Advent
My christmas season started this morning with solo cello on "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." It was beautiful. Since then we've taken down our pumpkins and other fall frippery, started on our christmas decorations, and written our first handful of cards. Success! It was sadly raining today, or we would have gotten a tree as well. Oh well. Now I am full of hot cider and hot soup, and about to head out to go watch Walking Dead with friends. Because nothing says Advent like gratuitous zombie violence.
Yesterday was warm and beautiful. We slept in till about noon, then went out letterboxing. Dinner was the world's best pho over at Lac Viet (Lamb pho! seriously!) after which we met friends for Atlas Shrugged II: the Strike at the dollar theater. The movie was lots of good fun, and we finished up with frozen yoghurt. A good day.
Brief thoughts on the movie. It covered basically the material we expected it to. The most jarring thing was that they changed out all the actors to People You May Have Heard Of. For instance, basically the first person on screen was Robert Picardo. Yay Robert Picardo! Also, unexpected Patricia Tallman! Run, Lyta, it's the Psi Cops! *ahem* anyway. In stark contrast to the hollywood tradition of recasting things with younger more attractive people, the movie was actually entirely recast with older, less attractive people. It was kind of a nice change. I preferred the new Dagny but the old Francisco; Hank was about the same except his voice was so extraordinarily gravelly that it got ridiculous if you couldn't also see his face. Eddie was completely different but still black. The Destroyer was still overwhelmingly silly, but oh well. The special effects were absolutely terrible. I didn't have a problem with the effects in the first movie - I did have a problem here. It also managed to be, if anything, more heavy-handed than the first movie. There was the standard Ayn Rand level of anviliciousness - and then they would go one giant unnecessary step past that. But oh well. The one thing that was interesting to me was the protesters. They protested everything, not just the good guys. When the new legislation comes down, they protest that too! And so they end up seeming to hold really inconsistent views. Which is perhaps uncharacteristically insightful. But the absolute best thing was James Taggart consistently failing to read anybody's name tags. I do miss Ragnar the Pirate though.
But enough of Rand. Things are basically good, and would be excellent if I could stop being sick. Our friends have the flu, so we're going to run them over some homemade soup (because the Other One is the King of All Soup). Today has been a happy mass of bumming around playing Skyrim and really excellent Christmas music. I hope all y'alls Christmas season has begun as pleasantly. Be happy all, and happy advent!
Yesterday was warm and beautiful. We slept in till about noon, then went out letterboxing. Dinner was the world's best pho over at Lac Viet (Lamb pho! seriously!) after which we met friends for Atlas Shrugged II: the Strike at the dollar theater. The movie was lots of good fun, and we finished up with frozen yoghurt. A good day.
Brief thoughts on the movie. It covered basically the material we expected it to. The most jarring thing was that they changed out all the actors to People You May Have Heard Of. For instance, basically the first person on screen was Robert Picardo. Yay Robert Picardo! Also, unexpected Patricia Tallman! Run, Lyta, it's the Psi Cops! *ahem* anyway. In stark contrast to the hollywood tradition of recasting things with younger more attractive people, the movie was actually entirely recast with older, less attractive people. It was kind of a nice change. I preferred the new Dagny but the old Francisco; Hank was about the same except his voice was so extraordinarily gravelly that it got ridiculous if you couldn't also see his face. Eddie was completely different but still black. The Destroyer was still overwhelmingly silly, but oh well. The special effects were absolutely terrible. I didn't have a problem with the effects in the first movie - I did have a problem here. It also managed to be, if anything, more heavy-handed than the first movie. There was the standard Ayn Rand level of anviliciousness - and then they would go one giant unnecessary step past that. But oh well. The one thing that was interesting to me was the protesters. They protested everything, not just the good guys. When the new legislation comes down, they protest that too! And so they end up seeming to hold really inconsistent views. Which is perhaps uncharacteristically insightful. But the absolute best thing was James Taggart consistently failing to read anybody's name tags. I do miss Ragnar the Pirate though.
But enough of Rand. Things are basically good, and would be excellent if I could stop being sick. Our friends have the flu, so we're going to run them over some homemade soup (because the Other One is the King of All Soup). Today has been a happy mass of bumming around playing Skyrim and really excellent Christmas music. I hope all y'alls Christmas season has begun as pleasantly. Be happy all, and happy advent!