Ultranormal

  • Once Upon a Time in Mexico

    This afternoon’s “Movie Matinee That Jen Doesn’t Want To See” was Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and it was a blast. Johnny Depp was great as the effortlessly slimey CIA agent, Antonio should only play “El”, and Salma Hayak was beautiful in her short stay on the screen in flashbacks. The action didn’t seem as spontaneous or as un-choreographed as I would have expected, but it was still exciting.

    This is a go – in – sit – down – disengage – brain – engage – popcorn – popping – testosterone – action – guy – gene – and – enjoy movie. This is not a deep film, although it tries at the end – it fails completely to be politically relevant to anyone. I’m fine with that. This movie was a lot of fun. Willem Dafoe sneers his way through yet another villain role, and the side story with Mickey Rourke and Ruben Blades was more compelling and better acted than the main plot.

    Friday, I’ll be at the first show of Kill Bill if anyone wants to come with me.

  • What Blowout?

    I sure am glad I stayed up… that was one amazing game. The Colts came back from 21 points down with 4 minutes left in the fourth quarter and won! That was some insane football. Better yet, I’ve got Marvin Harrison in my fantasy league.

    I was none too happy with my fantasy league. I missed the draft, and the software didn’t save my rankings, so I didn’t get any of “my” players. But, through picking up some well-time free agents, my team’s doin’ OK. I’ve got David Boston and Marvin Harrison, who both scored 29 points this weekend, and Michael Pittman who I picked up as a free agent two weeks ago. I’m three and one now (we missed the first week with a late start) and am pretty happy with the team I’ve got.

    Off to make phone calls, and maybe to the movies this afternoon.

  • School of Rock

    Today was a good day. I got up at 10:45 in the AM, showered, dressed, left the house and met the folks from work at Nagoya in Ashburn for some Hibachi action. It was good, but the Hibachi chef didn’t put on the show I was expecting. The two other times I’ve been there, the guy did the onion volcano, the egg-robatics, etc. This guy was aaa-aaall business. The food was just as good, I just like fire… especially flaming onions.

    After lunch, I went to see School of Rock. If you like Jack Black at all, even a little, you will love this movie. If you’ve ever loved rock, and ever wanted to be a Rock God, you will love this movie. It could have been super-cheesy, shmaltzy, after-school-special crappy, but it’s not. Jack Black pulls off hilarious earnestness, and the kids really do a great job. I laughed more than I expected. Oh, and Joan Cusack is amazing.

    Go see it with someone you love, or by yourself like I did.

    Tonight? I made a lovely butter-lemon salmon with curried tomato rice and it was super-tasty, if I do say so myself. I’m especially proud of the rice: just enough curry to give it a kick but not overwhelm the little pieces of tomato. Aaaaand now, I’m feeling sorry for Tony Dungy getting his butt handed to him by his former team, 21-nothing, and they’re still trying to run up the score with just a few seconds before halftime. What a way to spend your forty-eighth birthday.

    Tomorrow, I’m starting on the Honey-Do list Jen left for me. Lots of phone calls… and maybe I’ll go see another movie. Suggestions?

  • Reid Does It Again

    I love Reid Stott’s site. I found it originally through searching for photos, and stuck around when he started blogging. He’s as smart a guy as he is a photographer, and he says it better than I ever could again in his Weekend Plame Update. Amazing summary of what’s going on, and a great view from the middle that should scare the President’s Re-election Team silly.

  • Football Notes

    Watching football, curled up on the couch with the laptop catching up on blogs, e-mail, etc and I just noticed that CBS’s new penalty notice underneath the little scorebox in the top corner of the screen looks just like a piece of corn on the cob. CBS, what’s up with that? Are you being paid by ADM to make me want corn?

    Oh, and Sam Madison’s interception, picking the ball up from the bounce off his teammates back with a leap OVER him was the coolest defensive play I’ve seen in a long time. Good golly, I love me some football.

    Relatedly, I watched NFL Countdown this morning, and they showed Rush’s comment from last week that led to all the brouhaha, and his resignation. A bunch of critics have said that the other people on the show didn’t protest enough. Seeing the replay, I think that Tom Jackson and Steve Young responded correctly. They didn’t respond to the racial aspect of it, because they didn’t recognize that part of it at the time. But, both Jackson and Young both responded very strongly in football terms, defending McNabb’s ability – which I think was the right way to respond to it whether or not they caught the racial aspect of it or not.

    It’s a football show. They’re former football players. They responded in football terms. Makes sense to me. I also think that the response from especially Tom Jackson this morning was spot-on. They addressed it at the open of the show before the opening credits, which was perfect. After they addressed, it they ran the opening credits and got down to football. Perfect.

  • Home Alone

    If I weren’t sick, this might actually be fun. Why is it that I get sick whenever I take time off? My boss calls it “executive syndrome” – I call it some form of twisted natural justice. It’s not fair. It’s annoying. I have a horrible sore throat, a fever, bodyache – yeah, you know, the flu. It’s the beginning of October and I have the flu. Bleagh.

    Sick or not, I’ve got a story. Go look at this pic and then come back. I know it’s fuzzy. The Sidekick has a crappy camera, I know, but you should be able to make out the bumper-to-bumperness of the traffic. That’s the LDS Temple in the background there. That was Friday night. That’s when Jen and Max were supposed to go to Tucson Friday night. Their flight took off from BWI at 5:35pm. We left the house at 2:30. It USUALLY takes an hour to get to BWI, with traffic, the longest it’s taken us is two hours. It took us three and a half hours to get there. Needless to say, they missed their flight.

    They made it yesterday in exactly 65 minutes. They? Oh yeah, my dad drove them to the airport because I couldn’t breath or keep my eyes open.

    Happy vacation to me…

  • Comments Fixed

    Thanks to Joey from mortalengine.com to pointing out that the comments were broken and have been since I moved hosts. This is what happens when you move hosts, have your javascript file NOT rebuild all the time and don’t pay attention. I was wondering why y’all were so quiet… I thought I’d offended someone.

  • Scandal Suffixes

    Why do we still add “gate” to the end of our scandals still? Watergate happened thirty years ago, and it’s about time we let the ritzy apartment complex on the Potomac its name back, and remove the stigma from “gate” so it can get back to meaning something again. “Wilsongate” doesn’t even sound cool. It sounds like a really horribly named, faceles suburb of Akron. Now, I know the Media will never go for this. They love their cute little names for complex conspiracies and scandals. I’ve come up with a couple suggestions for possible replacements and usage examples:

    • “ron” – a la “Enron”: It sounds so much more tech geeky when you add “ron” to the end of words it doesn’t belong on.

      • Wilson-ron

      • File-ron

      • Travel-ron

      • Energy-ron (kind of redundant, don’t you think?)

      • Monica-ron

    • “iburton” – a la “Halliburton”: It adds a certain officiality to a name, doesn’t it?

      • Wilson-iburton

      • File-iburton

      • Travel-iburton

      • Energy-iburton (again, kinda redundant)

      • Monica-burton (shortened for ease of pronunciation)

    I really think this’ll catch on. It’s a new century, it’s time for new scandal suffixes! Bring on Bush-ron and Cheney-burton!!

  • Wow, That Was Quick

    Thank goodness that’s over. I didn’t see the comment, but I sure am glad Rush is off NFL Countdown. I love the show, but seeing his face on the show every sunday made me ill. He added nothing to the show, and was constantly interrupting with his stupid blowhard comments and ruined the genial raucousness of the show that I loved. That show only has room for one blowhard, and his name’s Berman. Berman’s got the experience and the good nature to pull it off and make it funny instead of galling. Rush is just a bore. Good riddance.

  • Flying Awesomes

    Talking to my old pal Josh today, I came up with the funniest thing I’ve IM’ed to someone in a long, long time. We were trying to top each with our descriptions of how “awesome” something is (it’s a stupid game, but it was funny). Here’s my last contribution that so far has silenced him: It was as awesome as awesomopterix, the first flying awesome.

    Seriously, go read this interview with Wesley Clark. It’s the pinnacle of awesomillitude.