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Jun. 28th, 2007 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
molly_oLast week we were in Ocean City, and our Internet access was spotty at best. It was a *great* trip -- the weather and waves were ideal, and our hotel was well-appointed and close to the beach, with a 7-11 right across the street.
While in the OC we met up with one of Mark's college friends and her wife for drinks. The bartender was apparently pouring with a VERY generous hand, because after two drinks I was *trashed*. How trashed was I? So trashed that when Anne & Patty recommended a local restaurant, I wrote in on my hand as "fisherma'ns wharf." And then I stopped and said, "Wow, look at this! I'm so drunk I put the apostrophe in the wrong place!" A & P smiled like they were humoring the drunk lady, and Mark patted me on the shoulder and said, "Sweetheart, they aren't editors, they don't care about that."
In other Ocean City news, there are NO bookstores in Ocean City -- NOT ONE -- but there are two Hallmark stores with "News Centers" than includes many shelves of books and an extensive magazine selection. (Including *pr0n*. In a Hallmark store. Which kinda blew my mind.)
Fantastic Four: The Silver Surfer was very, very cool, I'll admit that right up front. But what the heck did they do to Sue Storm? First, Jessica Alba looks like crap -- her tan is too dark and her hair is too bleached and her clothes don't fit quite right, she looks cheap and tawdry. It takes a significant, concerted effort to make Jessica Alba look cheap and tawdry, but I suppose it might make sense if she were playing a cheap and tawdry character. But Sue Storm is neither, so I can only wonder, WTF?
Then there's the lobotomy Sue apparently had between the two films -- in the first one she was a brilliant scientist, here's she's wedding-obsessed. I know weddings IRL can make people crazy, but it was so disappointing to see Sue being *ditzy*.
And I like Julian McMahon a lot, but they really haven't figured out how to use Victor sensibly, IMHO. Oh, and don't even get me started on the one-dimensional representation of the military (though I will say Andre Braugher brings gravitas and a certain nobility to a callow role). At least they had the grace to make the scary torture man a civilian.
Knocked Up: You know how a lot of movies put all the best jokes in the previews? Knocked Up did not do that at ALL. It was so, so funny, from start to finish. Mark and I have overlapping but by no means identical senses of humor -- he *loved* Kangaroo Jack, I … didn't. But some films -- Little Miss Sunshine, Shaun of the Dead -- manage to work for both of us, and Knocked Up was one of those. You can see how these characters aren't quite right for each other, but you still really like both of them. It sags a bit in the third act, as they say, but rallies at the end. Oh, and Paul Rudd is particularly funny. There's a great scene where he and Seth Rogan go on an extended "Back to the Future" riff, and their respective partners TOTALLY miss all the allusions, and the guys are cracking up and the women at first are just kinda like, "huh?" But as the guys keep it going and laugh harder, the women start to resent the joke that they aren't in on. It's a beautifully done scene.
Ally by Karen Traviss: I like this series, and I think I like where it's going (which is not where I would've guessed a couple books ago). Some of the characters make choices that confound me, but then life is like that.
Blue Screen by Robert Parker: I hadn't read any Parker before this -- I never even watched "Spenser for Hire" -- but somehow I managed to come to the beach without any reading matter at all, no sudoku or crossword books, *nothing*. So I found this at the 7-11 down the street. It was OK, but I found the main character's voice fairly unconvincing, and the editing was pretty sloppy. (On one, the protagonist finds out person A slept with person B and finds it sorta creepy but continues the conversation; 80 pages later the protagonist learns through another source that person A slept with person B and reacts with a stunned, "Person B?" and "struggles to make sense of anyone sleeping with person B." You've had almost 80 pages to come to terms with it, you should be able to maintain your composure. Or wait -- maybe the author *forgot* you already knew about that. (In which case, I have to wonder where the author's editor was.)
Other cool things:
this Old Spice ad featuring Bruce Campbell singing "Hungry Like the Wolf"
Environmental measures can *work*. Back in 1963, there were only 417 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the U.S.; 44 years later there are just under 10,000. Banning DDT and placing eagles on the endangered species list brought them back from the brink of extinction.
While in the OC we met up with one of Mark's college friends and her wife for drinks. The bartender was apparently pouring with a VERY generous hand, because after two drinks I was *trashed*. How trashed was I? So trashed that when Anne & Patty recommended a local restaurant, I wrote in on my hand as "fisherma'ns wharf." And then I stopped and said, "Wow, look at this! I'm so drunk I put the apostrophe in the wrong place!" A & P smiled like they were humoring the drunk lady, and Mark patted me on the shoulder and said, "Sweetheart, they aren't editors, they don't care about that."
In other Ocean City news, there are NO bookstores in Ocean City -- NOT ONE -- but there are two Hallmark stores with "News Centers" than includes many shelves of books and an extensive magazine selection. (Including *pr0n*. In a Hallmark store. Which kinda blew my mind.)
Fantastic Four: The Silver Surfer was very, very cool, I'll admit that right up front. But what the heck did they do to Sue Storm? First, Jessica Alba looks like crap -- her tan is too dark and her hair is too bleached and her clothes don't fit quite right, she looks cheap and tawdry. It takes a significant, concerted effort to make Jessica Alba look cheap and tawdry, but I suppose it might make sense if she were playing a cheap and tawdry character. But Sue Storm is neither, so I can only wonder, WTF?
Then there's the lobotomy Sue apparently had between the two films -- in the first one she was a brilliant scientist, here's she's wedding-obsessed. I know weddings IRL can make people crazy, but it was so disappointing to see Sue being *ditzy*.
And I like Julian McMahon a lot, but they really haven't figured out how to use Victor sensibly, IMHO. Oh, and don't even get me started on the one-dimensional representation of the military (though I will say Andre Braugher brings gravitas and a certain nobility to a callow role). At least they had the grace to make the scary torture man a civilian.
Knocked Up: You know how a lot of movies put all the best jokes in the previews? Knocked Up did not do that at ALL. It was so, so funny, from start to finish. Mark and I have overlapping but by no means identical senses of humor -- he *loved* Kangaroo Jack, I … didn't. But some films -- Little Miss Sunshine, Shaun of the Dead -- manage to work for both of us, and Knocked Up was one of those. You can see how these characters aren't quite right for each other, but you still really like both of them. It sags a bit in the third act, as they say, but rallies at the end. Oh, and Paul Rudd is particularly funny. There's a great scene where he and Seth Rogan go on an extended "Back to the Future" riff, and their respective partners TOTALLY miss all the allusions, and the guys are cracking up and the women at first are just kinda like, "huh?" But as the guys keep it going and laugh harder, the women start to resent the joke that they aren't in on. It's a beautifully done scene.
Ally by Karen Traviss: I like this series, and I think I like where it's going (which is not where I would've guessed a couple books ago). Some of the characters make choices that confound me, but then life is like that.
Blue Screen by Robert Parker: I hadn't read any Parker before this -- I never even watched "Spenser for Hire" -- but somehow I managed to come to the beach without any reading matter at all, no sudoku or crossword books, *nothing*. So I found this at the 7-11 down the street. It was OK, but I found the main character's voice fairly unconvincing, and the editing was pretty sloppy. (On one, the protagonist finds out person A slept with person B and finds it sorta creepy but continues the conversation; 80 pages later the protagonist learns through another source that person A slept with person B and reacts with a stunned, "Person B?" and "struggles to make sense of anyone sleeping with person B." You've had almost 80 pages to come to terms with it, you should be able to maintain your composure. Or wait -- maybe the author *forgot* you already knew about that. (In which case, I have to wonder where the author's editor was.)
Other cool things:
this Old Spice ad featuring Bruce Campbell singing "Hungry Like the Wolf"
Environmental measures can *work*. Back in 1963, there were only 417 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the U.S.; 44 years later there are just under 10,000. Banning DDT and placing eagles on the endangered species list brought them back from the brink of extinction.