Thursday, June 25, 2015

I Hate Birthdays

The thing I hate most about birthdays in the Web era is the absurdly insincere birthday greetings in email and on FB from corporations that happen to have my birthday in their database. What am I supposed to think about "good wishes" that don't emanate from any actual person? At best, it's an attempt to co-opt the natural human reaction of reciprocity; at worst, it's a crude sales pitch (who doesn't want a new weed trimmer on their birthday, right?).

If I wanted to read meaningless, empty, formulaic wishes that don't genuinely emanate from any real person with real feelings, I would go stand and stare in front of the birthday card rack at Hallmark for an hour.

 At least, that's what I used to do before the restraining order.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Some Thoughts On Jurassic World

Oh, and SPOILERS, obviously.

Here's a couple of thoughts about Jurassic World that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere.

1. Owen (Chris Pratt) is actually responsible for hundreds of deaths. If instead of trying to escape from the Indominus Rex compound he had heroically accepted his fate and sacrificed his own life so that the others could escape without releasing the dinosaur, nobody else would have died. Also, the movie would have been over much more quickly.

2. Everybody online is complaining about Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) running around the woods in her high heels and never once sinking in, losing a shoe, or breaking a heel. I think the director missed a great opportunity to capitalize on that. When Owen is pinned down by a pterosaur and Claire saves him, instead of shooting the pterosaur she should have spiked it in the head with her heel.

And then she and Chris could have exchanged some witty banter about how he's sorry for mocking her footwear, while all around them people continue to be dragged to their horrible deaths, all because Owen didn't sacrifice himself in the first act (see point 1 above).

3. As an aside, Claire is obviously not from New York or she would have a pair of sneakers in her purse that she changes into when it's time to run for the train.

4. I don't think I've ever seen such gratuitous product placement in a movie ostensibly about the evils of over-commercialization. Even in actual Mercedes commercials the camera doesn't caress the bodywork so lovingly before coming to rest on such a prominent shot of the emblem. The director of this movie either has the most profound sense of irony on the planet, or none at all. I'm not sure which.

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