I felt great at the gym this morning, especially on the treadmill. I wish I had more days at the gym where I leave wanting to do a little more (as opposed to those days where I'm going "please, God, let it end!").

Jon and I watched Commando Wednesday night, and I'd like to reaffirm that it is indeed one of my favorite bad movies of all time. It gets worse and funnier with age. Jon was a little wierded out by a preteen Alyssa Milano - now he knows how I feel every time I see clips from Empire of the Sun.

The new South Park was truly inspired; I have laughed myself silly in 3 out of 4 of this season's shows and the 4th had its moments. If there is one child in South Park who will grow up to be more deranged than Cartman, it has to be Butters. He apparently didn't lose an eye when Kenny nailed him with a shuriken, but his tapdancing has landed him a body count of 13.

Thanks to Netflix, Jon and I watched Solaris last night. I dislike George Clooney for his uncouth comments about Charlton Heston's Alzheimer's. His statements pretty much kept me from seeing this movie when it first came out. It's too bad this little gem tanked, because it's a good movie and Clooney the Asshole did a terrific job.

Nominally a science fiction story, Clooney plays a psychiatrist who is sent to investigate some odd occurences aboard a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. He finds two of the crew members dead, and the two remaining are freaked out. The first night aboard the space station he dreams about his dead wife, and when he wakes up she is next to him, flesh and blood.

I won't say more about the plot; it reminded me strongly of something I once said about religion. I once said I thought if humanity wanted to achieve the promise of eternal life, we better look to medicine, and if we want the promise of heaven, we better look to space. This movie is a wierd interpretation of the latter sentiment and it was like a punch in my gut. "No explanations, just choices" ouch ouch ouch ouch. By the end of this movie I was a blubbering puddle on my couch.

I checked Steve Soderbergh's credits through IMDb; I've seen a bunch of his stuff including Out of Sight, Ocean's 11, the Limey, and Traffic. I like his spare style; and he seems to balance his directing between the crowd-pleasers and the art stuff. Hey, he's an Atlanta native, how about that?

I just realized, when I wrote out that synopsis, it sounds remarkably like Event Horizon which is a really bad movie that starts out with promise. It's funny what the difference between a good director (Soderbergh) and a bad director (Paul Anderson. No, not that Paul Anderson. The other one!) can make to a plot line.

And I'll make another comment about Clooney. The MPAA was going to give this movie an R rating because of a couple of butt shots. So what? Actually he has a fairly nice ass so I think some of the wrinkly MPAA bastards were just envious. But I digress - wait, one more comment: You can't see a man's butt unless you're 17. WTF. Hell, I fervently pray for the day I can see a man's erect penis in something other than low-budget porn but I guess that is never going to happen. What? I *like* erect penises. Penii? Sue me.

Back to Clooney. Technically I suppose he's handsome (although if I ever met him I'd tackle him and shape his eyebrows) but not my cup of tea. I do like the fact that he has a strong masculine presence - does that make sense? He's not a little boy the way Orlando Bloom is. He reminds me of Eric Bana that way. So why do I want Bana's love child but not Clooney's? (I knew that before his comments). Beats me.Was this going somewhere? Oh, yes. I still think he's an asshole, but he impressed me with his work in Solaris. Next time I'll cut him some slack and support such a thoughtful film in the theater if he ever does something like that again.