Ephemera

Surprisingly, I'm not really looking forward to the Star Wars prequels. The first of them is due in theaters next spring and I have a feeling I'll be sick of them long before that. There are so many rumors and spoilers floating around that I think it will be really irritating to try and watch these movies. Either everything will have been given away so there will be no surprises, or it will be a constant distraction seeing just how wrong everything you've heard is. I really think about the only way I can enjoy these movies is if everyone will just shut up about them until after they come out and I get a chance to see them.

Posted by Hitch at 03:14 PM | Permalink

Tonight I'm letting my nephew Matthew fill in on the journal with his account of the first night of sales of the movie Titanic at the local Media Play.

Continue reading "The boat sinks" »

Posted by Hitch at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Two things on my mind today. The first is Princess Diana. It was one year ago today that she died and nobody can seem to keep from talking about it today. I'm sorry, she was a wonderful person, her death was a terrible tragedy, but all the hand wringing in the world won't bring her back. Let's move on. Let her family grieve in peace.

On a more tragic note: I went to see the movie "54" yesterday. Simply put it had the absolute worst quality you can find in a movie: it was boring, and the one thing that kept running through my mind every time Mike Meyers appeared on the screen was, "They couldn't afford John Lovitz?"

Posted by Hitch at 03:03 PM | Permalink

I was amused by the power of the media this morning. It's August and that means it's time for the Perseid meteor showers. Every year when this happens it gets reported as "news". Well this year they had to add a line to the standard article about the event. Basically they said, "Don't worry this isn't like the movie Armageddon." Heh heh.

Posted by khitch at 10:10 AM | Permalink

The shoe lace obsession continues. I finally found a pair that would work, but they were outrageously expensive. (For shoe laces, that is.) I really like the shoes, so I broke down and bought them. :-/

I came up with a plan that could make somebody with the right kind of technical know-how very rich. Someone should devise a simple to operate, compact aglet setting device. (Aglets are the little plastic ends on shoe laces.) You put this device in a store with a few spools of various types of lace material and you solve the big lace shopping problem. I couldn't find the right kind of laces in the length I needed, or the right length in the right color/diameter. With this the store could provide exactly the laces a customer needs without having to stock an incredible variety of pre-packaged laces. Anybody who's been through what I've been through would make a store with this capability very popular.

Also, today I saw the movie Snake Eyes. I was disappointed. I really like Nicholas Cage and Gary Sinise. I have been disappointed in Brian DePalma's work in the past, but really hoped that the performances of the two actors would make this movie work. Unfortunately the writing and direction were not there. The story could have been so much more and the direction seemed to undercut several good scenes. Neither actor was really pushed to give the kind of outstanding performance they're capable of.

Posted by khitch at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Sometimes things are just a little to surreal for me. Case in point: the new candy I saw today. I guess it's probably been out most of the summer, since the movie came out. It's called Godzilla Monster Mouth Candy. It's a plastic Godzilla head with a plunger on the back. When you press that plunger the mouth opens and a red candy tongue comes out. This just strikes me as more than a little bit weird. "Hey kids! Suck on Godzilla's tongue!"

One more thing I just noticed. "Godzilla" is in the dictionary of the spell-checker I use on this.

Posted by khitch at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Just a couple random thoughts from the notebook:

Is it just a southern thing? Or am I the weird one? I -- too often -- stop at a fast food place for a heinously unhealthy breakfast on my way to work. Every time I order a sausage and egg biscuit they ask me if I want jelly to go on that. Who puts jelly on sausage and eggs?

I'm still chuckling to myself about the imaginary Puff Daddy remix I thought of the other day. Re-doing the old Falco song as "Rock Me, Amistad!" hehehehehehe...

Okay, I'll go get help now.

Posted by khitch at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Okay, how about a little movie related rambling? A conversation with a co-worker today turned to the subject of attractive men in movies. She was saying that a certain actor -- formerly quite good-looking -- wasn't aging very well. This, of course, brought up the current foremost example of a man who is aging very well: Sean Connery. I don't know many women who don't find him attractive and sexy despite the fact that he must be somewhere between 70 and dead by now. She felt that he was so good looking that he should be cryogenically preserved at death so that generations yet to come can see how good he looked. They should build a museum to hold his perfectly preserved corpse. And in the lobby they should sell Sean Connery shaped popsicles. (ehem. -- enough said about that.)

My own observation on movies is that I've been wanting to see a collaborative effort by two directors: Oliver Stone and Spike Lee. Face it -- this would be one of the most talked about movies of all time. Can you imagine what people would think? The one drawback is I couldn't really come up with a good subject matter for these two to tackle -- until now. A biographical epic on the life of Barry Goldwater. Okay, I'll stop now.

Posted by Hitch at 10:12 AM | Permalink

Now that Tomorrow Never Dies is out on video, a guy I work with tells me that even though he's never seen a James Bond movie, he's thinking about renting this one. Just to see Teri Hatcher. (Don't ask -- it's a Superman thing.) I told him not to worry too much about it. She has a fairly small role and dies early. (Sorry if I just gave anything away.) She plays just another in the long line of women who've gone to bed with 007 just to wake up dead. You might think women would learn better, but really how are they going to find out? After all it always gets covered up, and it's not really a Jerry Springer type topic: "I had sex with a British super-spy and got killed for it."

Posted by Hitch at 03:44 PM | Permalink