Lessons Learned...

...from The Dark Knight:
It is too bad that Heath Ledger died.

I liked this movie well enough, but I don't think it was as good as the first one. This one seemed crammed full of action, and everything rushed from one thing to the next with no sense of pacing. Heath Ledger did do an incredible job, but his scenes were oddly edited, making me suspect that either they were using every scrap of footage of him or that they would have done things differently if he had been available for reshoots.

...from The X-Files: I Want to Believe:
There shouldn't be any more X-Files movies. Let the characters drift of in the sun, people.

The only charm of this movie was seeing what happens to Mulder and Scully further on in their lives. The "case" that brings them back to the FBI was not very interesting and the FBI's handling of it was not very believable. Both the case plotline and Scully's doctor-ethics plotline seemed manufactured and contrived. I didn't hate this movie, but I think it was solely due to nostagia for the series.

...from The Wackness"
There was once this crazy, magical time called 1994! And it was totally wack, yo! They had things like Kurt Cobain, Biggie Smalls, blunts, and Beverly Hills 90210!

Seriously, I could have done without the trip down '90s memory lane. This movie reminded me of that Simpsons episode they did recently (that wasn't very good either), where they reset Marge and Homer's courtship in the '90s.

The actual story of the movie was unconnected to the '90s, except for a brief, labored metaphor comparing the characters' repression of their emotions to Rudy Giuliani's repression of the seedy elements of Times Square, which made me wish they had just set in the present. I kept waiting for something to happen, before I realized that this wasn't the kind of movie where things happen. It's the kind of movie where the characters talk about their feelings for two hours. I usually like those kind of movies, except these characters had a limited array of feelings -- an ill-defined sadness and a strong desire to get laid. It struck me as perhaps an art-house Judd Apatow movie. Set in the crazy '90s, yo! Where everything was dope!

Finally, I think everyone will enjoy this video of Rush playing "Tom Sawyer" on Rock Band backstage at the Colbert show. Apparently, they scored 31% on expert mode.

She is blaming the oil men in the White House for the gas prices, but doesn't mention the congressional meetings with big oil, over the past few years, to discuss gas prices. The congressional meetings went something like this:

Congress: Uh, could you guys do something about your high prices? please?

Big Oil: No, are you crazy? We are just making ends meet as it is.

Congress: Really? We are sorry we bothered you then.

Here is the Daily Show on the subject.

The three core zones of the Monarch butterfly biosphere reserve protect eight overwintering colonies of the monarch butterfly in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. Perhaps a billion monarch butterflies overwinter here in close-packed clusters every year after a 3,500-4,500km journey. Witnessing this unique phenomenon is considered to be an exceptional experience of nature.

I wonder which ones are 21 and 24?

Link to the slideshow here

2) The movie is not as good as the book (although James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are very pretty to look at).

I was interested to see how they would adapt it, because the primary theme in the book is the act of writing and being a writer and what that means. The tragedy that happens comes about because Briony is a writer. She sees things, she notices, and she tries to make sense of it by building a story around it. But the secondary story of the lovers takes over in both the book and the movie, which is again all part of the point. Fiction is more powerful than real life. It seemed almost impossible to me that they would find a satisfactory way to reveal the ending. I can't think of a better solution than the way they chose, other than not adapt the book at all, but I didn't really like it, either.

Wasn't Hank already circumcised? I distinctly remember a comment from Hank to Dean about his ugly "dog dork" and Dr. Venture saying, "Hank, don't brag about your circumcision!"

So, did Hank get circumcised AGAIN?

youch.

in other news, this episode was pretty awesome:
"The both of 'use got jungle fever! The both of 'use!"
"You used to be all 'Go Team Venture' but now you're all 'Go Team...Boobies!"
"Stop starin' at my ass, Sampson!"
"Alright! I know where this is going!" "...Sex."
"She's not a were-o-dile; she's an epileptic." "Ew!"
"It's for the Venture [?] Newsletter. Pictures increase circulation."

So, on to my dilemma. Everyone here knows how pale I am and how I don't tan. We have all heard the burst-into-flames joke; in fact, I think it's here somewhere on this very website. Before I went to England, I was using self-tanner to approximate the color normal skin gets when it is exposed to sun. Mike (who becomes beautifully tan two minutes after stepping outdoors) made fun of me endlessly for the self-tanner, mostly by calling me "Sunkist."

When I was in England, I stopped using the self-tanner in favor of normal lotion, because even though the weather was nice, absolutely no one there was tan. The English are truly my people.

So now I am back and pale. Mike opposes my resuming the self-tanner, but I do kind of feel like a freak being pale in the summer. What say you, Pop5 - should I self-tan or not?

Seriously, spoilers may be after the jump.