May 30, 2013

This morning I watched Shooter. Still a great movie. Then I watched Iron Sky. Wow. The concept of the movie is that way back in 1945 the Nazis left Earth and colonized the Moon. America makes another moon landing mostly as a publicity stunt to get the President re-elected (who happens to be a Sarah Palin look-alike). To add the the publicity, one of the astronauts is actually a black male model, who is a verging-on-offense black stereotype. The Nazis then bleach him white and send him back to Earth with the next-in-line Fuhrer and a school teacher to kick off the Nazi invasion of Earth. There is also the main Nazi scientist who looks like Albert Einstein. The only funny part was in the room with all the world leaders after the invasion has started and the representative from North Korea tries to confess and take credit for the space ships, saying his divine leader designed and build them himself, and all the other leaders just laugh at him. Overall, it was a really bad movie but it had some good music, had some interesting societal commentary toward the end, and it had surprisingly high production value.

My new Nexus 7 arrived today and the back of the case creaks a tiny bit in one spot the screen is solid so I am going to keep it. The officially branded case I got is pretty much a piece of crap. I paid $20 for it and I would say at most it is worth $5. So I will be sending that back. I think instead I'll get a case just for the back of the tablet and then get a sleeve to put it in. I really like the keyboard though. It is much bigger but still compact and has a cover that can also be used as a stand. So I can probably send back the stand I got.

I also got a couple cheap screen protectors which are always a crap-shoot. The first one was a complete botch. I started in the kitchen but there was way too much random fuzz floating around that I couldn't keep the screen clean so I moved to my room. It was still a challenge but I managed to get the first screen down perfectly without anything between it and the screen. And then when I went to pull the top protective layer off, the screen protector came off with it and then fuzz got on it so I couldn't use it. I think the cheap screen protector companies know this is going to happen because they always ship with two. With a lot of work I was able to get the screen clean again and got the second protector on, almost as good as the first, and it seems to be doing the job. We'll see how it holds up.

I watched Blood: The Last Vampire, which also has an anime that I plan on watching. The main girl is a half-vampire that has been alive for a long time, killing demons, and her ultimate goal is to kill the main demon because that demon killed her father. The fight scenes were well done until the demons in demon form were brought in. They definitely didn't leave much money in their budget for that CGI. But overall it was a good movie.

My favorite movie of the day was Monsters. I can't quite remember the beginning but I think evidence of extraterrestrial life was found somewhere and we collected it but the ship carrying it burned up on entry, spreading the samples on Earth (at least in Mexico). A journalist is tasked with getting the daughter of the owner of the company he works for, safely back to the United States. Originally by ferry but they end up having to go through the infected zone. For most of the movie you only see evidence of the monsters or little glimpses here and there. And that makes the movie so much better. It builds the mystery and anticipation so they are that much cooler when you finally see them. And the movie isn't necessarily about the monsters, they are more of a backdrop. There is also some metaphor in there. I really enjoyed it. It kind of reminded me a bit of District 9 and whatever that movie was where the giant alien was attacking New York and the young people were filming it on a handheld camera.

Tonight I started a marathon, watching Mission: Impossible and MI:2. Tom Cruise looked like a baby in Mission: Impossible, he was so young. I had also forgotten that Emilio Esteves was briefly in the movie. Even though the movie is pretty old now it wasn't too bad. The mask reveal still looks very convincing. And watching movie reminded me of all the time I spent playing the N64 game with my cousin.

MI:2 has held up a bit better. The mask reveals are impeccable, as is Tom Cruise's long hair. And the action is pretty freaking good. I always remember the motorcycle stuff near the end. And the mountain climbing in the beginning. Which fits with the fact that people tend to remember the beginning and end of things much better than they remember the middle bits.

Tonight I nearly had a visit with the new volunteer kid but I was too quick to call it off. I called the foster dad but the kid wasn't home so he was going to give him a call and then call me back. In the between time it got kind of dark outside and there was a bunch of lightening and the wind picked up. I thought it was going to get worse so when the foster dad called back I told him I was going to stay home because I didn't want to get stuck out on the highway or interstate in the middle of a storm. And then less than thirty minutes later the weather completely cleared up. Great timing. So that is now two weeks in a row without a visit. I am feeling like a crappy volunteer, even though last week was the kid's decision. Definitely need to make it up next week.

I did have a good hour and a half phone conversation with my friend tonight. I was just thinking about getting ahold of him because it has been at least a couple of weeks since I had heard from him. Our conversation started with relationship stuff and then went into his expensive catfish (which came out to around $22 a pound because of all the things that broke trying to get to the fishing spot) and we ended on some of the movies I had watched today. I really need to talk to my friends more often because I miss having conversations with people. I most certainly won't get any of that at work this summer which is where I will be spending a lot of my time, so I will need to make an effort to keep in contact with people. Texting just doesn't live up to a real conversation with someone.