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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, February 3, 2010 Basic Black by Arthur Black I s t hat yo u, J ack? Feature this: a 30-something Canadian nondescript male toting a backpack lines up to go through security at Vancouver airport. His boarding pass indicates he's heading for Toronto. He plops his backpack on the conveyor belt as instructed, walks through the scanner and prepares to retrieve his bag on the other side. But his backpack isn't coming through. Instead the guy at the controls is staring bug-eyed, waving his colleagues over to look at the X-ray image on the screen. In no time an Airport Security team, flanked by a couple of Mounties shows up and escorts the nondescript would-be passenger to The Little Room. They have one question for the guy. Why is there a loaded, .38calibre Smith and Wesson revolver and extra rounds of ammunition in his backpack? I have a larger question for him: what the hell was he thinking? Is it possible that in this Post 9-11, would-be shoe bomber and underachieving underpants detonator era, someone still exists who's dumb enough to think he could carry a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage on to an airplane? A Police .38 Smith and Wesson is as long as a shoe and weighs a couple of pounds -- you're not going to 'overlook' it while you're packing and it's difficult to mistake it for a toothbrush. And those vigilant minions at airport security are positively percolating with paranoia these days. They're confiscating everything from nose-hair tweezers to bobby pins. Last month airport security goons in Ottawa made headlines by forcing an 85-year-old silverhaired grandmother -- fourfoot-ten, 90 pounds soaking wet, suffering from osteoporosis and answering to 'Cynthia' -- to take off her shoes, unzip her pants and submit to a belly prod from an 'inspection office.' Terrorist? No. Terrorized? Definitely. In Minneapolis, a bombsniffing dog found a piece of luggage he didn't like. False alarm. Nevertheless, part of the terminal was evacuated. In Portland, a Maui-bound flight returned to earth after an overly-liquefied passenger turned surly and obnoxious. The airport in Bakersfield, California was shut down after authorities discovered a 'suspicious substance' in a jar in someone's carry-on luggage. It was buckwheat honey. And this guy tries to board with a .38-calibre revolver in his backpack? If it's any consolation, he's not the only idiot attempting to fly the not-so-friendly skies these days. Mansur Mohammad Assad, a passenger on a Northwest Airways jet bound for Ohio, happened to casually mention that he wanted "to kill all the Jews." That entitled Assad and his 230 fellow passengers to a mid-air U-turn and a quick descent back to Miami airport, escorted by two F-15 fighter jets. Then there was the 42year-old German dummkopf who was flying with his wife and kids out of Stuttgart last month, heading for a vacation in Egypt. Why not, he apparently thought, have a bit of sport with airport security personnel? "I have explosives in my underwear," he wittily informed the fraulein wafting the wand. After they called off the Alsatian attack dogs, let him up off the floor, strip-searched and interrogated him for several hours and thoroughly examined his non-incendiary gotchies, the German airport authorities informed the jokester that not only would he and his family not be flying to Egypt (or anywhere else), they also would not be refunded the cost of their cancelled tickets and would in fact, be assessed a thousand-dollar fine plus costs for the entire police operation. Those airport security people -- no sense of humour. The courts aren't a barrel of laughs these days either. That doofus who tried to fly from Vancouver to Toronto with a pistol in his backpack? He's doing 39 months in the slammer. There are two lessons to be learned from these current inflight follies. Number one: if you really have to travel somewhere consider a cab, a bus, a train -- hell, duct-tape a bedsheet to your skateboard if you have to -- anything but submit to the horrors of commercial air travel these days. Number two: if you absolutely must fly somewhere and you spot your old high school buddy Jack Wilson ahead of you in the airport security line-up... Wave at him. Whistle, if you like. Semaphore if you know how. Sing your high school anthem if you must. Just don't yell out "Hi, Jack!" The Reel Thing Movie Reviews by: Sharon McCartney The great thing about a suspense or thriller movie is the hook. The little twist at the end that surprises you. A very good example of this is The Sixth Sense. At the very end you find out who Bruce Willis (Die Hard, The Whole Nine Yards,The Kid) is. Another film like this is No Way Out. Again at the end you find out who Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves, Silverado, Open Range) is. In The new Denzel Washington (John Q, Remember the Titans, Man on Fire, The Manchurian Candidate) film The Book of Eli, there is a hook at the end that you don't really see coming. It is a dark film about a post-Apocalyptic earth. In the film, Eli is trying to get a book to a safe place after all the copies of this book have been destroyed; eventually you find out it is the King James Bible. There is a different slant to this film though. I really enjoyed Mr. Washington's acting, he also produced the film. Mila Kunis (Jackie from That 70's Show) is great in this film. She is starting to come into her own, and there was real chemistry between them. I truly enjoyed this film. I give it a 4 out of 5. I also went to see Mel Gibson's latest, Edge of Darkness... what a disappointment. I love Mel's Mad Max, the Lethal Weapon series, Brave Heart, and The Patriot. But this film is so tired. He seems to have lost his edge. He is really showing his age, but when I looked up his age he is only 54 years old. He looks really short in this film (he is 5' 11"). Usually there is a bit of humour in Gibson's films, one of those Gibson moments, but this was just boring. The surprise car scene, is all the good I can say about this film. Maybe he should stay behind the camera. I give this film a 2 out of 5. Loyal Printing Ltd. "Everything with the printed word" 5310 Main St., Orono 905-983-5301