The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany, Part 1

Until last Friday, the last real road trip I went on with my friends was to Niagra Falls. That was three years ago, before Michele and Brianna moved up here and Nick started going on long trips for work. It was the end of an era, really, and I can't think of a better send-off than being asked to leave Canada. But that's a story for another time. Today is all about the weekend trip to Albany, which could be considered the start of a new era. Or not.

Noticeably absent this time around was Hedie, the primary orchestrator of most of our previous trips. When Nick first told her about it, she wanted to come, until she found out it was the same weekend she was whitewater rafting. Or just rafting. How many kinds of rafting are there? I'm pretty sure it was whitewater rafting. It's not like she was lazily floating down the Mississipi with Huck Finn and N-word Jim. Anyway, she was in Maine, leaving us to fend for ourselves when it came to trip planning and booking hotels. You know, the boring stuff she usually covers. and since this trip was my idea, I was left in charge of finding a hotel, for the first time in my life, I think. Jose made some dinner plans and everything else just sort of fell into place.

Also missing from this trip was my mom's minivan, which Jose inexplicably christened "Talula." After getting her windshield washer fluid caps ripped off by baboons on a previous trip, Talula was given a reprieve. Not that the baboon incident had anything to do with it, it's just that Jose, as much as he loves Talula (and he does), he was eager to break in his spankin' new Scion. Which I lovingly dubbed the Brave Little Toaster.



We packed up the BLT and were on the highway by 11:00 A.M. Michele was in the passenger's seat, because she said she gets carsick if she sits in the back. I always thought that was just a scam, but I was content with sitting in the back. Jose had the directions, but we also had a streets and roads program on Nick's laptop as a contingency. Lots of nice scenery out in western Mass and New York. No houses, no buildings, just lots of misty rolling green hills, broken up every so often by a barn and some cows, or whatever they are. There was one really cool-looking old silo that, if I was making a movie, I would pick that location for the setting and then work out the tiny details like plot from there. Maybe it would be like, where some kid died fifty years ago and now their restless spirit gruesomely slaughters anyone foolish enough to venture there. Or maybe there's a singing pig. The possibilities are endless.

Surprisingly, we didn't hit any snags. No detours to Booneville this time. Things went fairly smoothly. At least on our end. The plan, if not the whole point of the trip, was to finally meet some people we'd known online for years from a Farscape website, among other places. Nick, Michele and myself were in town for NYPinTA's charity screening of Serenity. Jose had arranged to meet with Alicia and Lance, aka BC and the jolly LaBomba, respectively, at the Albany International Airport where his lady Christy would be arriving from. The movie wasn't until eight. so we were all going to tag along to meet Christy.

I had my iPod going for most of the ride, but at some point while we were driving through western Mass, Jose got a call from Christy saying that her flight was delayed. She had already safely landed in New York from South Carolina, but she still had a connecting flight from NYC to Albany to deal with. Her layover was already four hours, and now there was another hour on top of that. So she was stuck for five hours at an airport that was two hours away.

By the time we got to Albany, Christy's flight still hadn't taken off and Nick had finished reading Election, the book he started when we got on the highway. We got a call from Ali and Lance to meet them in the parking lot by Sears in some dumpy mall. Lance was wearing the same Can't Sleep...Clowns Will Eat Me shirt that I have. Eerie. While we were waiting for them, Michele went into the mall to look for a bathroom. They pulled up behind us not too long after that and we all took a look around the mall.

The mall was in what I'll call a transitional phase. It was in the middle (or actually the begining) of remodeling, to make it more competitive with the newer, modern mall that I'd image was a few blocks away. So by this time we'd all made our acquaintances, but Michele was still AWOL on her bathroom quest. We were standing in front of an FYE, which neither Nick or I really care for because everything's needlessly expensive there. But it was the only store that sold movies and games, so we went inside. The others stayed in front of the store, and since Ali and Lance hadn't met Michele yet, I described what she looked like and said to flag her down if they see her.

I wasn't in the store for very long before I happened to look up from what I was doing and noticed Michele on the other side of the mall trying to find us. I ran out to get her and introduced her to the group. At which point Lance started laughing, because he asked Jose if that was Michele when he saw her go by and Jose said, "No."

We had lunch in the food court and hit a couple more stores. Jose wanted to get something for Christy before her flight came in, and Michele was eager to check out the As Seen On TV store, perhaps more eager than what is deemed appropriate when referring to said store. I also paid a brief visit to the scary, scary bathroom at the end of the food court, where none of the stalls had doors, except for the very first one, which was occupied by someone taking trumpet lessons. Or at least that's what it sounded like.

As we were about to leave to mall, a heavyset lady about thirty feet in front of us dropped to the floor. She just took a dive and we all stood there and watched, like the last episode of Seinfeld, which always annoyed me. But I wasn't sure what I should do. I didn't want to run up and help her, because if she just slipped, she'd probably be really embarrassed and wouldn't want to draw much attention to herself. On the other hand, what if she had a stroke or something? Heady stuff. Everyone stood around and watched as she rolled around like a turtle on it's back, presumably waiting to see if she'd get up. Nick put his headphones on. I nonchalantly walked back into the As Seen On TV store and pretended I didn't see anything. She got up and walked away. As best as we can tell, she dropped her drink and went down with it to try to salvage it. She must have been extremely embarrassed, but lesson learned; sometimes you just have to let it go.

Before we left the mall, Nick got a call from Boosey. Boosey as in Caboose, then name he was given when he joined the projects team at Best Buy. They were naming the new guys were named after Red Vs. Blue characters at the time. I don't think I even know his real name. I think it's Brendan. Or Brandon. Or Steve. Anyway, he asked Nick what he was doing that night and Nick said he was in Albany to see Serenity at eight. I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, but it was something to the effect of "I'm there!" Which was great, because for some reason I thought he was going all along and already told NYPinTA we'd have four people. It was four o'clock at this point, and we didn't know if he'd be able to make it here in time for the movie, but he was coming anway, becaus even if he couldn't make the movie, he had a buddy in Albany that he'd meet for drinks. He hung up and we drove to the airport.

The Albany International Airport looks an awful lot like my old junior high school. Even the inside looked like the library. If someone was watching my life on TV, they'd probably think we were too cheap to get new sets and just recycle old ones, like how Lost in Space used old sets from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Anyway, we were at the airport for an hour or so. Despite being there to meet people, I reverted to my "frightened of people" state and mostly stayed in the corner, talking with Nick and Michele. But Jose didn't seem to have a problem, oddly enough, and he chatted up Ali and Lance, who conveniently blocked the exits to keep him from backing down.

When I first met Michele at the airport when she came here from South Carolina, (C'mon! Not only are they using the same sets, but now they're just rehashing old storylines! This show is going downhill.) I wasn't really nervous, which was unusual for me. But the first time I saw her, I wasn't quite sure that it was her. She looked like her picture, but I still wasn't sure if it was just someone who looked like her. So to safe, I stood behind her and waited for her to turn around. Pretty romantic, huh folks?

Speaking of romance, while we were waiting for Christy at the airport, Michele came up from behind me, reached her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Except it probably wasn't the best time to do that, as at that moment I was silently...she wouldn't even have known if I wasn't giggling like an idiot. Anyway, from that point on, Michele said I needed to have a safety word to warn her. So for the next two days, every once in a while I'd blurt out "You can dance if you want to."

Well, finally Christy's flight came in, and wave after wave of people stepped out of the gates, but no Christy. I hadn't even seen a picture of her, so I had no idea what I should be looking for. Finally, Ali spotted her.

There will now be a brief intermission

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Nevermind

There's a big truck outside, pumping water out of the parking garage next door. It's making a very loud humming noise, and it's annoying everyone in the office. Except me. I kind of like it. It reminds me of when I was a little kid, and my parents would vacuum during the weekend. I always liked that sound. Not when it first turned on; that part was always abrupt and loud, but after that when, it had been going for a while and became a background hum. Sometimes I'd be watching cartoons, and I'd turn the TV way up so I could hear it over the vacuum, but most of the time the TV was off and there was a tape in the stereo. To this day, Cyndi Lauper reminds me of vacuuming. As does Air Supply and that song Gloria. Not G-L-O-R-I-A Gloria, but the one that woman sang in the eighties.

The vacuum humming was relaxing, and I was always a little bummed out when it stopped. I'm going to miss the noise outside the window, too.

Anyway, I was going to ask a question today. And I still am, so here it is...

What the hell is a cow?

I mean, the females are called cows and the males are called bulls, but what is the name of the species? One of the first things you learn as a kid is the names of animals, and the See 'N Say groups "cow" with "dog" and "cat." But unlike dogs and cats, cows refer specifically to one gender. There's no such thing as a male cow or a female bull. Not to mention cow and bull is used to describe the sexes of a bunch of different animals, like moose, elephants and whales. So what are the things we get our milk and Salisbury steak from officially called? Sure, they're of the genus bos and the subfamily bovinea, but that's not their name. Nobody says C. l. familiaris; they just say "dog."

I said I was going to ask that, because apparently the answer is cattle. It doesn't sound quite right though. I always thought of cattle as a group, but you wouldn't use it to describe just one, like, "Hey, look! A cattle!" So what's the singular noun for cattle? According to the wikipedia article, there isn't one, however both male and female cattle can be referred to as "ox." So dairy cows are oxen?

But the same article says the term "ox" is generally reserved for adult castrated male cattle. I just assumed oxen were a different type of animal within the same family, like the difference between wolves and domesticated dogs. But what do I know, I'm hardly an expert on cattle, oxen, or whatever the hell they are.

Regardless of the proper terminology, cows are female. Somehow that got overlooked when they were making Barnyard. The trailer's been around since at least last summer. It's a movie about cows with guys' voices walking around on two legs with their udders flapping around. That's just wrong on so many levels. Kevin James squirting milk out of his udders is enough to put a kid in therapy for the rest of their life. I still can't figure out how this movie got from pre-production all the way to completion without anyone saying, "Shouldn't we get some actresses to play these cows, or make them bulls maybe?"

I suppose you could say that you're already suspending your belief enough to accept that the cows can talk and stand on their hind legs in the first place, what's wrong with suspending it a bit more? Well to that I say, "My believe can only be suspended so much before it snaps, sir!" Anthropomorphized cows are one thing, but getting their genders wrong? That was the straw that broke the cattle's back.

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A Laser For Every Occasion

When lasers aren't choreographed to the music of Pink Floyd, they're busy performing an ever-growing number of tasks. From LASIK corrective eye surgery to assisting symposia keynote speakers point to charts, it seems there's nothing lasers can't do. What other invention of this or any generation can be credited with aiding in the printing of homemade greeting cards, as well as being the primary weapon used to fight the evil forces of Cobra's dreaded Crimson Guard? I don't see Gore-Tex™ making any such claims.

For some time now, I've seen ads for laser hair removal. But yesterday I saw an ad that confused and frightened me. It was for laser hair restoration.

What the...? How can lasers get rid of hair and make it grow?! That goes against everything I know and stand for. It disrupts and kicks sand in the face of all that I hold dear. How does something perform two contradictory tasks? It's like saying keys can open doors, but also lock them. Oh, wait. Well, there goes my whole argument.

It still seems weird though. Maybe different colored lasers do different things. Like, red lasers remove hair and green lasers grow it back. And blue lasers blow up the ocean.

Lasers giveth, lasers taketh away.

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The Best Two Bucks I Ever Spent

Nick and Jose embarked on an epic trip to the cineplex for a six-movies-in-one-day marathon Saturday. While I admire their proctal fortitude that enambles them to sit for intervals that mere mortals can only begin to contemplate, I had to forgo the cinematic extraviganza to take care of some tedious but probably significant things at home.

Namely, getting the house ready for a party next Sunday. Michele and I will be away this weekend to check out NYPinTA's Serenity showing and spend hours in the line ride at Six Flags, so we tried to get as much done around the house before we left as possible. I've still got a lot of my stuff up in the living room that my mom wants in the basement.

The good news is, we should be out of the basement by August 12 and into a three bedroom townhouse just a few minutes away. The bad news is, it just started getting hot enough to turn the central air conditioning on, which is making all the exposed pipes in the basement sweat, which in turn is dripping water on us in our sleep. So we have that to look forward to for the next couple of months. Yay.

Anyway, the party is sort of a dual party. It's for Ryan, who's leaving for China for two weeks at the end of the month, but it's also for Glenn's birthday, which is on the 26th.

Also, I somehow just found out that at the end of July, my parents and brothers are going on a cruise to the Bahamas. Without loveable old me! The injustice of it all.

So we had some chores to do. But Saturday night, I had tickets to the PINK FLOYD LASER SPECTACULAR at the Bank of America Pavilion. The face value is $20 apiece, but Michele got them free from work. She was able to get the last three in her office. The third ticket went to Glenn, because he'd probably like it more anyway and Ryan's already going to China and the Bahamas, so nuts to him.

I'd never been to the Pavilion before. It's right on the harbor, and used to have the easy to remember name Harborlights, before every single venue had a ridiculous corporate sponsor's name tacked onto it. The Pavilion is bigger than the South Shore Music Circus, which is a tiny round stage with a few hundred lawn chairs around it, but not as big as the Tweeter Center.

The show was pretty cool. They broke it up into two parts; the first part is the entire album Dark Side of the Moon, which was for the most part accompanied by scenes from The Wizard of Oz in addition to the lasers. It did eerilly link up, especially how the Great Gig in the Sky lasts for entire scene of the house caught in the tornado, then the film changes to color just as Money starts. And when the song changes tempo, the Lollipop Guild shows up. Interesting stuff.

Ironically, this is the first concert I've been to that didn't have the distinct smell of certain illeagal substances floating around. Actually, make that the second. I'm pretty sure the air was clear at the Weird Al show a couple of years back. However, to enhance the veiwing experience, they were selling cheap paper glasses for two bucks that give everything a kaleidoscope effect.

With the glasses on, the lasers had red and green counterparts in all directions, whereas without them, all you see is the primary white or bright yellow laser. The downside to the glasses is that when someone stands in front of you, nine people stand in front of you. But they were still cool. And I'm actually wearing them right now. I love these things.

There was an overly enthusiastic little kid sitting next to us who screamed in approval of everything that appeared on stage. He just kept saying "Yeeaah!" like the kid riding the giant pekingese at the end of The Never-Ending Story. I thought it was kind of funny, but Michele kept squeezing my arm and said with her teeth clenched, "Somebody get that kid to shut the hell up!"

There was a short intermission after Dark Side of the Moon was over, and Michele made Glenn part with his precious two dollars to get some glasses. He really fought it, but eventually gave in and watched the second half in Chong-o-vision. The second part was made up of several songs from The Wall, as well as a couple each from Wish You Were Here and A Momentary Lapse of Reason. I guess a lot of "fans" don't really like AMLOR (Christ, did I just use shorthand? The world as we know it is coming to an end) because Roger Waters isn't on it, but screw them, I think that's my favorite Pink Floyd album.

Anyway, it was a cool show. They ended with Run Like Hell and featured the ever-popular Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man. The laser-themed highlights included an inexplicable cameo by Bevis and Butthead, a coffin when the words "One day closer to death" were sung, and a creepy naked asexual Mac Tonight. Also, no one else in the entire world will find this funny, but at one point as The Wall portion of the show was starting, the words "Sound Effects!" were flashed in laser on the screen. It flashed between "Lights" and "Action," but seeing "Sound Effects!" written out in lasers just cracks me up. I can't really explain it.

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Turtle Turtle Turtle

In the summer of 1994, as American televisions were tuned into O.J.'s harrowing slow-speed police chase, a slow-speed chase of another kind was talking place right in my backyard.

A few months earlier, a giant snapping turtle dug herself into my grandparents' garden and layed her eggs. The day they hatched, eight baby turtles started off on a long and perilous trek, presumably to the river to which their mother had returned after burrying the eggs in the dirt. Actually, it's not such a long and perilous trek. In fact, if they'd just gone in the opposite direction, the river was about ten feet away. But I guess instincts hadn't quite kicked in yet. So instead they traveled down the driveway, onto the path in the woods. Once they were in the woods, they once again could have made it to the river by taking a left, but instead followed the path into my backyard, where my dad found them.

He called me and my brothers outside to show us. They were tiny. Even with their tails they were still not much bigger than a fifty cent piece. We found a long windowbox to keep them in and put it on the front porch. We put some food and water in there, added something they could crawl in; everything we thought we would want if we were turtles.

That night, I heard what sounded like a cat screaching and whaling. I'll never forget that sound. My parents were downstairs watching Love Potion #9. My mom said the noise was the cat in the movie. Still, it sounded like it came from outside, and even though our doors were hollow and not very thick, I didn't hear any other part of the movie. The next morning one of the turtles was gone.

And then there were seven.

It would have been easy to just name them after the seven dwarves, but we had named them when there was still eight, although I couldn't tell you which one mysteriously vanished. They all looked the same, but they each had a characteristic that separated them from the rest. We did name one Sleepy, but not after the dwarf, but because it was always asleep. We kept thinking it was dead, only to have it wake up momentarly to prove it's still breathing before nodding off again. One of them had a larger lump on it's shell than the others, and was given the approriate name of Lumpy. The fastest was Speedy. I think there was one called Daredevil, because it was always trying to climb the walls and escape. And one was Gamera, friend of children, just because.

After a few days, we decided to let them go, except for two. So we brought them down to the river and realeased them. The other two were put in a small container while my dad took us out to the store to buy a bigger tank for them.

When we came back, one of them was gone. The one remaining was Speedy. It's more than likely that this wasn't the original Speedy, since he didn't try to make a run for it like his brother while we were gone. But Speedy seemed like a good name for a turtle, so that's what he was called from that day forward.

It may sound strange, but I was able to teach Speedy some tricks. I set up a circle of the clamshell Disney video cases around him and he could remember which ones were empty and therefore light enough to knock down. If he fell on his back, he'd use his long neck to flip himself over. He was a smart little guy. One day I put my finger on his eyebrow and he shut his eye. Then I put my finger on his other eyebrow and he shut that one. I went back and forth making him close different eyelids until he got pissed off and tried to bite me. He was in my lap at the time, and when he snapped, I jumped up and he flew in the air. No more messing with the eyebrows. Point taken.

I took him out to walk around every once in a while until he started snapping more. Then I just left him in his tank to do his own thing. He never came close to biting me, but it doesn't hurt err on the side of caution. The little bowl I gave him to swim around in eventually got too small for it's purpose and became a drinking bowl. He got a lot bigger than he was when he first found him wandering around in the backyard, but since he was confined to a 10 gallon tank, he didn't grow to be as big as he would have if he'd been in the wild.

I kept Speedy in my room for ten years. My mom always told me to let him go, but I said that he didn't have a chance out there and the other turtles that we let go were probably eaten long ago or didn't survive the harsh winters. Two summers ago when I moved to Quincy, I finially realised it was time for him to return to where he came from, so I brought his tank out to the bottom of the waterfall (because letting him go at the top would just be cruel) and let him walk out. He sat on a muddy patch and looked around at his new home. He stayed there until I left, but when I came back to check later on, he wasn't there.

Last summer my grandmother found a snapping turtle crawling up the steps to her pool. Sure enough, it was Speedy! His stunted growth due to years in captivity gave him away.





We gave him some bread and he started following me around, like a dog. A really slow dog. I walked over to the same path he'd traveled eleven years before and he followed. I lead him right back to the river where I'd let him go the year before, and stayed to make sure he went back into the water. It was a weird day, but it was good to know the little guy was still around, and seemingly even remembers me. That's pretty cool.





So here it is another year later, and what should I see down at the waterfall but my old friend, a completely different turtle! Even freed of the constraints of his tiny tank, Speedy couldn't have gotten this big in a year, unless Barry Bonds dumped his steroid stash in the Mill River. And anyway the shell is a different shape. But who's to say this isn't one of the babies I released in back in '94? It's still not anywhere near big enough to be the mother, but it could be one of Speedy's teenage non-mutant siblings.







It wasn't until after I took the pictures that I noticed something strange. Seems our little turtle friend has a few unwelcome visitors. And by that I mean disgusting freaking LEECHES!!!




Look at those things! Sapping and impurifying all of its precious bodily fluids. Holy crap that's gross. If I didn't value all my fingers, I would have tried to take those suckers off. As it is, I'm content just feeling bad about it. Poor turtle.

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It's Friday!

Wow, this is some Friday, huh? Yup. Some Friday. I can't wait for the weekend that hasn't happened yet. I hope I see a snapping turtle and a Pink Floyd laser show. That'd be neat.

When I left work yesterday, (you know, Thursday) I saw a CBS Channel 4 News truck drive by, followed by a couple of police cars. Some people standing on the sidewalk turned their heads, and I even saw a couple of guys running to see what was going on. Obviously I had no choice but to check it out and see what was going on.

I turned the corner onto Boylston Street and heard music and a muffled voice over a loudspeaker. It sounded like it was coming from the other end of the garden. As I approached the other end of the block, I saw a cheering crowd lined up along both sides of Charles Street and the muffled voice became more clear. The voice was announcing a name and a time, followed by another name and time. Then I remembered those guys that were running. I think they had numbers on their shirts. It was a race. The JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge, and those two guys must have had a pretty good lead on the rest of the pack, because I didn't notice any other runners until I tried to cross the street. That's when they all came pouring in.

I kept looking for breaks in-between runners so I could cross the street. I couldn't just cut in front of somebody and screw up their finishing time. So I waited for my chance. There were a couple of times where I probably could have gone, but I took too long to figure out if I had enough time to run across the street. I called my mom to tell her I was going to be late because I couldn't cross the street. I wasn't about to wait for 12,000 people to cross the finish line, so I walked up the street to find where the race ended so I could cross the street.

I'd never been at a finish line of a race before. And now that I have, I can safely say that it's not one of my top five favorite smells.

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This Guy Needs An Agent

Okay, first of all, this was originally meant to be the June 7th entry, but Blogger went on strike or lapsed into a coma and otherwise refused to cooperate, so it was left in the queue until Blogger decided to play nice. Then I forgot about it.

But here we are, so let's get to it: Paris Hilton is completely useless and needs to go away.

She's famous for being famous. She was born into money, and used her wealth to make sure she was seen at all the right places, making her more famous, and even more rich. The fact that she has no talent and looks like a foot doesn't seem to matter.

Meanwhile, there's poor old Spare Change Guy. You've got to have a gimmick if you want to make it in the crowded market of eccentric street people, like the Asian lady that barks or the Even Better Guy. Yet Spare Change Guy stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack, and he does it by simply asking if anybody has any spare change.



Panhandlers the world over have been asking the same thing for as long as there's been minted coins, but it's Spare Change Guy's delivery that makes him special. He meanders downtown, disheveled and disoriented, with arms extended, asking each individual he encounters if they have any spare change. And that's all he needs to do. Sure, some may know him as Spare Change Man, or Spare Change Dude, or as one MySpace page put it, "that guy who screams does anybody have any spare change," but everyone in Boston knows Spare Change Guy (not to be confused with Spare Change Newspaper Guy, the guy that sells the Spare Change newspaper.) He's practically a local institution.

Just how well-known is he? A quick internet search brought up a man-on-the-street interview with him in the Weekly Dig, a hip and edgy free newspaper for people too hip and edgy to buy actual newspapers. For people who refuse to click on links, the interview went as follows:

The "Do-You-Have-Any-Spare-Change" Guy
Spotted scratching lottery tickets in Downtown Crossing

Do you have any spare change? Sir?

Hey, can I ask you a couple questions for the Dig?
Sure, that's a good paper.

Do you read it? What do you like about it?
I like the cartoons and some of the articles.

Some? Are there some you don't like?
You have to be interested in it to read it.

That's a nice beard you're sporting. Do you think they're coming back?
I don't know.

Why do kids listen to that rap music?
That's the music that's going down on the streets right now. I listen to some of it.

Really? Who?
I don't know their names. Do you have any spare change?

John M. has frequently seen Spare Change Guy ambling around in the background on Fox 25 News in the mornings. They even mentioned him a couple of times. And the new freelancer even directed us to a fan-made Ween video featuring the guy. The song's pretty creepy, sort of like Bobby McFerrin meets Sesame Street, but sure enough, there's Spare Change Guy walking around the opening scene, repeating his trademark phrase.

Basically, he's reached a near-Paris-Hilton level of ubiquity, but what does the poor guy have to show for it? A mangy beard and some scratch tickets, that's what. There's something wrong with the world when someone who had enough money for a lifetime to begin with is given even more money by the idiot masses who buy all the crap with her name on it because a magazine told them to. People know who Paris Hilton is, so they give her money. People know who Spare Change Guy is, so they walk on the opposite side of the street when they see him. What do you think he got, if anything, for the interview or that video? A couple of bucks? What do you think Paris Hilton commands for an interview? Given that they have arguably the same level of talent, it hardly seems fair. Spare Change Guy needs better management.

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Better Than Batman & Robin!

Well, here it is. Today is 6-6-6. If my bible knowledge is correct, this is the day that Gozer the Destructor takes corporeal form and reigns fire and death upon mankind. In what little time we have left, I guess it would only be fitting to talk about a certain movie that came out recently; a movie that is as good a sign as any that the end of days are near. An omen. I'm referring, of course, to X-Men III: The Last Stand.


Number of the Beast

Alright, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good, either, and that's the problem. I'm not sure how it's possible, but you could actually hear the collective moan of the internet when it was announced that Brett Ratner would be helming this installment. I enjoyed the Rush Hour movies, so I thought all the negativity was a bit premature, and I reserved my judgment until after I'd seen the movie.

And now that I have seen it, my first reaction was "Man, Brett Ratner must really hate Cyclops." The poor guy's on-screen for less then two minutes, all of which he spends crying, before getting sucked into oblivion as the flim's first casualty. Maybe that last sentence should have been preceded by a spoiler warning. Okay, if you don't want to spoil the movie, hit yourself on the head repeatedly until you forget what you just read. That should do it.

Anyway, the movie starts with a brief flashback to twenty years ago, to Jean Grey's first meeting with the Professor and Magneto (who were all chummy back in the 80s). then the movie flashes to present day, or rather, the "near future," making it unclear if the flashback we just saw was twenty years ago in real time (1986), or twenty years before whenever the near future is. The near future could be next week, or several years from now. It's all pretty vague. Well, some time in the near future, Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, is riding his motorcycle, the pinnacle of masculinity, out to the lake (where Jean died in the last movie), while very un-masculinely sobbing uncontrollably. As he's weeping and yelling, Jean appears. They embrace, and she says she can fix his heat vision so it can be controlled. Then she kills him. No more Cyclops. Seriously. He doesn't even get a funeral, or even a headstone, until the very end where it's almost thrown in with the rest of the movie's casualties as an afterthought. Oh, hey, Scott's dead, too. I guess we should give the whiny bastard a headstone. The fact that they never mentioned him again made me think that he'd be alive and return at the end of the movie, but nope. He's really dead.

I've never read the comics; all I knew of the X-Men outside of the previous two movies was the cartoon that used to be on Fox. And I'm pretty sure Cyclops was the leader of the X-Men on that show. Maybe in the comic mythology Jean, who's now "Dark Phoenix," kills Scott. But it seems like even if that were the case, the movie could have handled it a bit better. No one even mentions him for the rest of the movie, except for Wolverine, who casually mentions that Scott's dead. Way to respect the team leader, guys.

If Ratner hated Cyclops, then he had a mild distaste for Mystique, who avoids getting whacked, but loses her mutant abilities and reverts to simply being a hot naked chick nearly as early into the movie as Cyclops' demise. She was injected with "the cure," the new chemical extracted from a young mutant boy that can turn mutants into regular humans. The cure serves as the plot for the movie, as factions of mutants split about what to think of this "cure". While most of the characters are opposed to the cure, especially Magneto and his followers, a few, such as Rogue, who can't touch anyone without killing them, are lining up for it.

Meanwhile Jean, who has emerged as one of the most powerful mutants on Earth, teams up with Magneto to wage war on the humans who wish to destroy their abilities. Just in case we didn't catch on that she was Dark Phoenix, there's a particularly morbid scene where she vaporizes Xavier. Naturally, he gets a funeral scene, with somber music and everything.

Between the demutation guns and the awesome destructive force of Dark Phoenix, half the mutants in the movie are either turned into average Joe's or zapped into dust by the third act. And with the professor, Cyclops and Jean gone, it's time for some of the young blood of the X-Men team to step up to the plate, right? Well, that would have been nice, but instead we get a promising fight showcasing Colossus (who had a bit part in X-Men II) and perennial background character Kitty Pryde battling Sentinels that turns out to be a Danger Room simulation. Any hopes that they'd play a role of any significance in this movie are slowly drowned as the story progresses, and it's clear that the we should be happy we even got the Danger Room scene. With the previous movies' love-triangle angle literally vaporized, Kitty does serve as a potential new love interest for Iceman, who's getting frustrated that he can't so much as touch Rogue. They don't see much time on the battlefront, though, and Rogue doesn't join them at all this time around.

So that leaves the new characters. Beast, who I don't actually recall ever being referred to as such in the movie, and Angel. Both members of the original group of X-Men when the comic launched, but in the movie, Beast has long since left the tights behind in favor of a business suit, and Angel, who also is not called by his comic book name, doesn't even show up until the movie's nearly over. And even then he does little more than save and thereby reconcile with his father, the man behind the mutant cure. Beast on the other hand, had a lot more screen time (about as much as Nightcrawler had in the last movie), and even though the thought of Kelsey Grammar covered in blue fur seemed ridiculous at the outset, he looked pretty good and I thought was actually one of the few things Ratner did right.

To review, Xavier and Cyclops are dead, Jean's joined the dark side, the young padawans are busy with there teen drama, Beast is on a human-mutant relations committee and Angel is still two acts away. All this boils down to the Wolverine and Storm show. They're the only ones left that can run the school, and they initially decide to just shut it down until wing-boy pops in and asks if he can go there. Everyone knows that Halle Berry requested that she have a bigger role in this one and it looks like she got her way. It's not that I don't think she did a good job, it's just that we went from having not enough storm to almost exclusively Storm. And as for Wolverine, yeah, I he's the most popular character and all, but the first two movies were already saturated with the guy and this movie was practically all-Wolverine all the time. And I heard he's supposed to be getting his own spin-off movie. What would be the difference? How much more Wolverine could we possibly handle?

Now let's talk about the villains. Magneto lost his right-hand woman early on, but he's got Pyro now, and some new muscle in the form of Juggernaut. His comics counterpart is impossibly hulked-out, with what looks like a giant upside down salad bowl on his head. The movie version, played by Vinnie Jones (Bullet-Tooth Tony from Snatch) is bulky, but not as big as the comics version, and his helmet doesn't go all the way to his shoulders; it's more like a bucket. He looks more like Ram-Man from He-Man.



From what I understand, when Bryan Singer left the franchise to direct Superman Returns, he took his writers with him, and Brett Ratner brought in his own guys. That's probably why Juggernaut inexplicably says "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" I'm hoping there will be a deleted scene on the DVD where he confronts Storm. "Darkness! Darkness, everyone! Darkness is spreading!" (Note: it's more likely a reference to the "Juggernaut Bitch" viral video, but it still seemed totally out of place in the movie.

There's a bunch of other pierced and tattooed baddies among Magneto's ranks, whose names take up a good chunk in the credits but are never actually said on-screen. It doesn't really matter though, because by the end they're all either dead or minus their super powers. The final battle features the mutant biker gang against the dwindling forces of the X-Men, who are rejoined by Beast, who breaks out his old jumpsuit for battle time. There's a confrontation of old nemesises (nemisi?) Iceman and Pyro, and the climactic showdown between Dark Phoenix, and the one mutant who can stop her; that little kid who can recess mutant genes simply by standing near them. No, just kidding, that would have been too easy. It's WOLVERINE! Because of his regenerative ability, he can get close enough to her to have one last glimpse at the old Jean before sticking his forks into her. So she dies. Again.

The movie looks cool, and if Singer had directed it, it could have very well surpassed the first two. Instead, it's disappointing and doesn't seem to care about the characters and relationships developed in the other movies. And this may sound weird, but it seems like he just threw some swears in the movie for no reason, like the aforementioned "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" For example. It's a shame, really.

Even so, it's still better than Batman & Robin.

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Room with a View

Ever since we moved into the new office on Newbury Street, every day has been rife with excitement. Or at least, rife with the potential for excitement. Actually, I was just looking for an excuse to use the word "rife." But there has been plenty of times where I almost saw someone famous on this street, dating back to college.

Katherine Gibbs is just a couple of blocks down the street from the office, and while I was going there, I just missed Stephen King walking out of 7-11. I read about it in the paper the next day. This wasn't too long after his accident, so he still had crutches. How do you miss Stephen King hobbling down the street on crutches? By the way, not only is it appalling to realize that was six years ago, but the name of the school, which apparently sounded too stodgy and grandmotherly to it's target daytime-TV-watching market and has since been rechristened "Gibbs Boston". Blasphemy. Oh, and the auditorium I graduated in is now an H&M clothing store.

Granted, celebrities aren't as common a sight on the street as, say, Tricycle Man, but during my time at this address, I've seen everything from Gwen Stefani's body guards standing outside the Armani store to the Legend of Zelda-style view of the top of Steven Tyler's head. One of the guys I work with saw Michele Kwan walking out of the Ritz one day. Maybe if she'd won the gold, she could have stayed at the Four Seasons. Gee, that was kind of harsh. I hope she doesn't know Jeff Gillooly.

Anyway, as I mentioned last month, Condoleeza Rice stayed at the Ritz recently, and police escorts swarmed the building. When I saw the bomb squad truck, at first I honestly thought it was because the Yankees were in town. The truck wasn't for them, but a big yellow Yankee bus (which doesn't seem to be affiliated with the team, the names are just a coincidence) pulled up in front of the hotel later that day around 2:00 to bring them to Fenway.

My bosses are siblings, and the sister's best friend is a huge Yankee fan. She'd mentioned to her friend before that some of the players stayed at the hotel across from us when they were playing the Sox, and we always saw a small group of fans huddled around the front entrance waiting for autographs or simply glimpses of their favorite players. A group of about a dozen or so people started to form a little after noon, and my boss, who we'll call Lucy, thought it would be a good idea to go down across the street and ask those guys what they knew, (i.e., who stays at this hotel, what time to they leave for the field, etc.) She also thought it would be a good idea to bring me along.

So we walked over to the group, and she interrupted two guys that were in the middle of a conversation with, "Okay, guys, what's going on here?" Thinking she was some authority figure, they asked if they were doing anything wrong.

She explained that she just wanted to know when are the players coming out, and started making small talk. Where are you from, do you come here every time the Yankees are in town...stuff like that. A guy in sweatpants and a knit cap with the Yankees emblem embroidered on it who had been standing a few feet away came over and things took a turn. I couldn't smell it on him, but the nature of his banter suggested that he'd recently tied a few on. She told him that her girlfriend was a big Yankees fan, and he quickly interrupted.

"Girlfriend? Are you a lesbian?"

"Excuse me? Look at the ring, I'm a married woman!"

"Hey, that don't mean anything anymore!"

It went on like that for a while, before she motioned to me, suggesting that she brought me along in case things got out of hand. Let's just pretend for a minute that the idea of me being a body guard isn't completely laughable, and that, when coerced, I strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those that would attempt to poison my brothers. Let's pretend. Even so, like I get paid enough to confront a bunch of big guys with baseball bats. Keep dreaming, lady.

Anyway, the conversation went back to her girlfriend being a Yankee fan, and the guy started asking her all these questions to test her mettle.

"What was Joe DiMaggio's batting average in 1941?"

"I don't know, but my girlfriend would know that."

"How many RBI's did Matsui have last year?"

"My girlfriend would know that, too. I'm telling you, she could talk you guys up and down all day."

Somehow, the conversation shifted to what he did for a living. He told her that he doesn't work because he won the lottery ten years ago and he's a millionaire. Then he pointed at the Asian guy standing next to him and said the Chinese are the richest people on the planet, before adding, "Oh wait, that's the Jews."

I was stuck somewhere between being extremely uncomfortable and highly entertained. I'm pretty sure he called her a lesbian a few more times before she mentioned that she had seen Condoleeza Rice that morning.

"Did you shake her hand?"

"No, she was heavily guarded, but she waved...."

"I bet you would have shaken her hand if you weren't a racist."

Standing there while my boss was called a lesbian and a racist--not sure if I'm supposed to step in and trying as hard as I can not to burst out laughing--has to rank up there as one of the most surreal moments ever. She took the guy's mostly good-natured jabs in stride though, and as his grand finale, he asked which floor our office was on, because he wanted to know if it was high enough for him to jump out and kill himself. Why? Because "No woman will marry him."

As we were departing back to the office, he told her that if her marriage doesn't work out, they should get together. And with that, we went back to work.

When the Yankee bus pulled up to the building, I got a few shots of some players from our seventh-floor window. It was hard to see who's who from my window, but I was able to spot Joe Torre signing autographs, Johnny Damon, and guy I'm pretty sure is A-Rod (The knit cap guy said he was staying at a different hotel, but then again he said a lot of things.)









There were a couple of guys who I'm sure were someone but I'll be damned if I could tell who they were. One guy looked like O.J. walking out of court.





As if that wasn't enough excitement, Friday a cloud of smoke drifted past the window. Hold on, that wasn't the exciting part. When we opened it to see what was going on, a thick smoky smell filled the room and black smoke was rising from a car down the street. It was hard to see exactly what was going on, because there was a tree in the way. But several fire engines quickly and loudly arrived at the scene, followed by a woman who appeared to be the car's very surprised owner. It looked like it could have been deadly if anyone had been in the car, but thankfully it was empty and the fire department handily kept the fire contained. And, in what is probably the coolest part about being a fire fighter, they smashed in all the windows with axes. Who wouldn't want to smash in windows with big honkin' axes?

















And today, there's a giant fiberglass cow sitting outside the hotel entrence.

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