Jesus has returned, and is apparently working as an evangelist of BellSouth. Or whatever. I love the headline Gizmodo used:
Telephone pole Jesus Died For Your Landline Abandoning Sins.
Which could be true today. Chris and I haven’t had a landline in over 3 years, and several of our friends have given theirs up too. Why bother?
So, last week was ComicCon San Diego, which is always a huge geek-fest. Coming out of ComicCon among all the stories were a TON about the upcoming The Avengers movie. If you’re not a comic book geek, think X-Men. If that still doesn’t make sense, stop reading.
The Avengers movie has been hinted at as a teaser at the end of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and now Captain America – The First Avenger and has fanboys everywhere washing their bedsheets regularly. (Think about it for a minute, you’ll get it)
So, back to the point at hand. Captain American. Tiny stick of a boy, Steve Rogers, desperately wants to serve his country, but has everything wrong with him, except polio I think. But his tenacity catches the eye of a defected German scientist working for the US government on a Super Soldier program, having failed back in Germany.
Steve get’s injected, turns into the hunky Chris Evans and goes on to win the war for the US. Or close.
I saw a preview a while back that made me think of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was pretty crappy and didn’t give me much hope for Cap’s movie. But thank god I was wrong.
Except for the rah-rah-USA number in the middle, which made it’s point about 30 times more than needed, the movie holds together pretty well. The FX were good, the story got you cheering for Cap etc. and the bookends of his discovery in the ice make a nice tie-in for The Avengers.
Chris gave it a 7.5 and I gave it a 7. It’s a comic book movie, but the anachronisms are a bit much. I know the tree of power cube, or the Energon or whatever is key, and comes back again in The Avengers, but do we really believe that in the 1940′s the German’s had this (or anyone) and didn’t manage to disintegrate everyone? Really?
Anyway, as a lead in to The Avengers, this is a pretty decent movie. As a popcorn movie, it succeeds as well. So if you’re looking for somewhere cool to hide from the heat and have some fun, then this is a good choice.
In 2010, AMC launched it’s new series, The Walking Dead. A modern Zombie story about a group of people who find themselves among the last surviving members of the human race, at least in the Atlanta Area.
The story centers on Rick Grimes played by Andrew Lincoln. Rick was a police officer who was hospitalized during the zombie outbreak and wakes up to a world gone mad. He’s been in a coma for a good while and has no clue what happened.
Conveniently, he meets up with some good people, and ends up conveniently, finding the group that his wife & son are with. As is his former partner, who’s been having an affair with his wife. Hilarity ensues. Well, except for the zombies.
You don’t see that many zombies in modern television but with the success of the vampires and werewolves these days, you can see why they want their own series!
Chris and I watch the short first season (6 episodes) and I thought we liked it. When we heard they were coming back for a second season, I was happy. Chris has cooled on the whole zombie narrative however. So I’ll be on my own.
During San Diego ComicCon this week, the trailer for season 2 was revealed and it’s hard core. They are really ratcheting things up, and apparently moving back toward the original comic/graphic novel story, despite last year’s CDC storyline.
Anyway – here’s the trailer. WARNING – It’s graphic.
Hoarding Example - This is not our house!
I’ve mentioned before that these 2 progams, Hoarders & Hoarding: Buried Alive, are guilty pleasures. I’ve downloaded all 3+ seasons of each of them.
There’s numerous patterns that emerge when watching episodes back to back like I have, and some of them are concerning when I look at my own behavior. I’m not a hoarder. I know that. Hoarding is a serious mental health issue, and certainly not something to be taken lightly.
We all have issues with letting certain things go. Whether it’s because we have attached old emotions or memories to them, someone told us we need to keep things, or we believe that we can see a use for them in some other way.
Those are some of the patterns. Every person on these shows (and myself) takes a look at certain things and build stories around them. One of the things the psychologists & therapists on the shows focus on is that memories are not IN the items. Sure, the items work as triggers to the memories, but there are other ways to access the memories.
One of the most fascinating tests the cognitive behaviorists (I think) use is to randomly pick any item (usually very inconsequential) and ask the hoarder “What if I took this out of the house right now? How would you feel?” Which is usually met with questions about “What will you do with it? Will you bring it back?” To which the answers are “I don’t know and no” and the expressions on the hoarders face is usually shock, horror and sadness. It’s a great test & question, I think.
It’s a lot like the 6 month test. If it’s been packed away in a box for more than 6 months, do you really need it? Usually not.
There are some exceptions. Most people have a lot of childhood memorabilia that they don’t want to part with. I have tons of photos, my first baby shoes, baptism cup etc. and even though these have no real value, there is sentiment attached to them. Do I pull them out and look at them? No.
In part I think I keep these for my parents. Although I’m not sure why. How would I feel if they were taken away? I probably wouldn’t feel anything much after the first 30 seconds. Or maybe I would. (NB: Chris, do not throw this stuff away.)
So, now what? Chris and I have a small storage area in the condo, and it’s full. I don’t mean entirely stuffed to the rafters, no more room. I mean there’s an aisle down the center and shelves full on each side. Some of it’s winter bedding & gear that’s stored seasonally, and some of it is bulk storage for supplies (water, paper products) and that’s fine. The rest is just stuff.
Chris (he’s wonderful) cleans this room about once a month. I have no idea how it gets to be messy again when we hardly use it, but it does. I think this weekend I need to go through my portion of this stuff and make some hard decisions using what I see on the show, and what I wrote about above, as a means of purging some of it.
I’m very good at rationalizing why I need it. Just like the hoarders are. “Oh, I could use it for this” or “It cost a lot of money and I don’t want to just throw it away” and the classic “Let’s donate/give/take it to XCY Agency” which almost never happens.
So – Saturday for a couple of hours, I’m going to go through a TON of stuff and lighten the load. That’s something they haven’t talked about. Everything we own is in our head. If you have a lot of stuff, you figuratively carry it with you all the time. If you have a messy home/workspace, that physical clutter becomes mental clutter.
Coming next summer is the new re-boot of the Spider-man franchise. After Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi royally fucked up the last movie, I’m glad they’re both out of the picture.
So – now what? A reboot. Hollywood’s way of saying “Yeah, we screwed up, so we’re gonna start all over again and you can just forget any of those other movies happened. Oh, and we’re gonna shove the origin story down your throat again. And again in the sequels.”
This time out – Andrew Garfield is the titular Spider-man. I like that word. Titular. No, now I don’t.
Garfield you should recognize from the brilliant “The Social Network” about Facebook. Also he’s adorable and super fit. So of course I hate the bugger (ha!). Ok, enough puns.
Anyway, the trailer just hit the inter-webs (ha!) and I really liked the look. I hope the POV stuff at the end is either not in the movie or at least used very little!
