Dream Journal: June 15, 2010

This morning’s dream:

I dreamed that I was riding on my scooter, just about to get onto I-5 southbound at the MLK ramp, going somewhere south (although not as far as Portland, 170 miles), when something went wrong.  Snapped, broke, slipped, I don’t know.  But my motor revs went way down and I suddenly couldn’t sustain speeds over about 20 mph.  I limped home and had to give up on wherever I was going.

This was one of those “too close to home” dreams, since I rode past that exit on I-5 yesterday, going down to a site visit at an airport hotel (as a potential site for an upcoming event).  Also, last Friday, I took my scooter in for a checkup and was told that I need a new air filter, a new belt, new rollers, and a new back tire.  And thus I shouldn’t ride it long distances, which means I won’t be taking it on the trip to Portland this coming Saturday.  So I guess that stuff is weighing on my mind.
 

What Were They Thinking? — Mirror, Mirror, On the Bumper

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

On the way to work a couple weeks ago, I was following this Cadillac Escalade SUV.

Side-stepping the obvious question — “Who the heck puts a $3 bumper sticker on a $50,000 car?” — I looked closer.  (Oops, my error.  Checked out actual prices on this class of vehicle: $62,000–$75,000.  Yow!)

So now the question becomes “Who the heck puts a reverse image bumper sticker on the back bumper of a car?”

(Hint: Reverse image items are intended to be read in a mirror.  No one is going to see your back bumper in their mirror.  These are intended either for your front bumper — which is also a stupid place for them, since if someone is trying to read your bumper sticker while looking in that mirror, they are going to get in an accident [plus the front bumper isn’'t usually visible in a rear-view mirror anyway] — or the thing is supposed to go inside your back window or on your bedroom wall opposite your dresser, where you will see the devotional reminder in your own mirror and… well, I don’t know what you do then.  Feel good?  Read the Bible?  Watch Glee?)
 

Eggs Benedict

Doesn’t that look yummy?

It sure was.

And it turned out to be awfully easy.  I’ve tried a few egg-poaching gadgets over the years, but none have worked very well.  (Anyone ever try one of those microwave egg poachers?  What an explosive disaster that was!)  But I picked up a pair of poachpods a couple weeks ago and presto, they just work.  I can now make my own Eggs Benedict whenever I want.  (Okay, I’m using Hollandaise from a mix at this point.  I’ll tackle that for real someday soon.)

Which means now I get to experiment.  I’ve already done them with pepper bacon rather than Canadian bacon, but how about replacing the English muffins with artichoke bottoms like California Kitchen in San Mateo used to do, or pepper grits like Cape Fear Café in Duncan Mills did?  (Alas, the first of those is long gone, and Bennies are no longer on the menu of the second.)  How about spicing the inside of the poachpod, maybe with some chili sauce?  Mmm.

Oh yeah, the potatoes were easy, too.  Peel, season, fry in bacon grease, cover and let cook down while doing the Bennies, add catsup.  Nom nom nom.
 

Movie Review — Hamlet 2

I recently tripped across the big song from Hamlet 2 recently (working on this post), so I added it to my Netflix queue.

The movie is about a lousy high school drama teacher who is told that the drama department is being cut, so he decides to go out with a bang, producing a whacked-out controversial musical sequel to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, which results in rejection and near rioting.

In the post-Glee world, it is probably impossible to avoid comparisons between the TV show and this film.  So why fight it: Hamlet 2 is at least a thematic predecessor of Glee, if not an outright inspiration.  Recommended viewing for fans of Glee.

What I found most interesting about the film, though, was how my view of it changed slightly after watching the DVD extras.  On first glance, the movie appears to be in the “inspirational teacher” genre (Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dead Poet’s Society, etc.), but the filmmakers say that they hate those films; Hamlet 2 is really an “anti-inspirational teacher" film.

And when you think about it, that’s true.  Foremost, of course, is that the teacher is totally incompetent; although he has a lot of heart and passion, he has no idea what he is doing, and any success comes despite him rather than because of him.  Beyond that, most of the tropes of the “inspirational teacher” genre are all but missing: we never see the kids practice; we never see the kids fail and then improve; we never see the show going up against deadlines or almost failing to come off; they play with the teacher inspiring the low-life ethnic kid, but he turns out to the school’s best student; etc.  As you watch the film, you don’t quite realize that they are doing a drive-by on these tropes, flipping the bird as they go by rather than stopping to pick the trope up.  Kind of cool, in retrospect.

The other note of interest I found in the DVD extras is that the movie was filmed in Albuquerque rather than its setting of Tucson.  (Tucson told them no, based on how much they badmouth the city.  Go figure!)  And thus the “Tucson Gay Men’s Chorus” used in the film is apparently actually a gay men’s chorus from Albuquerque.  But I had that figured out (well, strongly suspected it) ahead of time, because I recognized one of the singers, a square dance caller I know from Albuquerque.  (Nice shirt, Bill.)  (Private joke.)  Alas, the singers are not credited in the film or on IMDB, neither as a group nor individually; Bill confirmed it for me via Facebook.
 

New Companion Blog: Sounds Kinky-er

I’ve recently created a second blog, one intended to house posts with sexual and other “adult” content.  It is called Sounds Kinky-er, and you can find it here:

http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com

Am I bowing to censorship demands here?  Am I making my blog over into something “family friendly”.  Um, no.  Look at the title of this blog: that isn’t going to change.  (In fact, no one has complained or commented on this.  It’s all my own decision.)

What I have found over the past year is that there are some sex-related and other edgy topics that I want to be able to write about, but which don’t fit comfortably next to posts about comic book movies and complaints about product design and thoughts about politics.  You could say that those don’t belong in the same blog as one another, too, but my real concern has been with someone visiting the blog via Facebook or Google, poking around, and getting a text-based eyeful of stuff that maybe wasn’t appropriate for them.

So I have found myself either jumping through hoops to making some content non-viewable (parts of my trip reports were colored to match the background, so you had to select the text to read what I wrote), and I have even refrained from writing about some topics.  Opening a new blog specifically intended for such topics — the new blog has a “This has adult content” front page warning for any visitor, which is enough to quell my concerns — will in theory free me to write on those subjects with more freedom and with less second-guessing of my content and word choices.

(But the new blog is not going to be loaded up with pics of naughty bits and perverse sex acts.  Sorry.  And it’s only going to be for the sex and similar sort of “adult” content.  Posts which deal with topics appropriate to adult-level maturity — including many non-sexual gay items — will stay right here.)

If you visit the companion blog now, you’ll find a number of posts which were originally on this site, ported over there.  As I add them there (I still have another couple dozen to go through at this point, including some trip reports), I’m zapping them here, leaving just the title and a redirect link.  A year from now, I’ll probably purge the stub posts from here, too.

I will still be posting links to new blog posts for both blogs to Facebook and other places, however.  I don’t want to make it harder for people to find my posts, just to make them more conscious of when the posts have adult content and able to opt out.
 

Dream Journal: May 24, 2010

First, some background.  One of my cats has some toy mice, which she loves to fling in the air and a few feet across the room.  Inevitably, she ends up letting one “get away” under a piece of furniture where she can’t reach it; three of the six are currently AWOL that way, not even under their usual pieces of furniture.

In the dream, I found a small pile of mouse turds.  Opening the cabinet door under the sink, I found three mice (maybe these are the missing toys?), which started to squeak and scramble away.  I swept two of them out onto the floor, but the third got away.

The cat scrambled in and caught one by the tail, and flung it in the air and across the room.  But not the little flings she does in real life; here, the mouse sailed a good 8 or 10 feet and smacked hard into the wall about 5 feet up, then dropped to the floor, dazed.  She picked it up and flung it again, with similar effect.  It then did a drunken (concussed!) scramble for a hole under another cabinet and got away.

Movie Review — Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 wasn’t quite as good as Iron Man (to me; read what I wrote on that one), but neither will I say it was worse.  It’s like getting a 97 on a test rather than a 98: it’s still an “A”, and that’s all that really matters.  (And the first film gets a special bump because it so outperformed expectations.  This one gave us pretty much what we wanted and expected, so it doesn’t come away with as much of a glow, as a result.)

There are two things to say with certainty:

• Robert Downey Jr. does a great job of playing Tony Stark, imbuing the character with more life than he had in the ’80s comics where I’m most familiar with him.
• At no time during the movie did I feel that the movie was thumbing its nose at the comic book connection, trying to void or avoid that connection.  That’s a very good thing.  There’s a certain trust that comic book-based movies have to live up to for the comic book fans, to find their own path but not seem to be kicking the comic book puppy in the process.  X-Men: The Last Stand\, Spider-Man 3, and Superman Returns all failed in this, being more intent on being a movie than something part-and-parcel of the comics; they “kicked the puppy”, but Iron Man 2 did not.  (Never forget that the reverse exists, too: call it “letting the puppy eat your steak” where a movie doesn't try to transcend the comic book — perhaps even embrcaes the worst stereotypes of the comics book — and becomes less as a result.  See Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.  No, on second thought, don't see it.)

Some other thoughts:

• The Nick Fury/SHIELD stuff was too strongly geared toward setting up for future Marvel movies (or I’m just too aware that it’s doing that), too self-aware of their purpose in the film.  Nick and Natasha’s characters would have been better in the film if they we presented more strongly as keeping an eye on/reining in Tony Stark, with the future connections being much more under the surface.
• Don Cheadle never looked really comfortable in the role of Rhodey, doubly so when in the armor.  Maybe it chafed?
• It took me a long time to accept the Justin Hammer character.  Once I was able to interpret him as being a Tony Stark wanna-be — everything he does is in imitation of Tony Stark, aping what Stark does without an understanding of why and how — then I was able to grasp the character better.
• Referencing the 1970s Stark Expo as “Expo ’74” threw me a bit, since “Expo ’74” was the name for the Spokane World’s Fair, which I fondly recall attending as a kid.