1) My goodness, we've had so many place-holding clip jobs around here lately, it's been a while since we've had a good old fashioned place-holding Random Thoughts post. So watch out, since these things tend to lead to Star Wars references.
2) The flooding around here seems to have stopped short of the all-out disaster we feared, though the many, many people left homeless would certainly dispute that. Elsewhere in the state, cities were absolutely devastated, and we'll all likely be holding our breath around here everytime it rains. And this seems to be a summer of rain.
3) Paul informed me sometime ago that I'd be taking him to The Incredible Hulk as soon as it opened, so we saw it Friday night, flood waters be damned. The surprising thing is, it's not soul-crushingly awful.
That's not to say it's, you know, good. Edward Norton tries to rise above this sort of thing and fails, Tim Roth is weirdly miscast as some kind of super soldier, leaving only William Hurt to get into the proper spirit of the piece. It's kind of dull but watchable, and at least the action scenes are cleanly staged. The CGI is sometimes laughably bad, and the whole thing turns into a remake of War Of The Gargantuas, but Paul loved it, as I no doubt would have when I was eight. When a coda shamelessly sets up an upcoming spin-off, he was in Heaven: "Iron Man and Hulk will be in the same movie? We're going!"
4) Before the movie, we sat through a full half-hour of commercials and previews. One of the ads was a Verizon spot, directed by Spike Lee--is there anything he won't do these days?--and featuring Timbaland. Paul confused him with Justin Timberlake, and we started an Abbott and Costello-style "Timbaland/Timberlake" routine, unfortunately interrupted when his attention wandered to the next commercial. Still, I was amused, even though the people sitting in front of us were probably annoyed.
5) People who dislike the Star Wars prequels dislike the fact that George Lucas felt the need to tie everyone and everything together, no matter how improbably. So, they fume, it's one thing to show Wookies as part of the bigger rebellion against the Empire, it's quite another to specifically haul Chewbacca himself into this thing, to the point of establishing he's an old pal of Yoda's.
Me, I don't have a problem with that, except: How then did Chewie, an apparent hero of the rebellion, wind up hanging with a two-bit smuggler like Han Solo. Did he become disillusioned with the rebellion, or did heat from above force him to go off the grid? And is it a good idea to give a minor character a more interesting backstory than your protagonists?
6) I warned you about the Star Wars thing. At least I wasn't going on about Vincente Minnelli. Remember, I'm never more than five minutes away from bringing up The Pirate.
7) The Yankees are adopting a new motto for the rest of the season: "We suck marginally less than we did previously." I'm sure it will catch on.
8) The reaction to the death of resolutely mediocre journalist Tim Russert shows everything wrong with politics and the people who cover it: Russert is held up as some sort of paragon of excellence, when in fact he consistently towed the line of conventional wisdom, never questioning, for example, the Bushinista's rationale for war until, of course, the tide of public opinion turned. I'm sure he was a nice guy, or as nice as somebody who lives and breathes politics can be, but he was very much a part of the power structure, which would not, in any rational world, be a reporter's job. But hey, he had a cameo on that one episode of Homicide, so he gets a pass...
9) I brushed Monika thoroughly Saturday night, and when I woke up, her fur had inexplicably fluffed out, making her look like a chinchilla. Not a big deal, really, but too darned adorable to not mention.
