The Last Picture Show
Program note: as we approach this long weekend, it is possible that posting might be a little more sporadic or light in content. Pops gots plans.

Tomorrow the missus is taking the day off. We're supposed to go out to dinner and I'm taking her to see Star Wars. Totally not against her will or anything either, she actually wants to see it.

I don't remember if I mentioned it here or not, but I saw it on Saturday with my cousin. It's possible that I'm suffering from chronically depressed expectations based on Episodes I & II, but I enjoyed it. As long as you approach it as broad melodrama and not Shakespeare or Chekov or any other Star Trek characters who write plays you'll get your money's worth. Unless you buy a medium soda for $4.25, then you won't. But then again, a medium these is (and I'm not kidding) 44 ounces, so that's less than 10¢ per ounce! What a bargain!

For some reason I go from zero movies for months and months at a time (this is not counting the ones with the words "fantasy" or "pleasure" in the title you find late at night on pay-cable) to suddenly spending all my free time there. I went out and saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all by my big-boy self last week. They had already relegated it to the tiny screen in the closet-sized theater where they burn off stuff they aren't able to replace with a new movie yet.

[Hitchhiker's by the way was... eh. The story was changed in subtle but significant ways from the books, which I don't mind since, as a Failed Writer, I understand the need to adapt but I thought it just felt sort of... unfinished. Zooey Deschanel was a non-entity as Trillian, but Sam Rockwell as Zaphod was all by himself almost worth the price of a ticket. Almost.]

What was I talking about before I interrupted myself? Oh yes. Then on Saturday I saw Star Wars and now I'm going back tomorrow. Three movies (OK, two movies, one repeated) in the space of a week. Mix in a grocery bag full of Ecstasy and a shemale hooker and it'll be like college all over again.

But then on Saturday, if that all weren't enough, Mrs. Pops and I are going (stalkers get your notebooks out) to a professional soccer game. Before you all bitch and sputter about how you hate soccer and how awful it is and how real Americans don't watch Eurotrash crap like soccer, I'd like to point out that none of you are actually invited. You're free to stay home and watch Eurotrash crap like televised singing contests or masturbate to Neil Diamond album covers or whatever it is you people do to kill time between reading blogposts in the Bucket.

Of course all of these plans are contingent upon babysitting working out and none of my kids coming down with a new case of attenuated Ebola or falling off the roof or being eaten by a giant snake or anything. There's always something. But if something like that does happen, at least I'll be available to blog more. And I'll have something interesting to blog about, especially if it's the giant snake thing. I promise to take pictures.

For now, I bid you adieu. Well, not really adieu. I'll be here tomorrow. And probably Sunday. Monday too. I'm just saying that with all the demands on my time, I can't guarantee quality. Yes yes, "when could you ever?" ha ha, you're all such very very clever little monkeys.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.0


Pops


PS- As Official Online Ambassador for Riverside County, I must encourage all of you to watch USA Network's original movie Rapid Fire. It's a true story about a bank robbery in Norco, CA, two cities over from me, in 1980. You're thinking "It's USA, so it's probably really cheesy" to which I must counter: it stars Jason Gedrick. That's right, Jason Gedrick. An otherwise ordinary ripped-from-the-25-year-old-headlines story sprinkled with a little bit of that Iron Eagle magic. I'd be all over watching that... if I weren't so busy this weekend. Anyway, check your local listings.
- posted by Pops @ 9:42 AM