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NASA wants your pee. Seriously? Urine, for Orion? And it’s part of the constellation program? (This works on a number of levels…the old NASA pee joke as heard in ‘Apollo 13′, and the fact that ‘Orion’ comes from the greek word for ‘urine’).

We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night. I think I would’ve been happier if they’d gone out with Last Crusade.

I should’ve known when I first listened to the soundtrack earlier in the day; lots of nostalgia there, but I didn’t feel as if there was much new or interesting. The best parts were recycled from Raiders.

The worst part was the relentless action. It was as if they were afraid if any of the characters slowed down for a second they’d realize their only plot function was to get the skull to the lost city, where everything was wrapped up in the most predictable and hackneyed way possible (and the heroes ceased to be useful well before the conclusion). Believe me, you’ll see it coming, and probably be wondering, like I was, how many more Rube Goldberg-machine-like action setpieces it would take before the evil communist villianess’s face was going to melt off (not literally; I mean it felt that much like a rehash of Raiders).

While I’m willing to suspend some disbelief about these characters being able to make it out of any scrape (think the inflatable raft-jump in Temple of Doom), it was unbelievably cartoonish here. You just wanted to laugh because it was so incredibly stupid–from Indy’s nuclear test site escape to the triple waterfall scene.

And aliens? C’mon. My least favorite theory about various ancient civilizations–that the only way they could’ve done it was by copying the answers off someone else’s test paper. I know this is an Indy movie and the supernatural is expected, but jeez. (Incidentally, there’s an article in Archaeology this month about the crystal skulls. Guess what, not elongated, and they’re also fakes. :)

A few of the jokes and reveals worked (Indy’s age, and who didn’t like seeing that little corner of the Ark during the Area 51 scene? And the Marcus Brody references were a nice touch.) but it was mostly just hokey. The Marion character ceased to be interesting just about instantaneously, when the ‘big secret’ (like nobody saw that coming) was revealed and during the subsequent love-fest (conducted on the run, of course, because they couldn’t possibly give up ONE action scene apparently). I felt like the best scenes (like the one where Indy’s packing to leave and discussing the current political environment with the dean of the college) were just rewrites of scenes from Raiders or Last Crusade (with Marcus). The backstabbing colleague seemed a bit too much like Benny from ‘The Mummy’–especially in the treasure scene. Between him and the giant ants (read ‘carnivorous scarab beetles’) you realize that this was Indy ripping off every movie that came after, and ripped off, the previous Indy films. The Mummy was better at it, unfortunately. Maybe the genre is just played out.

Silly, lacking in dramatic suspense, and a tacked-on ending that felt too little too late. Gee, when does it come to blu-ray?

The Spore folks reconsidered after a lot of bad press and complaints. So, our pre-orders are back on!

The new John Williams score for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out. How can an 80’s kid possibly resist?

Not to mention a Richard Cheese-ified version of the Indiana Jones theme on Itunes (Plus, so no DRM, if I read the fine print properly).

Baby chicks–Ameraucanas– (and keets–pied) should be here by June 27th or 28th. With any luck the coop will be mostly done, if we can find someone who can blow in insulation before then. If we’re super super lucky, we will get Squeak and the silkies to raise them.

Icky’s on chemo. So far so good, but he can’t have any doggie visitors for awhile. We still aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Cupcake’s liver and lipomas, but she goes in for more work on Thursday.

-epe

Watched “Who Am I?” (Jacki Chan) yesterday was pretty good.

“Might have to buy it” good.

We’ve had 2 interesting failures with our new dvd player, and recent dvd releases.

Sony DVP-CX995V + “Stranger Than Fiction” == “Reading -> power off”

Sony DVP-CX895V + “Stranger Than Fiction” == “Plays”

(for 2 different disks, one from amazon, one from netflix, a Sony pictures release…)

Sony DVP -CX995V + “The Holiday” == “Reading ->power off”

Sony DVP-CX895V + “The Holiday” == “Plays”

(Also a sony pictures release…)

The DVP-CX995V also has this annoying quirk, whereby if you turn it on, it turns it self off every other time ;). It didn’t bother me at first, but now… it’s irritating.

That little guy in the front, Pidge, is still looking for a home. Check out the Rochester IGs Drupal for more info.

We have had a great couple of nights for movies. We rented Aeon Flux and Superman Returns from Netflix. The first was not bad, worth a rental at least. Loved the second. We’ll probably pick up the big box set. If you pick one up, be careful–there were some things missing from the first batch of sets released. Check here for more info. We also made a trip to Walmart and picked up Clerks II (watched and loved it yesterday), Da Vinci Code (watched earlier today while decorating the tree!) and Young Frankenstein (old favorite).

My dad got an article into a UK video publication recently (he’s an HD consultant and recently worked on Collateral and the Miami Vice movie). Here’s his IMDB page and his consulting website.

Watched “The world’s fastest indian” tonight via netflix. It was awesome.

Not gonna ruin it =), but we’ll probably buy it.

Since I’m on the netflix topic. My current movie is the early batman serial 2 disk DVD set. We’ve watched the first one and it was pretty neat. Some of the dialog was a bit of a shock, blunt anti Japanese wartime propoganda and slang, for some reason I just didn’t expect it. Can’t wait for disk 2 =). We’re still trying to figure out if the evil guy in the movie is supposed to be japanese…

After reading this we decided they were big enough. Now we’re crossing our fingers that they’ll be good flyers by the time a coyote or fox starts sniffing around.

Looks like we might be fostering an IG. Maybe. Or not. Situation unclear. Guess we’ll know by Friday.

• Clerks II
• Superman Returns
• Nacho Libre

That should keep you alive at least through the summer. A little longer:

Tivo Series 3. Junk your cable company’s piece of crap DVR.

The Time Odyssey series.

If you’re looking for something more long-term, try the Earths’ Children series. 26 years from the first book til now, and we’re still waiting for one (or) more. We’ll be lucky if the author lives long enough to finish it.

Any second now, everything green’s going to burst and it’ll be mowing season again. There’s this one lonely frog peeping away near the pond (sure hope he doesn’t freeze solid in the next few weeks), plaintively trying to rouse his fellows into consciousness (Paul’s comment: ‘K…somethin’s peepin’…’). Unfortunately, the first mosquitos have hatched as well.

Funny how you can’t wait for the next season to start. In winter, you can’t wait until you don’t have to put on a hat, gloves, coat, and boots just to walk the dog; in spring, it’s all the mud; in summer, it’s the bugs, and in fall, you want some nice clean snow to cover up all the dead brown grass. This was one thing that drove me nuts about California; never much of a change.

Also, we’ve been picking up a few DVDs, mostly at a discount. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire improves with viewings; Donnie Darko (director’s cut) disturbs the hell out of me late at night and makes me nostagic for 80’s music I wasn’t much into then (I’m always 20 years behind in listening taste); and The Village had the advantage of being $8 used from Netflix (I hate when writers don’t quite wrap up a movie. If you’re going to go that far, at least finish the story). Man that sounded bourgeois and American of me. Really, I like unconventional movies. At least Darko wrapped everything up satisfactorally (if you watch it a few times, which of course you will).

When we watched the oscars this week, there was some blatently obvious “lobbying” from people in tuxedos that i’ve never heard of. The main thing they were trying to get accross is that in order to enjoy a movie the “right” way , you had to go to a movie theatre and interact with other humans. I call shenanigans. I’m betting the closest thing these clowns get to a regular theater is to drive by them for previews and opening nights. Anyway…

10 reasons i’ll be at home.

1. Only I yell at the screen at home
2. The floors not sicky
3. No odd fishy smell
4. Can pause to pee
5. It’s not so bad when we’re the only ones laughing
6. I’m not deaf when I leave
7. The seat is always good
8. No driving!
9. It’s cheaper to buy a dvd then go to the movies
10. Alchohol available at the consession stand

I think it’s finally happened; my brain has become like an irc bot, and everything I hear reminds me of movie quotes. Of course the interesting thing is this keeps happening at work, or rather in the irc channels we use at work, further making me sound more bot-like.
The other day at work Mark said something’s cost was ‘insignificant compared to’ something else. This triggered ‘it’s also insignificant compared to the power of the force.’

Today Dan was asking about machines:

what kind of box are these?

And Rob responded:

rectangular, noisy

This triggered Airplane:

Reporter: What kind of plane is it?
Johnny: Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with a red stripes,
curtains at the windows, wheels, and it just looks like a big
Tylenol.

Later, same channel, someone asked how to get an email address created involving the username ‘blogon’ and I immediately asked if they were going to read bad poetry at us.

This is a disease. It’s getting less funny all the time.

A lot of people probably have good memories of their childhood when they watch TV shows or movies from the era in which they grew up. I think this is even more true if you happened to grow up near places that were filmed a lot. For instance, at least one episode of Dukes of Hazzard involving a racetrack was filmed at the Saugus Speedway–which, of course, reminds me of the weekend swapmeets held there, which we used to attend occasionally. Lots of the back road driving on that show reminds me vaguely of the Santa Clarita valley in the mid 80’s, as well (and not at all of the year we lived in the southeast, oddly enough). Always makes me think of how neat it was in the SCV and the surrounding area then–still relatively empty, lots of hills, scrub, onion fields, and not so developed. Very different from how it seemed last time I visited in ‘99, and I’m sure even moreso from how it looks now.

ET, while not specifically shot anywhere I knew, took place in a neighborhood that looked very much like the ones I grew up in. Don’t know where that corn field and pine forest came from, though; certainly not behind my house nor within biking distance.
Then, there is the mother lode of things shot near Vasquez Rocks…old Star Treks, old Battlestar Galacticas, commercials…just reminds me of all the hours I used to spend with my mom in nearby dry streambeds cracking open rocks looking for agate. Also it reminds me of the time my dad worked a night shoot for the TV show Benson and took me along to watch them tape. Very long night, while they sat near a “downed” helicopter and had to stop shooting every time a plane flew over. I remember arriving home cold (got pretty chilly overnight) and falling into bed exhausted.

Since my dad worked in TV (video engineer), a lot of TV shows trigger memories of where we were living at those times…Too Close for Comfort, It’s a Living, Golden Girls…got to go to the set for that last once. The movie The Color Purple reminds me of the time my dad worked on a short video shoot involving Whoopi Goldberg, whom I got to meet (she signed my VHS copy of the movie). Blah blah blah namedropping blah. Reruns of Night Court, along with a signed script (from one of the Hurricane episodes with Brent Spiner as a hick), remind me of my parents’ friend Jeff who had a few different jobs on the show, from what I recall.

Pump up the Volume, while done a couple of years after I left, was shot at my high school.
I’m not sure where this post came from. I fairly often get nostalgic about stuff, but I really wouldn’t want to be living out there now. For one, I’m glad we’ll be paying off our house within my lifetime, and I prefer the near-solitude here to the postage stamp yards I remember from those years. For another, I never got through a winter there without wishing it had snowed (I’m just about feeling that way this year here!) But it’s pretty nice remembering how it was then.