No Fuss? Make One!

I'm all for sensitivity. Really. Well, due sensitivity, anyway. I mean, you just don't go up and ask someone if they want to go back over puppies with you just after their dog has been run over. You don't ask a widow how single life is at her husband's funeral. And you certainly don't surprise a soldier fresh from Iraq with some leftover Black Cats from July 4th. Why? Because it's insensitive. And unduly so. Eventually, though, the dog owner will get over the loss of a pet, either through time or replacement, the widow will hopefully accept the loss (though respect for the dead is still a good plan) and, God willing, the soldier will not suffer long term trauma due to his service.

That said...you had to see that coming...I think Fox News needs to man up. While doing my daily Google news check on the WGA strike (I needs mah TV, mayn!), I came across an article about JJ Abrams new movie Cloverfield. Thanks to clever marketing, I was intrigued by the movie around the time the first trailers ran. I probably won't ever see the movie because Andria thinks it looks stupid and our movie watching time is limited anyway, so I try to subject her to as little crap as possible. I don't feel like this has lessened my enjoyment of anything, though. I'll just read the plot summary on Wikipedia and call it a day. What got me was how the article said, and I quote:

Cloverfield also inadvertently disses New York for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, by re-enacting scenes of buildings exploding and massive clouds of debris for fun and profit.

Does no one recall what was said following the World Trade Center disasters? There was such sensitivity about the huge human losses that images of the Twin Towers were erased from movie posters and excised from films.

Like I said, I'm all for sensitivity, but is it really necessary that we call a moratorium on destroying New York because of what happened? I mean, if we follow that logic, shouldn't Peter Berg and the people at Universal be called insensitive for protraying an attack on Americans on foreign soil. I mean, the US embassy attack in Kenya happened in '98, only three year before the September 11th attacks. And I am Legend has WAY more dead New Yorkers than Cloverfield, if that's the bar for sensitivity that we're setting. I mean, ALL of them are dead except Will Smith. And The Bourne Ultimatum has Matt Damon, which is insensitive to Ben Affleck, because Matt still has an acting career.

Now, hyperbole aside, it's not like Abrams and Co. are pulling a Uwe Boll and making light of the attack. They just have a movie that a) is set in New York and b) due to the plot has scenes of New York's destruction. They could have set it elsewhere and nobody would've thought a thing about any relationship between the attack and the movie. The clouds of debris would be just that. Clouds of debris. If they'd been left out, someone, maybe even the writer of the same article, would've cried foul over the lack of realism in the mayhem. But, they didn't. NYC got the spotlight. Why? Because the city itself is an icon. No other city is as recognizable as "America". Not only is it culturally significant, though, but it's also geographically prime. The 1998 Godzilla movie also took place in New York and also featured he destruction of the city. Now, I don't expect that anyone should've been offended preemptively, but the reason New York was chosen as a replacement for Tokyo (once again, beyond the cultural significance) is that New York is on the coast. Unless something is coming from space and lands in a cornfield, it has to go through some coastal area. And if it's going through a coastal area, why not someplace where it can trash things? I'm not a monster, I don't know how they think (ok, how they WOULD think, since they're not real), but I assume that a monster worth its salt would probably bypass someplace like Holly Ridge, North Carolina, in favor of the Big Apple. What would it do, kick over the Faith Harbor United Methodist Church, trip over Danny's Welding and Crane Service, then head back out to sea, bored to death? Please!

I'm not presuming that Cloverfield will be a good movie. It's a giant monster flick made by a guy who couldn't keep people interested in a bunch of castaways long enough to match Gilligan's Island!
(Ok, Gilligan only made it three seasons and Lost will be starting number four soon, but Gilligan died so that Gunsmoke could live and Lost is really only on life support because JJ and crew promised to wrap up that mess in 2010)

What I am saying is that the victims and families of the September 11th attacks should be treated with respect. However, that doesn't mean that we should automatically shy away from telling a story just because a minority of people who MIGHT go into the movie completely unaware of its subject matter and be offended by it. If Hollywood would like to do something to keep a majority of people from being offended, instead, they should try to stop making crap.

Spectacular Spectacular

My mother bought the Josh Groban Christmas CD recently. I've heard a song or two of his before, but it wasn't until hearing his rendition of Little Drummer Boy that I realized this:

Josh Groban could sing the Taco Bell Value Menu and make it sound like a romantic epic.

That's all.

Kicking Skepticism in the Head

When I heard they were making a new Indiana Jones movie...back when they first started talking about it...I was excited. I mean, after Star Wars, the original Indy movies were the greatest film trilogy of all time, followed by the Back to the Future movies.

Being a child of the 80's (I don't remember the 70's...being an infant and all), I suppose that I'm not entirely objective when it comes to the subject, but still, they just haven't made movies like that since then. I mean, even the Die Hard movies, which were all loads of fun, didn't even measure up, and the first was made in '88 (the year before Last Crusade, which was, in turn, out the year before Die Hard 2).

Anyway, as time went on, I became a bit skeptical. I mean, Harrison Ford will always be one of the coolest actors ever, but he's 65 years old, for crying out loud! He's been eligible for AARP membership for more than half my life! And in the original movies, he fought Nazis. They were going to have to age the character past when Nazis existed as a threat. How could that possibly work?!?!? To be honest, I was almost angry that they were still considering it. And what's this crap about Shia LaBeouf as the sidekick? He's no Sean Connery or John Rhys-Davies. He's not even that kid that played Short Round!

I suppose I should qualify what I just said about Shia LaBeouf. I'm pretty sure I've enjoyed everything I've seen him in...I just haven't gotten to where I respect him on his own merit. Ke Huy Quan was in Temple of Doom AND The Goonies!

And nothing much else...perhaps I should be rethinking my respect levels on both of them...

Anyway...then, I saw the poster.

I don't know that I've mentioned it before, but I love Drew Struzan's work. Something about seeing a Struzan poster makes me want to see a movie. If Titanic had Struzan posters, I'd have one up on my wall. Or, I would've when I was single. Screw masculinity! That man can paint! And speed! He can paint a poster in the time it took me to do a comic!

Well, that's probably not entirely true. I mean, I draw slow, but I'm counting from when I'd start to when I'd finish, interruptions and all. He did the poster for Carpenter's The Thing in a night, but I imagine he worked straight through. Even still, his posters are a fair sight prettier than my comics ever pretended to be.

So, evidence notwithstanding, I'm once again excited about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...all because the poster rocks.

The Iron Cliche

Let me preface this by saying that I really like The Iron Giant. I'd managed not to see it until this weekend, but having remedied that, I'm pleased to have watched it.

Ok, so what's up with single mom's working in diners. Almost every tv/movie mom who is without husband (for whatever reason) works in a diner. Do they hand these things out at the hospital? When some girl who gets knocked up by her boyfriend who skips town comes in, do they hand her, along with prenatal vitamins, a handful of applications to Waffle House and such? Is there some arcane law I don't know about? Should something happen to me, would this be Andria's fate?

The diner, as a source of income, seems to be an especially poor choice for a woman on her own with child. First, the hours, as put forth by tv and movies, are inconsistent. Apparently, they only ask the woman who has no one to take care of her children to cover extra shifts. On one hand, I could see that being helpful...more hours = more money. On the other hand, the kid is probably burning the apartment down while she's at work. That or befriending an over-sized robot and bringing nuclear holocaust to your small New England town. Whatever.

The second issue is that, apparently, people who eat at diners are either apt to sexually harass their waitress or they're up to no good in a way completely unrelated to anyone else in the diner but will end with someone driving a truck/bus/SUV through the wall. Or they're carrying a bomb. This isn't what you would call favorable working conditions.

Lastly, no one gets paid well at a diner. The kind of people who eat at diners, according to movies and tv, are not the kind of people who leave big tips. They may even end up robbing the place, only to have Samuel L. Jackson, in his underwear, to force them to return his wallet bearing a rather distinct, expletive filled label embroidered on it. But still, no tips.

If I were Hogarth's mom, or any of the others in the army of single fictional moms, I'd start looking for employment elsewhere.

Vague Warnings and Finished Things

I started a new stick of deodorant the other day. Usually, I don't think much of it. I just remove the lid, pull that little plastic plug off the top and swipe it around my underarm area. For some reason, though, I noticed a message pressed into the stick. I've seen them before, but never paid much attention. This time, it caught my eye, saying "Take the risk".

What risk?

Does the deodorant know something about the future that I don't? I'm not entirely comfortable with a hygiene product that knows more about my destiny than I do.

Or is it just saying I need to shoplift a certain war-based board game?

Anyway, turned 29 on Monday. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Or, really, Pirates of the Caribbean 2b, since the second one really didn't have much of an end to it. Less so than most movies in the middle of a trilogy. I mean, think about it...

The Empire Strikes Back

• Luke's Jedi training........finished
• Rescuing Han and Leia........finished (not entirely successfully, but still...)
• Han and Leia's admissions of love (well, as much as Han is ready to do to this point)..........finished

All that's left hanging is Han's fate and the trilogy arc with Luke and Vader. Another one...

Back to the Future, Part II

• Sports almanac..........finished
• Fixing the present...............finished

The one thing that was left was what happened to Doc and how Marty was going to get home...which was only introduced at the end as a teaser for Part III.

PotC 2 had none of that, so I couldn't, a year ago, tell you if it was a good movie or not. Entertaining for the 2 hours or so that I watched it, surely. But it wasn't until I saw "3" that I could tell you how the 2nd should be judged.

However, I have to say, it is good.

Highlight for me.......best film wedding. Ever.

Solutions Abound

I've been hearing a lot about how they're going to change the movie ratings system so that movies with "excessive smoking" will get a higher rating like movies with people getting disemboweled do. At first, this struck me as a bit silly. I mean, sure, I'm as anti-smoking as the next guy (unless that guy is a smoker...then it just doesn't work), but...well...it seemed like maybe they're a bit...I dunno...crazy about it. However, after having a few days to mull it over, I came up with a better solution, and it's all thanks to Steven Spielberg.

For those of you who just didn't care, when they re-released E.T. a couple years ago, they digitally editted some scenes. In some cases, it was to make E.T. seem more realistic, like a bathtub scene where the pores on the rubber puppet were releasing bubbles. However, the scene that made the biggest splash as far as the news was concerned was the chase scene where the Federal agents were trying to catch E.T. and E.T. makes Elliot and his friends fly to get away. In the original, the agents all had guns. Spielberg thought, as he was preparing the new version, that it seemed unrealistic and excessive to have all these grown men with guns trying to stop a few kids.

Apparently, Spielberg doesn't think that they might want the guns for the alien who can make kids fly.

Anyway, since he didn't like the idea, he got rid of them and gave the agents hand-held radios. A little wussy, but a good solution. And that got me thinking. Instead of changing the ratings, we can just take out the cigarettes and replace them, too. At first, I thought it would be a simple matter of replacing all the cigarettes with these:


And that seemed like a good idea, at first....but then I thought about it. Sometimes a sucker isn't appropriate. For one thing, they aren't very manly. Can you imagine Humphrey Bogart sucking on a lollipop in The Maltese Falcon? Sure, Bogey would certainly lend a bit of toughness to it, but not everyone could pull it off. Jean-Claude Van Damme certainly wouldn't.

Does he ever smoke in movies? ...What am I saying, he's French...of course he does.

Actually, that raises a lot of questions about the tough image associated with smoking, but I digress.

So I began to think of alternatives. A couple sprang to mind:



Now, I have to admit, they still lack that je ne sais quoi that's necessary to convey the Bogey image, but for most actors, it'll do. Plus, it sends a healthy message to the kids about eating their veggies. But, it would be irresponsible of me to have left it at that, since Bogart was my example and I had yet to find a cigarette replacement for him.

Then it hit me.

Only one substance could possibly match that no-nonsense attitude and overall manliness that Humphrey Bogart exuded.

Invitation

If you have any interest at all in winning free Spider-Man 3 stuff, put your email address in a reply and I'll hook you up with an invite to the Spidey 3 Game Community. Lots of cool stuff. I won a shirt, a hat and some sticker.

And don't forget to check out my sketches of Peter Petrelli and Sylar below.

This All Seems So Familiar...

So, I watched Star Wars last night.

I didn't think it was Star Wars when I put it in the DVD player, and I think George Lucas has gone too far with his changes now, but I recognized the story as Star Wars. It had a farm boy who was the chosen one. It had the mentor who starts said farm boy on the path, then promptly dies saving the princess. It even had a final, climactic battle where the bad guys, led by the evil wizard, attack the rebels at their base. The main difference was that all the space stuff had been taken out and replaced with dragons.

The title on the DVD said it was called Eragon and I'm guessing that Christopher Paolini is a pen name Lucas used so as to keep Star Wars purists from firebombing Skywalker Ranch.

That said, it wasn't a bad movie. I like Star Wars in its many incarnations, so there wasn't really much to dislike. Jeremy Irons was good as Obi-Brom Kenobi and the CGI dragon was convincing enough. The kid Murtagh was a poor Han Solo, and there wasn't any wookie at all, but the dragon was an acceptable trade for R2-D2 (which I guess makes the farm boy part C-3PO) even if she lacked R2's charisma.

All in all, worth Netflixing (does anyone else use Netflix as a verb?), though I'm fine with having missed it in the theater.

The Good, The Bad, and The Broken

By the power of Netflix, I discovered a new love in the spaghetti western. I also discovered, make that rediscovered how easily my back can be injured.

Let's start with the pain so we can end with something good.

I've mentioned, more times than are necessary, how my house is old and not terribly well put together. Of course, I've also mentioned how I'm not terribly well put together, as well. This is more related to the latter. You see, since my house is old, we cool it with window unit A/C. It reminds me of this quote:

No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air.

Totally true. Also, with central air, you don't have to store, unstore, lug around, and finally place huge chunks of machinery until it gets cool enough that you have to store them again. A major plus. And, as a geography note, to make sense of the how in a second, Andria and I have a "queen" sized bed in a "twin" sized room. Not to mention Aaron's bed, my dresser, her dresser, the nightstand and the dog's bed.

Yeah, yeah, the dog gets lonely in the house at night. Lonely dogs make lots of noise.

Anyway, so I'm carrying the A/C unit from the storage closet into the bedroom and everything is going as well as expected. I've managed not to destroy anything or get any storage room nastiness on our bed as I squeeze past, but the window is closed and I've got no hands left. So I start to set the unit down. I was trying to observe the "lift with the knees" rule, but with as little room as there was, I got tilted forward a little. Suddenly, the weight of the unit was now on my lower back.

It gave.

Fortunately, the unit was only about 6 inches off the ground and NOT over my toes. Still, I needed to see the chiropractor and he was out Monday. I got popped, but my back muscles are still pretty sore.

SUBJECT CHANGE!

Last week, Andria was gone on choir tour, so we set our Netflix to send all 3 of the movies from my list instead of splitting them. I got A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Guys, it is your duty as men to see these films. At least the first and last of them. Sure, A Fistful of Dollars was ripped off from Yojimbo, but Eastwood plays the perfect anti-hero in it. And The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was just plain goodness. Technically, it comes first, being a prequel, but the techniques used filming it shame the other two, so it's better to watch them in the order they were filmed.

I'll probably order some more of Eastwood's westerns in a while, but since the last two didn't come until after Andria was back (poor girl didn't enjoy A Few Dollars More, so I waited to watch TGTBaTU until she was in her night class...it's three hours long!) I'll give her a break first.

I'm almost convinced to try and revive that western comic I had a few pages sketched from...

Only About 4 Decades Late

So, this weekend Andria and I watched Jesus Christ Superstar, the "rock opera" by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. This was brought on, of course, when Andria heard one of the female contestants on Grease: You're the One That I Want sing a song from it on Webber's guest judging week.

I don't remember which song it was.

Anyway, I decided, upon viewing that the name would be more properly rendered The Adventures of Pansexual "Jesus" and his Travelling Boy Band. Might as well call it like it is, right? Now, one who knows me might have expected that I would already be going into it with strikes against PJ&hTBB, given my rather conservative religious leanings, but I was aware that I probably wasn't going to be getting anything I was that familiar with. I mean, it's a friggin' Broadway musical! You want theology, go to church. You want a song a dance, you go buy a used car.

I mean, you go see a Broadway show.

Yeah.

My problems with the whole thing, putting aside what I was expecting, stem from some really odd choices with the story they told. I mean, Simon the Zealot has an entire song of his own, but Peter only gets a solo at the beginning of the reprise of "What's the Buzz"? What the heck? I mean, Peter, James and John, the big three disciples are almost entirely absent. Yet, in the "Garden" scene before Judas pops back in, "Jesus" still calls out to them specifically.

I suppose I should mention that the version I watched starred Glenn Carter as Jesus. Andria also got an older version (both through Netflix) and said that it had its own oddities. I don't understand Judas in it at all. He's supposed to be "Jesus'" right-hand man, though "Jesus" really doesn't seem to care about him (which makes sense contextually), and yet the only people Judas considers going to are Caiaphas and the temple leaders?

Really?

I find the particular line of thought "I'm irritated by the direction my best bud is taking, so I'm going to turn him over to the people most likely to kill him" a little off unless it is preceded by "A bathtub full of vodka? Drink it all? Love to!"

Of course, they never really touch on how, if "Jesus" is just a man, then he must be insane, 'cause I know if one of my coworkers started having audible conversations with "God", I'm using my sick days until after they decide to bring a gun to work. And yet, this doesn't concern Judas, who's the only one that isn't buying what "Jesus" is selling.

All these are a problem of incongruity. They felt they had to leave certain elements of the Biblical Jesus in, but they didn't consider how it was a poor fit for what they did with the rest of it. Much like "What's the Buzz" seemed out of place EVERY TIME it was sung. Like in the Garden...WAY too happy for the boy band to be waking up to Judas and the mob.

Anyway, out of the whole thing, the only shining star was the guy who played Pilate. And not because he was good, but because he looked like M. Bison.

Hide the Rum...

I went to see Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest last night expecting to see a lot of fun piratey (totally a word) action. Instead, I saw a two and a half hour treatise on human nature.
This is not to say I didn't rather enjoy the movie. It was a lot of fun. Without spoiling the movie, it seems that since the first movie, most everyone's become a jerk. Some of them don't realize it until later in this one, but they've all become a bit less likeable. Will Turner probably comes out the best (except maybe Governor Swann, who isn't any better, just that he wasn't that likeable anyway) because his motives are arguably the most pure. If there's one lesson to be learned in Dead Man's Chest, it's that no good deed goes unpunished. And there's a lot of punishment to go around here. I've read reviews that said that the CG overpowers the acting. I'm beginning to think that CG has become a scapegoat for just about everything when a movie doesn't meet up with expectations. This film wasn't meant to be the same thing as the first movie. The way the characters play out can attest to that. There is less comedy, true, but that's because there's more action and building up to whatever is in the last movie. The CG looked spectacular. I don't think that it interferred with any of the performances, as some reviewers have claimed. I wonder if they said the same thing with early animatrons and things like that in movies...

Anyway, it was worth watching. I really do look forward to seeing how it plays out in the third movie. I want to see how some of the characters redeem themselves after this one. Maybe there'll be more Will and Elizabeth in it, as well. Sparrow seemed to be THE central character even though there's a lot going on for the others, especially Will.

There were more nods to the ride, though you'll have to look harder to find them. The
voodoo lady's bayou set with all the fireflies was one of them. It was nice to see they brought back the monkey, too. You know how I'm partial to them.

Anyway, I wouldn't bother to stay around after the credits, though. Yes, there is a scene, much like the first, but...after 20 minutes of credits (probably less than that), it didn't really seem worth it. Still, go see the movie. And then settle in for the wait until next year.

Stupid years...

Super and Not-So-Superman

My back is killing me. I'd tell you how I hurt it, but I'm not even sure what happened, just that one moment I was fine, the next...immense pain. As such, I can't even really get comfortable enough to sit and type long, so this'll probably be a short post.

Or I'll just be in a very bad mood when I'm done.

Saw Superman on Saturday. Dude. Very cool. I'd say stuff about my few problems with it, but it was good enough that I don't want to risk ruining it for anyone. It was good enough to make up for how horrible X-Men 3 was. I forgive Singer for abandoning the X-Men to make this film. I've seen that people have had great things to say about Spacey as Luthor (and they were right), but they've also been less than kind to Routh's Superman and Bosworth's Lois Lane, but I was comfortable with them. Routh did a good job for somebody I'd never heard of. He did a good job portraying Superman's humanity as well as that sense of alienation that the character needed for other elements of the story to play out. I think that, by the end, Superman found his place in the universe. Which turned out to be cooler than I expected. Singer showed some heart with this one. Next, Pirates of the Carribean!

Also, my mother-in-law has gone home leaving my wife and I with Andria's niece. We're having a good time and all, but if she continues getting up and crashing on the couch as I'm getting prepped for work, we're going to have to have a little talk. I can't tiptoe around and get my morning routine done (not to mention that I'd worked in some time for a couple races in Midnight Club that didn't happen because I blew so much time trying not to wake her up).
She's got a bed. Why can't she sleep in it?!?!?

Oh, and we went to 2 different 4th of July fireworks displays yesterday. Actually, we only saw the one, but we showed up where the first was going to be, decided it was destined to be crap, and left. The one we stayed for wasn't much better. It was raining quite a bit and apparently that affected how much they were able to shoot off. In the 45 minutes or so from the time it was supposed to start to when we left, they shot off about 5 rounds of fireworks separated by long periods of waiting in the rain. Bleh. Oddly enough, the town across the river (who the storm had to pass to get to us) shot off their stuff just fine. We weren't sitting where we could see it, but we could hear it all. I wonder what they did differently...

Bad News, Good News

I got some bad news yesterday. Not bad "my life will be changed forever and I'll never quite get over it" bad, but bad enough that after arriving home alone I curled up with Batty and Nikia and allowed them to impede my movements as I played a few races on Midnight Club 3.

It turns out that due to a mistake on the part of my brother's father-in-law that their dog, Homey, got out and was hit by a car. As he was about the same size as your average squirrel, just taller, you can imagine that didn't end happily. I really liked Homey, too. Not enough to want a dog like him, too energetic, but enough that when he came to visit it was fun to play with him. That, and I have a soft-spot for small furry things. So, next time you're drinking something, pour a bit out on the curb for Homey.

In happier news, I'm quite thrilled about the Superman movie. With Singer directing, I have little doubt it'll be fun to watch. I expect it will be quite different than X-Men was, if it isn't I'll be disappointed, but...Kevin Spacey as Luthor sounds cool! And the trailers and sneak previews I've seen have proven that Singer hasn't lost his visual sense. I'll be going with my wife, mother-in-law and niece, so the nearly 3hr length has me a bit nervous about SOMEONE needing a bathroom break (which I why I don't drink during movies...I learned after The Patriot). Of course, I probably won't be seeing it until Saturday afternoon, so don't expect any real news about it from me until next week, but, by all means, feel free to see it yourself.

Oh...and the Spider-Man 3 trailer runs with it. I've seen it on Apple's trailers site, and it rocked my world. Dude. Sandman...black suit Spidey...Harry on a glider...not bad at all.

Dear Universal Studios...

I have decided to inform you that I will not be attending your movie The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift, or as I've come to call it The Movie so Bad, They Couldn't Get Paul Walker Back For. I know this seems harsh but, seriously, it's not like he's in a place in his career where he can turn down many gigs. In fact, I probably won't see this movie on video either, barring the chance that someone breaks into my house, ties me down, tapes my eyelids open and forces me to watch your steaming pile. Or, perhaps, a "friend" sneaks it in on me.

This excludes O'Neal because, while he is a friend, he has crappy taste in movies (except for Star Wars) and I can tell when he's planning something retarded. Like watching Tokyo Drift.

I might see The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything-A Veggie Tales Movie, but that's really only in a liklihood comparison with your aforementioned steaming pile.

I hope you don't hold this against me. I plan on getting most of my drifting action in Midnight Club 3, some of which will actually be in "Tokyo" (the Remix has a Tokyo level), but there will be no "Kid from Slingblade". Or Paul Walker.

Sincerely,

Adam "Noise Monkey" Askins

P.S. Try making more good movies. I hear it helps.

Flame On!

Today's sketch is the standard Marvel Universe version of St. John "Pyro" Allerdyce. Well, actually, if it were the current version of Pyro, it'd be a decomposing corpse, but other than that, we've got Pyro here. I'm not sure exactly how many of these I've got left in the buffer, because I haven't drawn jack squat since seeing X-Meh.

I stand by that spelling.

Saying that I hated The Last Stand would be incorrect. It's like that episode of Friends where Rachel tries to make a dessert and the pages stick together, so she ends up making it part shepherd's pie and Joey's talking about how good it is. You see, while the part of my brain that recognizes things as being good and bad are tossing it over the balcony (and blaming it on a bird attack), the stupid part of my brain is thinking: "Action...good. Special effects...good. X-Men*...good." I left the theater (on my birthday, mind you...this is something I've had time to think over) feeling like I'd just had my pocket picked by George Lucas (which follows because while getting your pocket picked sucks, I would still be stoked about meeting George Lucas). After the adrenaline rush died down, though, I started remembering all the little things that were bothering me. So, I didn't get to enjoy the initial post-movie high AND I decided I'd been cheated upon reflection.

That said, I think it would be acceptable to set Brett Ratner aflame and forget this movie happened.

*I'm talking the comic book characters here.

Hoping for Red 5

Man, yesterday was crazy. I had another one of those getting-up-every-five-minutes-to-blow-my-nose days. On the other hand, some good stuff happened between rounds with the tissue (or paper towels...whichever was closer). Also, watched Good Night and Good Luck. Dude. Awesome movie. Very static, but man... With as much of it being regular news footage, they still managed to make the characters have some weight to them. Man, I have a general rule against based-on-a-true-story movies, but this one is really good.

Also, I took a look at The Guide and saw that we're on Page 4 of the by page views list. That's HUGE for us. We'd previously peaked around the middle of Page 5, so this is great! We're actually two below Star Bored, which is rather spectacular. So, thanks to all of the people out there who've been coming back. Obviously, the way for Dim Bulb to succeed is for me to quit forever.

Hmm...maybe I won't quit, anyway. Sorry.

Timing and such...

It strikes me as a bit odd that, though the movie came out in theaters a while back, and Ze Cricket saw the movie in it's full glory, that he didn't do the King Kong strip until after I'd seen it.

I mean, it seems especially odd given that we haven't spoken in a while other than posting on the blog things. Either A) he's secretly NOT in Virginia and is instead stalking me (in which case...DUDE we can just hang out!) or B) reality is like The Truman Show, in which case I can only assume that he was forced to move so as to keep him from revealing that it's all fake.

This does, in fact, mean I've ruled out coincidence because...well...I hate plausible answers.

A Candidate for Everyone...

Well, I know who I'm voting for in the 2008 election...

In other news, my wife and I decided that we're going to bump our Netflix subscription up to the next level (2 at a time...remember, I'm poor). That, of course, means I'm never doing another comic again because I'll be too busy watching movies.

Ok, not really, but I'm sure it'll feel like it until Movie Gallery stops doing the free old movie rentals on the weekends.

Suddenly, I have the desire to watch Weekend at Bernie's. I don't think I'll ever understand how my brain works...

NetFlix - Less than Spectacular

In spite of my earlier excitement, I am not at all impressed with Netflix. If I watch a movie the day it arrives and return it the next morning, I can get exactly one movie a week (on the $9.99 plan - 1 movie at a time with unlimited rentals...the cheapest, excluding the $6.99 for 3 movies a month which seems to be only available through ads on MSN). That works out to, roughly, $2.50/rental. That's definitely cheaper than the video store here, but given that there are over 150 selections on our list right now, there's little chance we'll get through them any time soon. Plus, with a good part of my contribution to the list being tv series that I missed (24 seasons 1-4, Lost season 1, The Greatest American Hero, etc....), there's little reason to expect to see them in a worthwhile fashion. I may as well just eliminate all of those since I don't care to waste our one chance of entertainment a week, every other week for the next 3 years, on something Andria won't be remotely interested in. Sure, it's possible to upgrade. The 2-at-a-go option is just $15 a month, but that starts moving into a place where we're slaves to the rental, which we will be...it's our nature, and we'll be consumed with getting our money's worth out of it. Truth be told, we'd get our money's worth out of it when the third movie came, if you match it against the local video racket's prices, but that's not the point.

Or maybe it should be.

Maybe I should try to convince Andria that to make it worth it we should upgrade. That way, she can still watch her musicals ("If I were a rich man...da da da dada...") and I could catch up on glorius television (I think they have the A-Team and maybe even Thundercats).

But then, that kind of thinking is exactly how they get you...

Friggin' Potheads

...Oh, excuse me...that should read Potterheads.

So, historically, I've been anti-Harry Potter. There's no rhyme or reason to WHY I've been against the young wizard and the tales of his exploits. It was more of an arbitrary decision. Maybe that everyone and their grandmothers were screaming about how these books were the greatest thing to hit the printed word since moveable type, much like how I hate country music based, mostly, on how everyone here in Hicksville, USA, loves country music. Anyway, the local movie chain (well, the chain isn't local, but they have two outlets in my tiny town and no competition) has been offering one free rental a day over the weekend, so long as you get something that isn't new. Well, I'm not sure how it went down, but Saturday we came home with The Sorcerer's Stone and Sunday, because one of the others we'd intended to get was out, we got both The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban.

But Monkey, you're thinking, that's two movies and you were only getting one free per day and that's TWO on Sunday.

True, but its one free per day PER STORE. I do so enjoy working the system. Besides, if they didn't want people to do it, they'd make the computers at both stores reflect what the customer has done regardless of location.

Anyway, so in one weekend I've gone from no Potter whatsoever to one movie shy of all the Potter there is. Not too shabby. My wife did point out that it was quite a bit of the same thing in such a short timespan. Then again, she frowns on the idea of me getting the entire run of 24 through Netflix, as such is available, because that's a lot of 24.

I wouldn't be expecting me to read the books, though, if I were you. I still haven't finished American Gods yet...and I started that (more or less) back before Christmas.

Good thing I work at the library. They might've gotten mad at me otherwise.