apple juice

Ahhh… Friday.

The tagline for the past week or so has been “i’m dreaming of a white christmas”, and hopefully we’ll have that. We received about .5 cm* of snow this morning, and although it’s mostly melted off the roads now, it’s nice to look out and see some fresh white stuff.

*After discussing with a co-worker the absurdity of quoting 1/10th of an inch of snow, I (once again) decided that things would be better off if we (the US) just switched to the metric system. I’ll mount a full-scale campaign soon.

What is sad (/amazing/scary) is how close our country is to such a shameful part of our past. Since the comments were made at the birthday party, many little tidbits have been dredged up about Mr. Lott. Prior comments along the same lines, his voting record. (He didn’t vote in favor of creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, voted no on the Voter Rights Act)

Maybe this will move our democratic process forward. Maybe people will become better informed about who they are voting for. We can hope.

Wow.

It’s hard not to repeat what has been said elsewhere about this movie, but I’m here to say that it delivered. There was no feeling of expectations not met (Star Wars), no feeling that I was cheated out of my seven dollars (Star Wars). The Two Towers is a masterpiece.

To give you an idea of how amazing this movie was, how completely it grabbed your emotions, there were times in the movie where you could not hear a single person take a breath in the theatre. A collective sigh of relief would comfort you when the danger passed, but the unrelenting action of the movie swept you up and soon there was another moment that held you in mid-breath.

I don’t want to give away any of the key moments, because even though I’m sure most of you are at least familiar with the story, there are parts, that when realized on the screen, are much more powerful than what I had read in the book. The battle of Helm’s Deep, for example, was hard for me to get my head around in the book. I wasn’t thinking on a grand enough scale. In the movie, however, the battle is realized with perfection. (Minus the dwarf jokes)

Basically, you need to see this movie. If you haven’t seen Fellowship of the Ring yet, go see that first. This one picks up right away. You will be confused. There is very little backtracking.

I told a co-worker this morning that this trilogy is replacing Star Wars as my all-time favorite. And I haven’t even seen the last one yet! It’s that good.

Side note. This movie is rated PG-13 for a reason. Don’t bring your little kids to see it. It will scare the crap out of them. Parts of the movie scared the crap out of me. I saw one little girl that was maybe eight on the way out. I can’t imagine the dreams she’s going to have for the next week. Sonja called the people who designed the Uruk-hai “geniuses of terror”. And once you see them in action, you’ll have to agree.

This is easily my favorite movie of the year. Go see it! (And go read a real review if you want fluffy-artsy talk)

Going to see The Two Towers tonight. I can barely contain my excitement. So far at Metacritic it’s garnered a 92, pretty dang good. At work we’re doing a demo for most of the afternoon, so I won’t have too much time to think about it… but the countdown has begun… 10h 17m

Whoops, 10h 16m

Full review tomorrow…

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (album of the year)
Beck – Sea Change
Spoon – Kill the Moonlight
Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head
Mr. Lif – I Phantom
Jurassic 5 – Power In Numbers
Blackalicious – Blazing Arrow
Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
Sigur RÛs – ( )

Well, the great promise of a power hitter that was David Ortiz set sail for better seas today as the Twins released him to make room for some Class A SS that no one has heard of (that’s another story).

Anyone who saw David Ortiz uncork a shot to the upper deck knew that the man could hit, but they also knew he had an ugly swing, was not-so-good in the field, was hurt half the time (or more) that he was with the twins, struggled against lefties, and with runners in scoring position.

So although I think the man could hit 35 home runs in a season, maybe more, we’ll just have to watch from afar. As was written on TwinsGeek today, Want to hear something that surprised me? Ortiz’s career totals with the Twins include just 58 home runs over the last five years. Could anything make it clearer that it’s time for everyone to just move on?

My sentiments exactly.