re: indy 4

Pretty good, but I'm here to give you my now customary "things that bugged me in an otherwise enjoyable product" list. Massive spoilers abound.

• Marion Ravenwood disappearing for five minutes in the jungle chase. She and Cate Blanchett found themselves on the the amphibious vehicle, staring each other down, and I thought there was going to be a chick fight, but instead it cuts to another part of the chase and Marion is gone from all cars for a couple minutes. Then, when the chase is nearly over, she's back driving the duckie. That annoyed me, but it's not exactly the first plot hole involving her in an Indy movie. Remember her "death" in Raiders? Switched baskets my ass. You can hear her screaming from inside the basket as they put it on the truck that immediately blows up. I hate it when movies have misdirection like that. Another example is when Will Smith sees Frank the mannequin in a new location in I Am Legend. When you first see Frank, his head clearly turns - making you think its a Zombie. Of course it's not a zombie, its Frank, you only thought it was a zombie because HIS DAMN HEAD TURNED 90 DEGREES. How presumptuous of me!
• I know all religions are real in the Indyverse (see the very effective voo doo doll and other clearly-working sorcery in Temple), but seeing the alien's - I'm sorry, "inter-dimensional being's" - head and the flying saucer was too much for me. Spielberg loves his aliens, but he really needed to keep it more ambiguous. It's not like we saw the ghost of Moses pop out of the Ark.
• The completely pointless street racing at the very beginning. I guess Spielberg was trying to set a 50's tone, but that tone would be set later on aplenty with the Greasers vs Socs rumble. Wouldn't it be better to show Indy first, so the movie is more "It's Indiana Jones... in 1957" and less "the 50's had Indy too." Does that makes sense? And what the hell were those kids doing in the middle of desert anyway? Area 51 isn't exactly just outta town.
  
• The Crystal Skulls as the movie MacGuffin. They're not a bad plot device (much better than the P.O.S. rock with three stripes on it in Temple), but was this really the best they could come up with in 20 years?
• The entire Mac character. Utterly and completely pointless. What did he bring to the movie? How did he advance the plot? Anything?
  
• Shia and the monkeys. I'm cool with the Mutt Williams character, but the whole swinging-through-the-jungles-with-monkeys was horrifically awful. It was silly but not funny, and there was no point to it.
  

Common complaints I'm actually OK with...

• "Indy is too old." This didn't bother me. Indy was born in 1899, so he'd be 58 in 1957, and and it's not like it's impossible to be athletic at that age. Plus, he drank from the Cup of Christ, that's gotta have some nice after-effects, going past the seal or not.
• "Marion looks so old." Jeebus man, she's a woman in her 50's, what do you expect.
• "A nuke, really?" I feel like this should be a major Jump-the-Shark moment, but I'm strangely OK with it. I mean, Indiana Jones survived a nuke. How cool is that.

And what the hell, things I really liked.

• Opening action sequence in the warehouse. Except the "damn, I thought that'd be closer" line.
• Seeing the Janitor from Scrubs as a 50's spook.
  
• Mutt and Indy on the bike action sequence. Except the very end, where the student asks Indy a question like he'd didn't just do a controlled slide in a motorcycle through half the library.
• Marcus Brody's statute.
  
• The jungle chase scene in general. Except Marion disappearing and the monkeys, as noted already.
• "Henry... Jones... Juniah."
  

All-in-all, a good movie. Raiders and Crusades are still miles better, but I actually put this one ahead of Temple, which I've never really liked.

re: the first harry potter book

Yes, it was very good, but you have everyone else on the planet to tell you that. So in an effort that will surely only amuse myself, I'm going to list the little things that annoyed me.

• The House Cup. I don't like the point system. We have Professors who are the head of Houses but also dish out / take away points? That's like the managers in a boxing match also being the judges. And the amount of points taken or given is completely arbitrary: 10 point for this, 5 points for that, then 450 point bombs for other things. What gives? You need more structure for this to be a fair competition.
  
• Quidditch. I like the basic "flying lacrosse" style, but I really don't like the scoring system. Ten points for scoring a goal, but 160 points AND game-over for catching the snitch? That makes goal-scoring pointless. Almost all energy should be devoted to catching the snitch and harassing the other team's seeker. A more interesting system would be if catching the snitch rewarded no points, but would still end the game. Then we'd have the seekers go back and forth between trying to catch it and trying to stop the other team from catching it as the lead changed.
• Draco Malfoy. I hope more is in store for this character, maybe a redemption storyline. From what I've seen in the movies, all he does is talk trash and then get punched in the face. Boring.
• Why are Wizarding families completely dense to Muggle culture? Like Ron's "what's basketball?" comment. Come on, man. We're not the ones living in secret.
• I find it highly amusing that Wizards think of Muggles as complete fools while we're the ones with more efficient communication. I'll take a phone over a damn owl any day.
• "Muggle," by the way, is pretty much the N-word if you look at the context it's used.
• Is there no such thing as tort liability in Wizard law? Think about the danger these kids are constantly put in. Flying around hundreds of feet in the air without so much as a safety belt. Hunting an unknown, dangerous creature in the forbidden forest as punishment. You can find safer schools in inner-city Baltimore.
• This isn't Rowling's fault, but the Americanization of the text really got on my nerves. The two worst examples are references to "soccer" and a banner reading "Potter for President." How dumb do these UK editors think we are? Not to mention they changed the damn title of the first book. It's a miracle they didn't refer to the Dursley's Christmas gift to Harry as a "quarter" instead of a pence piece.
• Speaking of which, how did the Dursley's get the address to Hogwarts, anyway? Or did they just write "Harry Potter, Hogwarts" on the envelope and find the nearest owl?
• Why does everyone's name begin with an "H?" By God, this annoyed me. Harry. Hagrid. Hedwig. Hogwarts. Hermione. Hufflepuff. Enough, already!

But like I said, a very good book. :-P

damn you rules of professional responsibility

So I had this fun story written up about how during settlement negotiations the opposing counsel dropped a bomb on us, evidence that made it impossible for us to win in a hearing. It was glorious.

BUT- then I realized it's ethically sketchy to tell even a name-less client story over The Internets. Anyway, that's what I'm up to now-a-days. Suing people and stuff.

Oh, and I started reading the first Harry Potter book on Monday and I'm almost done with it. Hey, its the first time I've had a chance for leisurely reading in what, six years?

dear nba schedule makers

Why is there a three-day break between games 6 and 7 of the Spurs-Hornets series but only a one-day break between that game 7 and game 1 of the Western Conference Finals?

attack of the zombie fish

Please believe what I'm about to tell you. It's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Yesterday, a two-to-three foot dead catfish had washed up against our rocks and was stinking up the back yard. I dig a foot-deep hole and bury it, fully expecting that to be the end of it. How presumptuous of me.

This morning I'm looking out on our backyard and see something I at first thought was a piece of wood about six feet from the grave. Upon closer inspection, and I'm sure you can see where this is going by now, it was the dead fish, risen up from its grave. It's white skin had rotted to brown and green flies were swirling all over it. It's back fin and eyes were gone, but other than that and the skin it was unchanged (as in, not eaten into).

My mind searched for an answer not involving zombies. Can ants dig up and carry for six feet a three-foot long fish? Don't think so. They'd just eat it right up. What about a dog, it could have dug it up? Yes, but we don't have a dog, and our neighbor's dogs should be kept out of yard by a invisible fence and a real fence, respectively. Moreso, the dug-up grave didn't have any paw prints or scratch marks; it would just dirt tossed every which way.

So what happened? Anyone?

the dawn of a new age

the reign of dial-up at the gooden estate is over.

may the reign of teaching my family how to use wireless signals and internet explorer begin!

i submit to chris paul's will

God help us all.

10pm tonight: deacon fans' dream/nightmare matchup

I will of course be pulling for the Spurs, as they've been my team since the moment they drafted Timmy, but I'm not exactly looking forward to rooting against CP3.