Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. IVAW’s strategy is to mobilize the military community to withdraw its support for the war and occupation in Iraq. Therefore, IVAW is leading the movement of veterans and GIs who are working to bring the troops home now.

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans’ health benefits and support.

Tune in March 13-16: check here for details on where broadcasts are taking place. Check here to see where events in your city are being hosted.

Get your black comedy on this Tuesday at 7 p.m. with Heathers, the first selection in the EMP and Science Fiction Museum’s new Exposed: Inside Film series. The screening will be followed by a conversation with writer Daniel Waters, the man who penned lines like “Bulimia’s so ‘87″ and who recently reunited with Winona Ryder for Sex and Death 101.

Heathers aficionados can toast Heather Chandler with a “Big Blue”—Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Coconut Rum, Blue Curacao and pineapple juice, muddled with lemon—at Revolution Bar & Grill’s pre-movie happy hour.

Future films in the monthly series include The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival and The Golden Compass.

As everyone knows, February is International Kung Fu Month, so in the spirit of this complete fabrication of a remembrance, here are my favorite all-time Kung Fu movies. I’m something of an expert on the subject.

#5 – Enter the Dragon (1973)/Return of the Dragon (1972) – Neither of these movies are exceptional except insomuch as Bruce Lee is the reason we all know what Kung Fu is. And honestly, one has a handless guy who straps a knife-claw to his nub, and the other one has Chuck Norris. Score!

#4 – A Touch of Zen (1969) – This movie was Crouching Tiger long before there was a Crouching Tiger. Every element in every subsequent Kung Fu art movie owes to the cinematography here.

#3 – Hero (2002) – The plot is convoluted, but that’s incidental to things looking pretty and people wielding swords. The first fight, between the Jet Li and Donnie Yen, is one of the finest ever.

#2 – The Five Deadly Venoms (1978) – This is the quintessential Shaw Brothers movie. Shaw Brothers movies are at once terrible and spectacular, but the charisma of the actors who play the venoms (and who would reunite in countless films), and their martial arts prowess make this the one to watch.

#1 – Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) – This film is sometimes titled as Ninja Checkmate for American audiences, despite the distinct lack of ninjas. Stupid Americans. Normal Kung Fu plot. Normal training to defeat the super Kung Fu villain. Oh, but what a villain. Ghost Faced Killer (yes, this is where the rapper got his name) is the best villain in the long, celebrated history of villainy.

For those of you wishing to increase your Kung Fu I.Q., here are a few honorable mentions: The 36 Chambers of Shao Lin (1978), Dragon Inn (1992), Iron Monkey (1993), Once Upon a Time in China I & II (1991 & 1992), Drunken Master II (1993), Fearless (2006), Master of the Flying Guillotine (1978). That should get you started.

In my lifetime I remember Walter Matthau for his roles in such forgettable movies as Dennis the Menace, I.Q. and Grumpy Old Men. So I judged him based on these movies, dismissed him as a second-rate talent living off residual star power from decades past. I assumed he was the 1970’s equivalent of Tom Cruise – maybe in some decent flicks but certainly not carrying them. Then, earlier this year, I read an exchange by several writers discussing 70’s noir films, and one title that kept coming up was Charley Varrick. Trusting these opinions, I went to Amazon and ordered the movie without really paying much attention. The DVD arrived, and I was more than a little surprised to see the face of a younger Matthau staring back at me from the cover.I watched the movie. I loved the movie. I watched it again.

And what I saw was Walter Matthau being awesome. He plays the title character, an everyman antihero on the run after stealing the wrong pile of cash from the wrong people. The plot’s not important, though, as Matthau himself is the reason to see this film.

Filled with a newfound respect for the grumpy old man, I turned my attention to the Criterion Collection DVD of Hopscotch. In this dark spy comedy Matthau shines again, this time as a CIA agent who decides to out the agency by writing his memoirs. In both movies Matthau plays an in-control protagonist, perpetually one step ahead of his pursuers, and he plays it perfectly.

All this is an apology of sorts. I just want to say, I’m sorry, Mr. Matthau, for not realizing you were awesome while you were still alive. Up next is Matthau’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which I have it on good authority is also awesome.

On a given day, how many things do you complain about? It’s too hot outside, too cold in the office. I hate traffic. My Cheez-Its are stale.

Well, it’s that one time of year when we’re supposed to cease in our petty malcontentedness, and pretend to be thankful for all those little things we usually ignore. In doing so, I realize I am thankful for a great many things, and in an effort to trivialize the process, here is a list of some of them.

1. Matt Fraction – Fraction writes comic books, mostly for Marvel, including The Immortal Iron Fist, The Order and Punisher War Journal, but his best work is his original creation Casanova. I’ll blog more about that later.

2. Haruki Murakami – My favorite author. His book After Dark came out in English translation earlier this year. It was very good.

3. Chris Potter – A world-class jazz saxophone player who has put out a couple albums recently. I’ve asked for them for Christmas. I’ll let you know more, like, when I’ve actually listened to them.

4. Seijun Suzuki – Japanese film director who made one of my favorite movies, Tokyo Drifter, known for his theatrical style and absurdity. I’m currently watching through his Taisho Trilogy, which is weird as frick.

5. The start of college basketball season.

6. Heroes – I don’t love this show, but I enjoy it, and more importantly, I’m grateful that television like this is successful.

7. Mr. T – Mr. T is awesome, and I dare any one of you to try to prove otherwise.

8. White Ninja Comics – This isn’t my favorite web comic, but it’s probably the one I laugh out loud (LOL) at the most. Check it out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

9. YouTube – Redefining entertainment two minutes at a time. In the case of “Chocolate Rain,” four minutes.

10. Friends, family and loyal readers – Puts a tear in your eye, don’t it?

Go now, eat turkey.

Now I know what love is. Before, not so much, but definitely now, yes I do. And I owe it all to Fletcher Hanks. Who is this mysterious master of my emotions? Let me tell you.Fletcher Hanks was a comic book creator who froze to death on a New York City park bench in the 1970’s. Rewind 30 years, however, and you’ll find the source of my love, a little comic called “Stardust the Super Wizard”, penned by dear Mr. Hanks at the end of the Depression, as war spread across Europe, and America turned to primary-colored pages of crudely drawn fantasy for comfort – for escape. This was the Golden Age of comics. For those of you not geeky enough to know what the Golden Age is, it’s where Superman and Batman came from (Spiderman was from the Silver Age, about the same time period when Hanks found himself homeless at the start of a brutal Northeastern winter).

Hanks was, quite frankly, crazy as all hell. “Stardust” is the surreal story of a nigh-invincible superhero who harnesses the power of stars and uses his nigh-limitless array of rays to stop gangsters, in particular, from ending all of civilization, as gangsters are wont to do. Sometimes he crushes people. These stories are crude, and the artwork is cruder, and the vigilante justice meted out is the kind of thing that would raise red flags in school systems if a black trenchcoat-clad student were the artist. But at the same time they’re brilliant and so far ahead of the curve (Jack Kirby, eat your heart out) that if you didn’t know better you’d think they were a psychedelic creation of the 70’s (a time Hanks would never even get to see).

Why am I bringing up a 70-year-old comic, you ask? Because by the grace of whatever particular brand of divinity you ascribe to, and probably in its level of miraculousness owing to the combined power of all faiths everywhere, publisher Fantagraphics has recently released a compilation of Hanks’ work from his short-lived comics career in an absolutely stunning book edited by Hanks “scholar” Paul Karasik. It’s called “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets.” The book features several “Stardust” stories, as well as the equally astounding “Fantomah – Mystery Woman of the Jungle.” Sometimes her head turns into a skull-head, which is simply amazing (even more amazing is the pseudonym Hanks used for the Fantomah comics – Barclay Flagg).

I haven’t explained the love yet. These comics are CRAZY with a capital every-letter. Let me give one example – the one when my heart swelled as I read. In the first story in the compilation, Stardust captures a group of spies, suspends them in the air, and then uses a special ray to summon the skeletons of the spies’ innocent victims, and has the skeletons hover in front of the already-hovering spies!!! Needless to say, this particular panel should be framed and hung in the Louvre. Did I mention that sometimes Stardust just crushes people with his bare hands?

From his blurb on the back cover of “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets,” the late, great Kurt Vonnegut probably said it best:

“The recovery from oblivion of these treasures is in itself a great work of art.”

If it’s good enough for Kurt it’s more than good enough for the rest of us. Buy this book. Read this book. Make other people buy and read this book. It’s a little piece of forgotten culture that we’d all do good to unforget.

LeVar Burton played the blind engineer Geordi in Star Trek the Next Generation. If I may politicize for a moment, I fully support blind engineers everywhere. Not train engineers, though. That would be scary.

Cue awesome segue.

Speaking of Star Trek, George Takei got a freaking asteroid named after him. Takei is best remembered for playing Sulu, The Man with the Most Beautiful Voice in the Galaxy, in the original series and movies. I mean it. His voice is awesome. If I had his voice for just one day, oh, the places I’d go. Someplace with an echo at the very least. I think when we all go to our reward and the great golden gates of heaven open before us and brilliant white light bathes us in peace and tranquility, God will look down from his throne and when he speaks it will be George Takei’s voice.

Takei has been flexing him vocal chords most recently with guest appearances on the hit NBC show Heroes as the father of everyone’s favorite bungling but well-intentioned hero, Hiro. Hey look, homonyms. Very clever, Heroes creator Tim Kring. Takei speaks in Japanese for much of his screen time, proving that his pipes are awesome in any language. Sadly, at the beginning of this season, Takei’s character gets offed, and then he goes up to heaven where he is GREETED BY HIS OWN VOICE!

Incidentally, Takei was once in an episode of MacGyver, in which he also died. Takei guest appearance = dead character. I guess that’s the plight of the gay Asian.

Now I have to decide whether to talk more about MacGyver or give in to my inner geek and talk about science fiction. The geek is strong in this one.

In a little over a month the long, painful Battlestar Galactica hiatus will come to an end when the two-hour special Razor airs on the SciFi channel. For those unfortunate few of you unfamiliar with this show, I command you to go buy the first two seasons on DVD, watch them, then name your firstborn child after me for introducing you to its greatness. This is said not as a guy who just spent half a typed page talking about George Takei, but as a video professional and storyteller who was unexpectedly and absolutely blown away by this series from the very first episode. In a word, it’s beautiful. It’s revealing. It’s topical without preaching. And there are, in fact, spaceships flying all over the place.

The production value is equal to that of most movies, and the special effects are innovative and astounding. The effects artists take advantage of complete freedom of motion inside the virtual 3-D space, shifting the camera in impossible ways, but still owing to real camera movement. There are no lasers in Battlestar. The technology is intentionally anachronistic – bullets, missiles and flak make the setting seem as much WWII battleship as far-future starship. But effects are incidental to the real value of the show.

The drama is real and intense. Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Aaron Douglas, Michael Hogan and James Callis in particular give acting tour de forces. The young Sackhoff is destined for great things (has already achieved them). The setting: the human population has been all but obliterated by the Cylons, an evil race of robots (who become less evil and more conflicted as the show progresses). Against this backdrop, the crew of the Galactica and the few other survivors of the massacre live out intense but believable personal dramas. The social dynamic, not contrived sci-fi scenarios, is what is studied, and the show delves with abandon into issues of religion (the Cylons are monotheists acting out what they believe to be their god’s will), politics and psychology. It is simply a stunning accomplishment.

But wait, you say, aren’t there three season of Battlestar? Why yes, but season 3 isn’t out on DVD yet, and I have to admit parts don’t live up to the impossibly high standards of the first two seasons. The beginning of season 3 is fantastic, and there are a few great episodes thereafter, but the writers, in a half-witted attempt to flesh out the Cylons, wrecked the wonderful enigma they had created. It’s not a total loss, and it seems like halfway into this effort they realized their mistake and did their best to write their way out of it. Season 3 is still great, but it might have been too aware of its greatness, and became a bit self-indulgent.

Battlestar is the best thing ever on television. Strip away the spaceships, and you have one of the smartest, most meaningful shows ever created. Put back in the spaceships, and you have friggin’ spaceships and that should be enjoyable enough for anyone.

Hello people of Rivet,I’m Zach. I saw that you were looking for bloggers. While I am not a blogger as of yet, I am interested in perhaps becoming one in the near future, through your website if such an arrangement would prove beneficial to both your publication and myself. I noticed that most (maybe all, but who’s tabulating?) of your staff lives in the Seattle area. I do not. In fact, I live about as far away as possible (Savannah, GA) while remaining within the contiguous 48 states, and culturally the gap may be even wider between the Pacific Northwest and the Deep South. But I’m not really a Southerner except geographically, and in this age of interconnectivity maybe we should be trying harder to connect like minds in disparate places. Just look at what it’s done for World of Warcraft.

But about me. I have a Degree in Music, so I’m quite knowledgeable about, well, music. I’m a two-time Emmy-winning Television producer, so I have extensive experience in visual mediums, particularly with visual storytelling. I know movies and TV. I’m an author with a couple published short stories, hopefully with more on the way, and I’m working on my MFA in Creative Writing.

If you’re interested in my potential as a blogger, I’ll be glad to send a couple writing samples, but I wanted to make sure the geography wasn’t a problem before I did, and I’m lazy and didn’t feel like doing it right now, and Heroes is on. I mean, seriously.

-Zach Powers

[Editor’s Note: Did we hire him? What do you think?]

Get in the mood for the RIVET FAIR with pie recipes from the movie Waitress, written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. Keri Russell stars as Jenna, the diner employee with a passion for pastry and creative concoctions like Pregnant Miserable Self-Pitying Loser Pie. The official Fox Searchlight site includes even more pie-related fun. And catch the movie if you can—I watched it on a plane from New York to Seattle. Russell proves her range beyond the sweet naivete of Felicity, and Andy Griffith has a small role, too. That’s country!

Falling-in-Love Chocolate Mousse Pie

One 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
2/3 cup water
One 4-serving box chocolate flavored pudding mix (not instant)
One 1-ounce square unsweetened chocolate
2 cups (1 pint) whipping cream, stiffly whipped
One 9-inch baked pastry shell

In a large saucepan, combine condensed milk, water and pudding mix; combine well. Add chocolate. Over medium heat, cook and stir rapidly until chocolate melts and mixture thickens.

Remove from heat, beat until smooth. Cool. Place in the refrigerator and chill thoroughly. Stir. Fold in whipped cream and pour into prepared pastry shell.

Chill four hours until set.

Makes eight servings.

Source: foxsearchlight.com/waitress

We’re gonna be making a lot of pies this week, folks. The RIVET FAIR is coming up on Sunday, August 26, so get ready! We’ll be posting pie recipes all week to whet your palate.

Here’s a fascinating one: Avocado Pie, from www.grouprecipes.com:

Ingredients

Directions