The Eclectic Mix

So yeah. I wasn’t here for a couple of days. And by here, I mean in the blog, or blogging, or performing my bloggatory duties as required. I can’t travel…Or don’t travel. Unless absolutely required. And even then, it isn’t far.

But I digress.

I’ve just fallen into a bit of a funk. It’s just one of those phases that I hope everyone falls into–just sort of bored with the same routine, but stuck in it because it is what life funnels you to, whether you like it or not. So sometimes I just sit down, look at the blog screen here and either nothing falls out of the ol’ brain bucket, or I just don’t want to take the time or spend the energy to organize my thoughts enough to put something cohesive together. Sure, part of it might be laziness, but I think more of it is that I just need to unwind, and lately, sitting at the computer at home hasn’t been unwinding.

Hence, resolutions…Or some sort of attempt on my part to shove the gear shift in my life into a higher gear. Or maybe just in reverse. At least something a little different.

So, the first part is interactive, and maybe one or two of you will actually interact.

I’ve decided that I need to get hooked on a TV series–something that I actually look forward to seeing; something that captures my attention, and probably is a bit funny or at least a few degrees out of normal. I’m open to a lot, but I will lay down a few ground rules:

1. No reality programming. I don’t do reality. I get enough of that in…well…reality. And no one I’ve ever seen on a reality show makes me care enough about them to want to see how they do. This, by the way, also applies to cooking and cooking-related shows. I watch far too much of this already.
2. I’m not entirely sure how much time I can afford to invest in this, so please nothing that takes too much time each week–an hour should be fine. But a half-hour or hour a night (like for The Daily Show, or Letterman, or the like…)I don’t think I want to put that much effort into this.
3. I needs to be something that I can find fairly easily–either on the interwebs (Hulu, Netflix, some network website, or *gasp* perhaps even a torrent). If I’ve got to infect my Netflix DVD queue with it, I probably won’t try too hard to watch it…Unless it’s just the best thing ever.

And here are some guidelines for my taste that might help you point me in a direction…Or you can just ignore me and start recommending stuff willy-nilly:

1. My favorite TV shows right now are Corner Gas, Doc Martin, and The IT Crowd. Hence, I’ve seen them, or are in the process of watching as much as there is out on the internet right now, so don’t even try suggesting them. I’m also crawling my way through Firefly and the new Doctor Who episodes. Sadly, you’ll note that most of them are foreign…
2. I absolutely DO NOT like the following: Weeds, which I tried to watch, but really…How excited can you get over a bunch of hopped up pot heads and their suburban dealer lady? Robot Chicken, The Family Guy, or most of those “edgy” primetime cartoons. The Simpsons is funny. All else seems to be trying to get to to that level. And not succeeding.
3. I have tried watching Dead Like Me and Six Feet Under. I find them to be good, but something about them seems very weighty and difficult to invest time in. You get done watching an episode and feel like you’ll explode if you have so much as an after dinner mint.

So open up, dear readers. Impress me with your mad recommendation skillz. I await your input. And for this exercise, let me know your suggestions by hitting the comment link just above and to the right of the headline. That way everyone can comment on the suggestions, too!

Moving on…The second part of the plan is to get back to the story I was writing but stopped working on a while ago. I enjoyed writing it, especially since I was forcing myself to do hit a deadline every week. So look for more of that coming in the next couple of weeks.

So there you go. Apologies for the last couple of days. Now do your part.

See you tomorrow.

Since Netflix has been slowly trimming out its Friends feature, and one of the first things to go was the movie note you could send to the friends you had in that service, I figured I’d start posting some movie reviews here, a la Jenni’s book reviews.

I saw two movies this weekend–one actually in a real theatre, and the other a Netflix disc I’ve had since the Johnson administration…

Friday night’s movie was How to Train Your Dragon, a 3D computer-generated kids movie from DreamWorks. It wasn’t bad, as far as kids movies go these days, but it certainly isn’t as good as Shrek or anything Pixar puts out. The entire premise is about a band of Vikings who live on a rocky island that’s constantly being attacked by dragons, and our hero, Hiccup, eventually saves the day by first injuring then training and befriending one of the most powerful dragons of them all. Skeptical and disbelieving friends and family ensue, along with hilarity, danger, self-discovery, and the predictable happy, heroic ending.

It’s an easy film to watch, and certainly well done in the CGI vein, as they’ve gotten to the point where you can see the little hairs on the skin of the human characters. The voice acting is good, too, with all Vikings except Hiccup being voiced with Scottish accents (really?!?). But the writing was a little uneven, making me wonder if it was trying too hard to be a over-the-top comedy or a poignant “family/community love and strength” story with comedic relief. The lead character isn’t a strong enough or likable enough character to be a true hero, so you’re left just kind of wondering who you should be pulling for.

But in the end, the kids liked it, and that’s all that really matters in movies like this one. Three Stars.

The DVD I finally got around to watching was The History Boys, based on the Broadway/London stage play of the same name which won the 2006 Tony award for best play.

This was the complete antithesis to the kids film of Friday night–a group of grammar school students are preparing for the Oxbridge entrance exams to get into Oxford and Cambridge in the early 1980s. The headmaster of the school sees this as a chance to put the school on the map, so to speak, so brings in a teacher with a matter-of-fact style to help the other two teachers ready the group for the exam. The clash of teaching styles, marked primarily in teaching for an exam versus general overall knowledge in a well-rounded life becomes the primary focus of the story as the boys become stressed over the preparation and expectations the school has of them.

The movie apparently follows the stage play pretty closely, but obviously is open to more settings and perhaps a little more character development. And I have to say that while it’s confusing for the first 20 minutes or so as you’re just thrown into the middle of the story, the writing is very good, and once you get the initial threads of the story tied together, the story moves along very nicely. It’s a drama, but it has well-timed and uplifting moments of comic relief. The characters aren’t as developed as I normally like, but that seems to be intentional–you are told what you need to know about them to help frame the story and nothing more. It’s an ensemble story with no lead character, no one to really root for or get invested in, and so there isn’t really anyone who you really dislike intensely, though the Headmaster is about as close as you get to this. And the ending is a complete surprise–sure, you know from the minute the story starts that most, if not all of the boys will get into Oxford, but there is one more twist that you never see coming that scars the happy ending but provides the opening needed to tie up the story and give it an ending that satisfies a few lingering questions.

In the end, it’s a very easy to watch, fun movie. Certainly not for some–it is a play and not a musical, so those looking for the musical genre shouldn’t look here–and yes, per my apparent standard movie themes from Netflix, it has strong gay themes. The camera work is interesting because it seems to want to be noticed–the camera is almost constantly moving, even in scenes where it usually doesn’t move in other films. But all-in-all, it’s entertaining, mostly happy, and very well done. Four Stars.

So there you go. Movie reviews…A new feature here.

See you tomorrow.

It was a Saturday where the wheels just seemed to come off the cart after lunch time. But it’s getting back to normal quickly…Or more quickly than it’s taken otherwise.

Yeah. I had a great start to the day. Went and did my computer techie thing at mom and dads–to much success, I’m told. Then returned home to get some work done on my computer, now that I’ve got the really important data restored–I mean, actual project-type work.

I copied over the data I needed, installed the video editing software I need, and rebooted, and…

Yup…Wheels…Off…

In the process, I ended up installing Windows (twice), formatting over one of my backup drives (good thing I have two backups of my photos), and making another copy of my backup of the photos. Long story, but for any of you who are techies out there, for some reason, my computer decided to spontaneously boot off of one of the backup drives in my machine…

So now, it’s blogging time, where I get to share this with you. Aren’t you lucky?

Well, so I’m writing while re-re-copying my music back into iTunes, copying my photos again, and just trying to get the computer back to point A so I can try to get to my project tomorrow.

Ah, the metaphor that could be computers: reboot life and start over again tomorrow. Just make sure you’ve got a backup.

I know. Kinda lame, but it’s what you get.

See you tomorrow.

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the grocery store is one of the best places in the world to people watch. Or at least study the human condition. Or just revel in human interaction, because it’s almost always completely bemusing.

Or maybe I find that so because I’m just there so damned much.

I’ve said before that my preferred time for shopping is early morning–around 5:45 or 6 a.m. on weekdays. There are hardly any other people in the store most days, and so I can get through in a hurry. But lately, there’s been a noticeable uptick in the number of people shopping at 0-5-my gawd it’s early. And they’ve been an odd bunch.

This morning, there were two white hairs–er, pardon me for the term, I know some of you fall into this category–elderly women wandering through the store together, each pushing a cart, but walking side-by-side through the store, blocking every aisle as they slowly shuffled their way past the canned veggies. I managed to mostly avoid them, but as I came out of one lane, they came out of the next, and I heard one of them say to the other, and I quote: “oh, Ethel, don’t forget we need poop paper.”

That alone nearly made me spit. But the response just completed the picture: “Oh, dammit, Joyce, I wish you wouldn’t call it that.” Almost instantly, I drew up the relationship between Ethel and Joyce–two old ladies living together in some house or apartment, with similar, but markedly different floral-print chairs set comfortably in front of the TV in the very neat and orderly living room, while their forty cats climbed over the mountain of poop paper in the corner of the adjoining disused and generally trashed dining room. The house was silent save for the constant noise of the TV, cats, and the crunching of the hard candy that they kept in a bowl on the table between their chairs. Shopping at Cub was their only chance to escape the crushing reality of the cats and restock the candy and poop paper supply.

For the life of me, though, I’m trying to remember if they had any cat food in their carts. I really wish they did.

A standard shopper early in the morning is the type who takes every trip to the grocery store as a chance to catch up on their reading. These are people who shop with their reading glasses on, reading every label they can get their hands on, to the point where they probably recite the contents of the label as they cook it.

There are those who simply cannot figure out the self-checkout lanes. How hard is it to figure out how to scan and bag and pay for your groceries yourself?

There’s a guy there every morning that I’m there, and he’s buying a cart full of pop and bottled water–hopefully for some youth group or something, at least I’m hoping that’s what his tax exempt ID is for…

And then there’s an older woman there every day, who has a routine that, unfortunately, I’ve gotten to know pretty well. She walks the entire store, up and down every aisle from one end of the store to the other. Then returns to various areas to buy her two or three items for the day. Okay, so she isn’t one for mall walking, and I guess you need to admire her for getting out and exercising. But the funny part is that between her lap of the store and buying her food, she breaks to head outside and have a smoke.

Hell of a day, Monday. That signing and press conference. It was inspiring, leading people into great times to do great things. Sure, it’ll be expensive, but ultimately, it’s going to be worth it.

Yes, kids. Joe Mauer signed his contract.

Eight years. More money than a single human being should be allowed to have, let alone one who plays baseball.

Great things. He’s destined for great things. And that’s why the Twins needed to sign him.

Sure, there’s the provincial side of the fan base that doesn’t think anyone on the team should be making anywhere north of $10-12 million, never mind $23 million a year. But that’s what he easily would have made anywhere else, so in order to keep the best hitter in baseball, the Twins needed to give him that much. There are non-fans, too, who won’t get it. But unfortunately, this is how the business of sports works–heck, it’s how the business of anything gets done in this country: we solve all our problems by throwing obscene amounts of money at it.

Mauer is just 26. And when he’s done with the contract, he’ll be 34–practically over-the-hill for a catcher. But the thing about a 26 year old in baseball is that he isn’t at his prime yet: they never are. He’s got another couple of years to hit his peak, and that’s when he’ll really be worth the money. And with the other core players locked up for a few more years, this team really has the potential…

Here’s what I’m really hoping for in this town: this whole area is football crazy, and the Vikings–the lowly, lovable, horribly disappointing, perennial also-rans–are the ones more people really look forward to every season. But finally, and hopefully consistently, the Twins are the fan favorites: they have the new ballpark, the great team, and everything seems to be on their side for once. Ownership is spending money, fan buzz is very high, and we’ve actually signed a player to a contract that made the rest of the baseball world stop and notice. For once, Boston and the Yankees weren’t able to out-bid us for a player. For once, we trump both of them.

It’s one of the harsh realities of being a baseball fan. Because no matter how big a purist you are, you still need to recognize the business side of the game. Players contracts are now almost as important to know about as their abilities and stats. And while that’s disappointing, its still the reality. If you want to know and love a team, you need to know and love their financials, too.

Mauer is a great player, and is well worth what he’s going to be paid. He is, without question, the best batter in baseball. He is one of the greatest draws this team has seen since Kirby Puckett. And–maybe even more importantly–he’s a hometown kid, and that attracts more kids to the game than anything: they see what’s possible and start to learn and fall in love with the game. And that’s what we need.

So while yes, health care reform is important, and that signing was and important step in the process, but Mauer’s signing was huge.

See you tomorrow.