Disjointed Digression

So, I netflixed Aliens vs. Predator Requiem, since I couldn’t convince myself to see it in the theater, and I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater.

If you look up the definition of requiem, it says:
1: a mass for the dead
2 a: a solemn chant (as a dirge) for the repose of the dead b: something that resembles such a solemn chant
3 a: a musical setting of the mass for the dead b: a musical composition in honor of the dead

So it seems fitting that the title lets you know that the AvP series is dead. Really they probably should not have even made this movie. The movie is dark, and I don’t mean as in “dark and brooding” or somber. I mean it was hard to tell what the hell is going on, because you have a black alien fighting an invisible predator at night, in a sewer. Not that the whole movie is like that, but more often than not the fight scenes are dark and confusing. On top of that there is the incoherent “story”, which seems to be about people in a small Colorado town and how they have to defeat the alien menace.

Not even the hybrid predator/alien can make this worth seeing. There are no good views of this monster throughout the movie. You get glimpses and fragments of images, and that’s about it. What looks like happened is that the movie wanted to save on special effects costs and made cheap/cheesy monsters that they tried not so show too much on screen, lest the viewer see the zippers and wires.

There is one scene that made me giggle a little bit and that is when someone yells “Get to the chopper!” Quite the parody of the original Predator. The only other scene that is kinda neat was tossed in at the end to add to they “mythos”.  It has someone named Yutani receiving Predator technology. I guess this is how Weyland-Yutani (the company from the Alien series) gets started.

I really don’t think that those two scenes make this movie worth watching. If you want to see hot predator on alien action, watch (or re-watch) AVP, don’t watch AVPR.

For those that might not know, I’m pretty lazy.  Many years ago, I bought an automatic litter box.  One that scoops that cat waste into a a little plastic box which is easy to throw away.  It’s not 100% perfect, but it does a good job.  When we got Moxie, we decided to get a second automatic litter box, since one of Candy’s co-workers had a slightly used one for cheap.  This past week one of them broke.  Just stopped scooping.  So we decided to replace it.  Of course they have a new model out, so we can’t get the same ones that have lasted quite a while.  This new model has a new feature “Sleep Timer for Nighttime Use.”  I can only guess that is for people who put their cats out at night.  To make this new feature work, the litter box has a clock on it.  A little red digital clock.

Now the cat’s can accurately record in their bathroom journal what time that took a shit!  Candy was bewildered. As she eloquently put it “There is a fucking clock on the cat’s shitter!?”

Why, yes, yes there is a clock on the cats shitter.  And I’m sure that Loki, Moxie, and Nellie will use it to the fullest to plan their day/night.  Since cats do everything on a strict schedule! Now they have a clock that is exclusively for them.

So, last weekend Moon opened in Austin.  Beav and I went to see the first showing on Saturday.  Moon is basically a one man show with Sam Rockwell turning in a stellar performance as Sam Bell.  Sam Bell is a man on a three year contract to oversee a small moon base that farms helium-3 a clean energy source that is shipped back to earth.  The only companion Sam has is GERTY, a computer that takes care of him (voiced by Kevin Spacey.) Sam has two weeks left in his contract then he will get to go home to his wife and young daughter.  When Sam goes out to retrieve a full H-3 container he has an accident, and things get interesting after that.

Moon is one of the best movies I have seen in a while.  It made me think, and wonder about things after I left.  It’s not a summer blow stuff up blockbuster, that is for sure.  I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just say that you should try to find it showing close to you and go check it out.

We have not made the switch over to Blu-ray yet.  I know that the Blu-ray/HD-DVD battle is very old news (especially in the technology race timeline), but for what it is worth I was rooting for Blu-ray back then.  Now that Blu-ray has come out on top, I just can’t seem to get motivated to go out and get a new Blu-ray player, or start replacing all the DVDs that I have amassed.  I began to wonder today, am I becoming one of those guys that stops caring about the tech advances?  In twenty years, will I still need to have an old barely running DVD player, while my friend’s children are setting up their latest home entertainment technology?  Or am I just a late adopter of some things?  I know that I didn’t get a DVD player until the price was down around $100, and DVD movies were on average $15.  I guess once Blu-ray players get into an affordable price range I’ll get one and start picking up Blu-ray movies.  Since I’ll still be able to watch my DVDs on a Blu-ray player, I don’t see any reason to replace all my DVDs with Blu-ray discs.   So I think that the answer to my question is no, I’m not yet one of those guys who stops caring about technology.  (And no, this is not me trying to tell Candy that I want a PS3 because it has a Blu-ray player built in.)

A movie that I missed in my Trailer Park post a little while back was Moon.    I think this looks like it could be a good movie.  So when I saw that the release date was today, I got kinda psyched.  I went to austin360.com and checked for show times for tomorrow.  I figured it would be too crowded tonight.  There were no show times.  I went to each of the theaters listed on the site.  Nothing. Nada. Zilch.  WTF?  As it turns out the movie is being released in limited venues today.  I know there is some reason involving money (probably sums of money that I will never personally see in my lifetime) that they do limited releases,  but it is just annoying.  I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out and see if I can catch it when it gets a wide release.

It was decided; nay decreed, that my old beard trimmer was to be re-purposed.  Now it will be used to trim tangles from cat bellies.  Or where ever the tangles we can’t comb/brush out are located on our long haired cats.  This has lead me to look for other beard trimmers, so I went to amazon.com and searched for beard trimmers.  On amazon, I read the reviews, and they send me on to different products. (i.e. “this one is not as good as product X”, so I look up product X) In this round about fashion I have come across a little gem… the Philips Norelco BG2030.   The product itself is not the gem, as it really looks like it is not just a beard trimmer but a body hair trimmer; the gem is in the first (as of now) review. 

“In the words of another reviewer, the “Bodygroom” is Shaft, Beanbag, and Starfish safe.”

I will admit that they have a disclaimer at the beginning of the review “If you are easily offended, stop reading this review now.”  But that cracked me up.

So I had to send it to Candy, which led to this exchange on IM:

me: this cracked me up in the first review “In the words of another reviewer, the “Bodygroom” is Shaft, Beanbag, and Starfish safe.”

Candy: is the starfish what i think it is

 Candy: do you have all 3 of those

Candy : lmao

me: yes

Candy: everyone was looking at me cuz that made me giggle

Here are some movie trailers that look interesting to me.  Most are slated to come out later this year but one is supposedly already out…

The Objective Release date: 2/6/2009 (Supposedly you can see it On Demand)
I’m kinda curious about this one.  Honestly, it looks like it could be good, but probably not great.

Anvil! the Story of Anvil Release date: 4/10/2009 (limited)
I had never heard of this band, and from little I have listened to their music (thanks to Amazon’s samples) they don’t sound like a band I would listen to, but the documentary looks interesting.

Sleep Dealer Release date: 4/17/2009 (limited)
Near-future sci-fi, kinda reminds me of William Gibson novels

X-Men Origins Wolverine Release date: 5/1/2009
Wolverine, my favorite X-man.  This movie could be good, but the potential to suck is quite high, especially since they have Gambit in the movie.

Star Trek Release date: 5/8/2009
I’m going to see this one expecting to see a sci-fi action movie.  I’m not a big trek fan, nor am I a huge fan of JJ Abrams (Cloverfield was not good, Lost either imo)

Terminator Salvation Release date: 5/21/2009
A new Terminator movie, I’ll give it a shot.  The last Terminator movie was ok.

Drag Me to Hell Release date: 5/29/2009
Sam Raimi returns to the horror genre!  No Bruce Campbell, but I guess you can’t get everything you want.

Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Release date: 6/24/2009
The first one was not bad.  More of a nostalgia thing for me.

The Hurt Locker Release date: 6/26/2009 (limited)
Could be good, I’ll give it a shot.

Public Enemies Release date: 7/1/2009
Story of John Dillinger, looks pretty good.  Candy wants to see it for Johnny Depp, of course.

G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra Release date: 8/7/2009
Nostalgia again, like Wolverine ( and transformers 2) has a high potential to suck.

Inglorious Basterds Release date: 8/21/2009
Quentin Tarantino goes to war.  Interesting cast with Eli Roth as an actor. Looks good though.

Extract Release date: 9/4/2009
Jason Bateman’s comeback continues in this new Mike Judge movie.  Hopefully this will be as good as Office Space!

We went to see Watchmen on Saturday.  It has been a few years since I have read the graphic novel (I never did get the twelve separate issues) but from what I remember the movie follows the graphic novel very closely.  The ending is different from the graphic novel.

I do think that it was slightly dated, since it was set in an alternate 1985 (Nixon was never impeached and is still president, America won the Vietnam war and made Vietnam the fifty first state).  When the comics were originally written (1986-1987) this would have had more of an impact, I feel, than it does today, especially with a lot of the movie goers being born the same year the comic was written.  (Whereas I was thirteen when the comics came out.)  The movie has an R rating for a reason, there is quite a bit of Dr. Manhattan walking around nude (glowing blue wang on display) a sex scene that would be at home late Saturday night on Cinemax, and plenty of violence.  I’m sure there was foul language, but I don’t think it was overly used.  As for the Dr. Manhattan nudity, I think that it somewhat fits well in the story since Dr. Manhattan is losing his humanity (part of which is modesty.)

If you read the graphic novel, or the comics, do no expect to see the Black Freighter mentioned in the movie.  As well as it was woven into the fabric of the comics, I think that putting it into the movie would have added way too much to the running time of the film, which is at 2 hours and 43 minutes.  On another note, the soundtrack fits in quite well, and is outstanding!

All in all, I think the movie is quite good, I’d recommend seeing it at full price. 

So I’ve been using Pandora for a while now, and have a few stations (mostly metal).  90% of the time, I have it minimized and don’t look at the album art, but for some reason I pulled up the Pandora window and saw this:

The song playing was Hellbound by Pantera off the album “Reinventing the Steel” but that is not the album art. 

This is:

I’m really not sure what is going on at Pandora, but a few minutes later when the song Yesterday Don’t mean Shit came up from the same album, it had the incorrect album art again.  I just thought it was goofy enough to comment on.

I’ll occasionally read some random entries at http://notalwaysright.com/.   Some of the wrong number ones remind me of the time when my phone number ended in 2000.  Shortly after I got the number I got a call where the caller wanted to know if they had reached the public library.  Pretty soon, I got lots of calls for businesses.  Wells Fargo, a hotel, a few others.  Once on Easter Sunday at about 8 am someone called wanting to know if they had reached Classic Toyota.  Why would they call classic Toyota on Easter?  Another time, I received a call from a hotel that went something like this:
Me: "Hello?"

Hotel desk clerk, sounding annoyed: "Is that how you are answering the phone over there?"

Me: "Uh, yeah"

Hotel desk clerk: "Whatever, I need to see if you guys have a room for someone."

Me: "You do know that this is my apartment, right?"

Hotel desk clerk: "What?"

Me: "The number you called, it’s my phone at my apartment, not a hotel."

Hotel desk clerk: "I’m so sorry, have a nice day."

I set a somewhat lengthy outgoing message on my answering machine:
"You have reached (phone number, I forget the whole thing) THIS IS NOT A BUSINESS.  If you are trying to reach a business, check the number and try again." I got a lot of hang ups after that.  About a month before I moved (and disconnected that number) I decided to change my outgoing message to "Speak".  This lead to me coming home to the same number of hang ups on my machine.  One day there were two were hang ups, then on the third message an older gentleman was saying "Hello?" and on the fourth it was the same gentleman saying "Listen, damnit, I just want to get a room there, stop playing games.  All I want is to rent a room!"

And to think when I got that phone number I figured it would be easy to remember!