I still want to believe

The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie apparently had a rather bad opening night. It's still a little early, but I saw at least one source reporting a $5 M Friday. That's not good, but is it really surprising? Hollywood seems to have sabotaged any chance it may have had. They released it one week after the juggernaut The Dark Knight, and the same people would watch both. It'd be different if it were a romance, comedy, or a kids movie, but it's a thriller catering to geeks. When you only have $10 in your pocket, you have to choose.

What's more is that they released it on the same weekend as Comic-Con! What's up with that? Who thought it would be a good idea to release it on the same weekend that your core audience is busy doing something else? It was only given a $30 M production budget, which is fine because that's all it needed as a non-epic standalone thriller, but you could tell Hollywood had low expectations for the film from the beginning.

I sense a conspiracy : )

What's really sad is that the movie is really good. Really good if you're a fan of the television show, and not that bad if you're just into the genre of suspenseful thrillers. It's obviously written for the fans, with all the easter-eggs they'd be looking for -- even the actress who played Mulder's kid sister in the television show, all grown up, has a cameo appearance in a different role. There's numerous guest stars from the television show who made an appearance in the film. But after all the nods to fans, it still feels like an X-Files episode without the fandom. After we get through all the gratuitous nods and explanatory devices, you have the actual plot, and you feel like you're just watching an episode of the series. That's what I was looking for, and it delivered on that. It was classic, gritty, X-Files, reminiscent of the early seasons.

There's some things I would have changed. I'm not a 'shipper (fans obsessed with Mulder and Scully's relationship). So, I would have downplayed that part of the story. But I understand that's what fans wanted.

Here's the thing: I still want to believe. I want them to make more! If I can't have the television show, I'd like to have an episodic movie once per year, or at least every other year. There's no reason why this film should have had low numbers. The audience base is still there. We still want these stories. The story itself I would give a B- to. The only thing keeping this from being a viable franchise is that you can't let Hollywood sabotage it like they did this time around. If it hadn't tried to be a summer blockbuster, and had opened maybe around Halloween when fans are not distracted by Batman and Comic-Con, I guarantee we would be looking at higher box-office numbers.

Is it too late to inspire more films? Will Hollywood realize their mistakes and see that there's financial incentive to make more, given the right circumstances? Will there be an X-Files 3?

I want to believe.

There's plenty of material to work with. In the television series, we were given December 22, 2012 as the date when the aliens would begin colonization (Mayan calendar reference, of course). That's not too far off. Hell, I could write the scripts.

You never know, Hollywood realized their mistakes with Hulk (2003), fixed them, revamped and did amazingly well with The Incredible Hulk (2008). With the X-Files, it's not the movie that's broken. It's just the release date and marketing.

The Dark Knight: Excellence in movie titling

I applaud Warner Brother's ability to think outside the box in titling the sequel to Batman Begins as The Dark Knight. This is the first Batman movie title to not have "Batman" in it. You could imagine a sense of unease among movie execs that not everyone out there would get that we're still talking about Batman, so it must have taken some convincing to go with the less recognizable title.

Like it matters, really; All the movie houses still put "Batman" up on the marquee : )

Still, it is something to be applauded. The Dark Knight has long been Batman's moniker. Frank Miller used it in 1986 to pen the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. Not only is it an appropriate title from that standpoint, but the entire plot seems to have been written around the possible title. There's several themes in the movie involving "Dark Knight"...

(Minor spoilers)

• The night is darkest before the dawn. We're told that Batman has all but cleaned up the streets and made Gotham a safer city, ushering in the dawn of a new era of order in the city. With the introduction of District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman may even be no longer necessary to ensure the crime-free order sticks. Then... Joker comes on the scene and all hell breaks loose. The night is darkest before the dawn.
• What makes a white knight and what makes a dark knight? Harvey Dent is characterized as Gotham's "white knight", a man who can fight for the city and its people without wearing a mask. Incorruptible. Batman is, of course, presupposed to be the "dark knight", a vigilante and morally deficit defender of the city.
• Who is which? Is Harvey Dent as squeaky clean as he should be to be considered Gotham's "white knight"? Is Batman as dark and morally deficit as he could be? Who exactly is Gotham's White Knight, who is the incorruptible defender of the city? I won't spoil it for you, but its definitely NOT the Joker.

The entire movie centers around these themes. It's the perfect title. Good on them for sticking with it over pandering titles like Batman: The Dark Knight or some other intelligence-insulting title that I'm sure was suggested.

Mark Cuban's rules for a successful start-up

Mark Cuban is an Internet billionaire who owes a substantial portion of his fortune to start-ups. How successful is he? Well, he's listed as #133 on Forbes' "World's Richest People" list, with a net worth of $2.8 billion, and The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction," $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in October 1999.

Wouldn't you like to get inside his head? Well, you can. Mark Cuban keeps his own blog at Blog Maverick. Here's his twelve rules for start-ups:

Of course, anyone who has started a company has their own rules and guidelines, so I thought i would add to the meme with my own. My "rules" below aren't just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them as well.

1. Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.

4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over their secretary, run away. If an exec wont go on salescalls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the cheapest way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista... ask yourself why, then use it. Its a startup, there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, its ok to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your Yobaby.com polo you sent them in public, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or 10 for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party :0

These are all off the top of my head. But they have worked for me so far.

The other dark knights

While this weekend the entire known universe of movie goers are clamoring over The Dark Knight (as well they should be), it's important for me as a fan of both Batman and the X-Files television series to remind the world that next weekend two other night stalkers will be in theaters nationwide.



You must see this film (or else I'll use government mind-control reversed engineered from alien technologies, delivered through black oil attached to honey bees tended by clones, to make you watch it).

My Merovingian ties to the Da Vinci Code Legend

If you haven't read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown or watched the movie adaptation starring Tom Hanks, then it's probably because you don't want to. Perhaps you object to the premise of the story for religious reasons. I respect that, please skip this post. Also, if you don't want any minor spoilers, please skip this post. If not, read on.

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The premise of the fictional The Da Vinci Code, or what I'll call the Da Vinci Code Legend, is actually based on themes presented in the earlier non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Both controversial books popularized the legend that Jesus was married, was in fact married to Mary Magdalene, and that the couple had one or more offspring. Further, as the Legend goes, those descendents immigrated to what is now southern France. Once there, they intermarried with the noble families that would eventually become the Merovingian dynasty. Thus, descendents of the Merovingians also carried with them the direct bloodline of Jesus Christ himself.

For the record, I'm talking legends here, not necessarily historical fact. The major source for Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln's theory, Les Dossiers Secrets, which supposedly established a genealogical pedigree between the Merovingians (kings of the Franks) and Jesus, has been largely discredited as a hoax. Still, there are many who hold that the legend/hoax is true despite that document being a fabrication, pointing to other stories to make their case. Fact or fiction? I don't know. At the very least, it makes for a great plotline of a widely popular book and movie.

In The Da Vinci Code, the character Sophie Neveu finds out that she is a descendant of the Merovingians, and thus a living descendent of Jesus Christ. The Holy Grail is interpreted as Mary Magdalene herself, who according to the Legend carried the blood of Christ in the form of a child or bloodline of Jesus. Great emphasis is placed on Neveu being a descendent of the Merovingians because, as such, she is heir to not only the vast historical records documenting this bloodline, but also the physical remains of Mary Magdalene herself -- the Holy Grail. Amid fictional subplots involving a secret society called the Priory of Sion, and suppression of knowledge of Christ's living heirs by the Catholic Church, all concepts lifted from the non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, is the central premise that Merovingian descendents are also descendents of Jesus Christ.

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As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I am a direct descendent of Emperor Charles Charlemagne (747 - 814) on my mother's side of the family. Charlemagne was part of the Carolingian dynasty that followed the Merovingians. Though I'm not an expert (at all) on this period of European history, I knew enough as a fan of The Da Vinci Code to follow up on what was appearing to be a family link to the Merovingians and the Da Vinci Code Legend.

Charlemagne's father was King Pepin "The Short" of France (b. 714). I was a little disappointed to find that Pepin The Short was the guy who actually displaced the last Merovingian (Childeric III) and, with the support of the nobility and the blessing of the Pope, assumed the title of a King of the Franks for himself. It seemed the trail of linking my family to the Merovingians had run cold because, in my mind, how could one be related to a Merovingian when your great, great, great, great something or other grandfather was the one who kicked the last Merovingian out of office?

I was wrong.

Here's the bloodline: Pepin The Short's grandfather was Mayor Pepin "The Younger" D'Heristal (b. 635) -> Pepin The Younger's grandfather was Bishop Arnoul "de Heristal" of Metz (b. 582) -> Bishop Arnoul "de Heristal" of Metz's father was Arnoldus of Saxony (b. 562) -> Arnoldus of Saxony's grandfather was King Charibert I of Paris (b. 520).

King Charibert I was... a Merovingian.
King Chlothar I (his father) was a Merovingian.
King Clovis I (his grandfather) was a Merovingian.
King Merovech (his great-grandfather) was the Merovingian! Merovech is the name from which Merovingian is derived.

Like Sophie Neveu, I am a direct descendent of the Merovingians. What that means outside the realm of The Da Vinci Code fiction and a pseudohistorical legend involving living descendents of Christ, I do not know.

Yes, I am descended from royalty, so there

My mom has been interested in genealogical research as long as I can remember. She has huge stacks of scrapbooks and papers covering just about every ancestor of ours through the 1800s and dipping into the 1700s. These include photographs of relatives, in-depth records of everything they did, grave marker rubbings, the whole works. She's a true historian. She's trying to capture their lives in as much detail as possible.

I think that's very cool and I'm glad she's doing it. For my part, I just like the trivia of looking at a huge genetic flowchart and saying, whoa, that's my people! Whatever I am, that's where I came from! It's an interesting experience to put one's own narrative in the context of a narrative that dates back to...

Well, I wanted to know how far back we go. Tracie and my mom were talking about genealogy last night -- Tracie's traced her family back to Ireland (mother) and Scotland (father) -- so today I spent some time poking around a website she recommended: Family Search, the genealogical search engine created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who many may not know have been gathering and preserving genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. I asked my mom for a really old relative she had traced back to on her side of the family, and she gave me Rebecca Sarah Bell (b. 1766). Family Search is kind of cool because you can easily search for a deceased relative and through the "Pedigree" feature the site shows a family tree if the information is available.

I was in luck. Through Rebecca Sarah Bell, and her mother Sarah Wingate (b. 1736), I found the Blount line in my ancestry (Sarah Wingate's mother was a Anne Blount). That line goes way back, I learned, in a clear series of named ancestor after named ancestor, all the way to a Robert "The Admiral" Le Blount, thirteen generations earlier. Le Blount was born in 1029 in Guisnes, Picardy, France.

Now here's where it starts to get interesting. Robert Le Blount's father was Rudolph, the Count of Guisnes (b. 980), his grandfather was likewise Count of Guisnes (b. 905), and his great-grandfather, Gottfried (b. 852) was the friggin' Prince of Denmark!

Hamlet was the Prince of Denmark!!

Okay, so I'm descended from the Prince of Denmark. What else can I find? Well, here the LDS records end so I have to turn to Google. Gottfried, Prince of Denmark, was married to Princess Gisela de Lorraine, my great, great, great, great... something or other grandmother. Her family, being royalty and all, has an ancestry well-covered. She's fourth generation descended from Emperor Charles Charlemagne (747 - 814), who I guess would be my great, great, great, great, great... something or other grandfather!

I'm descended from an emperor!!

But wait, there's more. Through Princess Gisela de Lorraine, I am actually able to trace my genetic milkshake all the way back through several kings of France, and several kings of the Franks (West Germanic tribes), to King Clodius II of the West Franks. King Clodius II was born before 6 A.D. Holy crap! That's like Jesus times!

Okay, so it's all just trivia and whatnot. It's not like I have an emperor's inheritance waiting on me for having discovered that I'm descended from an emperor, and whatever blue blood I have is mostly watered down with moonshine anyway (most of my family is from the South Carolina area for the past few centuries), but it's still very, very awesome. It's just one spoke along the line too, and just on my mom's side. I was just clicking back and back to see how far I could go. There may be other notable ancestors I missed in the process. Still, in the very least, I now have snobbery rights.

Bow down and kiss the feet of Emperor Jeremy! Behold the mighty ruler!