crowds

It looks like some were planning on going to tonight’s big Tea Party rally in Cincinnati just for the purpose of seeing Sean Hannity. Now that Fox executives forced him to cancel his appearance we have someone wanting a refund:

Pat Kellison said she wants her money back. She'd not only bought the book but paid $20 for preferred seating to watch the taping of Hannity's show.

"I'm not happy," said Kellison.

But the proceeds from the tickets are going to the Cincinnati Tea Party. Doesn’t Pat care about the tea party? Perhaps its that the Tea Party can only really draw crowds when there is a big name attached, you know, names like Sarah Palin. That kind of puts a whole damper on the “grassroots” meme, doesn’t it?

I expect a lot more will be demanding refunds for tonight’s show and all the while Sean Hannity and the Cincinnati Tea Party are left with egg on their face.

The Black Friday results show what was to be expected – a rather blue Christmas for retailers:

As the closely-watched Black Friday weekend winds down, a National Retail Federation survey conducted over the weekend confirms the expected: more people spent less. According to NRF’s Black Friday shopping survey, conducted by BIGresearch, 195 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend*, up from 172 million last year. However, the average spending over the weekend dropped to $343.31 per person from $372.57 a year ago. Total spending reached an estimated $41.2 billion.

The good side of this for the shopper is that retailers will probably be running bigger sales this holiday season in hopes to draw in larger crowds.

As my long time readers know I am big into CG effects. I have even done some work in 3D computer graphics and modeling, so it should come as no shock that I had to go see Transformers 2 when it came out. I really liked the first one, so anxiously awaited the sequel. Heading into the theater I was preparing myself for disappointment. The reviews on the big dollar sequel were horrible.

Despite the bad reviews I hit the theater at opening and saw the movie and must say that I was highly impressed. Critics be dammed, but this movie had not only great effects, but also tons of action and awesome comedy. It appears that I am not the only one disagreeing with the critics:

After just five days, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is halfway to $400 million domestically, a box-office milestone only eight other movies have reached. If it climbs that high, the "Transformers" sequel will be by far the worst-reviewed movie ever to make the $400 million club.

Critics and mainstream crowds often disagree, but "Revenge of the Fallen" sets a new standard for the gulf between what reviewers and mass audiences like.

The movie pulled in $201.2 million since opening Wednesday, the second-best result for a movie in its first five days, just behind "The Dark Knight" with $203.8 million. Even after its whopping $60.6 million opening day, "Revenge of the Fallen" was packing theaters, a sign that unlike critics, who mostly hated the movie, audiences felt they were getting their money's worth and were giving the flick good word of mouth.

Critics be damn, the money and people have spoken. This movie is raking in the big bucks and the people love it. I know leaving my little local theater, people were in aww. One guy even said he was going to see it again. That’s movie magic and a magic the critics seem to be left out in the cold on.

This is very disturbing from Newsweek:

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

Again McCain and Palin did nothing to quell the calls of hate from their supporters. As matter of fact they seemed to relish in it and even encourage it. I'm glad we won't be seeing those hate-fests anymore, but I do fear the damage they may have done to the future of our nation.

After watching John McCain try to calm down his crowds yesterday, I ended up having some reservations. I'm not saying McCain isn't serious about what he is saying, but I am now wondering if he is in control of his campaign. His campaign aides were out just a couple hours before supporting the violent calls from McCain/Palin crowds and Palin herself continued the attacks yesterday. The top of the ticket is in charge of the campaign, which is John McCain. So is he saying he doesn't have control of his campaign? If so that sounds an awful lot like Bush and his administration.

There is a chance though that McCain was just trying to save face yesterday and has no intention of calming the fires. Perhaps McCain did this because he is so much like George Bush now in the sense that Republican incumbents up for re-election are refusing to be seen on the trail with him now.

The next few days should be interesting to watch and see how all this takes hold. I'm sure a lot of hard core Republicans are pissed with McCain, so he will have to stop that bleeding. I also don't see what McCain did helping him with Independents, so the polls could quickly open up more in Obama's favor, in which case we would probably see McCain trying to reignite the fires.