[  Mood: Neutral ]
[  Currently: Working a job I like a lot… ]

This week has seen my wife and I moved into a house we’ll be renting for six months before we buy it and live there a long time. That’s the good in a nutshell.

In the past three days, we’ve seen our black and white cat (my wife’s for six years before I met her, and mine since then–what can I say? The cat chose me) grow lethargic, lose her appetite, more details I will withhold, but if you’ve had a pet get sick, you have an idea what I may be going through without me providing details.

This silky-coated cat stole my heart from the day we met. She stalked me in her one bedroom apartment, sneaking up on me and glaring, then freezing in place with her eyes glued to me when I happened to notice her. She froze, looking daggers at me, saying with her huge, yellow-rimmed black eyes, "You can’t see me. I’m standing still. Go about your business. I’ll continue stalking you momentarily." It never failed to bring me to teary laughter.

She liked to get onto whatever furniture might have a book, remote control, or magazine left on it–especially on an arm–so she could poke it with a paw until it dropped off to crash onto the floor. At this point, as if she had no clue what would happen, she’d look wide-eyed at the nearest human, "Did you drop that? Did you know it was going to hit the floor so hard? You really shouldn’t leave things on the arms of chairs, you know." My wife has never been enamored of this behavior, as it saw a signed Ray Bradbury novel dropped into a bathtub once…

My kitty has five favorite things.

First, hiding under covers. She’s a spelunker. The darker the hole leading under the blankets, the better. Finding a lump under the conforter when I entered the bedroom? Hilarious.

Second, the sun. Preferably the hottest afternoon sun available, through the thinnest glass window, so more heat could be absorbed by the black in her coat.

Third, her toy. One of those "gone fishin’" contraptions made by Hartz. Hers has no bell–a popular feature on the newer models. Hers need only the rod and a long string, with a ribbon tied to the end. That ribbon has been through hell, mainly at her paws and teeth. She’ll attack it with the ferocity of a starved panther. She’ll drag it around in her mouth if she feels ignored.

Fourth, sleeping above my head in the bed, preferably on my pajamas.

Last, she loves licking the salty sweat off my forehead. Evidence here.

Now she’s facing a bug that her veterinarian can’t seem to pin down, at a time when my wife and I have no fiscal space to play with in our budget, and my dear, sweet kitty is in pain and I am depressed and sad and confused.

UPDATE: Word from home is, kitty seems to be acting herself again. Perhaps the bug is turning from the antibiotics we’ve administered in the past few days.

[  Mood: Evil ]
[  Currently: Eating kooks like Willie Scott for breakfast! ]
In response to:

Sci-Fi: WTF Couples
1. Indiana Jones and Willie Scott, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Poor Willie. She will always been seen as the also ran romance of the Indy series. Marion was Indy’s one true love as evidenced by Raiders and the forthcoming Crystal Skull. Willie was just a pit stop.
And it wasn’t hard for Indy to tell. She wasn’t good in the outdoors. She screamed every time anything happened. Clearly this woman should have been a booty call for Indy, but we were urged to think this would last forever. Probably had something to do with producer Spielberg making the actress who played Willie his one and only seven years after this movie came out.

I HATE Willie.

HATE.

Willie Scott and the wretched movie from which she spawned are proof positive that in 1984, for whatever reason, Spielberg and Lucas were wandering the desert of imagination in search of a creative idea.

There were plenty of other movies to see in 1984, and I saw at least twenty on that linked list. Man, 1984 was a good year for movies.

Indy sucked more than every one I saw that year, except The Woman In Red.

Gene Wilder, you let me down, man.

The horrible, erroneous gun/sword joke reference in the prequel is proof that Lucas and Co. had started filking with their own material in dangerous ways, long before the E.T. walkie-talkie fiasco. Indy meets with two swordsmen, instead of the one in Raiders, which is supposed to happen several years after Temple, yet he grabs for his pistol, and finding the holster empty, gives a knowing, almost 4th-wall-breaking, smile!

I blame Willie Scott.

Geekdom! I submit to you: we weren’t taking notes! We should have seen Episodes I, II, and III coming at that moment, and we should have initiated prepartions to prevent it!

The lonely dvd sitting in the Indiana Jones Trilogy box, behind Raiders, Crusade, and the extras dvd? I don’t look at it more than your average commuter looks at a traffic accident on the highway. It’s unfortunate that it happened, and it’s taking up space in my life, but I really wish I could just get the hell past it and not have to worry about it bogging down part of my day.

I blame Willie Scott.

I hear some of you, just a few of you, out there in the aisles with itchy feet and fading smiles, saying “But what about Short Round? You can‘t not like Short Round.”

Grammatically questionable as that last statement is, those very words have come out of at least one person’s mouth when I dug in my heels about IJATTOD sucking. It’s not a fond memory, as now, whenever the subject is broached, that’s the way I hear the question when anyone mentions Short Round.

Short Round doesn’t do anything for me, but I don’t have time to dig into that can of worms for the proper bait right now. Jonathan Ke Quan was, is, and will always for me be Data from The Goonies.
There is no Short Round.

Willie Scott is the reason there are only three Indiana Jones movies in my mind, my world, and just two in my dvd library.

Those movies are as follows.

Raiders, which showed me that cool swipe from the Paramount logo in the beginning, then got better from there. Only Coming To America made better use of the Paramount logo, and only Boogie Nights made better use of Alfred Molina.

Raiders also proved that John Williams’ best work was not The Imperial March. I know, it’s the Star Wars theme to lots and lots of geeks out there, but it pales in comparison to the Indy theme.

The Last Crusade, while touted as THE last Indy movie so many years ago (hey, who knew Harrison just needed the right script to get the hat back on?), was also the best of the three so far, for three reasons.

1. River Pheonix as young Indy. I weep every time I watch the opening to the movie, and every time I hear this song by Natalie Merchant, that she wrote for him posthumously.

2. Sean Connery! In the words of Stan The Man Lee, ‘Nuff Said.

3. Humor! Sure, one might argue a short asian kid who uses telephone books and KISS boots to drive a car, a woman who is scared of the wild and thinks elephants stink, and the poor attempts at slapstick all make for rollicking good fun at the movies. But where Raiders tempered its drama and action with comedy, and Temple added unnecessary song numbers and bad jokes to pad the feather-light story, Last Crusade found a very nice balance between humor and pathos.

And damn it, the movie makes me cry, OK?! It’s a good estranged father-son fantasy story, wrapped in an action yarn, starring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery!

“Let it go, Indiana.”

Last Crusade just seemed so effortless when weighed against the albatross that is Temple of Doom.

I blame Willie Scott.

Hell, if Wikipedia is to be believed, check out this quote: “After the release of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Steven Spielberg decided to complete the trilogy in order to fulfill his promise to George Lucas, and ‘to apologize for the second one’.”

Maybe Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is Spielberg’s way of saying, “Let’s make a real trilogy, and in a year or two we’ll mint more money after releasing the NEW dvd box set, sans Temple of Doom! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA! Eh…ha?”

Still, let’s hope Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is at least as good as Raiders,.

Which is to say, pretty filking awesome.

I want it to be the summer’s blockbuster movie, taking a righteous swing at the biggest moneymakers the past summers have seen and knocking them sideways.

The movie already has some good things going for it, long, Fiona-Apple-esque title aside. OK, it’s more U2esque.

Mr. Shamamalan LaBootay, who, even if he blows it in a bunch of art house films while living off his last four paychecks, will still appear in the next Michael Bay FIOS commercial, guaranteed.
His LaBoothness plays Mutt, who is potentially Indy’s son by Marion. Or actually is. Whatever, I’m not digging into the spoilers to find out. I’ll learn it all on day one in the theater.

And it’ll have some pudgy pasty white guy instead of Salah, it appears from the trailer. That’s its first strike in my book. I can just imagine Salah saying, “So, Indy, you have A SON!”

Not unlike Brian Blessed’s Hawkman exclaiming something exclamatory in Flash Gordon.

Kingdom touts Nazi-ish villains led by Cate Blanchett! No Indy film is complete without the good ol’ stormtrooperish villainy!

Indy is being portrayed as Indy, twenty years on. Not Harrison Ford’s likeness pasted digitally onto a young stunt man’s frame, with Harrison providing voice talent to lip-sync the dialogue.

Come to think of it, that’s probably what Frank Darabont’s script suggested…after all, the man wrote, directed, and allowed to be released this piece of crap.

I don’t blame Willie Scott for The Mist.

Yes, Frank, I am bitter. I’ll need about three more Shawshank Redemptions to put you back on the “trust me” list.

But Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn’t written by Darabont, Thank Shatner, so it won’t have Short Round, but it will have the wonderful, beautiful, still-hot Karen Allen! Marion returns!

I’ve missed Marion. I’m glad she’s back.

And I’m so very very glad Willie Scott will not be in the new movie. For that reason alone it has a better-than-good chance of success.

Unless it blows like Willie screaming. In which case…

I blame Willie Scott.

I sincerely hope it won’t.