So, I’m remembering a night in March of 2005, when I went to my first Baltimore Blogger Happy Hour. I was nervous, but it’s amazing how quickly liquid courage makes one relax and enjoy oneself. Baltimore Bloggers are, for the most part, a great group of people — and while that group shrunk and grew, I’m happy to have made such friends, and I’m glad I didn’t give into the doubts assailing me that day before that first happy hour, and went anyway.
Flash forward almost three and a half years, and I’m no longer living in Baltimore — moved south, and now I’ve got an apartment overlooking the National Zoo in DC.
Anyway, tomorrow night is the first D.C. Blogger Happy Hour that I’m aware of — well, I guess it’s the second, but I thought the first one was tonight, but it was really Wednesday, and, damn, two scheduled happy hours in three days? D.C. bloggers must like to drink! –and I plan on attending.
How different from Baltimore Blogger Happy Hours can they be? I mean, I’m pretty sure that some things are the same even across cities, and, um, bloggers tend to lean towards the alcoholic. In my experience, anyway.
I’m hoping some of these high-rolling DC bloggers will be generous enough to buy this DC Blogger Happy Hour virgin a beer.
Also: since I don’t know what any of you DC bloggers look like, I’ll let you pick me out of the crowd –
NOW WITH LESS HAIR!
(well, less hair on top of my head … more hair on my face …)
I usually don’t go into slapstick comedy flicks, so I’m not quite sure why “Zohan” made its way onto my Netflix queue, but it did, and it was here when I got home, so I threw it into the DVD player, and it surprised me. Although it starts out pretty ridiculously slap-sticky, it develops well enough into a parable about the American dream and putting aside cultural differences to create a better world (also: the importance of knowing how to apply the Vulcan neck pinch).
I’ll be going the Saturday, and probably Sunday, after Thanksgiving, but I already know what I’ll miss most about the remodeled National Museum of American History: the pendulum.
Usually, my alarm goes off at 5:30, and I’m walking down Connecticut to the Metro half an hour later. Today, the alarm rang and I just turned it off and slept for an extra forty-five minutes. It’s days like these, when I don’t have to work at the Bookstore after working at the Office, that I appreciate the flex-time available at the Office: coming in at 10 is totally cool (most people come in early — by 3:30, the Office is a dead zone).
I’m sitting on my couch, watching Tippy stand on the end of a bookcase, stretching out to paw at the still closed blinds. I’ve got my laptop on my, well, lap, and I’m listening to some music, and I’m preparing to watch the last hour or so of Tropical Thunder, which I started last night but couldn’t muster the energy to keep away to finish. Right now, it’s so-so: it has its moments, and its got some funny parts (Tom Cruise has the funniest part), but I don’t think it even reaches Night at the Museum funniness. Also, I really want to take a shovel to Jack Black’s character.
My ceiling fan is turning. I’ve also got the heat on, and since the fan always turns when I turn the heat on, I’m sure it’s got something to do with the heat rising and causing the fan to rotate. I remember some of my science! Thankfully, the rising heat is not turning the fan so fast as to negate the benefit of having the heat on. Speaking of which, as my apartment is now nice and toasty, I really should go ahead and turn it off.
Yesterday was considerably fun: the Office paid for a few hours at a bowling alley to reward the department I’m in for completing our third data-set. Best: since they wanted people to actually attend, they made it mandatory and consider it as ‘time worked’ for our timesheets (yes, we’re salaried, and yes, we’ve got timesheets, to keep us honest). It was probably my first time bowling in, um, how long has it been since Wilde Lake Middle? I mean, really, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a bowling alley. Post bowling was a happy hour at the Barking Dog in Bethesda, and tonight? Happy hour. Tomorrow? Happy hour. It’s a good thing I get paid on Friday.
I swear — I SWEAR! — I’m getting upset at the people in our cafe. Not the employees in the cafe, no, the stupid fucking customers, who ignore the three — THREE! — announcements we make as we lead up to closing time, and who say, as I come up to them after we’ve been closed for several minutes, “Okay, give me a minute, and I’ll shut my computer down.”
Asshole: we’re closed. We want to go home. We’re tired. Our feet hurt. We’re getting up bright and early tomorrow morning because, for a lot of us, this is a second job, and my alarm at least goes off at 5:30am. We’re here to serve you, and smile at you being an idiotical fucking idiot when the store is open, because, of course, that’s what we’re being paid for.
And, let me be fair: for a lot of customers, it’s a pure joy to help you. You’re friendly, you’re nice, you don’t scream at me because we don’t have any copies of what-the-fuck-ever that you were looking for that’s been out of print since the Carter Administration. You say “please” and “thank you.”
Some of you know enough about what you’re looking for to give us a nice detective chase, and some of you are just so painfully clueless it’s physically painful. Seriously - you’re looking for a book with a red cover? Here you go. But you said you didn’t know the author or the title, but!, look!, it’s got a red cover!
But when we’re closed, and we’ve got all the books on the shelf, we want to go home. We’ve been busting our humps all night so that we can be walking out the door five minutes after closing, because we’ve got trains to catch, and images of our beds are floating in our minds, and you’re telling us, essentially, that if we’re lucky, you’ll be out the door in five minutes because you didn’t listen (?!?!?!) when, at a quarter of, we said, “We’ll be closing in fifteen minutes.” And you didn’t listen at five of when we said, “We’ll be closing in five minutes. Please gather your belongings and start thinking about getting the fuck out of here.” Apparently you weren’t listening at closing, when we did, in fact, say, “You must now get the fuck out!”
“Just a couple of more minutes!”
No.
Nuh-uh.
Not motherfucking happening.
At nine-oh-motherfuckin’ clock, you need to either be in the queue waiting for someone to call “NEXT!” so that you can make your last-minute purchase, or you need to be, at the bare minimum, on your way out the fucking doors.
And, I swear, the point is going to come — I’m thinking mid-December — when someone tells me he’s going to start shutting down his laptop, and we’ll already be closed by that time, and I’m going to tell him just to close the goddamn lid or I plan on seeing how far across the street I can punt the fucking thing.
Generally, when you talk about going to the mall after Thanksgiving, you probably picture hordes of assholes shoving and screaming their way through retail establishments, a sight and experience enough to push most people to shop online, or at the very least, to feel great sympathy for me, as I work (part time, anyway) in retail.
However, I am smart, which is to say, I took that whole extended weekend off. And I’ll be making all my Christmas related purchases the following Friday, when we’ve got “Employee Appreciation” day: 40% all items in the store (our regular discount is 33%).
However, this post is not about shopping. As a member of “The Fun Committee” at my Office job, I’ve had my interest piqued by what I’ve hard about the National Mall post Thanksgiving: namely, that it’s empty: deserted, nada, no one, adios! All the museums are open, but because most people are traveling, or recovering from traveling, or recovering from visiting relatives, Saturday and Sunday makes for some empty — but open! — museums and green places. So I was thinking about passing the word around work to see if any of my coworkers would be interested in an informal museum group outing, but I thought I’d ask around the DC blogosphere to verify that what I’ve hard is correct: is, in fact, the Mall dead dead dead post Thanksgiving?
I was browsing Brickshelf before starting work and it took me a minute (the folder title not withstanding) to figure out what it was I was looking at: Medieval Quidditch!
I was in a car a few weeks ago, and the driver, a coworker, got mad at me for ’shadow braking’: “There’s no brake there!” she yelled, and I stopped myself from retorting, “Well, there fucking well should be!” as she somehow managed to avoid killing us both.
So, there’s this story about how the German car manufacturers didn’t start putting cup holders and radios in their cars until the late 60s, because they couldn’t quite figure out how people could drive and do other stuff at the same time. Personally, I think they had the right idea: as a driver of an automobile, a large, heavy, extremely potentially deadly accident waiting to happen after a moment’s — no, a second’s — hesitation, there’s nothing you need to be doing that is more important than keeping your eyes open, and your hands on the steering wheel.
I think text messaging while driving should be illegal, and fined heavily. That’s pretty much my opinion on doing anything behind the wheel that isn’t driving: reading, eating, putting on makeup, masturbating, reaching for a bag on the back seat. It’s distracting, it’s dangerous, and, when you think about it, that’s a pretty deadly combination.
If you avoid text messaging in your car, you stand a substantially reduced chance of a loss of a claim or, indeed, a loss of life, recent studies suggest. Texting while driving, or fiddling with myriad devices including your cell phone, BlackBerry or GPS system, is a leading factor in accidents across the nation.
Ask the 22-year-old Arizona woman who recently hit a stationary emergency vehicle, with its lights blazing, while text messaging behind the wheel. (Writer’s note: what an idiot).
Four states are actively attempting to ban driving while texting (DWT), with Washington passing a ban early this year on all drivers sending electronic messages while on the road. In 17 states including the District of Columbia, young or inexperienced drivers are banned from using cell phones, even using a hands-free kit, with emergency calls exempted.
These measures are in response to a ream of statistics that suggest DWT is a growing danger. In various accredited published studies, some 46 percent of drivers ages 16 to 17 admit to texting while driving.
Driving a car is a responsibility, not a right. If that old libertarian saying is, “Your right to swing your first ends at my nose”, then the motto for encouraging smart, responsible driving should be “Your right to drive a car ends at your bumpers.” Meanwhile, I’m going to be just as careful crossing roads here in the District, to make sure some idiot texter doesn’t run a red light and send me flying.
I haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth, but judging from the trailers I’ve seen for it, I think Guillermo del Torro brought all his F/X guys from that film to this one — and it works, especially in the world of the Hellboy. My biggest gripe with the first film was that the editing seemed a little too quick paced and frantic, and while this film is certainly quick, the editing isn’t so choppy as to endanger the story. A wholly enjoyable couple of hours.
Iron Man
Jeff Bridges and Robert Downey, Jr. — I mean, seriously, are you guys so strapped for cash you decided to sign up only for the paychecks? Because, really, that’s the only reason I can imagine why you guys — being as you are, I assume, financially responsibly and, oh, wealthy — would ever agree to be in this piece of shit horrible film. This was a horrible, horrible movie. Sadly, however, it was not in fact, the worst movie I saw this weekend, the other being:
Hitman
AHHH MY EYES MY EARS THIS MOVIE IS SO AWFUL I CAN SMELL THE STENCH OF POOP FLOATING FROM MY DVD PLAYER OH MY GOD SHOOT ME NOW SHOOT ME NOW
No, seriously, this movie was awful. Avoid at all costs.
Futurama: Bender’s Game
I really, really wanted to like this movie. I love Futurama! I loved Bender’s Big Score! But these straight-to-DVD movies keep getting unfunnier and unfunnier. While I hate to say it, I think the Futurama franchise would’ve been better off with only the first film. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the fourth — and final! — film, Beyond the Green Yonder, or something, but I don’t think I’ll be running out to buy it the first day it’s out on DVD. Hell, even the audio commentary on this film sucks. (I have a hard time believing I actually bought this on DVD).
I hope my next Netflix selections are better: We Own the Night, Be Kind Rewind, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I’m pretty sure National Treasure is going to blow, which will put it right in track to be just as bad as it’s predecessor, but I’ve got higher hopes for the other two.
So I was reading a piece in Salon the other day, about what steps the Obama Administration might take to investigate and prosecute those in the Bush Administration for their role in U.S. sanctioned torture.
The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the proposal. The plan would not rule out future prosecutions, but would delay a decision on that matter until all essential facts can be unearthed. Between the time necessary for the investigative process and the daunting array of policy problems Obama will face upon taking office, any decision on prosecutions probably would not come until a second Obama presidential term, should there be one.
The proposed commission — similar in thrust to a Democratic investigation proposal first uncovered by Salon in July — would examine a broad scope of activities, including detention, torture and extraordinary rendition, the practice of snatching suspected terrorists off the street and whisking them off to a third country for abusive interrogations. The commission might also pry into the claims by the White House — widely rejected by experienced interrogators — that abusive interrogations are an effective and necessary intelligence tool.
And then I was reading about John McCain’s meeting tomorrow — Monday — with Barack Obama, and it clicked into my head. I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person to whom this thought occurred, but if you’re going to have a bipartisan commission looking into the criminal misconduct of a previous Republican government, don’t you want to put a Republican to lead it so as to avoid any impression of bias? (After all, politics is perception). And which better Republican than John McCain? Okay, he ran a horrible campaign, but everyone in America knows he got tortured, and everybody knows that, politically, he’s not buddy-buddy with Obama. It’d be like in 1940, when FDR, after his third re-election, brought his opponent into the Oval Office and said, “Hey, I got a job for you.” After, Wendell Willkie was Roosevelt’s personal representative in dealing with nations involved with Lend-Lease, and late said that if he had to choose between an inscription that said “Here lies a President of the United States”, and one that said, “Here lies one who contributed to the preservation of freedom”, he’d choose the latter.
Honestly, who better than John McCain for the job of investigating what the Bush Administration did or didn’t do? And it’s hard to claim it’s a partisan witchhunt when the panel is weighted towards and led by Republicans (even if they are blood-thirsty for the heads of those who wrecked their party).
(Of course, McCain has his own personal issues with being against torture before he was for it, but, who knows, his explanation might be the truth).
It was starting to look it would be beautiful and sunny all day, and I was wishing I’d spent longer on the Mall this morning. I hadn’t actually planned to go to the Mall today, literally, I was on my way home from a mandatory staff meeting at my part time job, and made a right instead of continuing to the Metro station.
I walked from the business district where the Bookstore is right down to the National Mall. Actually, I was on Constitution when I started walking east, so, I suppose, I was actually a block “off” the Mall (the museums themselves I consider to be “on” The Mall.
I don’t get down to the Mall nearly enough, and I should make more of an effort. I don’t want to get to the point where I take anything in this city for granted, I should want to go down to the Mall once or twice a month and feel grateful to live close to so many awesome (and more importantly, free) museums and sights.
Heck, I live at the Zoo, and how many times do I go? I still haven’t been to the giant Aviary that I can literally see from my window.
The first Bond movie I ever saw — ever! — was GoldenEye. I was seventeen. Went with my Dad to some crappy theater in Columbia Town Center that was demolished, I’m sure, many years ago. For me, Pierce Brosnan has always been the only person capable of being James Bond, because he was my first Bond, the actor I associated with that role for eleven years. I sometimes thought Brosnan would always be the only person I ever, ever, identified as Jimmy Bond.
Right up until that very late Tuesday night, my first semester back in school after I went back, when after spending thirteen hours on campus, I did not drive home and go to sleep like I wanted to, rather, I drove to the Regal theater in Hunt Valley, plopped down some cash, and sat for two and a half hours watching Casino Royale (let me tell you, my ass was sore after all that sitting), I left with the feeling that I could never quite watch a Brosnan film quite the same way again: I mean, all the gadgets have always seemed a little ridiculous to me, something most of the Bond films have shared, but even when I watched a Moore film, or a Connery film, or whatever, I’d watch those actors and think, “That’s not Bond.” I know it’s sacrilege to suggest that anyone other than Connery could ever be anyone’s ideal of Bond, but that’s how I felt about Brosnan, so imagine my surprise when I now picture Craig Daniels as James Bond.
Maybe it’s because Casino Royale felt like an film for adults, whereas so many of the other Bond films seem ridiculous with their cartoonish violence, impractical gadgets, and, what was that other thing? General lack of a plot. Often — far too often — Bond films seem to go something like this: Opening violent scene + musical number + Something bad = Bond in some continent killing people, move to Bond in other country seducing girl, then killing people, move to Bond in other country killing people, then killing more people, then winning the day, then seducing one or possibly two girls. I’m getting off point here — okay, so Casino Royale actually had a plot, with Bond trying to turn a money launderer into providing intel to the British Secret Service. In other words, it was for grown ups! And I loved it.
So I started thinking, this week, that I’d work a little later on Thursday so I could leave early Friday and catch the matinee. That’s exactly what I did, running out of the office right at 11 (got to skip a demonstration!) with enough time to run past my apartment, have some lunch, drop some stuff off at the dry-cleaners, and getting to the Uptown in time to be the second person in line for the 1:50 showing. I’m glad I brought a book — I’ve been reading Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife — and I was quite a few extra pages into it by the time we were let into the theater, by the time I found a seat on the balcony, by the time the lights dimmed.
Okay — so, I don’t want to give away any plot points, but that might happen inadvertently, so if you haven’t seen the movie, or you don’t plan on it, or you don’t care, read on. Otherwise, proceed with caution, because I don’t believe in invisible text on my fucking blog.
So the film picks up, I don’t know, ten minutes after Casino Royale ends? Bond’s in a shootout with Mr. White’s bodyguards, all while driving in a manner that can only be described as incredibly reckless down narrow roads, through beautiful tunnels, and across a fairly scary quarry. Mr. White is locked in his trunk, but has an ace in the hole. Bond’s pursuit of White’s organization — which does, literally, have people everywhere — takes him to Haiti, then Austria, and finally to Bolivia, in pursuit of the apparent ringleader, Dominick Greene, a pretty nasty character. The “precious resource” his organization seeks to control is water, but he’s not above drowning people in oil to make a point.
It wasn’t bad. I won’t say it’s on the level of Casino Royale. While it was better than The Dark Knight, I’d say that Quantum of Solace relied too strongly on action sequences and less on story. If Casino Royale was about Bond outsmarting his opponent, Quantum of Solace is about Bond waging a one man war of attrition off that opponent, killing the organization’s — at the end of the film, people know it’s called Quantum, but where’d they learn that? Maybe in a scene cut from the movie! — henchfuckers at just about every turn: shooting them, killing them with glass, dropping them off buildings, yada-yada-etcetra. I think the film could’ve used a lot of fleshing out, so the short running time (less than two hours!), I think, may be the movie’s biggest handicap.
Mathis is back — about midway through the film. Once Bond has gone rogue, Agent Fields shows up. It’s pretty obvious she only serves one purpose: her costume is literally a tan raincoat and black boots, and, um, that’s about it. Small wonder she winds up in Bond’s bed — and she is, by the way, the only lovin’ James gets — and then winds up dead. By my count, Craig’s Bond has seduced two women and both wound up dead in a rather painful manner.
Long story short — I’ll most likely pick it up on DVD (but won’t shell out for BluRay), and I don’t regret spending the mullah to see it on the Big Silver Screen.
I worked a 12-hour day at the Office yesterday so I could leave early today: I wanted to catch the 1:50 showing of the new 007 at the Uptown. More on that later. So, I’m in the theater, and the trailers are running. The Tom Cruise Nazi movie actually looks good, so did the one before that although, I’m afraid to admit, I forget exactly which trailer was shown before the Tom Cruise Nazi one.
So the third or fourth trailer starts up.
There’s an old red car speeding towards the edge of a cliff, in hot pursuit is a bike cop. I’m thinking the driver of the car is suicidal, but at the last moment, he jerks the wheel, and as the car starts to skid, he leaps clear. The car goes over the cliff, and the driver almost does, too, but he manages to grasp the last possible rock and pull himself to safety. He stands up and it turns out he’s a kid. Where are his fucking parents? I wonder, apparently forgetting that, duh, he’s a character in a movie.
The angle switches to the cop, who demands, “What is your name?” I don’t remember which I notice first: that the cop’s bike is hovering, or that the cop is a robot. Apparently, I’m thinking, this is Robocop IV.
And then the kid says his name, and I’m like, “Oh, sweet, the Star Trek trailer!” Because, of course, the kid’s name is James T. Kirk.
Really, though, if you want more, you’ll have to wait until it shows up on YouTube (I’m sure it’s there now). Really, though, my first impression is that while the production looks nice and flashy … I’m just not buying Pine and Quinto as Kirk and Spock. But, as that’s based on about a four-second clip, I’ll try to go to the movie with an open mind: I really, and I do mean really really really want to love JJ Abram’s Star Trek.
Update:
Some bootlegs are showing up on YouTube, they’re all awful quality, but, here:
