Argh. After two tough days at work it's nice to sit down and watch stupid movies.

Last night's feature was a stupid disaster movie, The Core. The earth's core has stopped spinning, so the electro-magnetic field surrounding the earth is dissipating which is causing all sorts of natural disasters. A rag-tag team of scientists take a new type of vehicle to the core to jump-start it into spinning again.

Really! I swear on a stack of Edgar Rice Burroughs books that's what it was about!

I have absolutely no idea how bad the science in The Core was; I'll leave it up to a scientist to rip it to shreds (he lays into the movie, not only for the bad science, but the bad grammar. He noticed the exact same thing on a computer screen that I noticed last night). The deeply entertaining part of this movie for me was predicting who would live and who would die.

Not only was my score %100, I predicted the order in which they would die. Here's the rag-tag group:

1: Hunky (and, to his credit, a little dorky) Hero Scientist (played by Aaron Eckhart, who looks like the middle frame of a morph between Thomas Jane and Viggo Mortensen). He's the reluctant hero who rises to the challenges presented him as things go bad.

2: Older (and white male) vehicle Pilot-in Command. He offers serious advice to his protege (see below) about being in charge and making tough decisions.

3: Spunky (and hottie female) vehicle co-pilot. She is highly skilled and cocky, but not as experienced as the P.I.C.

4: Foreign Scientist. Best friend to Hunky Hero Scientist who doesn't want to save the world, just his wife and two children.

5: Brilliant Asshole Scientist. It's secretly his fault that the core stopped spinning.

6: Brilliant Scientist/Inventor of the vehicle and its drill. He has a grudge against Brilliant Asshole Scientist, who made a lot of money off of some things that they invented together (but did not share royalties with). I should mention that he's a Black Male.

So, who lives and who dies, and why? I paused the movie just before they started their venture to the center of their earth, and told my husband:

-Oh, by the way, if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read this -

First to die will be the Older White Male Pilot in Command. He *has* to die. Otherwise, how can the spunky co-pilot learn how to lead, plus show off her superior piloting skills?

Second will be the Foreign Friend. He's European, with a wife and kids. We *like* him, so he is so toast. I knew he would be second becaust the third and the fourth would have to come later in the movie.

Third to die will be the Brilliant Inventor. He has to die doing something to fix something on his beloved ship. Plus, he's the one Black member of the crew. They *always* die.

Fourth to die will be the Brilliant Asshole Scientist. He must die because it's all his fault. To the screenwriter's credit, he's not Eeevil, he's just a jerk who invented things for the military and something went wrong. He does not try to throw a monkey wrench into the Hunky Hero Scientist's desperate plans when things go wrong (which is the Uniform Code of Eeevil Scientists and Military Types everywhere), but actually tries to help. He even supplies the missing piece of information that will make the plan work. Still, he's the asshole so he must die.

Hunky Hero Scientist and Hot Babe Hotshot Pilot live. Why? Because they are pretty.

I would congratulate myself on being so perfect in my Disaster Movie knowledge, but any 11 year old could have done the same. Still, I got a lot of good laughs for every time I was correct; plus my husband kept me in stitches with his own Star Trek generated techno-babble voiceovers: " The granualarity hydrometer is reading off. We have to recalibrate the gorgonzola extracticator to push the crystallizers out."

Okay, yeah, we were drunk. How was your Tuesday?