Monday, June 27, 2005

Batman Begins w/ spoilers

So i saw Batman Begins. It's the best of the batman movies because it's not campy. There were like two jokes, and they fell flat. I'm glad for that. It's not a great movie though. X-men and Spiderman were better. I didn't leave the theatre charged, wanting to be batman and drive around in my car really fast i stealth mode and zip in and out of traffic (ok maybe a little)

Here's the problems i had with the plot. First Alfred buys into the costumed crimefighter without a thought. What? Gordon says at the end of the movie about how this is now an arms race implying that he's maybe the first to don a mask so what bruce did is even odder. Sure, if half of society is running around at night, it might be seen as ok but... Alfred doesn't even argue that he might get hurt. I suppose that would be the cliched reaction and a waste of film time. "Gordon, i want you to drive this strange vehicle and destroy part of the city. Sure thing stranger in a mask that held a weapon to my head!" Secondly batman is a driven character. He achieves extraordinary things by force of will. I this movie, it's almost a path of least resistance. He has no aim, he stumbles into his present situation and why he becomes batman is not explained. It's not revenge, they explain that. He's told he can't let anger rule him. The closest reason given is that he subverts the training he's given by Ducat. Thirdly, a secret society that destroys feted civilization thought history? No problem in a comic book, but it's given no credibility in the movie.
I did like the fact the populous' first exposure to batman is under a fear inducing hallucinogen further enhancing his myth.

The casting was great, except for scarecrow. That guy looked alike a wantabe smallville clark kent and i'm suppose to believe he has a doctorate? Does Christian Bale always talk with his lips jutting? At first i thought he was doing it to sound younger when he "came back from college" but then he did it later in the present.

Anyways, i liked the movie and i've always liked batman so i hope they make more now that they've gotten the orgin out of the way.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Planetary

So i bought the first three paperbacks of Planetary and read them. It's really not doing it for me. Now, i'll have to admit that i kinda read them out of order because i had found the second book at the library and that i didn't pick up on the fact that the Four are the Fantastic Four but i don't think it's my thing.

Bizzaro Comics





I bought the Bizzaro Comics book after i figured out that it wasn't comics about Bizzaro but comics that he would have made. It has allot of people i like; Kochalka, Kyle Baker, Dave Cooper... I was disapointed. I didn't think it was funny.
Miles, however, did like the supper baby illustration and kept going back to look at it.
I should try to draw something, but alas i'm not a writer.

[PD] finger lickin'





don't have a punch line. What should the box say?

Monday, June 13, 2005

*another leg



I was at a party once and one of the girls said that she saw a manikin leg in the back of a truck.





Except she swears that it had hair on it. She was pretty shook up about it. They said they took down the plate number. I never heard anything about it again.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Did you see this news item?







A man's leg and spine fell from an airplane onto a woman's lawn. There was no picture so i provided an illustration.

Coffee

The owner of my local coffee shop is starting her own record label with Sarah Dougher. And to think a year ago she was griping that BMI had come in and tagged her for playing recorded music in her shop.

And I want to give Coffee Haven a plug since it's the only place i know where i can always get a cup of Stumptown Trapper Creek decaf. They'll even make me a pot is there is none and Dale is meticulous about making sure the coffee is always fresh.

Do you know how hard it is to find a fresh pot of decaf? Most places will just offer to make you and americano which just isn't the same. I always find that they have a woody taste i don't like.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Skunk works

Everyone know about the PPC graphing calculator story, right? This American Life did a story about it.

Btw, Ira is suppose to be getting a tv show on showtime.

tiger on pismo

Before i installed tiger on the pismo (2000 firewire) laptop i made a disc image of the hard drive by placing it in target disc mode, connecting it to the G5 and used the disc utility. If amelia for some reason didn't like the new mail program or the OS for some reason, i could revert back. The pismo only has a 6 GB drive. The drive is usually pretty full. This was the transitional computer between my first computer and the G5 so my stuff was on there as was amelia's and miles' and any apps i used. There was usually only about 300 MB free which would dwindle to less than 200MB after the computer had been in use for a while triggering a "your disc is almost full alert". Tiger, with all the options turned off still wants about 1.3 GB of free space. I managed to prune enough files to clear up the need space only to find that Tiger wanted to install some language packs that were going to take another 300 MB. I figured that i must have intalled the extra languages during some earlier install so this time i dove into the system folder and tried to find those packages because i didn't know where else i was going to find another 300 MB. I rebooted to find that now the installer now wanted to do a clean install, no update option, which would require 4.7 GB. I don't know what i threw away that goofed it up. Ok, great, i'll have to place it target disc mode, use the disc image and start throwing away stuff all over again. Well, something i threw way was needed for that too. The system wasn't so crippled that it wouldn't boot. Now i'd have to erase the drive to find enough space, do a clean install and then revert back to the old disc image and then start all over again. Amelia would kill me if i lost her email. I thought about this for a while. I did the new install and tried placing the G5 in target mode, mounted the disc image and used the migration tool to move her account to the new install. It worked! I figured that i still had access to anything that might have been on the drive with the disc image and a clean install might clear up some space.
I only had 700MB left afterwards, no iLife or any other apps the computer might have come with.

bad back

So monday of last week i didn't go into work because i "threw my back out". It had been bothering me the week before. I was walking with vito at work and he asked me what was wrong with me. He said i was almost walking sideways. His wife is a chiropractor. Sunday night i carried Miles to bed. He always like to be carried. That night i couldn't sleep the way i normally sleep, face down because it bothered my back. Monday morning it was allot of work to get to a full upright position. It took about a week to get back to "normal", although running seems kinda awkward now and i find myself bracing my upper body with my hand on my leg when i do somethings. (have i always done that?)
I've talked to a few people and it seems to be more common than i would have thought. Shawn said he had to go the hospital when it happened to him and Jeff said it took him a year to fully recover. I went back to work after only taking one day off, but was tempted to stay a second day. I know i would have been bored. Monday i didn't' want to do anything, not watch tv, not sit at the computer and play games or walk to a store.
I'm not sure why it happened. I've done more exercise since my sabbatical than i've done in the last 10 years. I've lost weight. The last few weeks i have been working long hours and eating crap and not working out. The week before when my back started to bother me, i think started because i was slouching in my chair at work. I had back pain once when i was doing apple service, but that was about 8 years ago and when i was probably in my worst shape and it was no where near as bad as this. It was hard to get out of bed for a week.
This is kinda of embarrassing. I guess i need to stop playing WoW.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Meet the Fockers

A waste of 2 hours. Didn't laugh. It's not a bad film, except that it's a comedy. Before, with I heart Huckabee's i couldn't say that i hadn't seen a Dustin Hoffman movie, now i can't say i haven't seen a barbra streisand movie.
Amelia was confusing this movie with Flirting with Disaster which was a better movie as i recall + that movie has Tea Leoni.
Does anyone remember her in that sitcom where she was in Flying Blind? I think all she did was walk around being beautiful since she played a model.

music

So i started playing my ipod music in alphabetical order. It somehow seems more random that shuffle, it seems to hit songs i haven't heard otherwise instead of what seems like the the same songs over and over. The only drawback is that if a song appears on more than one ablum, then you end up hearing it twice in a row. (well, and dupes also)

also, the Damian Rice album "O" is a great album despite whatever dislike you might have of Closer.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

closer

So i saw Closer, the film where natalie portman plays a stripper. Bad casting, she like Brittney Murphy in Sin City, seems like she's never known a hard day in her life. I felt i could have watched the whole movie at 1.5x speed but i kinda liked the ending. Maybe it becuase i saw Clive Owen in the Croupier, but he ended up playing everyone like it was some kind of conman film.
I was surprised to find out that it was based on a play. Usually most movies based on plays are just talking heads so it's easy to tell, but not with this film. It's not an action movie, but i have a hard time imagining it being performed on stage.

a thing

I mention the Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes thing to Amelia once and she's like, "you have a thing for her don't you?"
Well, i did...