Howdy: a rambling, pointless post

Howdy: a rambling, pointless post

Just a few random thoughts, as I drink a cup of coffee (black and think about the week that was.

If you're like me, you get to October 31 each year, and you half to ask yourself one simple question: Where the hell did October go?

I don't have much to say today. I finished my vacation yesterday, and I'll head back to work this afternoon.

As vacations go, I can't complain. It was a good one. Got to go somewhere. I'd been feeling like I'd worn a pretty good rut for myself, so it was fun to get out of that rut, and go do something else. And it's also re-taught me that a routine isn't necessarily always good.

Mostly, it's allowed me to relax and take a step back. Let me see a bigger bit of the forest, instead of just a couple of the trees.

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Caught up on a couple of movies this week.

The Nice people at Netflix sent me Rear Window, which I hadn't seen in several years. It's weird how perceptions change in a movie. I was probably 16 or 17 the first time I saw Rear Window, I didn't root for Jimmy Stewart's Jefferies believing every word that L.B. Jefferies was saying, and was happy when Stella and Lisa get in on the act and work to get the bad guy.

This time, I watched and I found myself laughing at Stella and Lisa, and how they get drawn into L.B.'s wheelchair-bound world. I knew how the movie ended, but I kinda wished it had ended as some manner of lesson on the dangers of voyeurism. Somehow, we'd find that everything Lars Thorwald was saying was true.

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I also watched Below. Some of you have Netflix. Do you ever find something on your queue that you don't remember putting there? Well, it's not that I didn't remember putting the movie on my queue, but I couldn't remember why.

And then, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to my list, and it crept its way to the front, and got shipped to me.

And then, I misplaced it. I'd taken it out of the envelope, and I wandered around reading the description on the movie sleeve. And then I set it next to the computer, where it promptly got covered up with my messy existance. So, I wandered around a good part of the week wondering where the hell I put the movie.

Well, I found it while cleaning up.

I figured out that I'd gotten it because Darren Aronofsky had a hand in the script. Plus, it features Olivia Williams, from Rushmore and The Postman, a personal favorite, so I figured it deserved the benefit of the doubt.

I liked it. It has a real energy. Its story appeals to both the ghost story fan and the revenge story fan in me.

It's not for everybody. It's kinda cheesy, and there are far too many around who can't forgive that. I'll say this, too: I'm not big on naval history, but there were a couple of things just from my own tourism experience that bugged me about the submarine the sailors are manning. A little too roomy.

But on the whole, it's worth a watch, in my book.

Plus, I spent the whole movie arguing with myself as to whether the character of Weird Wally was Zach Galifianakis or not. Turns out it was....

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Been taking the second season of Arrested Development a couple episodes at a time. I missed a lot of the second season, owing to work and other schedule conflicts. As in the first season, I missed the whole arc with Julia Louis Dreyfuss. So far, her stuff has been the high point.

Tobias hasn't had much to do plotwise. Mostly, he stays in the background. But he's had some of the funniest bits of the season. But when he comes in after washing the Blue Man Group paint off, and he still has the paint behind his ears, I cracked up. I liked the little bits, too, where you could see he'd painted himself, and the parts he couldn't reach (between his shoulder blades) were flesh colored. Great stuff.

Andy Richter's cameo, with the sandwich? That's comic gold, people. Comic. Gold.

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Let's go wander off into the day...