Friday, January 23, 2009

Local News; and Entertainment du jour

Holy crap, what's with all the major wrecks in the last 24 hours here? A deadly DUI rollover last night on the BA, then a semi-truck hitting a bridge at 1am closing down the entire eastbound lane of I-44 for 8+ hours, and now there's another rollover just reported on another in-town highway. Maybe the road itself is reacting to the announcements of indictments of persons involved with city public works yesterday and the unrelated but coincidentally timed audit of Tulsa Transit. Shakeups in the Road Industry Shake Up Cars and Trucks. Okay, nevermind, bad pun.

Unusual for me: I watched two movies yesterday. They were of greatly differing tones. "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" and "The Assassination of Jesse James." The first was packed with crude jokes, and was a bit slow and predictable and it was a chore to get through the beginning and middle, and it wasn't as laughter-inducing as I had originally hoped. But very late in the movie, after seeing him leave Dalia's salon in a chuckle-able crying scene, I was convinced to watch through to the end just to see how he would end up with the hot girl (as he obviously would), and I'm glad I did. Cameos by John McEnroe and George Takei were entertaining exercises in self-parody. It wasn't too terribly bad after all, and the tongue-in-cheek humorous treatment of Palestinian-Israeli foibles and stereotypes (on both sides) and their relationships was a fun theme running throughout.

The second movie was not at all the wild western I was expecting from the title. But its careful crafting of the story of the strange relationship between Robert Ford and Jesse James resulted in a fascinating movie. Today we would call that almost a stalker's fascination with a star. Maybe that's what the producer saw in the story (or the story writer himself - I haven't read the book) and decided to bring out. Casey Affleck nailed the role of creepy obsessed fan-boy with his red-rimmed eyes, hang-dog look, and disturbed flashes of a smile when speaking of or to the object of his fascination, Jesse James (Brad Pitt). The narrative style of presentation often left me feeling like I had missed something important and needed to pay closer attention. I still can't quite decide if I liked that treatment or found it annoying. Enjoyable drama. Somewhat strange. Melancholy ending. Just the way I like it.

Just found this webcomic. http://xkcd.com/409/ Yeah, I looked up geek humor on Wikipedia. Um. Yeah. Some are a little over my head. I linked to this one specifically because of the Calvin and Hobbes reference; I always liked C&H best when they'd be on some existential or philosophical ramble while playing and doing normal kid stuff in the woods or wilderness.

Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Battlestar Galactica - another new episode tonight! Aiiiiiigggghh! I'm excited.

Beef roast tonight. I'd kinda like to flavor it with something other than the usual salt, pepper and garlic. Hmm... Meh. No time to hunt for ideas. The only thing I know of right off the top of my head is red wine, but I don't have any at the moment. Stupid Oklahoma laws that they can't sell wine at the regular grocer. Oh well. Ye old standard it shall be. But I can do something different on the side like rice or something. Soup. Hm... Yeah, I can do that without having to search for recipes.

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