BrainStream: I spent a majority of

I spent a majority of the weekend at my brother's house in WMass and took some time on both Saturday and Sunday to visit my mother who is recovering from foot surgery. It's weird going to my brother's house...he bought it when he turned 21 on his own and living with him is his best friend and my youngest brother. It's a small house and definitely says "Bachelor Pad" when you walk into it though all 3 men are currently in exclusive relationships. Most of the current look is due to the previous owner who had some weird tastes and definitely contributed to the bachelor image. Walking through the place you can find walls down everywhere and quite a few projects are mid-construction. I have to respect my brother because I'd freak out if I had that many unfinished projects. Not that it's his fault or anything, he works very hard during the week and needs his weekend for downtime. Plus it's usually just him with some help from his two housemates - while I boast the assistance of phenomenal in-laws.

Mostly I like to go visit him when I need to goof off. He's got an impressive entertainment system and because his house is a lot more recent than our house in 1885, he's completely wired the house for CAT5 Ethernet (Internet access) in every room. So with his friend living in the basement, brother on the first floor and he upstairs, they can all play networked games or just do their own thing. I'm pretty impressed by it - if I wasn't currently jobless, my plan was to get a cable modem and access through my local provider and then set up a wireless hub.

He also has a Playstation and plus various emulators on his PC for systems like Super Nintendo, N64, and even Atari. It's not unheard of for us to rent a view DVDs and some pizza and stay up late nights. This weekend we rented a few movies including Baseketball, Romeo Must Die and Dogma. We also rented Mallrats (I was on a Kevin Smith kick after downloading the trailer to his new movie last week). Baseketball was funny in a South Park/Bevis & Butthead/Simpsons sort of way. NOT something I can watch with Kirky and luckily she was in the other room playing EverQuest.

I've seen Romeo Must Die before - when I arrived in Vegas last year for the Def Con and Black Hat security conferences I went to another hotel to hook up with some of the Attrition guys and caught the tail end of this movie. It's pretty impressive with it's Matrix-style martial arts and the sound on my brother's home theatre system rocked.

Dogma. What can I say about Kevin Smith's Dogma? If you can see past the potty-mouth swearing, Dogma is an absolutely phenomenal movie - Kevin Smith is a genius. Dogma is a look at Christianity from the point of view of a jadedCatholic who works in an abortion clinic. She has a "vision" and is sent on a quest with Smith regulars Silent Bob & Jay to a church in Red Bank, New Jersey to stop a bunch of fallen angels from re-entering heaven.

The cast is amazing. Kevin manages to bring together Linda Fiorentino, George Carlin (ironically playing a Catholic priest), Salma Hayek, Alan Rickman, Chris Rock and Janeane Garofalo not to mention Ben Affleck and Matt Damon playing the fallen. Smith also sneaks in people who appeared in his previous movies with bit parts - Brian O'Halloran who played Dante Hicks in Smith's first (Clerks) and Gil Hicks, a contestant in a gameshow (Mallrats) shows up as a New Jersey reporter named Grant Hicks. Jeff Anderson who played Randal Graves in Clerks shows up a a Gun Salesman in the movie.

If you haven't gathered based on my previous post, one of the primary reasons I like Dogma is because of its critical look at how practioners of Christianity treat their religion and beliefs. My favorite quote comes from Hayek's character, Serendipity: "I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You don't celebrate your faith -- you mourn it."

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