Soda and '80s Music
First of all:
Happy Fourth of July!
That done, I owe my apologies to the Cyber Bag of Weasels for my disloyalty in writing as of late. Excuses are in order: I have been writing, posting some of it, doing a beta, and writing a D&D adventure. I know, I know--poor excuses. But it's what I've got.
This has been a great weekend. First of all, it is a three-day weekend, which is always a good thing. After that, it's just been one fun thing after another. Which is an even better thing.
Friday, of course, was nerd night. Hillehaus and Tommy made it home safely from Denver. Tommy and Marnelli got married out there--that was their "big surprise"--but everyone had figured that out months ago, when they began grilling Bobby and me about civil marriage ceremonies and talking about the costs of getting married in Colorado versus Maryland. Nonetheless, here's a hearty congratulations to them, joining Bobby and me in the never-ending adventure that is married life!
Saturday was our first D&D campaign game. It went great! The adventure was not very hard because I would rather err on the side of caution and have everyone come home alive than go the other way and have everyone die. But everyone enjoyed the adventure--including me--and they surpassed my expectations to the point where they actually leveled-up in their first game. So, now, adventures can become more fun and challenging, which will make it better for me, as DM.
Saturday night, we met our nerds for supper and War of the Worlds. Bobby dislikes the Regal Cinema in Belair with a passion, and so he convinced Zachariah that we should go to Loews in White Marsh and have supper at Red Brick Station instead of our old staple DuClaw. (Not that DuClaw is bad, but every now and then, a homey needs to go someplace different.) Dinner was awesome, and the movie...well, more on that in a few.
First, though, since it seems that I am going to talk at length about this movie, be forewarned that text in maroon text might contain spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens in the movie, skip that part. Don't complain to me if you do otherwise.
Let me begin by saying that War of the Worlds was one of the scariest and most disturbing movies that I've seen in a while. It is very intense. If you don't like watching horrible things happening to other humans en mass, then it is not the film for you. Now I have a bona fide blood/injury phobia, but I am always trying to cowboy up and sit through such things anyway. I was successful in that I didn't 1) run out of the theater, 2) vomit, or 3) pass out, but I was highly disturbed nonetheless.
The premise, of course, is that an alien race long ago--before humans evolved into humans--implanted ships into the earth. Now, in a rash of freak lightning storms, they implant themselves back in their ships and invade from below.
This particular version of the story follows Tom Cruise's family. (I think his name is Ray? I think I've blocked the names of the characters for the sake of mental wellness, and I'm too lazy to look them up.) He and his wife (Miranda Otto--Eowyn--yea!) are divorced, and he is watching his kids while she visits her parents in Boston. He has a fifteen-year-old son and a ten-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning), whose names I also do not remember. He is a blue-collar, C- dad--without enough food in the house, etc--and it is not hard to gather that there is not a lot of trust between his children and him, particularly his son, who won't even call him "Dad" but "Ray."
When the tripods first emerge from the ground, it is Ray who is in the thick of things. Come the first of many disturbing images as the tripods proceed to vaporize one-by-one the hordes of folks fleeing from them. And by vaporizing, I mean in up-close and personal detail, with limbs flying about and close-ups of faces as the rays hit them. Ray manages to escape, although he is covered with a sinister dust that is the flesh of his departed cohorts.
Ray ends up with one of the few functional vehicles left in the city, and the story follows them as they flee towards Boston, witnessing one horror after another, the tripods always close behind. They end up in a crowd that takes the car at gunpoint, and they try to take a ship across the river, but a tripod emerges from the water below them, tips the ship, and--horrible moment #2--begins picking people one by one out of the water. Ray and his family, though, manage to escape once more, although as they run once they reach the shore, the clothing of the recently expired victims rains down on their heads.
Long story short, Ray's son ends up following the military into the thick of the fight, and when the lot of them end up in a fiery explosion, we are left to assume that he, also, is dead. Ray and daughter end up in a farmhouse basement with a very creepy Tim Robbins, who has lost everyone in his family and is not faring well because of it.
Through it all, a commendable job is done with the characters. I don't like Ray, yet--given his situation--I am left with no choice but to feel for him. Dakota Fanning's character is in many ways the cookie-cutter prodigious child, but I can ignore that. I liked his son, who seems like a helpful, humanitarian kind of chap who struck back at his father in clever ways. (Like wearing a Boston Red Sox cap when his dad is a Yankee's fan; I laughed at that.)
Throughout this movie, one awful thing followed another, and I found myself thinking: It can't possibly get any worse. You can't possibly top people getting vaporized up-close on a grand scale. Then they got harvested from the water and no mystery was made of their fate...what can be worse than that? Every time I thought the worst had happened, though, it got worser still. Is "worser" even a word? This movie made it one.
The moment that did me in was when Tom Cruise peeked out the window and saw a tripod spraying the field with a mist of red. The stuff that wafted over and onto his hands had a resemblance to blood. It was. And yes, they show how it is procured. Goodness.
I give War of the Worlds three-and-a-half Keebler E.L. Fudge "Elves Exist" cookies out of four. Yes, that is a stunningly good rating for this kind of movie from me. It got extra points for the lack of boring CGI battle scenes full of explosions and twisting aerial maneuvers. The military is utterly ineffective against the tripods thanks to the shields around them. The tripods are destroyed internally, and giving away the exact reason, suffice to say that it makes scientific sense.
I had the rating at a healthy three-and-three-quarters, though, but I had to nibble off a quarter at the end. Ray's son somehow manages to survive the explosion that killed a crap-load of soldiers wearing far more protective equipment than he was. He returns at the end. Up until then, I had a good sympathy buzz going for the family, but when he came back ::poof!:: gone. I mean, they must be the luckiest family in New York. I didn't feel for them, I envied them, with jealous green eyes.
After the movie, our friend Claire summed it up perfectly: "That traumatized me." Potter--who can't even take campy horror flicks--admitted to sh*tting his pants at least four times. All told, it was awful and realistic, the characters weren't bad, and the plotline was believable and unique enough in a beaten-to-death genre. Three-and-a-half Elf cookies out of four, what more can I say?
The next day, Potter was in a bona fide meh-state after the movie, claiming that the movie had diddled his soul. Yes, it really bugged him that much. We went out to the Heritage Fair that night with Bobby's parents: Since Bobby's dad had helped set the thing up, we got to chill in the hospitality tent, drinking free soda and beer and listening to live music. Good deal. We also saw that our Ocean City trip in August will be more epic than originally intended as it appears that both of our families will be making appearances while we're there. So we had a great time with that.
We left when we thought the music was over, but as we were walking out, another band took the stage: an '80s cover band that played all of the guilty pleasure hits. We had to stay for that.
When it was all over, Potter summed it up nicely: "Soda and '80s music definitely cured my soul." Hence the title.
And that's the weekend.
Summarily yours,
Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain
Happy Fourth of July!
That done, I owe my apologies to the Cyber Bag of Weasels for my disloyalty in writing as of late. Excuses are in order: I have been writing, posting some of it, doing a beta, and writing a D&D adventure. I know, I know--poor excuses. But it's what I've got.
This has been a great weekend. First of all, it is a three-day weekend, which is always a good thing. After that, it's just been one fun thing after another. Which is an even better thing.
Friday, of course, was nerd night. Hillehaus and Tommy made it home safely from Denver. Tommy and Marnelli got married out there--that was their "big surprise"--but everyone had figured that out months ago, when they began grilling Bobby and me about civil marriage ceremonies and talking about the costs of getting married in Colorado versus Maryland. Nonetheless, here's a hearty congratulations to them, joining Bobby and me in the never-ending adventure that is married life!
Saturday was our first D&D campaign game. It went great! The adventure was not very hard because I would rather err on the side of caution and have everyone come home alive than go the other way and have everyone die. But everyone enjoyed the adventure--including me--and they surpassed my expectations to the point where they actually leveled-up in their first game. So, now, adventures can become more fun and challenging, which will make it better for me, as DM.
Saturday night, we met our nerds for supper and War of the Worlds. Bobby dislikes the Regal Cinema in Belair with a passion, and so he convinced Zachariah that we should go to Loews in White Marsh and have supper at Red Brick Station instead of our old staple DuClaw. (Not that DuClaw is bad, but every now and then, a homey needs to go someplace different.) Dinner was awesome, and the movie...well, more on that in a few.
First, though, since it seems that I am going to talk at length about this movie, be forewarned that text in maroon text might contain spoilers. If you don't want to know what happens in the movie, skip that part. Don't complain to me if you do otherwise.
Let me begin by saying that War of the Worlds was one of the scariest and most disturbing movies that I've seen in a while. It is very intense. If you don't like watching horrible things happening to other humans en mass, then it is not the film for you. Now I have a bona fide blood/injury phobia, but I am always trying to cowboy up and sit through such things anyway. I was successful in that I didn't 1) run out of the theater, 2) vomit, or 3) pass out, but I was highly disturbed nonetheless.
The premise, of course, is that an alien race long ago--before humans evolved into humans--implanted ships into the earth. Now, in a rash of freak lightning storms, they implant themselves back in their ships and invade from below.
This particular version of the story follows Tom Cruise's family. (I think his name is Ray? I think I've blocked the names of the characters for the sake of mental wellness, and I'm too lazy to look them up.) He and his wife (Miranda Otto--Eowyn--yea!) are divorced, and he is watching his kids while she visits her parents in Boston. He has a fifteen-year-old son and a ten-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning), whose names I also do not remember. He is a blue-collar, C- dad--without enough food in the house, etc--and it is not hard to gather that there is not a lot of trust between his children and him, particularly his son, who won't even call him "Dad" but "Ray."
When the tripods first emerge from the ground, it is Ray who is in the thick of things. Come the first of many disturbing images as the tripods proceed to vaporize one-by-one the hordes of folks fleeing from them. And by vaporizing, I mean in up-close and personal detail, with limbs flying about and close-ups of faces as the rays hit them. Ray manages to escape, although he is covered with a sinister dust that is the flesh of his departed cohorts.
Ray ends up with one of the few functional vehicles left in the city, and the story follows them as they flee towards Boston, witnessing one horror after another, the tripods always close behind. They end up in a crowd that takes the car at gunpoint, and they try to take a ship across the river, but a tripod emerges from the water below them, tips the ship, and--horrible moment #2--begins picking people one by one out of the water. Ray and his family, though, manage to escape once more, although as they run once they reach the shore, the clothing of the recently expired victims rains down on their heads.
Long story short, Ray's son ends up following the military into the thick of the fight, and when the lot of them end up in a fiery explosion, we are left to assume that he, also, is dead. Ray and daughter end up in a farmhouse basement with a very creepy Tim Robbins, who has lost everyone in his family and is not faring well because of it.
Through it all, a commendable job is done with the characters. I don't like Ray, yet--given his situation--I am left with no choice but to feel for him. Dakota Fanning's character is in many ways the cookie-cutter prodigious child, but I can ignore that. I liked his son, who seems like a helpful, humanitarian kind of chap who struck back at his father in clever ways. (Like wearing a Boston Red Sox cap when his dad is a Yankee's fan; I laughed at that.)
Throughout this movie, one awful thing followed another, and I found myself thinking: It can't possibly get any worse. You can't possibly top people getting vaporized up-close on a grand scale. Then they got harvested from the water and no mystery was made of their fate...what can be worse than that? Every time I thought the worst had happened, though, it got worser still. Is "worser" even a word? This movie made it one.
The moment that did me in was when Tom Cruise peeked out the window and saw a tripod spraying the field with a mist of red. The stuff that wafted over and onto his hands had a resemblance to blood. It was. And yes, they show how it is procured. Goodness.
I give War of the Worlds three-and-a-half Keebler E.L. Fudge "Elves Exist" cookies out of four. Yes, that is a stunningly good rating for this kind of movie from me. It got extra points for the lack of boring CGI battle scenes full of explosions and twisting aerial maneuvers. The military is utterly ineffective against the tripods thanks to the shields around them. The tripods are destroyed internally, and giving away the exact reason, suffice to say that it makes scientific sense.
I had the rating at a healthy three-and-three-quarters, though, but I had to nibble off a quarter at the end. Ray's son somehow manages to survive the explosion that killed a crap-load of soldiers wearing far more protective equipment than he was. He returns at the end. Up until then, I had a good sympathy buzz going for the family, but when he came back ::poof!:: gone. I mean, they must be the luckiest family in New York. I didn't feel for them, I envied them, with jealous green eyes.
After the movie, our friend Claire summed it up perfectly: "That traumatized me." Potter--who can't even take campy horror flicks--admitted to sh*tting his pants at least four times. All told, it was awful and realistic, the characters weren't bad, and the plotline was believable and unique enough in a beaten-to-death genre. Three-and-a-half Elf cookies out of four, what more can I say?
The next day, Potter was in a bona fide meh-state after the movie, claiming that the movie had diddled his soul. Yes, it really bugged him that much. We went out to the Heritage Fair that night with Bobby's parents: Since Bobby's dad had helped set the thing up, we got to chill in the hospitality tent, drinking free soda and beer and listening to live music. Good deal. We also saw that our Ocean City trip in August will be more epic than originally intended as it appears that both of our families will be making appearances while we're there. So we had a great time with that.
We left when we thought the music was over, but as we were walking out, another band took the stage: an '80s cover band that played all of the guilty pleasure hits. We had to stay for that.
When it was all over, Potter summed it up nicely: "Soda and '80s music definitely cured my soul." Hence the title.
And that's the weekend.
Summarily yours,
Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain