The Terminator

The Terminator, originally uploaded by Dunechaser.

What I'm Watching: I have been itching to watch Terminator since The Sarah Connor Chronicles hooked me, and I watched it last night on a Blu-Ray disk. That movie, originally released in the Fall of 1984, brings back many memories. I saw it in a theater and remember loving it. I remember, in college, trying to convince a friend to watch it who wouldn't because she didn't like the idea that Sarah was valuable only because she gave birth to John Connor. I tried to explain to her that Sarah meant a lot more than that: if John had been raised by someone else he would not have led any resistance. She never did watch it. I remember I had taped it off of HBO and I pretty much wore the video out because it was my go-to movie when I wanted to watch something but didn't have anything new (until I got ahold of James Cameron's next movie: Aliens).

Terminator is still a good movie. The haircuts and the low-budget effects ($ 6.5 million - even in '84 movie terms that's low budget) date it some, but the story is still effective. And everyone is so young! Linda Hamilton, Arnold Swarzenegger, Micheal Beihn,.. hell, even Lance Henriksen, Paul Winfield, and Earl Boen! I have a hard time thinking that this movie is almost 25 years old.

The biggest difference, I think, between the Terminator franchise and the Alien franchise is the Terminator has much more story to mine. Alien took a left turn into a big mound of cow manure during the first 2 minutes of Alien3 and never got any better. Like I have said - Terminator 3 wasn't bad and the new TV show has been outstanding.

Of course I shiver a little with news of Terminator 4: it's the story of the aftermath of Judgement Day (so I have to wonder: is this new movie going to take into account / going to be taken into account by SCC? If so then poor Sarah and John are doomed to failure, yet again). The bad news is that McG (yep, that's his name. He should change it to McLovin) is directing. He did the Charlie's Angels movies (bleh). The good news is Christian Bale is playing John Connor, so there's a reason to watch. No, Arnold is not going to be in the movie, and I have no problem with his omission. Many different T-Models exist, after all.

Busy B

Busy B, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Brenden asked me to take him to see his dad on Saturday afternoon. Actually he said "Dada (unintelligable) truck (mumble) now". I asked him if he wanted to go see dada, and he said "Yeah, mama!" So I called Jon and sure enough he wasn't busy (cloudy and cold) so we went and hung around the drop zone for several hours. Brenden brought two of his battery-powered trains (Thomas and Arthur). Another couple had their almost-4 year-old daughter with them who started coveting Brenden's trains. B actually likes sharing his trains because he has more fun if he plays with someone so he let her use one and they had a loud, shrieking , fun, blast.

Sunday Brenden asked me if we could go outside (he just walked to the front door, pointed to it and said "out"). I said "It's too cold" but he found a pair of his pants and put them on himself and tried to open the front door. (Note: he has never put his pants on by himself before. He pretends to not know how). I finished dressing him and we went out and it wasn't too bad. I started raking leaves and he helped by picking leaves up and putting them in a small trash basket I use to transport rakings to the big 'lawn refuse' barrel. He got tired of helping after a while so he decided to start spreading the leaves around instead. Still, we lasted a couple of hours and I didn't have to constantly chase him because he was heading for the street. I am naively hoping I can actually do something about our mud flat front lawn this year.

Also on Sunday, B decided it was funny to pull my pants down. He knows better, now.

What I'm reading: I'm still chewing my way through Quicksilver, but I took a detour with a book Alan recommended to me World War Z which was written by the same guy who wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. Good fun flesh-eating zombie fanfic recounting a world-wide zombie infestation through the stories of the men and women who survived and fought in it.

What I'm watching: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End You know for a bunch of pirates they don't do much pirating. They betray each other a lot - I guess that's the rogue portion of the equation. This DVD was the first Blu-Ray disc I have watched and I must say the visuals were breath-taking. Too damn bad there was no PIRATING! And not enough Chow Yun-Fat. Arr!

What I will never watch, not in a million, billion years: Frank Daranbont directed 2 of the best movies based on Steven King novels, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. I will never, ever, ever, see the movie The Mist, however. I was debating putting it on my Netflix queue but after I read a review I knew I had better find a spoiler. I did and even the spoiler upset me so bad I almost cried! I'm going to post a relatively vague but important spoiler in the comments in case anyone is wondering what I'm talking about.

Three guys playing

Three guys playing, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

I'm about to go to a doc appointment about my sinuses. I noticed that half the people listed in my phone book are doctors.

What I'm watching:

American Idol Even Jon is getting bored.

Sarah Connor Chronicles If this show maintains its excellence, then my two favorite shows will feature bad robots. How cool is that?

S.O.B A funny, but somewhat dated Blake Edwards film from the 70's. Featuring Julie Andrew's boobies. SRSLY!

Blades of Glory Very silly with some good laughs. IOW a typical Will Ferrell movie.

Dirty Jobs One of the most terrifying shows, ever. Or at least nauseating. I love it! the geoduck farming episode left me particularly ill and flabbergasted.

BLEH

bleh, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Short bits:

Yes, the Christmas tree is finally down.

Brenden has a set of foam letters he plays with when he's taking a bath. Last night Jon mixed them all up and stuck them on the wall next to the bathtub, and asked Brenden to find letters, starting with "A". "Can you find the A, Brenden? Where's the A?". As Brenden would pull a letter off the wall, Jon would sit the letter upright on the rim of the tub. B had a few misses, but he only needed real help with like 5 or 6 letters. Maybe I'm dreaming, but maybe Brenden is going to be a reader, like me! Oh, I hope. I have so many books I think he'd love.

Our DVD player bought the farm. Which means we need to buy a new one! Since we have an HD TV we should get one of them new-fangled Hi Def players. It looks like Blu-Ray is the winner in the format wars, but I'm still scared of buying the Betamax 8-track player.

I just deleted 5 paragraphs of boring politics.

Lost is back, and so far Ben has been beaten up 3 times in 2 episodes. Jon wants the losties to just kill him already, but I'd like to see more Ben abuse before he's disposed of, preferably by feeding him bit-by-bit to a polar bear.

American Idol is back as well, unfortunately. The audition weeks are always train wrecks and after the choices are narrowed down to 24 it gets really boring, but I kind of like the Hollywood week where they take the people who made the auditions and put them through the meat grinder. Unfortunately the producers narrowed down the amount of episodes dedicated to this process the last couple of seasons.

I saw half of Pathfinder and despite the general critical dislike I am enjoying it. Once I see the rest of it I'll comment more but it's always nice to see Clancy Brown doing something other than cartoon voices (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

"Mama, are you?"

smile3, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

What I'm Watching
The Farmer Astronaut Or was that the Astronaut Farmer? Anyways, plot is family man, ex-aerospace engineer, designs and builds his own rocketship and meets a lot of resistance. Awfully contrived. I mean, did the screenwriter ever hear of Burt Rutan? Do some research!

Letter to Brenden Month 33
Whoo boy you won't shut up! I love it (mostly)! You have fully engaged your imagination gears (and if you inherited my imagination you're in for a lot of fun), and I enjoy watching you play with your trains while you narrate the action "Ono, homa wook ou!" (oh no, Thomas, Look out!) then you crash your trains together. I really enjoy it when you narrate a Spongebob episode to me:

"Wook mama Bobob go!" (Look, mother; Spongebob is running!)
"Bobob patree wheee!" (Spongebob and Patrick are sliding down a rope!)
"Bobob ow ow ow! Foo foo foo" (Spongebob and Patrick have rope burns on their hands! {blows on hands})

I also am amused (sometimes) when you get up at one in the morning and say "Mama, are you? Mama, are you?" It's much nicer than your old yowling (not that you don't do that, especially when I say "It's one in the morning! Get back to bed!") Everything is also "Yes, mama" or "No mama" when I ask you questions. That;s nice.

The "Mama, Joos!" then winging your sippy-cup at my face has got to stop there, bud. At least say "please"!

Mr. Quackquack's Beer

Mr. Quackquack's Beer, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Ugh. I still haven't totally gotten off of meds but I'm getting there. I've been listless and headachey lately.

What I'm Reading
I finally read a Neal Stephenson book, and I chose Cryptonomicon, which takes place both during World War II and pre-911 present day (it was published originally in 1999). Much, but not all, of the action centers around British and American code-breakers and some commandos who carry out odd missions whose entire job seems to entail preventing the Germans from finding out that their codes have been broken. We also see some pacific-side action involving the Japanese occupation of the Phillipenes (yeesh!). Most of the present-day action involves a computer nerd who, along with his ultra-paranoid business partner, is trying to set up some computer-related businesses in the Phillipenes. I'm barely scratching the surface of the plot. Although it is a little long-winded, Stephenson has two things going for him. I loved the main characters, and I could tell because I cried when I found out one of them died, and I also cried when I found out one of them lived. The other thing is he has a sense of humor that Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett would be proud of.

So right now, to punish myself, I have started Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, a three volume story that makes Cryptonomicon come across like a Nancy Drew mystery (in terms of length and complexity).

What I'm Watching
I finally started watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles. How could I not? I love the first movie with a mad passion (I like the second movie, and I didn't think the third one was bad). So far I'm not complaining. John Connor's kind of whiny but hell he's a 15 year-old boy so that's to be expected. The actor who took over the Sarah Connor role is good - she does a good tough mom without going over the top (like Linda Hamilton did in the second movie). Summer 'River Tam' Glau plays Cameron (ha ha!), the Terminator sent back to protect John. Glad to see she's getting more work. I enjoyed Firefly and wish it had lasted longer. As for the storyline: The nice thing about mucking about in the timestream is you can change things around plausibly. For instance - in the third movie we find out from John that Sarah died of cancer. In the series this isn't overlooked and they get around it in an acceptable manner.

Superbad
Damn what a funny movie. Kind of hard to watch. It involves three eighteen-year-old dorks trying to buy booze so that they can have sex with drunk girls. The three dorks look like they should be slamming back Mountain Dew and playing Dungeons and Dragons in their parent's basement. Damn funny but I felt like I needed to send my brain out for dry-cleaning after watching it.