Both of them had a lot of adds from dating websites. Not just a few, A LOT. Like three of them every commercial break. Match.com seems to love Food Network. With Syfy , it’s mostly from eHarmony, probably hoping the geeks will approach the Hari Seldon-like mathematical formula, and Chemistry.com, which has, as its main selling point, that they will accept you when eHarmony won’t. Insert your own joke here, but I’m still waiting to see a spot from loweredexpectations.com (MadTv fans will get that one. The rest of you can move on).

What does this mean? Are both of these groups, as a whole, in NEED of these services? Does no one else see the opportunity here?

Let’s get the foodies and the geeks together. They have a lot in common anyway. Both have an obsession with things normal peopple would call ephemera and like to play with toys (trust me, my action figure collection had nothing on my wife’s obscure, it might peel a potato, it might make James Bond tell you where the chip is, kitchen tools). Both worlds have their own celebrities that aren’t recognized by the rest of the world. Best of all, their skills are complementary. Most geeks are awful cooks (molecular gastronomists not withstanding), and most foodies could reeeaaallly use help with their computers.

I propose we combine Comicon with Taste of San Diego, and let nature take care of itself. Think of the awesome snacks we can have at the D&D parties of the future.

For most of these, this would have been an improvement.

Children of Men — The nativity crossed with the apocalypse, of course i loved it.

Monsters vs. Aliens — AWESOME! (no really, that’s it, it’s not even an ironic “awesome!”)

Coraline — Gaiman’s version of Alice in Wonderland, gorgeous and life-affirming in that way Gaiman always is, but that you never really expect him to be.

Watchman — Took an original work and stuffed so much of it onto the screen that it TOTALLY RUINED IT, mostly because it got the spectacle, but missed the heart. (and once again, sorry, Honey!)

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian — about what you would expect; Amy Adams as Amelia was a lot of fun.

Up — can’t comment. still. bawling.

Star Trek — Squeee! But I feel kind of dirty about it.

Race to Witch Mountain — The most boring story about aliens ever!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs — Cute story, fun characters, animation kind of didn’t work for me, not sure why.

Charlie Bartlett — You had me at, “Meet the principal, Robert Downey Jr.”

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra — This is the kind of movie in which one character, without apparent irony, utters the exclamation, “Damn! That ninja’s fast!”

9 – Bury my heart at Joe-Ann’s fabrics.

Bride Wars — This spot sat here blank for a while while I thought about it, which I guess is it’s own review, isn’t it?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine — I’m glad I read so many negative comments because by the time I actually watched it, I found I really enjoyed it. Huh.

27 Dresses — Shouldn’t say this out loud, but I kind of want to be James Marsden when I grow up.

Fool’s Gold — Out of all the movies I’ve seen this year, this was one of them.

I love You, Man! — Relatable in a way that made me deeply, deeply afraid.

And that’s about all I can remember right now. Others, like HP:HBP I’ve already commented on, and there were many I meant to see, but haven’t yet (Terminator, 2012, Jennifer’s Body, Zombieland, Avatar, etc). And I guess that’s my “The year in cinema” post you have to write so you get your card stamped or they throw you out of the guild.

So, please, please, please, please sponsor me. And you are encouraged to come to the event in costume. The theme is Noir. I promise to go in costume and have embarrassing pictures taken. And yes, all right, posted.

Here’s the link to my fundraising sight. All donations are tax deductible.

The story is stupid. The trees want to kill us. And they do it by making us kill ourselves. M’k, I guess I can accept that as the plot of a B movie. At least the title told us that this movie was wearing the stupid as a hat, not trying to hide it. And the thing that really sells this movie is Mark Wahlberg’s “acting.” He’s ok running, ordering other people to run, and watching sad things, like people laying down in front of lawn mowers (yes, really). The talking? Um … obviously, he knew he was playing a science teacher, and he was channeling every too-hip-for-the-room high school teacher on network television in 1985.

Now, I like M. Night Shyalaman. I even liked The Village and Lady in the Water. This one? I actually kind of love it, but it is a really, really bad movie. At no point in this movie do you ever look at anything any of the characters do and think to yourself, “yeah, that makes sense.” Look, people, when nature’s trying to kill you, do not seek shelter by running away from the room into a forest-ringed meadow. That’s just asking for trouble. And please, if you know suicide is the major risk, you might want to make sure no one has a firearm, like, oh, the soldier who is carrying the firearm right in plain sight.

And when Betty Buckley shows up as the crazy lady who’s lived alone in a scary house for years with no contact with the outside world and does not know what is “happening?” It just goes waaay so far out the stupid end that it circles back around and ends up at awesome, which is an amazing feat, and I’m sure, not really what they were intending.

And that’s the thing. Shyalaman thinks he’s making a serious movie with an important point. I have the feeling Wahlberg does too. John Leguizamo is cashing a paycheck. Zoey Deschanel is … you know, Zoey is awesome no matter what she does so I am not even going to fault her, except to say I think perhaps her extreme vegan/no soy/gluten allergic diet may have started affecting her brain.

But it entertained me. And I am tempted to put it on my “to own someday” list. There’s a lot going wrong here, but I think enough went wrong that it all came together as something horrifically, gloriously, right.

Plus, most is this stuff is just beyond me. Not beyond my understanding, per se, but beyond my ability to come up with any good answers. I’m not exactly an answers guy. I’m usually all about the questions.

But this time, I have some thoughts. They may actually be relevant (who’da thunk?).

The personal situation. My family has health insurance right now. It’s not perfect, but its ok. Its expensive, and co-pays are going up, but its something, which right now, something is kind of everything. We only have this health insurance because of my wife’s employment. And since she works for a state agency, this could end just about any time, leaving us with nothing.

If we had to go out and get our own private plan, even if we were able to pay any amount out of pocket (which, of course, we couldn’t), we would not be able to have health insurance. Because of pre-existing conditions (congenital heart disease, BP, other stuff), we are radioactive as far as insurance companies go.

I believe in individual responsibility and a “can-do” attitude, and I do not have the attitude that my problems are your problems. I get that. I don’t want everyone else to pay for my health coverage. But I would at least like to be allowed to have some. Right now, unless it’s through an employer group plan, I can’t. even. get. it.

This is the defenition of a broken system, in my book. The people who need it aren’t allowed to have it.

Now, we’re luckier than most because of the fact that since my children were adopted through State Adoptions, and were foster children first, they have MediCal cards that cover them if we lose our primary insurance. Thank God for that.

My wife and I … sorry, you’re screwed, is the answer we get. But at least it’s not the kids.

So … do I want the government taking over this industry? No. I’ve seen the DMV. But leaving this all up to capitalism is sure as FUCK not working. And in conversations I’ve had with people about this online and in person have basically amounted to people either missing the point, or responding with “wow, sucks to be you.”

I get that it’s not your problem, but It would be nice if we take more responsibility for each other than that.

I know a lot of the problem with cost is the number of people scamming the system. We are told through official sources speaking unofficially, that a large part of our cost increase this year is the massive amount of people having gastric bypass surgeries. You can get a doctor to sign off on the medical necessity of elective surgeries. Sometimes this is legit, sometimes this is not. But it does increase costs for everyone. But this is a tangent.

Perfect is the enemy of good. We need to fix this, but no solution is perfect. We can’t let that stop us. Yes, systems in other countries sound awful. We can’t craft a better system? Where is your American pride?

And a note about the politics here. Obama is neither the savior nor the anti-christ (stop sending me your links!!!) But I do think tackling this is fairly politically brave, and also a but suicidal. Best estimates indicate that any reform is only likely to see signifigant cost benefits ten years or so out. This is long after he is out of office even if he serves two terms. He’s basically saying “I’ll take the hit for this, but something must be done.” I have disagreed with a lot of what has happened recently, and I’m not sure I like his solution very much, but I appreciate the stance.

Yeah, something must be done. And we can all complain about it whatever it is, but if we can spend 4.5 trillion dollars to “rebuild” middle eastern countries, we can take care of each other as well.

At least I hope we can.

I will preface my comments with the following information so you can know how seriously to take me. It’s like on Netflix, how it shows you the percentage of commentor’s scores that agree with yours.

My least favorite of the Harry Potter Books was the Fifth, Order of the Phoenix.
My favorite movie of the series was the fifth, Order of the Phoenix.

David Yates took a book that had a lot of interesting stuff in it and made it a tight, lean war story. And this was the first of the movies that felt like it was taking place in a world that was real, one that inhabited the corners, shadow regions , just-beyond the edge of your sight spaces in our own. A lot of people thought the production design was lackluster after the epic scope of Goblet of Fire, but it worked for me. This was a world like ours, gearing up for the ultimate war. So, I was really happy that they gave Yates the rest of the movies to direct. These last three books (four movies) are really one story, and it needed a consistent tone.

But for this movie, he was working against the material a little. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, while it was more successful as a novel that Order of the Phoenix, still has the same problem: There’s a lot stuffed in it. There’s the developing War, and there’s the flashbacks through Voldemort’s life, there’s the mystery of the Half-Blood prince, and the political changes at the ministry of magic, and several love stories, and the introduction of the quest for the Horcruxes, and there’s Malfoy’s secret mission and there’s … well, you get the point. There’s a lot going on. And its a good book, as all of them are, but its hard to boil down into one film that adequately hits even a majority of all of this.

So, the question was, would Yates and Kloves focus on the stuff that mattered, boil it down to the strongest bits? The answer : eehh … kind of?

You have to accept the fact that this story is not the book story. I read comic books for years. I can accept a divergent continuity. This is the movieverse, not the bookverse. You need to accept that and move on, and enjoy them each for what they are.

I think focusing on two things: the war (which encompasses Malfoy’s mission and Snape’s conflict), and the stirrings of romance was wise. We kind of get to the Horcruxes, and the half-blood prince mystery is sort of dealt with (I have a feeling that if it had not been in the title, it probably would have been cut, which may have been appropriate), but the movie picks its subjects and sticks with them. It might actually give short shift to some of the romance plotlines (one of which I really missed), but here all all the romances crammed into this book: Harry-Ginny-Dean, Ron-Lavender-Hermione, Remus and Tonks, Bill and Fleur, Neville and Luna (wait–that one was a fanfic I wrotesomeone posted on some strange website I most certainly have never visited (what?).

So, Ron-Lavender-Hermione gets most attention, Harry-Ginny kind of not really happens–Remus and Tonks just rocket through the nonsense and are presented as a couple. Bill and Fleur and the whole werewolf plotline … um … not there at all. Actually we haven’t seen Bill or Charlie at all in these movies, have we?

Anyway, we also lose most of the Voldemort backstory. I wonder why they included any of it at all, frankly, because without most of what they cut, it was kind of pointless.

The battle at Hogwarts was … a couple of death eaters yelling in the hallway. So … not a win there

I really liked the movie, but it did seem to meander somewhat, I don’t know how they could have done what I really wanted, which was to make it both 30 minutes shorter but put back in Bill and Fleur and make the ending battle more signifigant, and bring some clarity back to the Half-Blood Prince thing. Maybe cut some of the Quidditch/Slughorn stuff? I don’t know.

I see why they made the cuts they made, but they kind of removed some of the urgency, and should have given us more of a payoff for the Harry-Ginny stuff.

I don’t know… they did, at least, keep the zombies, so that was a win there. Maybe I’m not that hard to please after all.

Brenda Cooper, Jody Sherry, and me

Had a great time at the Footprints book signing at Powell’s in Beaverton, Oregon. We decided to go up the day before, so I wouldn’t be stressed about making it on time, plus we wanted to have a day in Portland just to visit the city and see what it was like, since I’d never been there before.

note to spouse: when I am successful enough that we can live anywhere, we are moving here. k?

this place is gorgeous, love the mountains, the river, the cool summer (yes I know the winter snow is a bitch, but I was raised in Indiana so this is not new to me).

Made a pilgrimage to the downtown Powell’s, as you do. I had no idea such a place existed and now am wondering how I was able to live in this world without knowing that. Then we went to Beaverton and found out that the Cedar Hills Crossing store is only slightly smaller than the other one. Portland, evidentally, is bookstore mecca. again … moving to Portland someday.

Went to see Up in the afternoon while was trying to relax and not get nervous. This is a movie that does not play fair, and if it is not nominated for an actual academy award instead of being relegated to the “cartoon ghetto” category, it will be a crime.

But the event was wonderful. Peter Honigstock, the sci fi section manager, was a great host, and the store has a very nice area set up for such events. I enjoyed meeting Brenda and Jody, and we had a great time talking before and after the reading. There were a lot of people there as well, a lot of people interested in sci fi and this anthology in particular. We all read, and then there was a discussion time. One of the interesting things about this anthology is that it is about something specific … those footprints still there on the moon, and this gave us something to talk about, sharing our experiences and impressions of the moon landing, our ideas about what happened, and didn’t happen, next and our theories as to why. It felt a little strange, my opinion of these things being asked, because I am by no means an expert, but during the discussion a few things began to clarify themselves in my head.

My generation didn’t have the moon landing as an event to witness. For most of my generation, our first memory of space exploration was the Challenger disaster. So it’s important, as the moon landing is celebrated, that we get a chance to look at that, think about that, and try to get back to a place of hope about humanity’s future in space, even as we try to solve our current host of terrestrial challenges. It is not beyond out our technology to establish a moon base. It is not beyond our technology to travel to Mars. We just haven’t done it yet. And yes, we have problems here that need our attention, but the human soul yearns to explore, to put itself out there, beyond the known. Maybe the fact that we’ve stopped, allowed politics and economics to get in the way of that longing, maybe that’s why humanity seems so heartsick right now. We’ve stopped ourselves from moving out, so we’re twisting in upon ourselves.

just a thought … probably a goofy one.

Anyway, after the reading, we signed a lot of copies of the book. www.powells.com will soon have these available for order, it looks like from their website.

And since nothing can happen to me without some kind of personal injury, I was waiting all day to fall down, or cut myself, or have a piano dropped on my head. Nothing happened. The signing went well. I thought I’d broken the curse. Then, getting back to the hotel and getting my things out of the trunk, I leaned forward a little too fast and nearly cracked my head on that part of the trunk just below the license plate frame that is really hard and sharp-edged and thin … still hurts, but no concussion.

So, in that spirit, I am going to write about 5 things I am enjoying right now.

1. Last Exile I am a long-time anime fan, but I’m not really into the mecha or the weirdo super-powered kids stuff. I like the trippy sci-fi aspects, the riot of mad ideas, translated through a different culture. This sometimes is not copacetic with sense-making … but this one is my favorite ever. I love the prussian steam-punk vibe, the characters, while adhering to certain anime archetypes (hello, stoic hero with a past, cute kid with bug eyes and a mysterious power, and you, super-pilot teenager) are beautifully developed and animated, and the wolrdbuilding is completely trippy, yet makes perfect sense by the end. Plus, its a story about my favorite thing, a band of plucky rebels on the run. And weird are they/aren’t they alien creatures. I first saw this a few years back out of order of G4’s anime unleashed block, and have been rewatching it on Netflix’s instant system, which, if you haven’t tried it, is wonderful.

2. Anathem by Neal Stephenson

This book has been much written about and reviewed already, so I will just add this … This is his best book. It may be a contender for my favorite book of all time, actually. I read the last 200 pages in one day. Yes, the beginning is a little bit of a challenge as you must first become familiar with an insular world before you are cast out into the rest of the story, but it is an amazing experience. Plus: super space nija monks vs. well … that would be telling. But that moment the central mystery locked in place … wow.

3. Poseidon and the Bitter Bug by the Indigo Girls.

another amazing album, no suprise. Ghost of the Gang might be the most uplifting song about suicide ever. Plus, they used my favorite painting of all time as the album cover. As I get older, I find I am identifying more with Amy’s angry poetry than I used to. It used to be the Emily songs that grabbed me. That probably says more about me than about them, because I’m fairly certain Amy has not mellowed over the years.

“Tonight I’m gonna take that ride for the years we missed and the frieds that died …
side swipe baby on the road somehow with a pack of dreams, we just weren’t allowed
Maybe you’re walking those halls all quiet and sad …
sitting in the dark all scared and mad
feel my hand reaching out and don’t forget
where you come from, baby, cuz there’s truth in it … “

4. www.unclutterer.com. I suck at it, but am trying to get my house organized and uncluttered. This site offers advice and inspiration, and a lot of pictures of gorgeous workspaces I will never hope to be able to emulate. They did inspre the “landing strip” now in the entryway, which has been helpful. If only they could come up with a simple system for “processing” laundry that does not involve me folding it all.

5. wii fit. Trying to lose the last few pounds, as wel all are, this thing has been an invaluable training tool. It’s also helped get me focused on core strength and balance, which revealed some things I needed to work on, and explained a lot actually. Love the questions … “wow, you’re really unbalanced, do you trip and fall a lot?” which, yes, of course …

It’s a little clingly though. It scolds you if you miss a few days and lately has been asking me if I’ve seen other members of our little user group. It even asked me if one of them looked like she was gaining weight, losing weight, of staying the same. It’s starting to creep me out.

and no, I will not be sharing my wii fit age with you.

And Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the first album I ever really wanted to buy, but wasn’t allowed to because it was unholy rock music(yeah, right!) and my church did not approve. This was also the era in which I was not allowed to go see Return of the Jedi because the church frowned on its members going to “the show,” and the cool kids called it in 1984. Damn Baptists … sorry, I know I’m going someplace bad now. Michael Jackson’s amazing flame out out of weird accusations and long-delayed projects (hello Katrina relief song?) was just as entertaining as Farrah’s. But Michael’s work was good. Black and White is still my favorite MJ song (will not go near Man in the Mirror), but I always thought he was kind of a sad case always trying to reclaim a childhood that was stolen from him by the mass media and an abusive father.

I think we all kind of knew it was going to end suddenly, so Michael, go get some peace as well now.

weirdness note: I found out about MJ’s death via a twitter message form Randall Flagg. This will give me something to talk about with the psychiatrist next week.

Sorry, I got nothing on Ed McMahon, except that I was always really hoping he was going to show up at my house with balloons and a giant check, and am still somewhat disappointed it did not happen.

Anyway, Farrah, MJ, ED … go gently and all that …

adding her condolences:

Dollhouse, same thing, although you’re not officially cancelled yet (maybe I should not say I like it publicly, because that never goes well.)

I add you to an illustrious list: Firefly, Wonder Falls, Drive, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, Veronica Mars, and others I’m certain I will remember later.

I would also like to add Heroes to the list, but it was not cancelled, it just started sucking really, really hard, so I pretend that it has been.

So, new tactic:

NBC, please, please do not renew Chuck, it is not at all a fun and quirky show my entire family adores, not at all. In fact, we tune in solely to mock it, mst3k style. My wife sooo does not have a crush on Zachary Levi (you can admit it honey. wait, don’t yet), and my thoughts about Yvonne Strahovski are all about I wish they would not let someone so unattractive defile our tv screens. The supporting cast is not at all hysterical, and I am not one of the people who wants to purchase a Jeffster t-shirt. And really, the end-of-season plot developments did not promise an invigorating evolution for next season. The fact that Captain Awesome is so awesome that he goes all the way around to being a lovable dork? Not at all awesome.

So, in conclusion, NBC. Please cancel Chuck. We want that hour of our lives back every week.

FOX, please cancel Dollhouse as well.

That is all.

edited to add: Part of it worked!