Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Did You Have a Merry Christmas? Well? Did Ya, Punk?

My holiday break had a Clint Eastwood theme. I didn’t plan for it to be that way, that’s just how it turned out. I watched Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, Dirty Harry, Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire, and Invictus.

It worked out well, because I’m taking a class about westerns this semester. Even though only one of those movies is a western, the inherent Clint Eastwood badassery in the others still helped to stoke my previously non-existent interest in westerns.

Other movies that I remember seeing over break (with my ratings out of 5 because I know that your hopes and dreams are hinging on what I think of specific movies):

Julie and Julia (2.5/5)
Up In the Air (4/5)
It’s Complicated (3.5/5)
Man on Wire (4/5)
Ordinary People [new favorite] (5/5)
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian [new worst. movie. ever.] (1/5, and that's being generous because I like Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria)

I also saw about 30% of Bladerunner. During the other 70% I was in a stupor. You know the one, the barely-coherent-after-spending-all-night-vomiting stupor. I’d like to revisit the movie on a non-stupor day.

What I saw of Bladerunner: 3.5/5
Vomit-induced stupor: -873/5


What else is going on…well, it’s been raining here. A lot. And I’m starting to believe that I’m responsible for the weather. Two days after I landed back east, we got 20” of snow. It proceeded to be ridiculously cold (for me at least) while I was home. Even my dad, whose favorite comment is that a cold winter day in Maryland is like a pleasant spring day in Minnesota, thought it was cold. When I left the east coast, the temperature went up about 20 degrees. I got to L.A. just in time for some of the worst weather SoCal has had in years (decades? hard to tell what’s exaggeration around here when it comes to rain).

My Californian roommates are not familiar with rain terminology. But then again, why should they be? One of my roommates came in today and I asked if it was raining. She said that it wasn’t “raining raining” but it was…*insert that look people get when looking for the right word.* She struggled in vain to describe the water falling from the sky. I asked: is it misting? Drizzling? Sprinkling? Spritzing? Spitting? She could only respond by making a noise demonstrating the rhythm of the rain on her car. Based on that, I think it was sprinkling.

On a completely unrelated note: seeing as I’m sort of [<--understatement] in love with Conan O’Brien, let it be known that I am heartbroken over the recent late-night nonsense. That is all.

1 comment:

  1. I need to quibble with your Night at the Museum rating because you obviously did not take into account the presence of Amy Adams in tight pants and riding boots. That's worth at least two stars on its own.

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