Monthly Archives: August 2009

Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)

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Thank you, to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. Wasn’t the best or worst birthday I ever had, but not bad considering. Forty-one…. Yeesh… just 28 years until retirement, give or take one or two.

Usually, I buy myself something. But this year I haven’t found anything I want. Or rather, I don’t want to buy myself anything and then have to put it on a plane to get it home J. Maybe when I get back home… I’ve got a few things in mind. Word on the street is that’ll be Saturday. I haven’t seen an airline reservation yet, so I’m not really convinced.

Anyway, I thought I was going to have more to say tonight but I’m beat. I spent the second day in a row putting out fires in two states. Thanks again for the birthday wishes. Later.

A Better Offer, Damn

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On Friday I talked to the fellow who was hired for this area, probably about 3:30pm. We decided it would be best for him to meet me here at the hotel at 8:30am and go from here.

This morning he called me at 8:10am and wanted to let me know that he wasn’t going to take the position. A better offer came in.

Okay… Thanks… Fuck! I know where this is heading. Chances of me being on that Wednesday morning flight back to Michigan just got a lot slimmer. I find it hard to believe that he got a job offer in the window I described above, but that’s neither here nor there. My issue is that I’m ready to go home and this makes that unlikely.

I talked to my boss and let him know what was going on. He made noises about finding somebody to fill in for me. But as of this afternoon there have been no takers. He’s got a couple more guys to go, so says he. We’ll see how that all works out. I fully expect that I’ll be here through Sunday. And I expect that they’ll be asking me to stay another week. I do not want this mind you; it’s just what I’m expecting. If this position paid better I might even consider taking it myself. But it’s not union and the pay scale isn’t even where I started at. So it really isn’t an option for me. Too bad, I kinda like Florida.

I slept like crap last night.

I have failed to get a stable version of City of Heroes to play on my laptop in the 4+ weeks I’ve been away from home. It freaks out the graphics card on my laptop and crashes after 10-30 minutes of play. So I’ve done a lot of aimless surfing on the internet and watched more TV than I have in 20-years. And as an added bonus, only about a third of the stuff that I thought I’d put on my iPod actually transferred. On the plus side I did chat with my buddy Joel on IM for the first time in months this weekend.

Really, that’s about all I have for you tonight. Later.

Do You Want A Little Company?

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So I’m sitting in the hotel eating my Domino’s Pizza when the phone rings. A pleasant enough female voice ask’s which room this is. I tell her. She says that she got a call asking her to call my room. I tell her that it wasn’t me and it wasn’t anybody else because I’ve been here two weeks. She says, ok. Then asks me if maybe I want a little company. I decline politely and wish her a good night.

I just got called by a whore. An actual whore, prostitute, call girl, hooker. I don’t know how to feel about that. Does this kind of crazy shit happen to anyone else? Just thought I’d share. Later.

Yo Joe!

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In my efforts to stay in the Tallahassee area so as to avoid a repeat of last weekend’s T-Mobile fiasco (I was at St. George Island when their AC went down.), I went to another movie this afternoon. This time around I saw G.I. Joe.

This is not the G.I. Joe I grew up with. That Joe was the size of a Barbie and had fuzzy hair and beard and looked a lot more like the U.S.  Military soldiers than this Joe does. This Joe is based on the little Star Wars sized action figures that my kids had. A Joe that was far more technically advanced than my good old boys were. The movie was pretty much exactly what I would expect. It was a CGI spectacle. A rock ‘em, sock ‘em action fest. Damn near one big explosion with just a dash of story to make it all make sense. Not make it plausible mind you, just make it make sense. I can’t say that I was impressed. The CG was exactly what we’ve come to expect from this sort of movie, good in places, not so much in others.  I was entertained and I’d go see another one if/when they make it. Like I said, this isn’t my Joe, but the kids in the audience seemed to like it.

I only have two real complaints about the film, given what it was, a popcorn-action adventure. One, does everything have to blow up? I mean really! Can’t some stuff just get crushed and broken? At some point in one of these movies I expect to see somebody crumple up a piece of note paper and throw it over their shoulder and have it take out a skyscraper with a huge fireball. Two, Marlon Wayans needs to settle it down and play it a little less for the laughs. I’m okay with a little bit of this sort of thing, after all it is for the kids, but come on. The guy ends up reminding me of Jar Jar Binks the way he over reacts to everything and goes out of his way to get the laugh. I blame the director. His character was alright and could have been good, but they chose to go over the top with it. Everything was just as I would have expected.

I enjoyed this way more than I did District 9, but I can’t say that it was great. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that hit all my buttons to be considered great. But in all fairness, I don’t really like movies; they always leave me thinking about how I would have done it had I been in charge. Maybe the Count of Monte Cristo (2002) would be the last movie that hit all the right buttons for me. Later.

District Boring

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I just got back from watching District 9… I was disappointed. I didn’t have any real expectations going in, just saw that it was getting better reviews than G.I. Joe and it looked interesting. So the aliens are bugs who live in a South African slum. The aliens were well done and the weapons made a big fancy mess out of the stuff they were fired upon. But I was bored by the film, annoyed by the camera work, and found nobody to sympathize with in the whole movie. And to top it off; it looks like they’re suiting up for a sequel. You can count me into the ‘don’t care’ crowd for that one.

The reviews are comparing this film to Blade Runner and Alien. Two movies that are good, this one’s not. They’re saying it’s got vision, grit, and realism. But I found it boring, slow, and not at all compelling; a complete waste of my ten dollars. I should have gone to see G.I. Joe, at least that movie knows that it’s all about the popcorn and action and doesn’t try to be something that people don’t care about. I’m annoyed.