…along came today.

I have a secret.  Since moving to Topeka, I haven’t actually had access to internet in my home environment.  It’s true.  No computer.  That changed last week.  I was able to procure a computer and get myself some sweet web action started.  Great?  Yes!  Of course.  Now here is the trick.  There is always a trick.  My computer is a tad ancient.  She has a few issues.  1) She is missing some bits and pieces that I need for memory.  2)  She is running on Windows 98.  Yep.   The “I’m so close to being obsolete, it isn’t even funny” Windows 98.   There are a handful of browsers that W98 doesn’t support.  Like Yahoo mail or Facebook or WordPress.  So there is that.  I am grateful for the computer and the different sites I can actually chill upon.  I have tech-nerds looking into making improvements if that is even possible.  The worst case scenario is that I take what I can get until I can save up for something nicer.  I should probably do that anyway.

                                                In other news….

I finally watched the first season of Fringe.  I liked it.  A lot.  It’s a sort of combo of The X-Files and Alias.  Hopefully it will be less like Alias.  Here is what I like.  They have MAD SCIENTISTS running amuck.  You don’t see that very often anymore.  Also- John Noble as the reigning good(?) mad scientist is great.  Great great performance.  Everyone I can leave or take, but he is really good.

And I finally made myself watch the first season of Entourage.  I liked it.  I liked it for how it details the biz.  What it means to be a movie star on the rise or fall.  What it takes to make a movie.  The pressures to do a good movie versus a sure thing.  I would still say that I don’t really care about the characters.

OK, so here is what I have been watching lately.

THE HANGOVER- Loved it!  I refuse to judge myself for indulging in lowbrow antics from time to time.  I have to let the little boy or the wonky teenager take over from time to time or I end up fading away.  People told me this was a funny movie and wrong on so many different levels.  I had a “blah” feeling about it.  But I went against my instincts and really enjoyed it.  I laughed for almost two hours straight.  I am a huge Galifinakis fan.  I really hope this is the moment where he starts getting recognition for his genius.  Yes, I am pretentious enough to call him a genius.  The one criticism I have is Mike Tyson.  Wow.  He is bad.  He plays himself and he is terrible at it.  The man has been punched in the head about a hundred times to many.

REAPER- Liked it a lot.  This was another one of those things that just didn’t look great to me.  But it was actually a pretty good show.  Clever.  Good performances, especially Ray Wise (Leland Palmer) as the Devil.  And it looked like they were setting up a cool mythology to the show.  Unfortunately, low numbers and a semi-controversial plot led to assholes canceling it. 

DRAG ME TO HELL- Liked it.  All I can say is it kind of scared the shit out of me.  That is all I can ask.

GI JOE- Big fat turd in a bowl.  Here is the thing.  I paid two dollars to see it.  I could have taken two dollars, set them on fire, and that would have been a more financially responsible decision.  Bad writing.  Bad acting.  I watched GI Joe when I was a wee lad.  The people who made this movie, took that lad and beat the shit of him.  Bummer.

Yeah, yeah.  I know I haven’t been in blog mode for well over a couple of months.  Not a lot of life changing items in my basket right now.  Still working.  Still just floating through life.  Only a few noteworthy mentionables.

I went to my family reunion in July.  It was awesome.  It was in a place called (and I am not making this up) Flippin, Arkansas.  Yeah.  Flippin is located in a little pocket of the world where you half expect hillbillys to jump out a make you squeal like a pig.  We affectionately renamed it Rapin’, Arkansas.  There were confederate flags on fences.  Toilets next to mailboxes.  And not a tooth to be found in miles.  But once you get past the butt-clenchingly scary part, everything kind of unfolds into a beautiful campsite on the (again, not making this up) White River.  My mother was one of five children born to Gene and Shirley Reeves.  Four girls and one boy.  The boy, Uncle Rick, and his family were the only ones not represented there.  I guess we have always been a high drama family.  I don’t know that any of them would call their childhood, happy.  And some of that leaked out on to us, the cousins.  Our parents did what they could  to not repeat history with us, but the ghosts were always there, haunting our houses, rattling chains, making the world just a little smaller for us.  But none of that mattered over the Fourth of July. 

Same old at work.  I have finally committed to a regular schedule.  It’s nice.  We still have a problem child in 0ur department.  I have pretty much given up on our powers that be to deal with her.  She is pretty much untouchable.  It has now moved into the conspiracy phase.  I think she may have compromising photos of someone in administration with some kind of farm animal.  Sadness.

I will try to get back to being blogtastic on a regular basis.  I have a few irons in the fire that may eventually be worth mentioning.

I like television.  A lot.  I grew up on it.  It was my parents’ cheap babysitter.  I can’t seem to unhook myself from it, and I’m not particularly interested in doing so.  However, I have turned my back on watching shows as they come on.  I cancelled my cable and never bothered to get a digital converter.  So now all my episodic joy comes from renting an entire season and bulldozing through it.  Here is what I’ve been watching recently.

THE SHIELD – Holy shit.  Where has this show been my entire life?  It is brutal!  Time flies.  Seasons change.  Children grow.  And there I sit, unable to not watch the show.  Maybe it’s a depressing statement about me, but there is something extremely satisfying about a show where ever single character lives in the gray areas.  Brilliant.

DEXTER -I’ve tried getting into the show several times.  I can see why people like it.  It has a peculiar clever quality.  I just can’t attach myself to it.  It’s a middle of the road show disguised as something more.  It’s not honest enough to be serious and not odd enough to be unique.  I’m not saying it’s bad in any way.  It’s all that and no bag of chips.  What I do really like about it is the locations.  It really takes advantage of the South Florida locale.  It makes me truly miss the Florida life.  There is just so much sky and ocean.  It consumes you.  I think, down deep, the reason coasterly Floridians live their lives in such hustle and bustle is because they may be swallowed up by the great blue all-ness at any given moment.

THAT 70’s SHOW- It’s strange.  I loved this show.  I was in my early to mid-twenties when this show was in it’s first few years.  The stoner humor and naughty situations appeased my juvenile tendencies.  Eventually I moved on to different things.  More mature things.  Lately, when I’ve thought about the show, I figured it probably wasn’t nearly as good as I remember it.  That would wrong.  It is REALLY funny.  Everybody contributes their own comedic spice to the pot.  It makes me sad for the state of sitcoms today.

So it’s been a while.  Just got swept up in life a little bit and forgot all about blogville. 

Well some temporary good news with my car situation.  The mechanics have patched a few things up and gave her back to me.  Free of charge.  (General fanfare)  There are still some problems.  I think my transmission might be a bit janked up.  It could be as little as a bad hose or as much as a bad everything else.  I can’t afford to heal it completely right now.  I’ve been getting the little things fixed, hoping that that will stave off the big things for a while.  That seems to be how I deal with most of my life troubles. 

                                                  SHAWN’S SUPER-COOL MOVIE REVIEWS

WATCHMEN- I have actually seen this twice.  I didn’t set out to see it twice.  It just happened that way.  There was a lot I liked about it.  Most of the characterizations were just what they needed to be.  In particular, Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl and Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach were very good.  To be honest, I am not entirely sure how I felt about it.  I walked out both times not feeling disappointed or excited.  The one criticism I can make is that it is irrelevant.  When the GN came out in 1986, it’s inner issues mattered in reality.  The Cold War was a scary constant.  We were still smarting from Vietnam.  For the Haves, it was nonstop party.  But for the rest of us, the Doomsday clock was at five minutes to midnight.  In the middle of this, Watchmen mattered.  I am sure correlations can be made between then and now, but they didn’t do that.  Otherwise a good movie.

WOLVERINE- Pretty good.  Good for what it was.  They didn’t stray a million miles from the original origin story.  Maybe a thousand miles, but close enough.  They hit all the right notes with the action and comedy.  And Jackman really has a good handle on Logan.  I didn’t like what they did with Deadpool, but that’s just me.

STAR TREK- Awesome.  Just awesome.  I can see why some purists are hating on this movie, but I don’t even care.  I hope this is officially a franchise reborn. 

ANGELS & DEMONS- Pretty good.  Certainly not life changing.  Better than DaVinci Code.  They had to change a lot.  I can see why.  Dan Brown is great at twirling history and culture into an engaging premise, but he’s a hack at everything else.  I can’t really figure out why the Catholic are so uptight about the flick.  They aren’t really portrayed as particularly villainous.  I mean, their past mistakes are displayed on the table for all to see.  If they can’t cop to those mistakes by now, they deserve the bad publicity.

It is possible that, by the end of today, my car may be out of my life.  Let me explain.  I have been having issues with my Intrepid for the better part of 8 months.  It overheats.  And then it gets a little smokey in the engine area.  Not good.  I have spent a lot of money trying to nurse it back to health.  Last Thursday, around midnight, she boiled over.  My temperature gage light came on.  I stopped the car and I could hear bubbling in front of me.  Lame.  I had to abandon the car in a Dillons and take a taxi across town, home.  The next day I went back, got the car and drove it across town and dropped it off at the dealer’s shop just in time for it to start boiling over again.  They have had it since then.  It could be bad.  It could be more expensive than it’s worth.  The dealership told me they would give me a good deal on trading down for something better.  I’m torn about this.  I would love a new car, but I’m not looking forward to making payments.  I should know after work.

Friday morning I woke up and looked in the mirror.  Then I grabbed an electric razor and shaved off all my hair.  Yep.  Why?  Total boredom.  Or maybe I just needed it to change.  It doesn’t look so great.  I kind of have a white supremacist thing happening.  I’m not thrilled about that, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.  In a couple weeks, I will start looking less Third Reich-y and more like I intended.  It did manage to suprise me.  It didn’t accentuate the slow bald that is creeping up on me like I thought it would.  On the other hand, it did bring out the some gray hair that was inevitable.

I thought my mother was moving to Salina this summer.  That would have made me very happy.  She is not.  She is moving to Arkansas.  I’m not sure why she made that decision, but I don’t think it was a good one.

I have officially lost 10 pounds.  Yea for me.  That happened in two weeks.  I am now at the end of week three which means I haven’t lost anything in a week.  That makes me think that I am doing something wrong, however, I also feel hungry and cranky which means I am probably doing it right and I just need patience.  Le’ sigh.

I have heard no less than three times in the last week that I need to rent the movie “Bolt.”  You know, the John Travolta dog cartoon?  Here is the thing to know about me.  First- I am a 34 year old dude with no wife or kids.  Family fare is just not my thing.  I will admit, WALL-E was one of the best movies that came out last year.  However, an animated movie that changes not just animated movies, but movies in general, is rare.  Very rare.  Second- And this is very important.  Let’s say I am looking at a movie poster.  And I am trying to decide if I want to see this movie based on what I see on the movie poster.  If, anywhere on this poster, it reads AND STARRING MILEY CYRUS, I am not going to see that movie.  Sorry, filmmakers.  It’s just not going to happen.

I know this is, maybe, an unfair prejudice on my part.  Maybe little miss Montana is a perfectly decent person with oodles of talent.  Though from what I have seen, that second part may be stretching it a bit.  I am, most likely, punishing her for the sins of her father.  I don’t want to be the guy who does that, but I figure I’m not really impacting her career or financial status either way.  But her father must be punished.  I will have my revenge.  For six months in 1991, there was only one song on the radio.  One… terrible… song.  One song that the world a lesser place to live in.  I know that bad music is a staple of popular culture.  Always has been.  But no one song has quite confounded me like that one.  And since it was a constant pressing force, I couldn’t just accept it and move on.  It devoured everything in it’s path.  And then, like everything eventually, it was mercifully gone.  And more crap came in.  But I have had an acky breaky hangover for almost 18 years.  Maybe forgiveness is the way to go.  Or maybe I need to let the younger Cyrus slide.  But I’m still not going to see the dog movie.

I made a decision a couple of weeks ago.  One that has been a long time coming.  I decided I AM  going to lose all the weight I need to and finally get healthy.  Since then, I haven’t had a bite of bread or sugar or cheese.  I eat lots of veggies and fruits.  Drink lots of water and tea.  I have also have worked my way into a minor daily exercise program.  Very minor, but it’s a work in progress.  I have been loyal to this promise for two full weeks.  And I have lost 8 pounds.  So I feel great and joyous and full of life right?  Nope.  I feel hungry.  I feel lethargic.  I feel cranky all the time.  I actually woke up last night thinking I smelled phantom chocolate.  I didn’t know if I was going through withdrawal or having a seizure.  I don’t want to be angry or whiny about this.  I sound like a spoiled child.  I’m having a hard time with it.  I could always rely on food to make things better.  French bread was my friend.  Milky Way candy bars were my friends.  Pizza, pop, cake- all life long friends.  But now I have to save my life.  And that means telling those friends to go to hell.

I think the hardest part of all this is that it’s one more thing that I have to pay for.  Anymore, for anything I really want or need, there is a high price.  Nothing is easy anymore.  There are no gift bags.  No presents under the tree.  I trade joy for health.  Time for money.  I just want it to be worth it.

Had he lived, my father would have been 67 today.  I’m not sure why that is important for me to know, but it is.

Easter- The day that Jesus came back, LL Cool J style, and gave all the world delicious eggs and chocolate bunnies as a way of saying, “No hard feelings for nailing me to some wood.”  OK, that is probably not the EXACT story of Easter, but cut me some slack.  I’m just trying to connect some dots that won’t connect.

We sort of spread Easter out over the week.  My mother came up from Georgia.  That was awesome.  I haven’t seen her and her little girls in almost a year.  We had a lot of fun hanging out.  And here is the best part.  She doesn’t want to live so far away.  She wants to be able to see her kids and her grandchild without having to drive across 27 states.  So she is thinking about moving to Salina.  Yeah.  My crazy, sexy hometown.  In a weird, circular way, it makes sense.  I moved to Salina with my father when I was 11.  Before that we lived in Arizona (twice), New Jersey, Colorado, New Mexico, and for 8 months in 2nd grade, Salina.  So when we were told we were going to visit our grandparents, Salina was the destination.  And now my sister has a little girl.  She is going to be able to tell her the same thing.  I am glad for myself too.  My family had just about died off in Salina.  I had no reason to go back.  Now I do.

As I don’t really have my own family to spend the day with, I spent Easter chilled out watching DVDs.  Here is what I watched.

ZACK AND MIRI…- I really kind of enjoyed this.  I’m not sure if Kevin Smith has ever been able to plumb the depths of any real serious human emotion or connection, but he tries really hard here.  And he succeeds here more than any other movie he has done.  And I think it’s really funny in the process.  I think the movie’s only real drawback is Seth Rogan.  I like Rogan, but he has done this kind of stuff for Apatow.  A lot.  It’s a little tired.  I really liked Jason Mewes in it.  I had concerns that he could break away from the Jay character he’s played for so long.  But he does it.  I’m not saying he is completely different.  But he’s more than adequate.  And he is really funny.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) – It feels strange to say this, but the only really good part of this movie is Keanu Reeves.  Hear me out.  Casting him as an alien is perfect.  He IS an alien.  Keanu Reeves is an alien.  There, I said it.  There has always been something a little off-human about him.  Like he is constantly trying to discover how to breathe, walk, talk.  He uses that in this movie.  I totally bought into him showing up in a spacecraft and trying to save the earth.  If anyone can do it, Keanu can.  Everything else in the movie was crap.

W – Hmm.  Not sure how I felt about it.  I don’t think it was very good.  I mean, it wasn’t bad, but it was too simple.  Stone really knows how to spoon feed the audience.  It doesn’t really paint Bush as a bad man.  Just a mediocre man.  A man who was under-qualified for everything he did in life.  Cheney and Powell are portrayed as the devil and angel on his shoulders.  A special acting note- Thandi Newton as Condi Rice.  I have no idea whether this was a really good performance or bad performance.  It was just such a strange portrayal.  So exaggerated.  You should see it for yourself and tell me.

TWILIGHT – This wasn’t as bas as I thought it was going to be.  Beautifully shot.  Lots of greens and grays and browns.  It reaffirms for me why the Pacific Northwest is the way to go.  Not all the broody vampires.  The scenery.  Again, I’m not so sure about the performances.  I suppose they got exactly what they were going for.  Everybody seemed distracted by something just right of the camera.  And the main girl looked like she was about to throw up the whole time.  Honestly, just watching them made me sleepy.