Reports Of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
No, I'm not dead yet, I just haven't been able to find ten free minutes in the last week or so in which to sit down and blog. I'm sorry about the lack of updates, it's just been a crazy time with the new job.
My mom has come and gone for one of her annual or semi-annual whirlwind visits. Mom loves the West almost as much as I do, and when she comes to visit she usually wants to do nothing so much as hike up a mountain. She's where I get it from, I guess. Saturday we drove up to Brockway Summit and hiked up the Tahoe Rim Trail to what I consider to be the best overview of the lake, a small series of granite pillars on the ridgetop at the lake's south end. I know I promised pictures of her visit, but I'm not able to post pictures until Melissa's computer is fixed and I can download the photos off her camera. I'll have them posted as soon as possible.
Also of note is the fact that I finally saw the new Star Wars movie last week. My appraisal: It didn't suck. If that sounds like faint praise, it is. But the bar was set so low by Episodes I and II that I was just glad to have an entertaining story, something that doesn't further soil the memory of the original trilogy. The action was great, I liked General Grievous (he provided an ominous presence that was so completely lacking in the first two movies), Ewan McGregor is a great Obi-Wan, and it was neat to see how Darth Vader and the Emperor ended up the way they appear in the original trilogy. There were weaknesses, of course; the acting was wooden as ever, the dialogue was cringe-inducing in places, and the magnificent Samuel L. Jackson is still woefully miscast. Also, the whole thing kind of felt rushed in a strange way, so that I felt like a lot of my questions weren't answered--for example, why was General Grievous coughing so much if he's a droid? What exactly killed Padme? And I'm still not completely sure why everyone is fighting in the first place, something about a Trade Union of Sepratists, I don't know. A note to uber-nerds: I know you could write entire doctoral theses on the answers to these questions and I don't care. I'm not actually interested in discussing these issues. I'm just making the point that I would have enjoyed the movie more if a few things were explained a little bit better so that it even makes sense to people who aren't swimming in trivia about the movies.
In the realm of stuff that isn't completely made-up, I watched and enjoyed the premier episode of Morgan Spurlock's new series "30 Days" last night. Morgan, as you may remember, made the very memorable film "Super Size Me", in which he documents his own physical decline while eating nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Now he's taking the same gimmick (yes, it is a gimmick, but an entertaining and thought-provoking one) and applying it to other areas. In the premiere episode last night, Morgan and his fiancee-with-the-patience-of-a-saint Alex cut ties with their own successful lives and try to live on minimum wage in a strange city for 30 days. This is a great idea although of course it's been done already--see Barbara Ehrenreich's great book Nickel and Dimed. I'm all in favor of anything that calls attention to the plight of the working poor in this country, and after watching last night's premier episode one gains a real appreciation of the dilemma faced by those who are forced to toil for such inhuman wages (and despite what Rush tells you, it's a lot more than just teenagers on summer vacation and precocious Senior Citizens who work these jobs) when they must decide between, say, their own physical health and working so that the electric bill can be paid.
Of course, it's a valid criticism to argue that Spurlock and his fiance don't really get a true taste of the hopelessness faced by people working for slave-wages since they know full well that after a month it will be back to their comfortable lives as yuppie media darlings. But the point remains; it is a travesty that anyone who works an eleven-hour day (as Spurlock does during his month-long experiment) should have no option but to live so dangerously close to the edge.
My mom has come and gone for one of her annual or semi-annual whirlwind visits. Mom loves the West almost as much as I do, and when she comes to visit she usually wants to do nothing so much as hike up a mountain. She's where I get it from, I guess. Saturday we drove up to Brockway Summit and hiked up the Tahoe Rim Trail to what I consider to be the best overview of the lake, a small series of granite pillars on the ridgetop at the lake's south end. I know I promised pictures of her visit, but I'm not able to post pictures until Melissa's computer is fixed and I can download the photos off her camera. I'll have them posted as soon as possible.
Also of note is the fact that I finally saw the new Star Wars movie last week. My appraisal: It didn't suck. If that sounds like faint praise, it is. But the bar was set so low by Episodes I and II that I was just glad to have an entertaining story, something that doesn't further soil the memory of the original trilogy. The action was great, I liked General Grievous (he provided an ominous presence that was so completely lacking in the first two movies), Ewan McGregor is a great Obi-Wan, and it was neat to see how Darth Vader and the Emperor ended up the way they appear in the original trilogy. There were weaknesses, of course; the acting was wooden as ever, the dialogue was cringe-inducing in places, and the magnificent Samuel L. Jackson is still woefully miscast. Also, the whole thing kind of felt rushed in a strange way, so that I felt like a lot of my questions weren't answered--for example, why was General Grievous coughing so much if he's a droid? What exactly killed Padme? And I'm still not completely sure why everyone is fighting in the first place, something about a Trade Union of Sepratists, I don't know. A note to uber-nerds: I know you could write entire doctoral theses on the answers to these questions and I don't care. I'm not actually interested in discussing these issues. I'm just making the point that I would have enjoyed the movie more if a few things were explained a little bit better so that it even makes sense to people who aren't swimming in trivia about the movies.
In the realm of stuff that isn't completely made-up, I watched and enjoyed the premier episode of Morgan Spurlock's new series "30 Days" last night. Morgan, as you may remember, made the very memorable film "Super Size Me", in which he documents his own physical decline while eating nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Now he's taking the same gimmick (yes, it is a gimmick, but an entertaining and thought-provoking one) and applying it to other areas. In the premiere episode last night, Morgan and his fiancee-with-the-patience-of-a-saint Alex cut ties with their own successful lives and try to live on minimum wage in a strange city for 30 days. This is a great idea although of course it's been done already--see Barbara Ehrenreich's great book Nickel and Dimed. I'm all in favor of anything that calls attention to the plight of the working poor in this country, and after watching last night's premier episode one gains a real appreciation of the dilemma faced by those who are forced to toil for such inhuman wages (and despite what Rush tells you, it's a lot more than just teenagers on summer vacation and precocious Senior Citizens who work these jobs) when they must decide between, say, their own physical health and working so that the electric bill can be paid.
Of course, it's a valid criticism to argue that Spurlock and his fiance don't really get a true taste of the hopelessness faced by people working for slave-wages since they know full well that after a month it will be back to their comfortable lives as yuppie media darlings. But the point remains; it is a travesty that anyone who works an eleven-hour day (as Spurlock does during his month-long experiment) should have no option but to live so dangerously close to the edge.
posted by Yukon Sully | 4:42 PM
1 Comments:
We hiked up the Tahoe Rim Trail on the lake's north shore, not south.
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