One for each other and all for one, the three brave amigos are we

This is the clip that contains the saying I kept joking about using to answer questions from my committee members during my dissertation defense.

I'm falling in love with your creature soul

Sunday evening I watched Avatar. Before leaving the house, I posted the following on my Twitter feed (in case you missed it): As if I haven't been watching enough movies lately, I'm going to finish tonight off by going to see Avatar in IMAX 3D. Should be cool.

Someone direct messaged me, initiating the following exchange:

Her: SHOULD be cool? Should be?!!!!

Me: Hahaha. Fine. Definitely will be cool. In fact, I'm betting that all five of my senses achieve orgasm*. Is that better?

Her: Ok, now I'm worried about your level of expectation. Let's just say you'll likely want to fuck a blue alien after and call it even

Me: But how is that going to be different from any other day?

Her: Cause you'll want to do it in IMAX 3D. Duh.

She was right. I came out of there totally wanting to do a ten foot tall, blue alien girl with cat-like features.







*I totally stole that from Ryan Davies

La plus jeune avait l'pied léger

Friday night I watched 'Son of Rambow' with my kids. It didn't live up to its hype, but the kids liked it. One of the sub-plots of the movie involves a French exchange student. The first time this kid showed up on screen elicited this response from Mr M.

Mr M: That is so cool. I want to dress like that kid when I'm older.

That kid:





I've always told my kids I'd love them the same whether they're gay or straight. Mr M might be trying to find out if I mean it.

A man who will fight for your honor

A friend and I went mountain biking today, and while we were on the trail, came up with a fantastic movie idea. Here's the storyline in bullet form.

- A recently divorced man from Philadelphia moves to Boulder City, Nevada to start a new life.

- The man used to be heavily into skating, but since moving away from the city has taken up mountain biking as a hobby.

- None of the local mountain bikers like him because a) he's from the big city, and b) his biking style reflects his skating technique and therefore is quite different from their own.

- There is one exception to the locals not liking him: The most popular girl in town takes a liking to him because hey, fresh meat. They quickly become a couple. Her parents disapprove.

- One day on the trail, some of the local riders try to pick a fight. They chase the guy on their bikes. He finally gets away by taking a huge jump and landing it successfully. The leader of the pack behind him isn't able to, wipes out, and causes a huge mountain bike pile up as all his buddies crash into him. Our hero gets away.

- As a result of the crash (on unforgiving terrain), tensions build between our hero and the local mountain biking gang.

- Tensions also build between our hero and his girl's parents. After trying unsuccessfully to convince their daughter to dump our hero, they decide to take matters into their own hands and go to the police with trumped up charges of theft of some very expensive family heirlooms.

- A warrant is issued for our hero's arrest. Eventually the police chase him, but he rides his bike straight down the side of a mountain, leaving the police empty handed and frustrated (at the site where the red arrow is pointing).



- In his escape ride, our hero's mountain bike breaks, rendering it unusable for the big race coming up at the end of the week.

- Angry at the false charges brought against him, and sure that the popular girl was somehow involved despite her assurance that she wasn't, he breaks up with her.

- Forced into hiding, and unable to compete in the big race, our hero ponders moving back to Philadelphia.

- The morning of the big race, the popular girl shows up at his hide-out with a brand new, top of the line, full suspension professional racing bike (a significant upgrade from the one that broke as he fled the police).

- Also, the popular girl threatened to change her name and never speak to her parents again if they didn't come clean about the false charges they had filed. Since she was an only child, and they didn't want to lose her completely, this forced them to admit that they had lied to the cops.

- Armed with a new mountain bike, and with his name cleared, our hero is able to ride in the big race after all. Of course, with his new style, he smokes the rest of the competition. This wins the locals over, and they carry him (and his bike) away from the finish line on their shoulders.

- With the new approval of his new peers, and popular girl's parents, any thoughts of moving back to Philly disappear completely. Our hero and popular girl settle down and open up a bike shop. He then trains everyone in town to ride using the 'new style' of mountain biking.


(With any luck, the soundtrack will be performed by Phil Collins.)

Extreme ways are back again

I saw The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday. If you're wondering whether or not it lives up to the previous two installments, the answer is yes. If you're not wondering that, then don't read that last sentence.

As could be expected, the movie was sold out and the theater was packed. I arrived about 45 minutes early and it still took a while to get a decent seat. There were only two empty seats in the portion of the theater where I like to sit, and I took one of them, leaving the one next to me empty. It didn't stay empty for too long. About five minutes before the movie started, a married couple came in, and the wife ended up taking the seat next to me.

Now, I prefer not to sit next to people when I go to movies, but that's just because I hate people in general and don't want to be near them. It's also because if I'm not sitting by anyone then I don't have to hear someone's running commentary of the movie. For example, yesterday the woman to my right stated to noone in particular, "I really don't like that S.O.B." I wanted to lean over to her and say, "Oh really? You don't like the bad guy of the film? Do you think that might have anything to do with the directing? You're not supposed to like the bad guy! That's why he's the bad guy! Getting you to hate him is the whole point of the script. That way you don't get upset if/when he gets killed at the end." I didn't though.

Having said all that, I realize that it's inevitable that I'm going to have deal with sitting right next to people when I go see a highly anticipated film on opening weekend. The part that annoyed me about the couple that came in after I did was that I was asked if I wouldn't mind moving to an empty seat near the front of the theater so that they could sit together. Well, it turned out that I would mind. You see, it turns out that somehow I managed to make it to the theater early enough to pick the seat that I was in. I picked that seat because I don't like to sit too close to the screen, which is precisely why I make it a point to get to the theater early, so that I don't have to. Next time, plan ahead.

Ok, rant over. Now I just have to ask one question. If there was a cage match between Jason Bourne, James Bond and Jack Bower, who would win? My money's on Jason Bourne.

Sing with me now

My kids came to town last week. They got here Wednesday night, but I didn't really get to start spending any time with them until Friday because they went to a wedding on Thursday while I was out buying a car.

Anyway, on one of the days they were here I started singing a song while I was fixing lunch for some reason.

Sha la la la la la
My oh my
Look at the boy too shy
Ain't gonna kiss the girl
whoa whoa

Sha la la la la la
Ain't that sad
Ain't it a shame, too bad
He's gonna miss the girl

Roommate's Son: Why are you singing a song from the Little Mermaid? It's a little girl movie.
Me: It's an awesome movie.
11 year old son: Maybe he just likes to watch mermaids. It's ok Dad. There's no shame in that.

No shame indeed.

A movie's showin' so you're goin'

I just saw the movie Knocked Up. It was everything I'd hoped it would be, which is to say it's a very funny movie. There was a time in my life when I thought I was above the kind of crude humor that this movie revolves around, but thankfully that time has passed. A friend of mine saw it last weekend and recommended it, albeit with this bit of advice: "Don't go see it with a girl you intend on sleeping with later that night. The whole pregnancy part of the story kind of kills the mood." Fortunately (?) for me, I have nobody that fits the bill, so I was able to enjoy the movie without it being a cock-blocker.

Normally I tend to be a little wary of going to movies like this one when they've first opened since they're the ones that tend to draw the teenage crowd. Since groups of teenagers tend to just sit and giggle the entire time they're in a theater, I was certain that I was going to have to do my best Strong Bad impersonation if the audience got too boisterous by turning around and saying, "This is my fist. You might recognize it from such features as the amazingly true story of your face in five seconds." Instead, I was pleased to find the theater fairly empty so I'll save the threats until next time.

While I enjoyed the comic aspect of the movie, there were also parts that reminded me of the times when I was privileged enough to get to deal with a hormonal pregnant woman. That's something I hope to never experience again. I think that it's good to be reminded of these things from time to time so that I remember that women are nothing but trouble and that it's best to just steer clear of them altogether.

Look what you did, you idiot kid, you don't have a clue

You've got to love YouTube. They have almost everything one could ask for, which is quite handy on days when one doesn't have much time to put into a blog post. Today, one figures one can just play a clip from one of one's favorite movies, The Royal Tenenbaums.



One's not quite sure why one loves that scene so much. Maybe it's because one's been there before, and is fairly certain that one will be there again at some point in the future.

Or maybe it's because of the following scene, which one couldn't find on YouTube (although one didn't look very hard) but has transcribed below.

(the scene is set with the entire Tenenbaum family sitting around Richie in the recovery room at the hospital after the incident).

Chas: Why'd you do it?
Richie: I wrote a suicide note.
Chas: You did?
Richie: Yeah. Right after I regained consciousness.
Chas: Can we read it?
Richie: No.
Chas: Can you paraphrase it for us?
Richie: I don't think so.
Chas: Is it dark?
Richie: Of course it's dark. It's a suicide note.

Is it all just wasted time

I am continuing my quest to do absolutely nothing this weekend, but I've run into a few set backs. Perhaps the biggest one of these is that there is something screwed up with our cable. All of the premium channels (HBO, Showtime, Max, etc.) are playing in Spanish. That would be ok with me as long as I actually spoke Spanish, but I don't, so you can see my problem. That still didn't stop me from watching the Return of the Jedi though. There's something comical about watching a movie like that dubbed into a different language, but I must say, you know you're bored when you're watching a movie in a language you don't even speak.



The Return of the Jedi was released when I was eight years old. My mom let me and my brother see it on opening night. At the time I thought that it was the best movie that ever was, or ever would be created. We were a few minutes late, and we missed the beginning of the movie, so we felt justified in staying into the next showing to see what we'd missed. We probably would have stayed for the whole thing again, except our mom said she'd pick us up as soon as the first one was over. I wonder if she minded that she had to sit outside for an extra 20 minutes or so for us to get the entire story.



It's funny how things like bad acting and terrible dialogue don't matter when you're a kid. The only thing that mattered was how cool the light sabers were (I've always wanted one of my own), how cute those furry little Ewoks were, and that the good guys won. Oh, and the speeder bikes. I still want my own speeder bike. I figured by now we'd have those. Come on technology. What's the big hold up?



One more thing, I remembered how good Princess Leia looked in that metal bikini. I thought so when I was eight, and I still think so. I remember being on the playground discussing it with two of my friends. They told me that even though it wasn't included in the movie, there was a part where Jabba the Hutt made Princess Leia change into that right in front of him so he got to see her naked. Oh how I hated that Jabba the Hutt. Jealous? You betcha.

Now I'm big and important, one angry dwarf and 200 solemn faces of you

I have a friend who shares my exact taste in movies and music. Nary a conversation between the two of us ends without at least some discussion of a new CD to pick up, or a movie that the other should go see (if they haven't already). And yes, I said nary.

The last time I talked to him I asked if he had seen Eragon yet. Of course, nobody should have seen Eragon yet, unless it was to make fun of (or beat up) fantasy nerds, but I digress. (Speaking of digressing, I urge you all to click here and read Eric D. Snider's review of the movie, if only for the opening sentence. Go on, I'll wait). Not surprisingly, he hadn't seen it. After all, he likes the same movies I do, and I only like good movies. Plus, he's not really into beating up fantasy nerds (he will make fun of them though - like you wouldn't believe). However, he pointed out that a guy we did our master's degrees with probably had.

Now, I'm not really one to make fun of people. Ok, that's a lie. But few have made it easier to do than this guy did. He was comic book guy, minus the goatee and ponytail. This guy was nearly 30 (if not already-I forget), and spent his adult life living alone and strengthening his D&D character (he even had a nice fantasy sounding name which I'd give to you, but I googled it last night and apparently he's still going strong).

When the first installment of The Lord of the Rings came out in theaters I asked him if he was going to dress up like Gandalf and camp for tickets.

His response? "I couldn't go as Gandalf, I don't have the outfit. I could go as Strider though."

He was serious. He even owned a sword.

Curiously, he never learned the lesson of always logging yourself out of things when using a shared computer. One time I offended his girlfriend by pretending to be him when he left his IM account open, but the best thing was when he left his email account open on one of the lab computers.

He may as well have put a bow and a tag that read 'To: Native Minnow, enjoy.'

It was springtime, the semester was about to end, and students would be getting a little break before the summer terms began. Since all this guy could talk about was playing these fantasy games, and how strong his alter-ego was, I decided to go through his contacts list and send an email to a few other grad students inviting them to join the next game. With the help of two of my friends, I composed four emails and sent them out. I only remember one of them well enough to reproduce it here, but it's enough to get the point across. It went something like this:

[Fellow Grad Student],

Some of my friends and I are going to be starting a new game later this Spring and are looking for a few new players to join us. Specifically, we were wondering if you would be interested in playing a left handed axe wielding dwarf. Let me know, it should be a lot of fun.

[Comic Book Guy's look-alike]

Each email had a different character that was very much 'Lord of the Rings' themed. They were something like an evil sorcerer, an arrow shooting good elf with magic powers, and a mercenary swordsman on horseback.

I figured that each of the four recipients would realize what had happened and know it was a joke. Imagine what he thought when two of them politely declined in an actual response.

Why don't you climb down off that movie screen?

While I was visiting Flieswithoutwings for Christmas he brought up the fact that he thinks my daughter resembles Kate Hudson. He's mentioned it to me before, but I had just watched a movie starring Kate Hudson, and thought she looked really good in it, so when he said it this time it made me feel a little gross.

Me: Don't tell me that. I think Kate Hudson is hot.
Him: That's why I'm here. To rock your world!

So, I've posted a few pics and am leaving it up to you to decide. Does my daughter look like Kate Hudson? Or can I continue being attracted to her (the actress, not my daughter)?

Doesn't matter much to me just as long as he's dead

I was talking to an old friend on the phone tonight:

Him: What are you up to tonight?
Me: I'm on my way to see a movie.
Him: Yeah? Which one?
Me: Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny.
Him: Is that a movie about them finishing the continental railroad or something? Because that's what it sounds like to me.
Me: No stupid, it's about the band Tenacious D.
Him: I don't know who that is.
Me: You haven't heard of them? Surely you've heard the song Wonderboy.
Him: That's not really my kind of stuff.
Me: What are you talking about? You don't even know. You should get that album and listen to it. I guarantee that it's right up your alley.

I then proceeded to tell him about cock push-ups and some of the lyrics to Fuck Her Gently.

You don't always have to fuck her hard
In fact sometimes that's not right to do
Sometimes you've got to make some love
And fuckin' give her some smooches too
Sometimes you've got to tease
Sometimes you've got to say please
Sometimes you've got to say, Hey
I'm gonna fuck you . . . softly
I'm gonna screw you gently
I'm gonna hump you . . . sweetly
I'm gonna ball you . . . discretely

Him (laughing): You're not doing anything to me man.

Then I told him about the time I included that song on a mix CD I made for a girl. She was joking around about making one that was full of naughty songs, so I told her I'd make one. Of course, I think she had a CD full of romantic songs in mind, and what I made was completely the opposite of that. In fact, the theme was very agressive, and I seem to recall her telling me that she didn't even listen to it past about the fourth song.

I can't remember the entire track list, but I named it Lustful Lullabies and included songs such as Sex Type Thing (Stone Temple Pilots), Kinda I Want To (Nine Inch Nails), Romantic Rights (Death From Above, 1979), Hey Pretty (Poe), Rapture (Pedro the Lion), etc. It was a rather angry sex mix.

As I was telling my friend about this, he kept laughing with each new track I named off.

Him: Don't you go becoming a serial killer without me.

If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts

The other day a friend of mine asked me if The Royal Tenenbaums was my favorite movie of all time. It's a great movie, one of my favorites, but I don't think that I could give it favorite movie of all time status. I told my friend this, then he asked what would be my favorite movie. I said that I'd probably have to go with Gladiator, and given more time to think about it, I'm sticking with that choice.

Why Gladiator? Because I can't think of any other movie that got me so excited for its release, and then delivered by exceeding all of my expectations. I watched it several times in theaters, and even bought the DVD as a Christmas present to myself before my wife and I owned a DVD player. I also own the soundtrack, and after the conversation with my friend, I went home and played it. It still got me excited after all this time.

Could it be dethroned? Absolutely, it just hasn't been yet. But I'm curious now. I want you all to humor me and tell me what your favorite movie is and why.

Whose house are you haunting tonight?

Ok, here's the Halloween costume:
















In case you're wondering what the hell I'm supposed to be, I'm Eli Cash from The Royal Tenenbaums:

















And if you're wondering about the make-up, it comes from the scene at the end where he's on the way to Etheline's wedding, he's high, and he crashes his car into the mailbox.

Here's a closer look:
















I swore that I wasn't going to wear make-up, because the last time I did it ruined my opportunities for kissing throughout the night, but once my friend, A-Pizzle, gave me the costume idea, it was just too good to pass up. Luckily (?) there wasn't anyone who wanted to this year.

When the last king of Hollywood shatters his glass on the floor

With the number of people working in Hollywood, you wouldn't think it would be too much to ask for more of the movies that come out to actually be worth watching, but apparently it is. I've seen a couple of good movies recently, but there hasn't been much else worth watching.

In fact, it's gotten so bad that last weekend, when I was trying to distract myself from dwelling on the disaster that was my comps, I couldn't even find a movie to go see. That's saying a LOT because when I'm in that kind of mood I'm kind of like the drunk guy around closing time who is willing to hit on the ugly girl just to avoid going home alone.

These were my choices:

Crossover - the scene they seem to be most proud of is two people dunking the same alley-oop pass, plus there are dunks over motorcycles. No thank you.
Flyboys - a movie about WWI flying aces which is criticized by some as being less realistic than Snoopy's fights with the Red Baron.
Jackass 2 - stupid people going to watch a movie about stupider people doing stupid things.
Gridiron Gang - same as every other sports movie ever made, except this time starring the Rock.
The Covenant - boy witches (warlocks?) driving H2s over cliffs, and then reappearing seconds later unharmed. That sounds, like, totally awesome dude.
Crank - just like Speed, except the bus is a guy.
School for Scoundrels - Napolean Dynamite fights Billy Bob Thornton for a girl, that's not Angelina Jolie. Pass!

And there aren't very many good ones on the horizon either:

The Guardian - I have yet to see a very good movie starring Ashton Kucher.
Open Season - see above
Employee of the Month - Sorry, but Dane Cook isn't that funny. He's getting way too much publicity these days. Plus, Jessica Simpson sucks.
Man of the Year - Robin Williams isn't that funny either, and if the best this movie can offer is to have him dress up like he's in colonial times for his inauguration speech, or crack jokes playing on quotes from past presidents that really aren't that relevant anymore, then I'm not going to pay to see the movie.

Come on Hollywood. Get your shit together and ENTERTAIN ME!!!

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Last night I decided to take a break from reading, mostly because I was starting to get a headache, and went to see Little Miss Sunshine. It was a fun movie, and I'd recommend it to anyone who can laugh at topics such as attempted suicide and heroin use. Ok, so the topics themselves aren't all that funny, but the way they're portrayed in this movie is. I laughed throughout the entire thing.

The story is about a family that lives in Albuquerque. The father is a motivational speaker who is trying to get a book deal (9 steps to being a winner), in the meantime the mother is the breadwinner of the family, the son wants to attend the Air Force Academy (and has taken a vow of silence until he attains that goal), and the daughter wants to win a beauty pageant. The wife's brother tried to kill himself, but the insurance company won't pay for him to remain in the hospital, so he has to live with them because he can't be left alone. Throw in a grandfather who got kicked out of his retirement home because he was using heroin, along with a road trip to California in a VW bus, and let the laughs ensue.

Early in the movie, the entire family is sitting down for dinner and the daughter asks her uncle how he hurt his wrists. At first he tells her it was an accident, but the mother starts to tell her the truth because "She's going to find out anyway." The father wants to make sure that the daughter understands that he doesn't condone it and interjects with thinges like "He did it because he's a loser. A winner would never give up on himself." (quotes used liberally b/c I don't actually remember their exact words). The uncle launches into a list of the events leading up to his decision, and the girl keeps cutting him off before he can explain it all:

Him: I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back.
Her: You tried to kill yourself because of a girl, that's silly.
Him: I fell in love with a boy. One of my grad students.

And on and on it went for a couple of minutes. Good stuff.

I realize that I'm not doing the movie any justice with the way I'm trying to write about it, but if you can see the humor in what I've written here you should definitely go see this movie.

On an only somewhat related note, I had a voice message when I got out of the movie. Since I'd gone to the late showing, the call would have had to have come after 11:00.

"Cool," I thought, "the only time someone calls that late is if it's a booty call."

Then I quickly remembered that there is no booty that would be calling me.

It turned out to be my brother who was trying to keep from falling asleep while he drove the last few hours home from a work assignment. I called him back and talked for a little while until his phone cut out as he went through a patchy service area. I hope he made it home ok. I went to sleep.

I should have been listening to every word you said

I went to see An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. If you haven't heard about it, it's Al Gore's documentary on global warming. I think that everybody ought to see this movie, regardless of political affiliations. Of course that's not going to happen, conservatives are going to see that it's Al Gore's movie and immediately dismiss it as rubbish. That's too bad, because it could actually open up some eyes about the state our world is in right now, and the direction we seem to be heading. I like to believe that it's not too late to make some changes, but it will be if we don't start acting soon.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the following. Some of this comes from the movie, some of it is just me, but I'm not going to go to the trouble to distinguish that as I ramble on here. If you really want to know, go see the movie ;-)

One of the major things to think about is the exponential increase in the number of people living on our planet. The number has reached approximately 6.5 billion, nearly triple what it was 50 years ago. Along with that comes an increasing demand for natural resources, some of which are renewable, others of which are not. The scary part about that is that once the non-renewable ones are gone, they're gone for good (I know I've said it before, but it warrants mentioning again). I mentioned a few days ago that people generally try to push the limits of what they can get away with, and that seems to be exactly what we're doing with our dependence on such things (i.e. oil). As the world population continues to grow exponentially, these resources are going to be used exponentially. Especially given the fact that many third world countries are starting to become more developed. The thing about exponential growth is that it will double with each passing time period. As E. O. Wilson points out in his book Consilience, that means that the "day" before we run out of a resource we will still have half of it left. If people aren't thinking about this sort of thing, then they won't spring into action until it's too late.

The frustrating thing is that the technology for alternative energy sources is out there. Why isn't there more of a push for solar energy these days? Take a place like Las Vegas for example. When I first moved here I was told that the only difference in the seasons are that you either get sunny and hot, or sunny and cold. It's always sunny! If that doesn't sound like a good place to start implementing solar panels, I don't know what does. I know that it's expensive to equip a home with solar panels. I think it's around $10,000, and that extra cost might be enough to prevent a lot of people from being able to afford a home. But what about the casinos? There's more money funneling through those places than a guy like me can even fathom. And in each one's quest to be the biggest/newest/best they keep bringing in more and more fancy stuff. The money it would take to place solar panels on the rooftops of those would be a mere drop in the bucket compared to what they spend on other furnishings.

I won't even get into all the problems with the accelerated extinction rates of species here, but believe me, things are dying off. The problem with that is, nobody seems to care, unless it's something that's going to affect mankind. If you're one of these types of people just stop and think about this: How much would it cost to build machines that can provide all the services that nature already does for free in the event that the things that do them start dropping off the face of the earth? We in the United States are the worst in the world when it comes to thinking about this stuff. Our consumption of the world's resources far exceeds our proportion of the world's populations. One would think since we have been a world leader in many things for so long, that we would be when it comes to the environment as well. It's no secret that our automobile industry is lagging behind those of other nations when it comes to automobile emissions. Gore talks about how California has just recently passed legislation to require automobiles to have lower emissions over the next decade or so. The state has since been sued by the automobile industry claiming that it's too hard for them to meet those restrictions in such little time. The irony with that is other countries are already there. Why should it take the manufacturers in the U.S. a full decade to get where these other countries (including China) are today? Is that really an unrealistic expectation? It makes no sense to me. Maybe we just need some different people in charge, starting with our president (have I mentioned how much I hate the current one?).

Speaking of presidents, it kind of all boils down to politics. I don't understand why, but somewhere along the line 'environmentalist' became a dirty word. The point this movie brings up is that it really shouldn't be a partisan issue. After all, we're all stuck here on the same planet with no real option of going elsewhere (despite what Stephen Hawking has recently said about colonizing the moon). You'd think we'd all want it to last as long as possible.

The thing that people always talk about when it comes to conservation related topics is that it will ruin the economy if we don't let people do what they've always done. I understand that it would be a big deal if that happened, but people tend to be fairly resilient, and if someone loses a job because one technology becomes obsolete, they are generally able to get training to do something else instead. Who knows, maybe it could be one of the new jobs that the new technology is bound to be offering up. All in all, I think the 'it will ruin the economy' argument is pretty weak. The thing that ought to strike people the most is that if the earth is gone, the economy is going to be the least of our concerns.

In case you're still reading (doubtful) and want to know more about the movie or what you can do to help do your part, here's a site you can visit:

http://www.climatecrisis.org/

(sorry, but the link icon isn't working correctly and every time I use it, half of my post gets erased)

Tombstone

I watched the movie Tombstone yesterday. I hadn't seen it in quite some time, but I have to say it's one of my favorite westerns. I originally saw it when I was in high school and it was in the theater. A group of us went to the movie theater without really knowing what was playing. A few of us ended up going to see Tombstone while flieswithoutwings and shootingstar went to see Mrs. Doubtfire instead. After the movies were over we all met back up in the lobby, and we went on and on about how good the movie we had just seen was. We kept rubbing it in to flieswithoutwings that he'd gone to see such a lame movie just because his girlfriend wanted to. In fact, I think we rubbed that in for several months after the fact. It's funny that I still remember stuff like this.

I'd love to be as witty and cool under fire as Val Kilmer's portrayal of Doc Holladay (but that's probably just because I'm a wimp and not very witty). I love the scene where one of the Cowboys is trying to intimidate him by twirling a gun around his finger, and gets fancier and fancier with it before he finally puts it into his holster, then Doc imitates the same thing with his recently emptied glass. Another one of my favorite lines is when there's about to be a gunfight in the street, and Doc comes out and draws his pistol. One of the cowboys sneers "You're so drunk, you're probably seeing two of me." Doc draws a second pistol and replies "In that case, I've got two guns. One for each of ya'." And of course, who could forget "I'll be your huckleberry."

Until I get some wit and toughness, I'll just have to keep living vicariously through the movies I watch. I'll have to make sure that there aren't any chick flicks in the future for me.

The quilted thicker picker upper

I was driving home from a movie yesterday (V for Vendetta - go see it, it's good) and was talking to my sister on the phone when a kid rode his bike out in front of me. It wasn't very close so I didn't have to brake, or even swerve, before he got out of the way, but it still startled me.

She started talking about how someone we know hit a kid on a bike a few years ago. It was a similar situation where they were just driving and this kid came zipping across in front of them, except there was no time to react. Luckily the kid didn't die, but he did get hurt pretty bad. The person who hit him ended up getting sued by the kids parents, but the judge threw the case out of court because there was a police officer who had witnessed the entire thing and said that the kid came out of nowhere, so there was no way they could have done anything to stop it from happening.

I didn't remember any of this, until she said the part about the cop seeing it all.

Me: "My memory must be getting really bad. I can't believe that I didn't remember any of that happening."
Her: "It's not that your memory is bad, you're just too self absorbed."

That I am, Sis, that I am.

My life and the movies

Every once in a while, I’ll watch a movie and feel as if a part of the script has been taken from a segment of my life. Incidentally, these often become some of my favorite movies. Some of the more recent ones include The Royal Tenenbaums, Garden State, Closer, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you haven’t seen these movies yet, I highly recommend them (with the exception of Closer. If you’ve ever been cheated on it will probably bring out feelings that you’d rather forget).

I just finished watching We Don’t Live Here Anymore for the fifth time. I saw it for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival a few years ago and immediately fell in love with it. This one is along the same lines as Closer, in that it is also not an easy one to watch if you’ve been cheated on, but that is probably why it gripped me the way it did. I just wish that I could have dealt with situations in my life with some of the same attitudes as the characters in this movie. Of course, in real life you only get one take.

I find myself enamored with trying to determine what causes a relationship to fall apart. I’m not sure exactly why, because it’s not like I recognize when it’s happening in one of mine. Maybe I’m just hoping to catch some of these things so I don’t make those mistakes in my next one. Although sometimes if feels futile, since there are a million different things that can cause the deterioration of a good relationship.

The thing that scares me is that while I despise infidelity (just have the guts to leave if you’re no longer in love), I find myself sympathizing with some of the jerks in these movies, and I’m not sure what that says about me. I’m just glad that I recognize this because maybe that means there’s hope for me to fix it. Here’s hoping that this introspection eventually pays off.