FBI – Looking to God

Tower Heist is one of those movies you can plop on the couch and immediately know who the players are and what they’re after. Reminiscent of the lighthearted caper Ocean’s Eleven, the film features an all-star cast portraying a quirky set of characters out for revenge. Not only is the movie a popcorn feature with all the expected thrills of a heist tale, but it also has a wonderful ending that is much too good to spoil.

With that intro out of the way, Josh Kovaks takes top billing for today’s Wednesday Warriors.

As great as Tower Heist is, critics didn’t like it. Yes, it is light. Yes, it has a few ridiculous plot holes. And yes, the acting could be better. But because it doesn’t take itself seriously, and some of the story elements are not as tight as one would hope, it doesn’t mean the plot isn’t good. On the contrary, holding it together is a lead character so unbelievable that Ben Stiller makes him believable.

Ben Stiller [Photo Credit: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.]

Josh Kovaks is the manager to a New York apartment building whose employer (Alan Alda), who Josh admires, becomes the center of an FBI fraud investigation. When Josh discovers the apartment’s employees have fallen victim to their employer’s Ponzi scheme, he takes it upon himself to seek revenge against his once-beloved idol. Adding further to his motives, this happens after one of the elderly employees attempts to take his own life soon after finding out his retirement nest egg has vanished in the scheme.

From the very beginning, the audience gets to know Josh as a determined boss who leads his team with the goal of making the tenants’ stay more enjoyable. He memorizes silly facts about wines so as he can make recommendations to those with the financial means of appreciating his taste. He also takes the time to get to know each guest under his care—a trait the tenants find comforting. Under Josh’s watch, he is aware of everything, and everything that happens, happens for a reason.

Like other good caper films, Josh goes on a mission to recruit those capable of pulling off the impossible. In this case, he and his crew will need to break into his former boss’ penthouse to rip off what is supposedly a bucket of cash, ready for transport. The trouble with the plan is finding where his former boss had hidden it.

Although Josh has a hard time attempting to pull the plan together, nothing compares with him trying to keep the other members of his team from bailing on the plot or betraying each other. The people problem is what has him losing sleep.

Overall, in spite of the obstacles, Josh delivers on his promises to his team—even if it’s not in the way the audience quite expects it.

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Have you seen Tower Heist? If so, what did you think about it? What do you think of Josh?

The other day I took to my closet, put on a pair of old, tattered jeans, a t-shirt, and hit my home office. I’ve been planning to paint it for a couple of years now. Only recently did I decide the time was right to do something about it.

For this Freedom Friday post, I’d like to take you on a spring cleaning adventure. Believe me when I say it’s not as adventurous as I’m making it out to be.

Over the past couple of years, my home office had gone into disrepair. I had boxes of utter junk I had kept around for those “just in case” moments when I needed that half-bent, used straw I had saved from that frosty I had months ago. Bags and bags of paperwork I hadn’t tackled for a long time rested dormant waiting for my sorting hands. I’m still not done yet. The shredder’s going to have a lot work to do soon.

The biggest problem was all the computer parts I had accumulated. I’m talking about desktop boxes, monitors, network cards, hard drives, sound cards, motherboards, memory chips, graphics cards, printer cables, network cables, fans, desktop speakers, subwoofers, mice, keyboards, mice pads, and on and on. I can’t believe how much money I burned through the years on old desktop computers that today I can easily replace with a laptop, a tablet or phone. Sad, really.

All these parts belonged to computers I had set up throughout the house when the iPad was a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. As they became obsolete, I’d retire them into my home office to one day sell them for parts. Well, we all know how that turned out. You may ask, how many were there, Jack? Seven desktop computers with monitors. Yeah, crazy, eh? There was a time that each room had a computer. Maintenance choked every ounce of goodness from me.

Anyway, I took them all apart. I reformatted the hard drives, and poured water and sugar in its assembly chambers. I then took my trusty screwdriver and poked holes through the platters. It’ll take the expertise of the FBI to piece them all together. Even then, no way could anyone rescue any of the data on those suckers. Too late, though. They’re already at the dump.

Now, if you didn’t know better, I could be working for the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service). Then again, I wouldn’t admit it, would I? Nor would I post that information on a blog. A mischievous smile penetrates Jack’s face.

Nevertheless, I pulled together all that old equipment and hauled it to the curb. And this is the truth: at the very moment I had placed the last computer on the curb, a black van of no distinct marking pulled into the drive, swung open its back doors and two men slipped the equipment into its belly. It was quick. Not even thirty seconds they were gone. I thought, guys, the hard drives are not with the boxes. I guess they’ll find out once they take them apart in their secret lab.

I now have a clean room. At least the bulk of the mess is under control. I still have a long way to go. I think in the next few days I’ll get rid of the old posters of The Godfather: Part III and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. They’ve been on the walls forever.

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Have you done any spring cleaning? What items have you gotten rid of that served its purpose in the day?

Tag: FBI

Josh Kovaks

Spring Cleaning

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