DaVinci Crap

First, let me preface the following rant with the fact that I am one of the few Americans, nay, world citizens, who has not read The DaVinci Code and been sucked into the pop-culture phenomenon.

On Saturday Ross and I decided to go to a movie. It is important however to note that Ross and I not only have extreme differences of opinion on movies and are nearly polar opposites, but I want to state for the record, that I NEVER get to pick the movie that we see. If there is a film out that I am interested in I either see it with my sister or it is rented and I watch it alone. So, my Saturday night choices (we had not been to a movie since Thanksgiving when we saw, Walk the Line...Ross' pick) were DaVinci, X-men, or the one starring America's favorite crazy fruit, MI:III. Faced with the daunting task of picking from three winners I deffered to Ross and he settled on, DaVinci. I was less than thrilled but at least it starred "real" people, not mutants or celebrity scientologists.

It is also important to note, before I get into my thoughts on the film, that I am a realist when it comes to movies. I don't like the improbable, fanciful, or supremely imaginary. I only want to see extreme violence if it is heroic and war related, and I need to be able to believe the characters, otherwise it is a waste of time. With all this in mind, here are my thoughts.

• Who thought Forrest Gump would be good for the roll of le Professeur with long hair?
• Since when do Albinos have blue eyes?
• How can an elderly man who has suffered a fatal belly wound wander half way around le Louvre with a magic pen writing down secret codes and clues?
• Why must the blue-eyed albino constantly charge out of the darkenss with a knife or gun? How many times must he do this before it gets old. (A toss up here for MI:III...ripping of masks throughout the film or charging knife-wielding flaggelating monks).
• How is it that half-whit Americans who subsist off of CSI and Law and Order can not only always outwit the police in film, but can always out-wit French Police?
• Miranda vs. Arizona was an American case about rights when being arrested...since when do the British Police read criminals their Miranda Rights?
• Where is DaVinci? The only element of the great mind is in the random view of paintings in the museum and the small scene where Magneto talks about "The Last Supper"...rumor has it that the book has much more detail but shouldn't that have been in the movie as well?
• I am supposed to believe that a crippled professor orchestrated the whole thing? How did he know that the prof. would come to his house?
• If someone wants to shoot you, they will...a flock if pigeons isn't going to stop them.
• Like Forrest Gump wasn't going to throw the Cryptix into the air....
• Enough with the flashbacks already!!!!
• I am supposed to believe that a french cryptologist is not only happy and okay with the fact that she is the last living heir to Mary Magdalene, but that she is willing to stay with a bunch of strangers that covered up her life for 30 years and probablly killed her parents? yeah, right.
• 2 and a half hours? Come on!

I could go on, but I wont. A friend of mine challenged me a week or two ago to read the book, but to that friend, I must say, I am so sorry....I cannot. For, I saw the film and it did sucketh!

We are the Champions....

Congratulations to Willie's baseball team for being the best underdogs in all of Hunter/Cyprus baseball and beating all the other teams with really mean coaches.

And Annie Said..."Let there be flowers"

Finally, the front yard is taking shape. I just spent a couple of hours this morning planting flowers and working in the yard...I am so happy that there is now some color surrounding the front of my house. Now, if only I didn't break my lawn mower, things would be even better.

A blog about nothing

Here's the million dollar question. Okay, maybe not a million dollars, and maybe not even a question per se, but it is definately something worth thinking about. There are a lot of people out in the world right now with blogs. I read a statistic the 70,000 blogs are created/updated every single day around the world. Knowing this, and realizing that I have been a pretty faithful blogger now since September 2005 this is what has come to mind...how much of my life and my thoughts should I put in my blog? Do I keep it "sterile", somewhat sarcastic and whitty (at least I think I'm whitty), some might even say boring and safe for the sake of privacy and meeting the generic needs of the people who read my blog...mostly family and friends if they even read it, OR do I dare to be bold and say what I really feel and think about the world and my role in it risking the chance that I'll be offensive, rude, or unsettling to the same people I try to play it safe for?

I know that some of the teachers who take my classes read my blog, as well as some of the gals in my book club, my family, a few friends (yes, I think I have a few) and even some co-workers. So, where do I draw the line?

Jared and I were having this discussion at the end of the work day today and I have continued to think about it. I view my blog as Jared put it, sort of "sienfeldian" in nature: meaning that I like writing about nothing, the goofy stuff that I see and encounter on a daily basis as well as posting some of the pictures I take while I am out and about adventuring in my community and the world at large. Am I afraid to really write my true feelings? I think so. Do I want to write about politics, why Wal-Mart and the people who shop there are all that is bad in the world, and starving kids in Africa? Not really. I think about those things, but I'm not sure I am brave enought to tell the Internet what I really think about it all.

So, after a good deal of thought on the matter, I think I'll remain bland. I like bland....non-confrontaional is a good way to exsist, for the most part. If Sienfeld was successful for years as a show about nothing, then maybe I can continue to be a blog about nothing and be happy with it. For the time being then, I'll keep my thoughts on mini-vans, coupons, people who laugh like Mozart in the movie Amadeus with that horsey-whiney sort of laugh, children who use my yard as their unsupervised playground and people who insist on reclining their chairs on airplanes and squishing me to a point where I think I am going to scream and claw my eye balls out to myself. I've got to keep it mysterious, right?

Your daily moment of Zen

Washington DC

Ross and I had a great time on our trip to Washington DC. We ate good food (Old Ebbit's, Anna Maria's, The Burro, Au Bon Pain), saw great sites (Arlington, museums, protests, Georgetown, etc.), and were happy to be away from the real world for 6 days. We got rained on in Baltimore, took a taxi with a great cab driver to the Naitonal Zoo ("Talk to me"), and spent some time freaking out in the hot and sweaty food court in Union Station. Our hotel was in a beautiful area of town and on Tuesday morning, someone was filming a movie on our street and rumor has it that Woody Harelson (is he even famous anymore- hemp!) was the star! We saw the Red Sox beat the Orioles (See Jared's post here and here) and got squished in the airplane coming home. All in all, it was a great trip and I was happy to visit our nation's capital.

The Rock Wall

A couple more pictures here