L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

I don’t often review movies here at the lair beyond what I’ve been reviewing through my DVDregs project (which I haven’t forgotten about; I just prefer to spend more time reading books than watching movies). I also find that most movies that come down the Hollywood pipeline are such disappointments that I anticipate very little from the movie world anymore.

I was, however, greatly anticipating The Runaways. I’ve been a HUGE Joan Jett fan since I first heard the opening percussion and guitars of “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” And when that gorgeous, gravelly, smoke-saturated voice kicked in, my little Blackheart belonged to her. She is one of the original rocker grrls who still wails like nobody’s business, even at one notch past the half-century mark.

I didn’t learn about her early roots until much later (thank you, Interwebz!), but when I did discover The Runaways, I had another squee attack. This is the band that started the careers of Joan Jett AND Lita Ford?! Close my eyes forever, indeed.

So I began paying more attention to the cinema chat swirling around this one, and that’s when I stumbled upon the teaser poster for this movie.

What a big hot mess of sexual innuendo!

Let’s start with the tagline: “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.”

Okay, this could be interpreted in non-sexual ways, especially if you assume that people viewing this poster know who The Runaways were in the music world and subsequently look at this statement from a purely musical standpoint. 1975 was a year filled with some…interesting chart-topping musicians: Captain and Tenille. Glen Campbell. John Denver. K.C. & the Sunshine Band. Barry Manilow. The Carpenters. The Bee Gees. Melissa Manchester.

1975 was basically an easy listening station’s wet dream. But something was brewing under the surface on both sides of the Atlantic…something awesome and raucous and loud. The punk rock scene hit huge in ’75, with the appearance of groups like the Sex Pistols, Blondie, and the Ramones. I won’t try to ramble on anymore about punk rock since I have already pointed out that music knowledge is not one of my strong points (I only knew about these three groups because I like their music).

However, just this little bit of knowledge gives credence to the tagline’s statement that “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.” The Runaways were most assuredly nothing like The Carpenters. Their different-from-mainstream sound was ready to explode onto the scene and take that filthy muskrat love hostage. Plus, their arrival on the music scene meant the arrival of the girls to the predominantly boys’ club of hard rock.

Then we get to the poster’s solitary graphic: a ripe, red, luscious, dripping cherry with a lit fuse for a stem.

Again, let’s assume some Runaways knowledge. Probably their biggest hit was the song “Cherry Bomb.” It not only shows up on every Runaways compilation out there, but Jett has included her renditions on both her greatest hit CDs. So here we have the visual representation of the proverbial cherry bomb, made even more prominent by the black background.

[Loba Tangent: I love how this bright red image against the black background is so evocative of the poster for that 1975 movie cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.]

Then you get the names of the two principal actors, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, in a simple white sans serif, hovering above a roughly spray-painted and smudged stencil of the movie title, in matching cherry red paint. It’s amateurish but bold, which are definitely two things that could be applied to the early days of this band.

Of course, if we remove the assumption that people looking at this poster have any idea of who The Runaways were or what they meant to the music world, this poster drips with sexual innuendo (literally!), just like I originally said. The again, with lyrics like “I’ll give ya something to live for! Have ya, grab ya til you’re sore!” there’s very little room for interpretation here. The Runaways were fiercely sexual, often referred to as “Jail Bait Rock” for obvious reasons: They were all in their teens or barely 20, with original lead singer Cherie Curie only 15 when she joined the band. Gives that “ready to explode” cherry a whole different connotation there, eh?

Sex sells, and this poster definitely sells the sexuality of this movie and this group.

Bonus Movie Review

I’ve already said a lot about the group The Runaways with my poster review. So what about the movie? I cringe a little at calling this movie a proper biopic of the entire group. It really isn’t.

The screenplay is based upon Cherie Curie’s Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway. Curie was only with the band from 1975-77, so obviously basing the script on her recollections isn’t going to give the full story. Also, it’s her memoir so it’s told from her perspective with her take on what was happening. Jett was tapped to provide additional information, to help flesh out the story (which is only appropriate since Jett was the group’s founding member with drummer Sandy West, who died in 2006 of lung cancer).

That being said, obviously the focus of this movie was Curie, with Jett playing a substantial secondary role. I was actually very surprised by this, for two reasons. One, Joan Jett is the most successful musician to come from the original line-up and she was a co-founder, so you’d think she’d be more of the focus. Two, look at the teaser poster: Kristen Stewart received billing ahead of Dakota Fanning. I took this as an indication that her role would be more substantial. I guess it really was a matter of box office pull. Stewart is the bigger name thanks to those shitty twinkly vampire movies the Twilight franchise.

I’ve never read Curie’s memoir but I can only assume that it’s a bit of a weak read based on the overall weakness of this movie’s screenplay. There’s an absence of cohesion throughout the storytelling. Also, the band members who aren’t Curie or Jett get supremely shafted in screen time as well as character development. Case in point: The biggest scene for Lita Ford is brief and tantamount to a hissy fit. Regardless of whether or not this was an accurate portrayal or just how Curie remembered this particular moment, it makes Ford one-dimensional and rather unsympathetic. Again, though, since this is from Curie’s perspective, maybe that was the ultimate goal.

Negatives of the screenplay aside, this movie’s strength resides in those two names on the poster. I still find Dakota Fanning unnerving. She’s literally the oldest young person I’ve ever seen. However, she brings a fierceness and energy to her portrayal of Cherie Curie that is incendiary. Her transformation from mousy waif from a broken home to corseted, drug-addled prima donna jail bait was almost completely believable (hindered only by the obvious and unchangeable truth that Fanning isn’t all these things, so it’s really all pretend in the end).

As for Stewart’s performance as Joan Jett? This is the kind of acting I want to see more of from Stewart. She has an ability to completely immerse herself into a role to spectacular effect. For this movie, Stewart was Joan Jett, right down to the burgeoning of those amazing sexy-growly vocals that are synonymous with Jett’s solo career.

Jett herself is on record as stating that the first time she listened to a recording of Stewart singing one of the movie’s songs, she thought the producers had made a mistake and sent her a recording of herself from those days. Whether this is movie hype hyperbole or not, both Stewart and Fanning nailed their musical impersonations, making their contributions to the movie’s soundtrack excellent additions.

Yes, I have the soundtrack already. It’s actually quite good, a substantial mix of movie Runaways and real Runaways music interspersed with songs from other punk/rock scions like Suzi Quatro (Leather Tuscadero!!), The Stooges, Sex Pistols, MC5, and David Bowie.

Regardless of screenplay flaws, this is one raucous, vulgar, in-your-face, wild ride into the true essence of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and the brakes are out and there’s no stopping until the cliff appears ahead and we all go plummeting to our rock goddess deaths. But we’ll be so hopped up on whatever pills and booze we can get our hands on, we just won’t care.

I think the only thing that I would have loved to see more of was toward the end, when Jett began to be the dominant character and we started seeing her metamorphosis into the soon-to-be Jett of Blackhearts fame. And when Stewart appeared toward the movie’s end, wearing that fuchsia blazer with the hyper-huge shoulder pads? I squeed a little. And immediately pictured this in my mind:

I love rock-n-roll, too, Joan. Oh, yes, I do.

Of course, we don’t need a biopic on Jett. We know what happened with her post-Runaways. But I wouldn’t complain if Stewart wanted to finally stop hanging out with sparkly vampires and sink her teeth into another Jett-based role. Until then, though, I’ve added The Runaways to my wishlist and am looking forward to firing up the soundtrack for my commute home. Drive me wild…

How To Massacre a Horror Movie Classic In Three Easy Steps

Here, first, is a brief list of Things That Never Should Have Happened:

• Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween.

Well, I did say it was brief.

OMGWTF.

Typically, I don’t condone real violence of any kind, but I would like to officially request that I be allowed to kick-box Rob Zombie in his outtie bits for the full 2 hours that I wasted on this piece of shit movie.

I warn you now: This post will be graphic in language and anger, and will spoil the hell out of Zombie’s remake. Why? Because I’m angry that I wasted time on what I knew in the very core of my being was going to be shit, and I want to make damn certain that none of my denizens make the same stupid mistake.

Unfortunately, I may ruin bits of John Carpenter’s original movie as well, so be forewarned. Actually, though, if you’re reading this and you haven’t seen Carpenter’s Halloween, stop right now and go watch it. I’m not kidding. I’ll still be here when you’re finished, venting and howling pointlessly.

First let’s begin with…the beginning. The opening of the 1978 version is so classic and so iconic. The clown mask. The fastest sex scene in the history of movies. The killing. The reveal. Oh, the reveal. What a brilliant moment that was, wasn’t it? How the camera that has been, up to this moment, showing us the action from the killer’s POV, changes to now show us that the killer is a tiny little boy with the most chilling, expressionless face in the history of Haddonfield. I can honestly say that I found this to be one of the most disturbing setups for a horror movie villain ever.

How does Zombie fuck it up? The same way most people from my generation fuck things up: by taking it TO THE XTREME!!!11!!!!1 We’ve got to see everything! We have to have reasons! Why and how!! We can’t be satisfied with just seeing a little boy fall into the abyss of pure darkness. We have to see what made him that way!! So what’s Zombie’s take on what made Michael Myers? He’s full-blown, over-the-top, no-holds-barred White Trash, of course.

I hate copouts like this. It’s a benchmark of lazy, unimaginative writing to fall back on something so trite and, quite frankly, stereotypical.

Also, which do you find more disturbing? The idea that Michael Myers was the product of a by-the-Hollywood-numbers dysfunctional upbringing, with his stripper mom (of course she’s a stripper!!) and her abusive, useless boyfriend, his slutty sister and houseful of predictable White Trash insanity? Or that Michael Myers was the son of a bland suburban family living in a bland suburban house in a bland suburban neighborhood, with two happily boring parents and an older sister too busy fooling around with her desperately-in-need-of-stamina boyfriend to notice that her baby brother was getting ready to step into the darkness of pure evil for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

I don’t know about you, denizens, but the latter version is way more disturbing to me.

Plus, in addition to the White Trash angle, Zombie heaps on gluttonous helpings of offensive language and over-the-top unnecessary violence, including showing Michael Myers massacre his entire fucked-up family minus his mom, who’s off stripping, and his baby sister. Yeah, Zombie decided to embrace that portion of the Halloween franchise and make Laurie Strode Michael Myers’s baby sister.

Of course, what Zombie fails to then explain is how exactly Michael Myers knows where his little sis ends up after he’s put away and his mom kills herself over the clusterfuck her family became. He also fails to explain how Myers ends up being built like a brick shit house when all he does is sit in his locked room in his locked ward, making papier-mâché masks for himself. We all have to suspend disbelief now and again, I suppose. After all, Carpenter’s Myers not only knew how to drive a car but also seemed to instinctively know how to return home, even though he’d been locked up in a mental asylum since he was a little boy. However, I feel far more amenable to suspending belief for Carpenter than I will ever feel for Zombie.

I do not understand why anyone allowed this remake to happen. I know that Zombie told Carpenter that he was doing it, and Carpenter’s response was that Zombie should make it his own story. But all Zombie did was bring FAIL to name Halloween. Carpenter’s original 1978 movie is sheer horror brilliance. Yes, it shows its age in many areas. Yes, there is this weird puritanical undertone that only virginal good girls survive horror movies (thank you, Sidney Prescott, for disproving this “rule” with such panache; now please go away and take Gale and Dewey with you).

Put all that aside and what you have is an amazing script brought to life by a director who knew that, to really scare his audience, he needed one thing. Come on, you know what word Loba’s about to write, don’t you? Let’s say it all together now…ATMOSPHERE!!

Carpenter’s vision of this story is so expertly controlled. He never takes it over the top, never makes it seem implausible (okay, the asylum breakout scene was a bit vague). He didn’t need gallons of fake blood or CGI trickery or truckloads of pedantic and patronizing exposition. Truth is, he and co-writer Debra Hill banged out the script in a very short period of time, made minimal rewrites, and filmed the original movie for about a dime more than what a Starbucks Venti latte costs today. Further evidence to support my motto that “Less Is More.”

Carpenter’s Michael was a whisper on the wind, a diaphanous demon who skirted the perimeters, always watching, only seen by us, the helpless audience, who could do nothing but scream impotently at the screen as our protagonists bounced, popped, sang, and screwed their way along (“Totally!”), until Michael deemed it their time to exit, stage left. It’s torturous bliss, done to perfection by Carpenter’s direction. Myers is there in the flutter of a curtain, the creak of a door, the shimmer of candlelight. And then…he’s gone.

There was none of this greatness in Zombie’s take on the story. If Carpenter’s Michael was a whisper, Zombie’s Michael was a freakin’ bulldozer: all rumble and destruction, no grace or tact.

Also, and this is my own personal pet peeve, when we first see him as a young boy, he speaks. Michael Myers doesn’t effing speak!

Then there’s Dr. Loomis. Donald Pleasance should be granted permission from whatever afterworld that might exist to exact unmerciful punishment against Zombie and Malcolm McDowell for this insipid, touchy-feely bastardization of the great Dr. Loomis. Dr. Loomis was fierce and scared and heartless in how he spoke of Michael to others he was trying to warn, and we didn’t need any freakin’ explanation as to why. We didn’t need to know what he saw during those 15 years that he worked with Michael. We were a smart enough audience that we could figure out on our own that it must have been some pretty fucked-up shit.

And Pleasance’s Loomis would have never…I repeat, NEVER in a bajillion years, told Michael at any point that “in a weird way, you’ve become like my best friend.”

OMGWTF!!!

You know what? Zombie should have left his original ending in which Michael killed Dr. Loomis, because this version of the character didn’t deserve to live. I don’t care how great Malcolm McDowell may be in other movies, in this he stinks. Of course, you’re only as good as the material you’re given to work with, and that’s not saying much in this instance. You’d think that someone who obviously loves McDowell as much as Zombie does (ever see his video for “Never Gonna Stop”? Red, Red Kroovy, baby…) would have given him something better to work with than a shitty hairpiece and a shittier script.

To call this remake an abomination is a gross understatement. Every time I heard Carpenter’s original Halloween theme play, I understood the true meaning of the word “sacrilege.” It’s also further proof that Hollywood respects nothing beyond the almighty dollar. If they did, they would have never let anyone remake this movie, but they would have especially been vigilant of placing such a classic in the hands of the man who directed House of 1,000 Corpses and who continues to insist on casting his wife even though she has the acting ability of a can of potted meat.

I’m actually angry at myself for renting this movie; I feel as though I’ve somehow validated the remake by doing so. It was my own stupidity though. I’ve resisted watching it for this long, but after listening to a podcast recently that said not completely unkind things about the remake, I decided that maybe I was being too critical (as I am prone to be) and perhaps I needed to learn a little lesson in leniency. Consider this post to be this horror disciple’s penance before the cock crows three times.

Burn, Zombie. Burn and take every last copy of your shitty remake with you. This is the perfect movie to explain why I hate remakes right down to my very core. Also the perfect reason why I’m not even giving the Nightmare remake a second thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish rinsing my brain with peroxide.

Trying extremely hard to be beautiful, succeeding in an obviously fake way, and possessing no real substance beneath the pretty.

I have a nerd notebook in which I write nerd notes about nerdy things. I wrote this about Avatar. I honestly don’t even remember writing it, but it made me laugh this morning when I discovered it while looking for something else in my notes.

My apologies to Avatar and James Cameron for the harsh comparison.

Happy Ides of March, denizens! Watch your back and don’t trust your BFF Brutus today. Actually, don’t ever trust someone named Brutus. It’s a weird name and sounds too much like Bluto. Don’t trust people named Bluto either. Only trust Loba.

So I’ve been having a bit of a resurgence of horror love as of late, thanks in part to my DVDregs project as well as the discovery of a new podcast (let’s see how well my denizens pay attention to their surroundings; this new podcast recently made the list under “Sounds Sweet” to the right).

I love horror movies. I love the coronary jolt, the acrid tang of fear and adrenaline. I’ve been a horror fan since I was a wee pup. Back in the day, it was all about gore for me. I was mad into slasher flicks. Freddy Krueger was my all-time favorite at the time, simply because he was all about the gore and camp, two things that when combined provide an unstoppable tsunami of entertainment for those so inclined to enjoy such a combination.

Actually, Freddy is still pretty high on my list of favorites, but I think I’m far more apt to choose the original movie over any of the sequels. That first appearance of Freddy was so very dark and grotesque and disturbing. The guy was a child killer when he was alive, which is one of the darkest of all the criminal acts one can choose for their villain…something that I think is completely glossed over in sequels, which trade in the disturbing truth of this burned boogie man for the camp of one-liners like “Welcome to prime time, bitch!” or “Better not dream and drive!”

As much as I enjoyed watching Robert Englund chew the scenery like a pit bull on steroids in all the sequels (and, really, there is no other reason to watch most of the sequels than Englund’s performances as Krueger), it’s that first appearance of Krueger that keeps pulling me back. That’s the defining Freddy movie, the one that most deserves its place in the horror pantheon.

[I'm still flipping a razor-sharp middle finger to the remake, though. I'd rather be forced to watch one of those craptacular sparkly vampire movies than have to endure watching Hollywood botch up another of my favorite horror movies a la Zombie's Hallowhathafu.]

So what scares me now? Atmosphere. I think I pretty much pushed this idea home significantly in my Halloween posting from last year. Almost every single movie on that list was frightening because of story rather than how much red dye and corn syrup they used in the making of the film. Even the gorier picks from this list depend more heavily on clever writing than on the gore factor (okay, so Billy from Black Christmas isn’t the most eloquent obscene phone caller…I’ll give you that).

It’s atmosphere. I remember my first realization of this truth came when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I was well entrenched in my horror phase by this point thanks in part to cable television and the local Nightmare Theater movie presentation every Saturday (followed, of course, by Freddy’s Nightmares and Friday the 13th: The Series). That Halloween, the community newspaper ran a contest in which they asked their younger readers to submit a scary story that would be judged for inclusion in their special Halloween section. Prizes were involved as well, but I don’t really remember what they were.

I also don’t remember what exactly I wrote for my submission. However, it was something horribly slasherific, something trite and predictable. Something that to me, at that point in my life, possessed all the trademarks of great horror. Needless to say, I didn’t win. But to this day, I still remember the story that did win that year. It was about a harlequin mask. No blood. No gore. No death. And it was scary as hell. Why?

All together now: Atmosphere. Something like that crawls under your skin and sleeps there, not jolting you immediately, but slowly releasing its venom through your blood, where it seeps and trickles until it’s permeated through to your very core. That’s the kind of horror I find myself loving most now. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like cheap scares as well…but the cheap scares are transitory. It’s the deeper scares that stay with you, make you squirm over and over.

Know what one of my favorite examples of this type of horror in recent years is? 2008′s The Brøken. It’s all the things that instantaneous shock seekers abhor: slow, brooding, surreal, and stylish. Would I recommend this movie to most horror fans? No, not really. It’s a bit too avant-garde for a lot of people’s tastes, and there are admittedly several WTF moments in which it seems as though something integral was cut too close for editorial comfort. However, I still very much enjoyed this film.

Same with 2005′s The Skeleton Key. Again, not a movie designed to slam you with constant jumps and starts. But I found that it crawled into my brain and hung around for quite a while, bothering me with its simple premise and simply creepy ending.

I guess what I’m saying is that I very much enjoy scary films that tamper with my senses and my sensibilities. Cheap thrills are just fine, but give me a movie that’s going to leave me afraid to open a closet (stupid Ring) or make the natural settling noises of a building set my teeth on edge, and I’m one happy wolf.

That’s all I really wanted to write about. Sorry if you were expecting something a bit deeper. How about this? I promise a book review soon and possibly even another DVDregs review. Ooh, ‘citin’!

A Star Trek/X-Men crossover? Wouldn’t that be the most awesome thing ever?

Actually, no it wouldn’t be. Okay, sadly, I own this book. It’s sitting on my bookshelf right now. Mocking me with its blatant mediocrity. I have nerd shame about very little, but this book sends nerd shivers through my spine. And not the good kind.

Anyway, I whipped this up after random afternoon geek-dreaming in which I tried to figure out a way of fixing the X-Men movie franchise while crossing it over and tying it in with the aftermath of the TNG episode “The Host.” You know, the episode that introduced us to the Trill…and also introduced us to the uncomfortable realization that Beverly and Riker did the nasty, Trek-style (but only after Bev made sure Deanna was down with that).

No one checked with Professor Xavier…er, Captain Picard, though. I suspect he might have been a bit miffed, don’t you?

Like I said…silly geek-dreaming. Of course, this actually sounds better than that shit bog of a third X-Men movie that they actually made.

We have a habit of turning sentimental about celebrities who are struck down—Muhammad Ali, Christopher Reeve—transforming them into mystics; still, it’s almost impossible to sit beside Roger Ebert, lifting blue Post-it notes from his silk fingertips, and not feel as though he’s become something more than he was. He has those hands. And his wide and expressive eyes, despite everything, are almost always smiling.

Siskel & Ebert were my prophets when I was a wee wolf. I remember tuning in to listen to their argumentative sermons on the latest Hollywood offerings, at first always paying obeisance to these scions of cinematic debate, later processing their opinions with my steadily developing disagreeable demeanor.

Gene Siskel’s death broke that magic spell, and I never felt quite right about watching the partially patched ship of Ebert & Roeper. So, sadly, I didn’t even realize at first that Roger Ebert had slipped away from the public eye, his voice lost to a series of surgeries to save his life from the insidious spread of thyroid cancer.

So to see Ebert, profiled in this extraordinary Esquire article, was quite a shock to me. I’m sure it was a shock to most people, since he really hasn’t been seen by the public in almost 4 years. At first blush, we might be tempted to already start eulogizing him in our minds, his surgery-misshapen face and gaunt frame leading us to automatic assumptions that, when we read this article, prove to be greatly exaggerated.

Yes, Ebert is, as the article states, “dying in increments, and he is aware of it.” (Then again, as Ebert points out in his blog, aren’t we all dying in increments?) Not only can he no longer speak, he can no longer eat or drink. His is now a life of many vicarious pleasures. But it is also a life refocused. He has returned to the written word with a vengeance, not only as his sole means of communication but once again to the passion of his prose. He journals profusely, continues to review movies, continues to write books, continues to wield the power of his thumbs like a samurai wields his sword. He is, as the article states most factually, The Essential Man.

I cannot praise this Esquire article enough. Chris Jones has written, not a eulogy, but a tribute of eloquence and intimacy to a man still full of life in all its opinionated glory. Though quite a lengthy piece, I assure you, you will reach the end and be left craving more.

I’m foregoing Flashback Friday this week, denizens. Today was hella busy at work (it was the first day back in the actual office since last Friday), and the more I thought about writing a flashback, the more irrationally irascible I became. So instead I’m posting my latest Gates McFadden/Beverly Crusher-inspired PhotoShop trickery.

Do I really need to say how much this poster delights me? If only this had been the movie Cameron made…

Oh, and you can see ZomBeverly here, in case you missed her the first time around.

Better stock up on the fava beans and Chianti now…

(Really, this was just an excuse to finally use this photo, from Empire magazine’s 20th anniversary photo shoot. I do loves me some Silence of the Lambs. )

I set out tonight, hoping to watch something with the parental units that was as un-Christmasy as you can imagine. Then I realized that TBS was yet again running their “24 Hours of A Christmas Story.”

Oh, how do you resist Ralphie? You simply can’t, can you? I think that A Christmas Story is to my generation what It’s A Wonderful Life was to its generation. Only A Christmas Story is actually enjoyable. So we watched it twice. And now the SyFy Channel’s Ghost Hunters marathon is playing. And I’m about to refill my wine glass.

Could this be a more perfect start to Christmas?

I wish for you all a wonderful day, regardless of what holiday or beliefs you may hold. In fact, I wish for you wonder and merriment every day. And I hope that 2010 holds amazements unimaginable for each one of you.

And here, before I depart, is a special holiday wish from my favorite dancing doctor. I designed this for two very special ImagiFriends^TM. I hope they don’t mind if I share it with all my denizens…but how can I resist?

So I griped and complained about the snow all Saturday. Then Sunday came and went, and nothing. Why? Because I spent a large portion of that day, digging out from under all that you see to your right. When all was said and done, we got a little more than 2 feet. That might have just been the final measurements due to drifting, though. The numbers people on the telly were saying more along the lines of 16 inches. My arm muscles disagree…but that’s okay.

When all was said and done, I felt much better once Sammy was no longer being held prisoner by the snow. So Sunday evening was spent relaxing and being in a far more agreeable mood.

Then the news came from WaPo: All federal agencies will be closed on Monday.

I’m not a federal employee, but I help make federal employees look spiffy. So if they’re not there, we’re not really needed. Which meant that my company closed for the day as well. And the silver lining shone through brightly.

So where the heck was I all day? At the movie theater. Watching Dances with Na’vi Avatar. For 3 hours. My butt still hasn’t woken up. Which is why I’m getting ready to go exercise…and maybe even attempt to process how I feel about this movie. I’m still not sure. I did, however, make sure this was available as soon as I got back online. Seriously, Sigourney Weaver as a feline alien must become part of my collection. As soon as possible.

Oh, one more thing. Expect some serious 50BC09 posting in a little while. Maybe not now. But soon. And for the rest of…er…the year?