Random mumblings

Bored today. Bored yesterday. Boreder tomorrow. Met her on my CB, said her name was Phoebe, sounded like an angel come to Earth. When I went to meet her, man, you shoulda seen her, twice as tall as me, three times the girth. Everybody now. My fat baby loves to eat. A big ol' Buddha-belly and her breasts swing past her feet. My fat baby loves to eat. My big-ol', fat-ass baby loves to eat. Got blisters on those fingers yet?
(Now, imagine this as if Bill Nighy were saying it, since that's the voice that was in my head when I said it) You know, the great thing about being a rock-star is, in order to get people to love you, all you have to do is say the name of the city you're in. For instance, if you go "Hello, Houston!," they'll cheer their asses off for you. You could yell out, "Houston sucks!" and they'll still cheer because you said bloody Houston.
Alright, enough totally random crap.
Let's see, what to say, what to say. Well, first off, Houston does indeed suck. I don't need to go there to find out. I've seen pictures. And since the only things that come out of Texas are steers and queers, and I have a need for neither, I don't imagine I'll be headed there anytime soon.
Saw Batman Begins. Um, yeah. I wasn't that impressed. It was okay, but it's not one of those movies that I'll ever feel the need or even want to see again. There's this webcomic that I love to read called PvP by a guy named Scott Kurtz. Every now and then, Kurtz puts a blog entry on the main page, below the comic and ads (I admire his priorities). Shortly after BB came out, Kurtz posted a message that was roughly the same as what I just said. He pointed out a few problems that he had with the plot and basically said that he saw the movie and thought it was okay, but not the great thing that everyone has made it out to be. A few hours after he posted this, he posted another entry that basically said "Look, stop e-mailing me, everyone. I have issues with the movie and you can't talk me into loving it." I have a few friends who saw it and I basically had to say the same thing, coming down to the point of saying, "Hey, I didn't try and justify the things you didn't like in the Star Wars prequels, don't try and do the same for me and Batman." It just comes down to the point that I didn't really like the movie. It had potential, and it had things that I did like, but it also had pointless bits and things that were just ridiculously bad. I mean, seriously, my God, that's how they want to do Scarecrow? What the fuck? The bad thing is that right before I saw the movie, I went out and bought the first DVD set of the Batman Animated Series from the early 90s. It was a great show that, watching it again, was so much richer than I remember or could even comprehend at the time. Anyway, so I see Batman Begins, am kind of let down, and go watch the Animated Series DVDs. The third episode is deals with the Scarecrow. I shit you not, the plot of that episode was essentially lifted and put into BB. I was pissed. Yes, the Animated Series was great, but don't rip it off. Damn, they didn't learn a thing from Men in Black II, whose plot was taken from an episode of the MIB animated series. Not only has Hollywood ripped off every decent novel in the history of mankind, but now it's starting to ripoff spin-off TV shows? Whatever. By the way, you may have noticed that I did not mention she-who-is-now-nothing-more-than-a-crazy-ass-movie-star's-armcandy, but there's no point mentioning her when talking about BB, other than to complain about the trend of Bat-girls (not like the character, but in the Bond-girl tradition) to find out just who the Dark Knight really is. I might go see the sequel simply because, like I said, there's potential here, and the fact that Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill is on the short-list of people to play a live-action Joker.
Alright, fumed about that enough. Oh, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith, too. That movie...was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I almost want to see it again. Young Ms. Jolie doesn't prance around in her underwear nearly as much as the trailers might have you believe. In fact, any sexy angle that they might have tried to pull with her just didn't get to me, not even dancing in a very cold rain. Sadly, that's one of the reasons I went to see the movie. But I digress, the movie set a great tone and tension during the first hour. There's all this build-up to when they actually start trying to kill each other, and then the explosions begin. The movie seriously made me reconsider the "boredom" of domestic life. For example, the modern minivan can be an extremely versatile vehicle if you are being chased by gun-totting assassins intent on killing you (as Brad Pitt points out, those automatic doors can be very handy). So, I guess I'd give the Smith Family a B+ or A- (the movie had some problems, like how you can live with someone for 5-6 years and not find a cache of weapons in your kitchen/garage, you know, the obvious stuff). I'd give the Dark Knight a C- (and that's simply because of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman [sorry, dwainker, your boy Gary really isn't in the film that much, but he makes a great young Gordon for the first half of the movie], as well as Bale's portrayal of the Bruce Wayne side of ol' Bats' personality).
Family Guy had a good episode last night that gives me hope. The first episode of the new season was really great, but the ones that followed that one have been either not-so-funny-and-kind-of-boring, cruel-and-not-funny-at-all, or half-funny-half-crap (although I haven't seen the episode where Peter's declared retarded, the premise alone seems like it should fall into the "cruel" category). Yet, last night's, where Brian ends up on The Bachelorette, was great. It had satire, it had some cut-aways that were good, and it didn't go to potty-humor too often. Yeah, the ending was kind of weak, but overall, it worked for me. It gave me hope for the FG movie coming out in September, which I hope is the reason that several of the episodes were lacking-MacFarlane might have thrown all the good stuff into the movie and, once that was finished, was able to focus on making the show good, too. I guess I'll find out in about three months.
Hmmm... My Shakespeare class is working on Midsummer Night's Dream right now. You probably couldn't feel that chill that ran up my spine as I typed that title, but the play is one of Billy's works that I just can't stand. Love Lear, enjoy Hamlet and MackeyB, and really like Tricky Dick the Third. Yet, with Dream, oh, how I hate it, let me tell you why. It's the plot with the four lovers, man. So worthless. Oh, Helena's crying. Wait, now Hermia's crying. Or is that Helena? I can't tell them apart, they're so frickin' alike. Now, Demetrius and Lysander are twins, right? I mean, they are mirror images of one another, at least on the page:
D- I love Hermia!
L- No, I love Hermia!
D- I'll kill you when I get my hands on you!
Puck comes along, a little mischief ensues
D- I love Helena!
L- No, I love Helena!
D- I'll kill you when I get my hands on you!
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Oy.
So, right now, we're watching a 1968 (?) version with Judy Dench as a near-naked Titania (she didn't look too bad 35 years ago. I'm just saying) and Ian Holm as a hyperactive (imagine that) Puck. All the fairies look like they've been dipped in a huge green paint can so that they all look like offspring of the Jolly Green Giant. Holm does this thing whenever he appears out of nowhere where he's flicking his tongue around like a mad dog. Just odd. The movie's also big on this effect I call stop-time, where it'll be filming a scene and the camera will stop and everyone freezes, a fairy will move into position, and then the camera starts up again, making it look like the fairy just popped in. It's an old effect. In fact, Star Wars used it whenever a lightsaber was lit or a door opened. You could see the people in the shot kind of move just a bit as no one can hold perfectly still. Anyway, so that effect gets used a fucking lot. The acting in the movie is alright, but not as great as my professor would like us to believe. The only actor in it that really impresses me is Holm, and that's simply because of the dedication he puts into it. The costumes are horrendous, with the women wearing what amounts to an oversized shirt, perhaps shorts (you can never really tell), and knee-high leather boots. If I didn't know better I would have thought this to be a porn movie when you first see Helena walk around in that outfit. The oddest thing is that the actor who plays Peter Quince is Sebastian Shaw. This probably means nothing to anyone who reads this, but I know Shaw as the "crusty old, white dude" version of Anakin Skywalker from the end of Return of the Jedi. All my life, I've seen this guy as a weak, pale, bald guy who has a fairly deep voice. In this, he's got hair and he speaks in a high-pitched, Cockney accent. I didn't recognized him until the professor paused the movie while he was onscreen and it kind of freaked me out. I saw his name in the opening credits (sans character name) and instantly remembered who he was, but it wasn't until that moment that it registered. Now, every time he's onscreen, it's a little spooky.
Well, I've probably wasted enough of my time, and maybe some of yours, too. Serves you right.
The SotP from last time was John (sometimes Cougar, but not by this point in time) Mellencamp's "Key West Intermezzo" aka "I Saw You First." The song's really good, I like it, and one day I'm going to run away to Key West for God knows how long. No, the song has nothing to do with my decision, I just want to get out of this Goddamned place for a while, and a little island that's fairly close to paradise seems like a good spot. It's that or Winslow, Arizona, just so I can call somebody and say, "Hey, I'm astandin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see, but there's no girl in a flatbed Ford around." Did you know there's an actual park in Winslow that's dedicated to that song? People could buy bricks to have their names engraved on and placed in the park, and it has a statue of a guy with a guitar and all sorts of things. If you're interested, check out the article on Winslow, Arizona, at wikipedia. Anyway, back to Johnny Cougar for a moment, the original of this song was great. The acoustic version that he did several years later, with a violin playing the electric guitar's melody, was just fucking awesome. Some musicians are great when they're young. But there's quite a few that, when they get older, can just blow you away. There's a story on the Love Actually DVD about how Joni Mitchell recorded the song "Both Sides Now" when she was in her mid-20s. The song is about having experienced love and the heartbreak and joys that come with it. Well, as you can imagine, it's very precocious for someone that young to say that they know everything there is to know about love. Well, she recorded the song again 30 years later, and her voice is just so much deeper and heavier than before, and her experience in those 30-odd years have really changed how she delivers that song and how powerful it can be. I have three versions of "Rhiannon" by Stevie Nicks. The first is from the album Fleetwood Mac, back in the 1975. It's a total rock-out, and she sings it fairly fast. Twenty-two years later, she recorded it again with Fleetwood for The Dance. It's slowed down a bit, she changes some of the words to make it a little more powerful, and it's good. The third version I have comes from her 1998 solo album Enchanted, and it's just her and a piano. She's pounding the notes. Just striking it, driving those notes into you. She sings it at a very deliberate and slow pace, and she feels every word that's coming from her mouth. More importantly, you feel every word. She put such power into it because she's gone through so much in those 23 years. It doesn't even matter if they were the first to record the song. Johnny Cash took "Hurt" and gave it personal reflection. What came out was a song that was one of his best, and it was recorded within a year of his death. That's kind of what Mellencamp does here: it was, at most, 10 years between songs, and he hadn't really experienced that much in the time between when the original and the acoustic versions were recorded. Yet he can still put real power into that song, simply by changing a few things. That's where the experience comes in. He doesn't care about record sales anymore; he doesn't need to rock-out in order to ship-out albums. He just knows what it takes to make a song go from good to fucking awesome.
Alright, enough of the sermon. Hell, I'm starting to feel like Billy Graham.
Song of the Post: "You've been tellin' me a genius since your were seventeen. / In all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean. / The weekend in the college didn't turn out like you planned. / The things that pass for knowledge, I can't understand."