Went to a midnight showing of the new X-Men? movie, kind of on a whim.

I put in a brief review on IMDB, which is something I never do. Here’s what I had to say:
I give it a ‘3’ out of 10 for the effects and exciting fight scenes. Other than that, I don’t remember ever having seen a movie before where all the meaningful dialogue and plot points were able to be condensed within the trailer. That’s what this movie was — a 104-minute trailer that lacked any significant story, character development, or dramatic elements.

The new (or sometimes newly involved) characters could not have been any flatter if they were penciled on a 4-panel comic book page. A story that, at the start, seemed like it would evoke some thought on racism and human rights (in the X-Men? tradition) literarly went up in a puff of ash and degenerated into an excuse for the final throw-down between Magneto’s ‘brotherhood’ and the NeXt-Men?. If they make another one, I really hope Bryan Singer Returns; he seems to have a much firmer grip on what these people can be about.

… My judgement– if you’re a fan, you’ll probably feel you need to see, but I wouldn’t waste 8 bucks on it.

Hey

I posted some pics from Lorch & Jamie’s wedding over the weekend in a brand-spankin’ new gallery. Take a look, and I left it open for other people to upload if you want to post any of yours…

Meanwhile, I have a lot of crap around the house to catch up on with the rest of my day off before going back to work tomorrow, so that’s all I can give to ya.

How was your weekend?

Oh– and for those of you who were wondering, Christy is now in MKE.

I dunno why Josh had such foreboding cautions in regard to the Atlanta airport. To me, it seems like lots and lots of other airports that I’ve been to– and this one is better than some; at least you can get food and beverage behind security…

Right now, it’s about 2:20 eastern, and I’m waiting for Wordy to get here from L.A. I took a walk down to the gate where our flight is leaving for Fort Myers a little later in an effort to get seat re-assignments so’s we can sit together on the way there. But of course, no one was at the counter yet. I guess it can wait.

Something that won’t be able to wait much longer is my need to pee. But before that, I leave you with my Top Five Favorite Airports That I’ve Actually Been To…

1. Minneapolis/Saint Paul: unparalleled options for commerce while waiting for your connecting flight, and good accomidations overall.
2. Milwaukee: Maybe it’s just from familiarity, but it’s relatively small, simple to get around, and also good services, etc, within
3. Denver: Really, really long and straight, but a lot to do, and lots of windows to see out
4. Chicago-O’Hare: I definitely don’t remember disliking O’Hare for any reason. It’s frickin huge, though.
5. Bozeman, Montana: 5 gates, 1 restaurant, lots of breathing room. Nuff said.

Crap, I forgot to mention that the 40th Anniversary party for the Wisconsin Review was last Thursday at the Algoma Club in Oshkosh, and it was a very nice event. I think everyone in attendance had a good time, and while I was nervous leading up to the event, I was pleased with the way it all turned out.

Went out with the rest of the staff afterwards, and that was fun, too. We had never ‘hung out’ before, but maybe we should over the summer. I proposed that Peabody’s could be a nice venue for staff meetings during the months of June July and August.

Now I’m really out.

Well at least they have the internet.

I’m in Eagle River to visit the folks and get some things done around the house in prep for Memorial Day weekend.

I cleaned out the chimney this morning, and now I’m at the coffee joint with the wifi access whilst I wait for some work to be finished on clothes that I’m taking back to the ‘Valley’ for Lorch’s wedding.

Which, good god, is only two weeks away.

Speaking of which, it’s going to be bloody outstanding to get out of Oshkosh for a few days. If you’ve talked to me in the last week or so, I probably mentioned being burned out at work. *sigh* Just really need some time off to re-group and get ready for the summer.

Later on in July, I’m taking a week off to either fly to L.A. or drive to Bozeman, so if you have a particular opinion on that one way or the other, lemme have it.

Meanwhile, there will be an email going out to the Bock folk in a couple days about a Brewers outing, so watch for that.

Did anybody see that Mission Impossible flick last night? I was just wondering if any spaceships that looked like DC-8s were featured at some point…

Other than that, I’m going to read the paper now.

PS- I turned on some more features on the site, if you feel like messing around with em a little, I’d be mildly interested to hear what you think.

Check out this story that I pulled off the AP wire this afternoon:

CBS Announces Broadband Channel

This news at about the same time that ABC has started posting its recently aired episodes of Lost, Alias, and Desperate Housewives to stream FOR FREE on their website…

I am banking on Internet television opening up a whole new dimension of entertainment possibilities in the next five years or so– imagine if networks no longer had to result to cancellation of ‘niche’ shows like Arrested Development or Family Guy, and instead could just relegate them to the web?

Or better still — this sort of distribution could open the gates for less conventional material to actually GET MADE, rather than banking on the drab, hopelessly formulaic, 22-minute schtick that saturates the average TV network (and causes me to watch almost nothing).

I read Wil Wheaton’s blog pretty religiously via RSS.

He had a post the other day about an issue that I had *heard* of, but not investigated too much. It’s worth the followup if you haven’t already, so please take a look at the following links:

Adam Green on The Huffington Post
Save the Internet dot com
MoveOn.org Civic Action

Talk to you again soon…