I’m Learning Spanish! Behind the Wheel Spanish Level 1, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Tyson, International Remote Viewing Association Conference, and more…

 

I’m Learning Spanish!

 

I got a series of CDs called Behind the Wheel Spanish Level 1 to prepare myself for my next trip to Peru. The Behind the Wheel series comes in its own case and with a companion book. The program uses a method Your browser may not support display of this image.called Speed Immersion developed by Mark Frobose. Speed Immersion uses simple language and sentence building techniques. Frobose promises anyone can learn a foreign language! I’m putting him to the test!

 

The Behind the Wheel programs are designed specifically for those of us who drive 10-20 minutes at a time and want to use this time constructively.

 

While Sleep-Learning is roundly dismissed and ridiculed as a myth, I’m going to try it. Psychologically, it will certainly enforce my determination to learn Spanish. 

 

The Behind the Wheel CDs have an English speaking instructor that goes through the lessons and two native language speakers to help with pronunciation. Available in Winter 2009 will be Behind the Wheel for learning Arabic 1, Portuguese 1 and Spanish Level 3. I learned quite a few Arabic phrases in our travels since our Moroccan tour guide enjoyed teaching us simple phrases. In ša-? Alla-h! The most popular Behind the Wheel CDs are Spanish, followed by Italian and French. www.amazon.com/Behind-Wheel-Spanish-1/dp/1427205558 

 

The International Remote Viewing Association is pleased to announce their 10th Anniversary Conference. The Conference will be held June 19th-21st at the Green Valley Ranch Resort, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Green Valley Ranch Resort, is only minutes away from McCarran International Airport and the Las Vegas Strip.

 

 

 

At Friday evening, the controversial Ed Dames will preview his new film documentary, Viewing the Future: Grim Predictions by Major Ed Dames. After the documentary, Mr. Dames will be available for a Q & A, moderated by Paul H. Smith, the president of IRVA. This will be your opportunity to ask Mr. Dames those questions that have been troubling you for years. This DVD documentary begins with the once top-secret U.S. military program, and goes on to discuss the facts surrounding several of his past remote viewing predictions. He also reveals several future predictions. (Photo on left: Ed Dames with Ingo Swann, the genius behind Remote Viewing, and John Alexander in Santa Fe, N.M. in 1994) The list of speakers is impressive, including many of our great friends. I’m looking forward to spending time with Melvin Morse, M.D. and hearing his presentation, Is the Aperture the Tunnel?

 

I consider Mel one of my mentors. Mel and his wife Pauline will be at the IRVA Conference with their research collaborators, Mike and Susan van Atta.  Mike's remote viewing club remote viewed one of Mel’s patient’s near death experience, which will be the subject of his IRVA presentation.  Also, Mel will be presenting an experiment in which Mike remote viewed an object in his home and Mel remote viewed an object at Mike’s home.

 

Mike and Susan are Reiki Masters and combine remote viewing with their Reiki work. Mel has done a study of Reiki healing and will be presenting at a conference in Montreal in July, in conjunction with specific effects on patients such as raising white counts. Mel can be reached through SpiritualScientific: Your browser may not support display of this image.http://www.spiritualscientific.com. If you want to know why I value Mel so highly, read the “about us” portion of Mel and Pauline’s website. Very few of us would dare to be so honest! Thank you Mel, for blazing that trail!

 

 

 

Founding Members of IRVA: (standing - left to right) Hal Puthoff, David Hathcock, John Alexander, Lyn Buchannan, Paul Smith, Skip Atwater, Angela Thompson- Smith, Marcello Truzzi. (seated) Russell Targ & Stephan Schwartz. Photo courtesy of Robert Knight. http://www.irvaconference.org/

 

X-Men Origins:

 

Wolverine. A troubled but toned super-mutant burned by love. You’ll forget Jackman was in “Australia”.

 

I dreaded a movie on the origins of Wolverine. I saw “Australia”. I still shudder at the memory of “The Fountain”. Would Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine be shirtless, yelping, and making orgasmic faces? 

 

Not having ever read an X Men comic, this movie review is based solely on the movie! I know. I’m a rebel.

 

If “they” wanted to keep Jackman in the X-Men family, the carrot was waved (sweeten with the Executive Producer credit) and this franchise mutant was bestowed his very own feature film. And one where he doesn’t just growl and cast about aggressive pheromones. It’s his conflicted backstory!  

 

Why is it that only villains enjoy their superpowers? They are not tormented.

 

So we go back to the beginning. A beginning that isn’t very clear to the uninformed. A young boy, Logan, the future Wolverine, is sick in bed. An older boy, Victor, the future Sabretooth, is openly hostile to the sick boy. Why is this stranger being nursed in Victor’s home? Very quickly, Logan gets demon-possessed into his version of a New Age spirit-animal and eviscerates Victor’s father. He tells Logan he is his real father. Huh? Bad timing to be sure! What kind of a parting gift is this? His son’s claws are ripping his intestines out! Now Logan has to grow up with that psychological trauma on his resume. 

 

Victor takes baby brother through the woods and a montage shows Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) as grown men going from one war to another. They sure keep busy. There is their Civil War duty, two World Wars, and the Vietnam War. They kill, they get mortally-wounded, but they are immortal. 

 

They can’t die.

 

It takes Logan decades of war to finally say “Enough”. Maybe it was the fact that their boss, Stryker (Danny Huston, pictured), had them doing mercenary work in East Africa. For Victor, he’s in his element. This is his biological inheritance. For Logan, killing got old. So Logan leaves the elite gang of killer mutants, angering Victor who feels betrayed. He vows to kill Logan for abandoning him. Victor has separation issues.

 

We leap ahead six years and Logan is now working as a lumberjack in tranquil Canada, with an ethereal schoolteacher for a live-in girlfriend, Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins).  Does he ever get mad and slip into his animal nature? 

 

Surrounded by nature and unconditional love, Logan’s paradise is ruined by a visit by Stryker. Someone is killing off the team! Victor is not far behind. When Victor finds Kayla instead of Logan, he sends a message. Love me, not her.

 

Knowing he can’t beat Victor in a mutant fight, Logan allows Stryker to turn him into Weapon X. But Logan is already immortal or in very good shape for a man over one hundred fifty years old. Seems Stryker has extracted the magical essence of nine other mutants and wants to infuse Logan with all their powers. Stryker achieves his goal, but Logan will not obey. Stryker, having spent a billion dollars, summarily orders Logan be killed with a kryptonite bullet.

 

Logan is expendable. There is a Weapon XI in the wings!

 

But first, there is boxing match, a new mutant with a cocky attitude, and the left-at-the-altar Sabretooth.

 

I wasn’t expecting much. It’s based on a fantasy comic book! It is high art compared to The Fantastic Four (or that guy who wears a toilet seat over his head).

 

I loved the rich, deep color saturation the director, Gavin Hood, gave the production. There are a few blunders: When Logan becomes Wolverine, his hair leaps out; Huston’s facelift gives him a feminine look instead of the face of a mass murderer, and what is Dominic Monaghan doing in this movie with his big ears and funky, wayward nose?

 

Postscript: Due to the enormous box office for Wolverine, Hugh Jackman's mega hit is already green-lighted for a sequel. Now, the spin-off of the X-Men series is getting its own spin-off. The new flick will follow Ryan Reynolds' character, Wade Wilson, who is later transformed into Deadpool, the mutant assassin. I really liked Reynold's character and it was the best supporting character of the film.

 

Tyson.

 

Emotionally and psychologically raw, this is a revelatory experience. Tyson has a Second Act, he could mentor a troubled teen like his savior, Cus D'Amato.

 

I immediately recognized that Mike Tyson has been so cruelly damaged that he has no social barriers to fall back on. I’ve met quite a few people like this: years of engaging in hallucinatory substances strips people of boundaries and social masks. 

 

No one ever told Tyson what not to say. Who would? 

 

This documentary is so raw and revealing, that it will stand as a boxing classic – and I am not a James Toback fan at all. Toback is a self-conscious director, but finally he will have a highly regarded hit movie with “Tyson”. Because he stayed out of the way. Toback has been massaging Tyson for years preparing him for this movie. He put Tyson in his little seen 2004 film “When Will I Be Loved” and his 1999 film “Black and White”. Toback gained Tyson’s trust. It took twenty years.

 

 

Tyson starts at the beginning and it is clear that something “humiliating” happened to him when he was a kid. I do not believe it was being forced to give up his lunch money or the death of one of his pigeons. Tyson keeps going back to the word “humiliated”. Whatever it was, it was the crucial event that made him a world champion.

 

It is Tyson’s honest recollections about his mentor Cus D’ Amato that show how exposed Tyson is willing to be. You see him emotionally change. He starts to cry talking about the man who nurtured and trained him to be a champion. Tyson’s love for Cus is pure. In my opinion, it continues to be the only relationship Tyson has ever had with another human being.

 

Tyson goes over his famous fights with the skill of a historian and a psychologist. I saw Tyson fight when I lived in New York. All I remember is that we got there late and it was a brief night out. Tyson explains his thought processes as he walked to the ring for a fight. He goes over all his great fights, the downfalls, the drugs, and the many, many women. See it for Tyson’s intense monologue on his love of women. He only wants to give pleasure. He does not want to receive it. He likes to dominate strong women. You will love it for another reason: Mike says he performed fellatio on a woman in a bathroom. Tyson goes over many of the historical events in his life, his brief marriage to actress Robin Givens, his still raw anger over his arrest for rape, the ruthless Don King, and his infamous ear-chewing episode. Tyson’s honesty is unparalleled.

 

Tyson also brags about meeting the president of Istanbul.          

 

Toback left out a memorable Tysonism. I recall that Tyson once said that if he had walked his accuser downstairs after their hotel room tryst, he would have never been accused of rape.

 

We walked out saying one of Mike’s probable, and soon to be classic, prison taunts to some guy at his press conference after his release from prison: “I’m going to f**k you til you love me.” And how can we forget Mike’s memorial tirade to an interviewer about an opponent: “I want to eat his children.”