Escape From New York

I loved Escape from New York as a kid. It was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. I own it on Blu-ray and decided to re-watch it.

The opening sequence describes the situation with an uncredited narration by Jamie Lee Curtis…

In 1988 the crime rate in the United States rises 400%. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A 50-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline across the Harlem River and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States police force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don’t come out.

It doesn’t sound so far fetched anymore: create a place for people that do not want police.

I love John Carpenter’s synth soundtrack. Opening track here.

I did not know there was an alternate opening to the movie. This opening shows Snake getting busted for robbing the Bank of the United States…the crime that sent him to New York Maximum Security Prison. You can see that they have created “USART,” a subway that covers all of the USA (looks like it is the BART station in Berkeley to me). I like the original opening better with the focus on New York as a prison.

I watched the credits and noticed something new to me: James Cameron (Terminator, Aliens, Titanic) is listed as doing special effects and matte artwork.

Highly recommended.

Mini Reviews: Ozark season 2,3, Dead To Me season 2, The Wrong Missy

Ozark Season 2 and Season 3 (Netflix)

I loved this show. It is really well done. Season three really got to me. Highly recommended. I put it up there with Breaking Bad as one of the greatest TV series of all time.

Dead to Me Season 2 (Netflix)

I really liked the first season. Season 2 was not as good, but still worth watching. The characters (Christina Applegate and Linda Cartdellini) are still fun to watch.

The Wrong Missy (Netflix)

This movie is dumb. But I have to admit I laughed out loud several times. Looking at the trailer, I thought Lauren Lapkus was trying too hard. After watching the movie, I thought she was hilarious. She makes this movie work.

It’s Alive!

My old blog covers January 2003 to January 2013. I accidently overwrote it when I started this blog.

I brought it back to life. You can now access it here:

http://oldblog.davidlenihan.com/

How I Fixed It

  1. I used WinSCP to download my old blog to my computer.
  2. I ran this PowerShell script to update all the links to the new location (/ORIGINAL_davidlenihan.com)
    ls *.html,*.xml -r -files | %{(gc $_ -Raw) -replace 'davidlenihan\.com','davidlenihan.com/ORIGINAL_davidlenihan.com' | Set-Content $_}
  3. I used Adobe Media Encoder to convert all .wmv, . mov, and .mpg to .mp4 that can play in modern browsers.
  4. I ran this PowerShell script to change all references to videos to .mp4
    ls *.html -file -r | %{(gc $_ -Raw) -replace '(?<url>\"http://(www\.|)davidlenihan\.com/[^ ]*)\.(wmv|mov|mpg)\"', '${url}.mp4"' | Set-Content $_}
  5. I used WinSCP to upload the updated blog contents to the new location on the web server
  6. I created a subdomain (http://oldblog.davidlenihan.com) that points to the actual location (http://www.davidlenihan.com/ORIGINAL_davidlenihan.com) for easier access
  7. I placed a link to the old blog on the bottom right side under “Links”

Let me know if you find any issues.

My Family’s Home Pages

Editor’s note:

This blog post was originally posted April 9, 2006. My old Moveable Type blog has been replaced with a new WordPress blog. In updating to the new blog, all my old posts ‘went away.’ I will periodically bring back some of them so they can live again. I had to update this post because many of the links no longer work and the JavaScript code did not work correctly with Chrome.

David


For Christmas 2000, I thought it would be a nice gift to give my family their own domains. I wanted my family to actually set up their own home pages, but I knew they probably would not. So I decided to give them a little incentive…I setup *very* annoying home pages for each of them based on the internet classic hamster dance.

Here are the original home pages, safely archived on my web site:

Of the original 4 web sites I setup, only my brother has kept his domain, but removed the “bro dance” home page. My Dad, Mom, and Joe let their domains expire and no longer own them.