39 years
Thirty-nine years ago today, men stood on the moon for the first time.
Will we ever go back?
Month: July 2008
Hellboy II
In spite of being about a demon who is fated to destroy the Earth, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” is surprisingly… cute.
Deep thought
Apparently California uses more gas and oil than China.
This makes sense.
When I picture a scene in China, I picture lots of people on bicycles. Don’t you?
What I’ve been doing
Pretty much nothin’.
Oh, wait. I went for a walk in my neighborhood last night. I walked down to Oaks Park because I’d heard that the Rose City Rollers were having team tryouts, and I thought looking at Goth-y, tattooed chicks on roller skates and yelling at each other might be entertaining.
It wasn’t, or at least not as much as I’d hoped.
On their website, the Rose City Rollers had said that the tryouts would not be open to the public, and so I’d practiced a line that I thought I’d give if anyone challenged me; I’d tell them I was a writer, and I was preparing a story. If they’d asked what paper I wrote for, I would just tell them I’m a freelancer.
No one challenged me. And I didn’t talk to anyone or ask nosy questions, like what were they doing the night of the murder, or if they noticed a light in the upper window of the old MacNaughton mansion. I just hung around outside the big green hangar and watched them skate around and talk about the team for 20 minutes.
A friend had mentioned she might be there, too, and she’s hot, so that gave me even more incentive to be there. But it was muggy, and I was tired, and poorly dressed (jeans and t-shirt and sexy (but hot-in-a-temperature-way) hat) so even though I showed up and poked around, I ended up leaving probably too early to meet up with her. I wandered around the midway of Oaks Park for a bit, and watched kids and families having a grand time on the rides, and eat snow cones and cotton candy and drive bumper cars and get swung around in the air in various ways. I think I’ll go back later this week and just spend an hour wandering around, as long as the weather stays nice. It’s kinda fun.
After that I walked back across Oaks Bottom, or as I like to call it, “the swamp”, and up the trail into Sellwood Park, and then into Moreland, where I bought a gelato (half hazelnut chocolate, half raspberry (locally grown!)), which was delicious and also put me just under my calorie goal for the day. Then I got some groceries and grabbed a bus home.
Oh! And also, I upgraded my iPhone to the 2.0 OS. Which I’m kinda regretting, because it’s kinda buggy. The keyboard was hanging up the whole phone the past several days, getting worse and worse, which frustrated me. And it uses up the battery faster. Or maybe that’s just because I’m playing with it more; I can’t tell. Anyway, I did a restore without restoring my backup, which is the iPhone equivalent of reinstalling the OS from scratch, and it seems to be OK now. It doesn’t freeze up like it did before. But I’ll keep worrying until Apple puts out a patch.
Oh, and I’m writing movie reviews for a ‘zine that’s coming out soon. At least I’m going to submit them. We’ll see if a) they get accepted, and b) the ‘zine actually gets published. It’s all up in the air. But I have to move fast on that because the ‘zine is going to be published soon. So be mad at me if I don’t actually do something in the next couple of days, OK?
So… yeah. Not much goin’ on.
Two-thumbed fist
Saw “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” last night, a documentary about one of my intellectual heroes.
It made me sad that he’s gone, and mad that he’s not here to excoriate the Bush Administration and other politicians, and it made me want to get really drunk and write a lot.
So I’d say it succeeded.
Strange that two of my heroes, Thompson and Philip Kindred Dick, shared so many traits. Both incredible and prolific writers, both addicted to drugs, both haunted and fearful of politicians and particularly President Nixon. Both reclusive but social, opening their homes to strangers and newfound friends (and young nubile women), to the detriment of their marriages.
And both of them with personality issues.
Hmm. Food for thought.
The Sucky Section
Ken found some video from Thursday night’s Foo Fighters concert at the Rose Quarter. Apparently YouTube user crawlingkitty shot several videos from the show, situated as she (he? I mean no offense, I just can’t tell) was in the General Admission section on the floor.
Ken spotted the fact that I appear several times in the video below (and he’s probably a bit sad that he didn’t show up, since he and his wife were right next to me):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwB5F7pgWkE&hl=en&fs=1]
What’s that? You didn’t see me? Had a hard time spotting my magnificent hat in the blurry phone-cam video? Here’s a screen grab, from around the 1:36 mark:
Click pic to embiggen
Dave Grohl’s pointing right at me! Or something.
Fighting Foo
Maybe longer post and more (fuzzy iPhone) pictures later. Maybe.
But I just wanted to note that I saw Dave Grohl and company last night.
Arena rock isn’t my normal kind of thing, but I’ll make an exception for the Foo Fighters.
Much Foo ass was kicked. And many Foo names were taken.
Goodbye Constitution
Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately.
Didja notice that the Democratic-led Congress handed President Bush the gift of monarchy yesterday? When King Bush II signs H.R. 6304 into law today (probably cackling with glee over just how much the “opposition party” in Congress gave him), you can say goodbye to any protection from unreasonable search and seizure you may have thought was provided by the Bill of Rights.
Didja notice that? No?
I’m sorry; go back to your American Idol, and make sure to go to church on Sunday to pray to Invisible Sky Man. Didn’t mean to disturb your slumber.
I almost forgot
Since I plan on logging every movie I watch in a theater this year, I almost forgot to post that I saw “Secretary” last Monday, as part of the ongoing Independent Film Revival series.
I felt almost skeevy being there alone. Alone in the crowd, I mean. Lots of couples, both boy-girl and girl-girl. I couldn’t tell if the girl-girl couples were friends or lovers. I tried not to stare. Man, I’m self-conscious just thinking about it almost a week later.
And after the movie, I felt as if the movie confused and angered me. Yeah. I got issues.
War and peace
In the past couple of days, I’ve seen two movies.
Thursday night I saw “War, Inc.” It’s a satire, a thinly-disguised story of a man, played by John Cusack, who is hired by the former vice-president, now C.E.O. of Tamerlane Industries, to conduct a trade show in Turaqistan. Oh, and to help conduct the world’s first-ever war run entirely by private industry. And by “conduct”, I mean political assassination. And also a political marriage between a Turaqistanian pop star (played by Hillary Duff) and the son of the Emirate.
I tried to get into the movie, I really did. But it all hits a little close to home for me. I found myself thinking, “this isn’t really that far from real life” and it kept drawing me out of the story. Dan Ackroyd’s Dick Cheney impersonation didn’t help. Ben Kingsley’s faux Southern accent didn’t help. Seeing Joan Cusack ham it up didn’t help. Marissa Tomei as an investigative journalist didn’t help. Even Montel Williams as the soothing voice of GuideStar (an OnStar clone) didn’t help.
Today, I saw “Hancock”. Reviews were mixed – on the one hand, Dustin at Pajiba said the second half of the movie ruined the easy-going first half. But Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, said it was good (with minor science nitpicks, which can be expected of a superhero movie). I was unsure if it was worth seeing or not.
I liked it. I liked it because of Will Smith, and because of Jason Bateman, and because of Charlize Theron. And it was funny, and Hancock’s character grew over the course of the movie. I was surprised that it was only 92 minutes – I suspect some backstory was cut. Maybe the backstory didn’t work; internet gossip has it that there were some last-minute re-shoots just two weeks prior to opening weekend, never a good sign.
But I liked it. It’s no “Iron Man” but it was funny.