Beatles, but nobody likes them both equally." Well, I'm a Beatles guy, but far from immune to the allure of a soulful rendition of "Suspicious Minds." And that's where Robert Washington, Elvis impersonator extraordinaire, hip-swivels into the picture. This Saturday, the Capitol Theater presents Washington's tribute to the King of Rock and Roll. Don your gold-lamé jumpsuit, enjoy a documentary called Almost Elvis and then "Surrender" to a hunka, hunka "Burning Love." Incidentally, in a stirring tribute to color-blind casting, Mr. Washington - who does a pitch-perfect Elvis - is African-American, yet won the first Elvis World Championships down in peckerwood Memphis. Thank you ... thank you very much.

ELVIS BIRTHDAY BASH, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Capitol Theater, 206 Fifth Ave. SE, Olympia, $15, 360.705.1658

SUNDAY, JAN. 19

If you're a regular reader of this column, you know my respect for Doctor Who showrunner and head writer Steven Moffat knows no bounds. He's an absolute genius. His sitcom Coupling is legendary in the UK (though its U.S. incarnation fared poorly), and his Adventures of Tintin script for Steven Spielberg was admirably faithful to its source material. You can establish the quality of any Doctor Who episode by noting how proximate Moffat was to its script. For me, however, Moffat's crowning glory is Sherlock, the BBC's modern-day update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's irascible detective. Each season (or "series" in British TV jargon) includes three movie-length episodes, all loosely based on classic Conan Doyle adventures. If you've never watched the show, I implore you to seek out all six previous episodes while adding Series 3, commencing Sunday with "The Empty Hearse," to your DVR. (In "The Adventure of the Empty House," Conan Doyle explained how Sherlock survived a seemingly fatal encounter with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls.) Oh, my friends and fellow Sherlockians, the game is once more afoot!

Until next week, may the Force be with you, may the odds be ever in your favor, and may I draw your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time?

GRAB A CUP & READ THE MORNING REPORT FOR 1.13.14 >>>

Iran has agreed to start eliminating its stockpile of higher levels of enriched uranium beginning Jan. 20 under an interim deal announced in November.

US Army wants to transform all nine of its Stryker brigades into the heavily armored "double V-hull" (DVH) configuration.

Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip today, just hours ahead of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's funeral. The projectiles did not appear to have landed in Israel.

Department of Veterans Affairs says more female veterans will suffer from the kinds of injuries that go with being a ground-pounder.

Disabled military retirees will be protected from the reduced COLA.

The Appropriations committees are set to unveil this week how they will cut roughly $25 billion from the Pentagon's budget.

Weapon sales to Iraq have become entangled in sharply escalated political debate after al-Qaida affiliated forces regained partial control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

The Arctic Passage opens challenges for the mil because it means it has a new ocean to patrol - for the first time since 1846.

The College of William & Mary and U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command reaffirmed their partnership to develop internships, research and training opportunities for both William & Mary students and TRADOC Soldiers in the field of national security.

Six15 Technologies is announcing the release of their direct view monitor for military applications called the Standard Mobile Monitor (SMM).

Watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's flawless, hilarious Golden Globes monologue.

Fifteen new comics. Fifteen talented creative teams. Fifteen new reasons to open a new line of credit for Image's 2014 barrage of awesome.

Mad Men returns to the tube April 13.

HBO says the upcoming fifth season of Boardwalk Empire will be the series' last.

Christine McVie retired from Fleetwood Mac more than 15 years ago, and now, she's coming back to the band.

Are you ready for some Thrones?

Military sitcoms shouldn't work. There's really nothing funny about war.  But the funniest thing is that they have worked, time and again. Since the mid-1950s, when television was just beginning its reign over America's living rooms, we've been treated to a combat comedy cavalcade filled with classic shows like F Troop, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Hogan's Heroes, C.P.O. Sharkey and, of course, M*A*S*H.  All of these shows live on in our memories and in reruns, but when M*A*S*H ended in 1983, military sitcoms went with it.  Major Dad tried to revive the genre in 1989, but that proved to just be the death rattle, lasting only a handful of seasons.

FOX wants to bring the military sitcom back to the forefront with Enlisted.  It's a new century, a new America and a new generation of television viewers. Could Enlisted be the show that reintroduces the military sitcom to the public consciousness?

I really hope not.

Read more...

FLY AWAY! >>>

You'll be the first to admit you're a total movie snob. It's a rare breed that chooses to hang out at a museum and discuss aviation films rather than watch the Seahawks playoff game.

What's tougher to admit, though, is the fact that your girlfriend is so not one of those people. Maybe you should have screened her better before you went and got all emotionally attached and sentimental.

Read more...