Random Thoughts

Here’s the first Get Smart movie trailer in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Not really a lot to form an impression with, but it still looks promising. I’m warming to the idea of Anne Hathaway as #99. She and Steve Carrell were on the Academy Awards tonight, and Steve Carrell was his normal silly self, but Anne Hathaway was more than sufficiently pretty and seemed comfortable and confident and held her own with Steve very well. So a nice little bit of chemistry there.

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There Will Be Blood
Movie Review

Okay, let me point out before I review this movie that on the Internet Movie Database There Will Be Blood was rated 8.8 out of 10 by 25,000 voters.

(The Internet Movie Database if you didn’t know is the best place, bar none, to get movie information, cast, running time, theater showtimes, trailers, reviews, spoilers, etc.)

Let me also point out that, if that weren’t impressive enough, the movie has also been nominated for eight Oscars.

Now having said that.

Whoa my heavens did this movie suck.

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Typical Random Thoughts in My Brain
Just After a Sudden Conversation
with Almost Anyone I Don’t Know Well,
In Lieu of Just Working Normally

1. What, chemically, is going on in my brain that makes a simple conversation a big deal?
      
2. Why does my brain consider me having a conversation to be a performance?
     
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Helpful Messages My Brain Sends Me
During a Sudden Conversation
with Almost Anyone I Don’t Know Well,
Instead of Just Letting Me Have a Conversation

1. Are my eyes crossed?
     
2. Am I sweating? 
     
3. That was a stupid thing for me to say. 
     
4. What can I say next that might be fairly interesting rather than boring, so they won’t think talking to me was a waste of time?
     
5. I can’t think of anything to say.
     
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From chaper twelve of The High Window:

I got a shoulder holster out of the desk and strapped it on and slipped a Colt .38 automatic into it, put on hat and coat, shut the windows again, put the whiskey away, clicked the lights off and had the office door unlatched when the phone rang.

The ringing bell had a sinister sound, for no reason of itself, but because of the ears to which it rang.  I stood there braced and tense, lips tightly drawn back in a half grin.  Beyond the closed window the neon lights glowed.  The dead air didn’t move.  Outside the corridor was still.  The bell rang in darkness, steady and strong.

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Hey. Guess what. It’s American Idol time again.

Whee

You’ve heard of football widows.  I am an American Idol widower.  And I don’t even care about football, so it’s not like football season evens it out.  Super Bowl?  Yawn.  So it’s doubly tragic for me that I’m subjected to this show. 

Here is why American Idol sucks.

1. Ryan Seacrest.  I hate this guy.  What does he add to the show?  He’s nothing more than a smug arrogant little prettyboy.  With that annoying, flawless, pearly white, and completely insincere smile.  Which he switches on and off like a lightswitch, have you noticed that?  He smiles with his mouth only.  His eyes are completely uninvolved with any smile his mouth produces, because all his smiles are fake—-solely for the benefit of producing the occasional gleam under studio lighting.  The smile gives the illusion of confidence, from the nose down, but when you look above the nose he just comes off as insincere, with a sort of, I dunno, deer-in-headights quality. 
      
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