Current mood:

grateful

So, like, yeah, and stuff.
Okay.

Work has been shit. Stable shit, but the kind of shit that doesn't allow you to actually go somewhere and shit. You're four seconds from your desk before somebody grabs you and needs your help or they will perish and die. Normally, this would be the kind of thing I would have no scruples about shrugging off and allowing somebody to burn in their own fire, but these are people's careers I'm managing, so I suck it up and bust my own ass. I've missed lunch a couple of times, because damn it, we're just too busy.

I've actually gotten two parking tickets because I got so busy that I forgot to go out and move my car. Combined, they're about a seventy-dollar idiot tax. I have another one for $85 that I haven't paid from long ago, because in California, you can't park in a two-hour parking zone for an hour, park somewhere else for three hours, and then come back to anywhere in that parking zone...and by "parking zone," I mean "street." Move a block down, and you're screwed. Move ten feet to turn a corner, and you're fine. The parking ticket situation in downtown Sacramento is universally regarded as shit.

But what I'm really here to say is that I saw Don't Mess With Zohan, and Wall-E. One thing I've noticed about the majority of Adam Sandler movies is that you forget how much fun they are to watch until you're watching a new one. He lacks the kind of charisma that leaves you with a pleasant feeling when you think about it afterward, but I really enjoyed the many levels to be found in this movie. The comedy was solid and only dabbled in the standard appeal-to-the-mindless-masses retardation. It was there, but not long enough to make you roll your eyes and go "this again?", separating it from many a Mike Myers movie (the comic, not the killer). Obviously not to be seen if you take offense at all to any joke based on any Middle Eastern nationality, behavior, or stereotype.

Wall-E, on the other hand....

...well, let's talk for a moment about faith. Those of you who know anything about me know that I don't have any room in my life for faith. Hell, those of you who are familiar with Amber and how I kept letting her back into my life know that I don't need faith in anything to appreciate life. Interplay made Fallout and Fallout 2, and they...well, they got raped and pillage. SSA made the original Pool of Radiance series, and they were bought and gutted by Wizards of the Coast. Even Reese's dabbled in those fluffy whipped low-fat bars, and come to think of it, they haven't put out anything good since Nutrageous, and they're really, really on a roll with putting out shit lately. Even Genndy Tartakovsky had...hey, know why? Let's leave Genndy Tartakovsky the hell out of this.

(By the way, I am terribly sad that he will not be involved in the new animated Clone Wars movie.)

Anyway, I am not a man of faith. I deal with what I have, and I make choices based on what is likely. If something is regular, solid, and "reliable," I will make use of it, but I don't get emotionally attached. Sometimes, a super hero movie is Iron Man, and sometimes, it's Elektra. I'll lament that I spent two hours watching something, but I'll get over it, and I'll note, for the future, who and what was involved in the movie, so that I can avoid it in the future.

But Pixar really, really, fuckin' really has me. Toy Story. Toy Story 2. The Incredibles. Monsters, Inc. Stories that use animation as a medium, not as a product. Cars and Ratatouille could have just as easily been done with computer-assisted live action, but to them, the goal seems to be to present as much human emotion and meaning as possible while simultaneously staying as far away from the direct human element as possible. A very strong case can be made that this was their entire focus for Wall-E, almost to the exclusion of all other goals.

And you know what? It got me about as close to actually crying in a movie theater as I've ever been.

Well, not counting the abortion that The Punisher was, but this was because it was beautiful, not because it was shitting over every hope I had of walking out of the movie theater satisfied.

Less is more, and this movie might very well have been made to prove that. It strips away the distracting factors and the unnecessary expositions to expose the source code, the hidden core of what brings us to the movies and draws us in. Sure, there are slips in this from time to time, but they're not nearly frequent enough to stop you from seeing that Pixar can goddamned well get you to care for a dirty metal box than most studios can get you to care for a sexually abused orphan infant with AIDS.

Pixar has my faith, and has had it since I sat down to see a movie with a premise that I thought was absolutely dull. I respected them after Toy Story 2, but after Finding Nemo, I saw that no matter how the story initially strikes me, they can breathe life into it and make me care, and I grew some faith. Wall-E repaid me for that faith in spades, and if Pixar ever truly lets me down, I will be crushed. Just like I was crushed when I walked out on The Wild after ten minutes, and was still, for some reason, thinking Pixar was behind it. Good thing I took a closer look at the poster when I got outside.

I tell you, I just about lost it at "activating security camera."

And for those of you who are going to see the movie soon, I offer this advice: Watch for mice. Don't be afraid to giggle your ass off.

Now, if The Dark Knight is as good as the first one, my summer will be complete already.


Well, it would help if I could get more done on the second book. I'm 250 pages into it, which, by the first one's standards, is about halfway into it, and though I don't like the proportion's match to where the plot stands right now, that's probably pretty accurate. I'd like some feedback on it, be even my old fan club has been too busy for the past six months to do any reading on it. Damn it, I gave them the super-secret chapter they demanded, and this is how they repay me? I will murder them all. "They" just being Jen and Jenna, this is not going to be a long murder spree.