Monthly Archives: November 2008

Sunday’s Best

Argh, Sunday night. After four days off there is a feeling of dread in going back tomorrow. And there’s no need for it, since I enjoy this job. I’m sure it would be different if Bill was here, but he’s not on this cold rainy evening.
I wish he were here, but I must carry on. Didn’t do much today due to the weather. Yesterday would have been the day to do something but I stayed local. No trip to Manhattan, just a walk to the post office.

I did find the scarves I’ve been looking for, and of course I found them after buying a scarf on Thanksgiving morning in the city while waiting for Bill and his mother outside of Grand Central Station.

Last night I watched Tropic Thunder, which was very good, very witty. Turns out I didn’t have Hancock, the Will Smith movie. That’s next in the Netflix queue. Tropic Thunder was basically a movie about a making a movie, which I thought was along the lines of The Stunt Man, a movie from the early 1980’s starring Peter O’Toole, Barbara Hershey and Steve Railsback. Similar concept, different plots, or plotz.

I watched the director’s cut last night, the commentary with Ben Stiller, Jack Black and the great Robert Downey Jr., who is certainly one of the best actors around today, playing a blond haired blue eyed Australian who undergoes a darkening of his pigmentation so he can play a role written for a black man.

It did sag in bits, but then again it was the director’s cut, not the theatrical release which had most of the fat trimmed off. But as Downey’s character says in the movie that he doesn’t step out of character until the DVD commentary, he does his commentary in character, to the amusement of Stiller and Black.

After that I watched bit’s and pieces of Saturday Night Live as well as Escape from the Planet of the Apes which I used to love, now I was surprised that I was able to sit through it then because there was an awful lot of dialogue and really cheap sets.

Then again, I wasn’t able to see it in the theater since I was too young so I had to wait for it to be shown on broadcast TV. I think the only one I saw in a theater was the fourth Ape movie, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

They never showed the Apes movies nearby, it seemed they only showed them in Passaic, which was too far and too rowdy for me to go alone let alone ask someone else to go and get their parents to drive us. Paramus was closer and within walking distance and had a few theaters.

This afternoon I finally got around to watching Wall-E which was as charming and cute as I had been told. Harpy likened it to old school cartoons from the 1920’s, not much dialogue- you need to follow the plot by watching the action and figuring out various bleeps and whirrs.

But it’s not all bleeps and whirrs and watching it on DVD affords the luxury of reading subtitles. It’s funny, when I sat don a few minutes ago I was saying to myself I don’t want to write, but here I am twenty minutes later and basically finished with tonight’s entry.

And I just got a call from Rand who is going to be dropping off my computer in a few minutes. Oh how torn I am, using Bill’s Mac and finally getting the right commands down to going back to Ol’ Dusty.

Which is sort of like Bill’s Mac being EVE and Ol’ Dusty being Wall-E.

Yeah- that makes sense.

Janie Jones

A lazy good for nothing Saturday and that’s how I wanted it to be. Didn’t do much of anything today. Just relaxed watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall and it was ok. It was hyped up to me quite a bit so maybe I was expecting too much. It was enjoyable but not gut splitting, which is good since who wants to clean up guts anyway.

Last night was pretty good though. Juan was a lot funnier than Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He stooped by on his way back to Trenton. We hung out and watched most of Zelig and The Times of Harvey Milk.

Of course while watching the documentary on Harvey Milk I got choked up which was a surprise to Juan. He was nice enough to ask if I was alright even though I think it made him a little uncomfortable.

I blubbered that even though I’ve watched the documentary a few times already it still gets me every time. I don’t think Juan had ever seen me like that before and I also don’t think Juan had seen the documentary before either.

He left around 10:00 and I watched the rest of the documentary. I wound up staying up until 12:30. I wanted to sleep late but I couldn’t sleep past 8:00.

I rallied and was out the door, paying 25 cents more for the funny papers. Saw the family unit on the 3rd floor only briefly since Superboy needed a super change and I certainly didn’t need to see that.

After the morning shows I watched the extra disc of the documentary before I had to turn it off. You see since I’m using Bill’s Mac these days, the TV is in the next room and I don’t get any chance to watch it, only hear it, which of course isn’t the same thing.

Right now, The Stand is on. I’ve seen that before a few times. Pretty good adaptation of a Stephen King novel. I can hear what’s going on and I can picture it in my mind.

I still have Wall-E to watch as well as Hancock on DVD. Hancock got so so reviews but I am a sucker for a super hero gone wrong story, so that should appease the 12 year old boy in me.

Also deleting non-existent racks from my iPod. The gray exclamation points show which tracks are no longer there. Rand is fixing my computer and updating my iTunes so perhaps if I take everything off the iPod and reload it, it might work better.

Then again it might not.

In any event I missed the Apple sale where the iPod classic was on sale 20.00 less that the list price. No matter where you shop, the iPod is 249.00 so I guess 229.00 is a big deal. It was a one day sale.

Perhaps as we get closer to December 25 there might be another sale. But even then it’s a bit of an extravagance.

One other thing Juan got a super duper new phone, which he was so happy to have. It does everything, even contains a defiblerator.