Watching the Facebook
Well we had a string of some really nice spring weather, even having a good weekend to take out the visiting bigmacbear to a party and then the Eagle. Overnight it turned rainy and cold. We had gotten rid of the comforter on the bed but Chris had to wake up and haul it out early this morning as the temperature dropped.
Here's a few more questions that I need to answer:
1. deanosota asks: Will you be seeing The Watchmen this weekend?
Well, that was a yes. I saw it at the midnight showing on Friday. It was a theater filled with nerds and geeks, so an audience that would know the material. I thought it was good, but didn't have the spark to really be considered great. Many scenes looked like they were taken directly from the comic, and that was good, but the movie lacks something as an adaptation.
Let's face it, Watchmen is a character study. Who are costumed heroes? What makes them tick? If we put them in a really desperate situation, would they really come out as heroic as comic books make out? Only Dr. Manhattan is really a superhero, per se, and his powers make him so different that he no longer connects with humanity. It's a cynical, but likely realistic thought.
The ending in the comic book is more there to finish the plot than it is to give a big action sequence, so it doesn't really translate well in a superhero move where people are looking for the big fight. I'm sure that will disappoint many casual viewers who are expecting something more.
Luckily the audience knew the story and knew what to expect. They expected penis. You could tell who in the audience didn't expect that coming. Frankly we really need to get over this whole "you can't show male full frontal". It's really silly. No one made a big deal of the breasts in the film. In many of the negative reviews of the movie the reviewers were more shocked by the big blue than they were the graphic violence and blood. Personally I'm squeamish, and I can't watch horror movies - this was coming pretty close for me as far as gore goes. I say less violence, more penis.
Oh, and the soundtrack. Yikes. i understand using poplar songs to evoke a time is to help the viewer, but man, could you try to find songs that were less clichéd. When I heard "Hallelujah" and "All Along the Watchtower" it really took me out of the scene. In fact "Hallelujah" got many unintentional laughs from the audience.
Lastly, since it is a character move, and the reasons for the heroes motivations are really deep in the book, it's sad that the Silk Specter wasn't really given as much depth. She's the whole reason for Dr. Manhattan's actions in the present, but it doesn't really connect on screen how she was pushed into the superhero life by her mother and how she's the last connection to humanity for Dr. Manhattan. Part of it is because her mother didn't seem like the sad character she was in the book. Nite-Owl and Rorschach were handled pretty well.
Worth seeing, but I think that more adaptation and less cribbing from the comic could have made the experience a lot richer in the end.
2. An Anonymous reader named Curious and Alone writes: How did you meet your husband?
We met right here on LJ. About six years ago I had just started here on LJ. Chris had been on for a while. In connecting with friends of friends here, Chris commented on a post or two and eventually wanted to meet with me.
Chris was supposed to surprise me and come down to the Dallas Diablos and Houston Roughnecks Rugby game where I said I was going to go. I instead responded to an invite to go to Austin that weekend and meet cristalskye, lostncove, and mattycub, who were there to see one of Randy's plays at the fringe festival.
So we missed each other that weekend, but Chris then messaged me about meeting for lunch one day before he would go back to Dallas, and we met. It was over chicken fingers at Skeeter's near my office in Greenway Plaza. I talked - a lot - because I was so nervous. I remember a hug and how I walked away back to the office in a bit of a cloud of excitement!
Chris and then met a few more times when I would visit my sister who was living in Dallas at the time. Eventually the visits to Dallas were to visit Chris rather than my sister, then eventually I moved in. The rest is history.
3. Another anonymous questioner asks: Why aren't you on Facebook?
I go back and forth on this, but really, I'm not too crazy about another site. I'm on Linked In, Flickr, and Twitter and sadly on MySpace (there's nothing to see there, really). I'm not sure I really want something else to look at. Besides, remember Friendster? Yeah, well MySpace is already going the way of Friendster and I think we can all say that Live journal is less vibrant than it once was (sadly - it was the one place you could find people who could write a whole sentence). I'm worried that Twitter and Facebook will be yesterdays news pretty quickly.
I guess I'm trying not to join Facebook because I know that will be the moment that Facebook will have become totally uncool. Not that I'm worried that much about cool, but I know that the parade would have moved on somewhere else. I just wish I knew where it was moving to.
Oh, and I love Twitter, but it's already reached the point where it is now being marketed to, and then it fills up with more folks trying to advertise than actually trying to connect. It's like when MySpace became more marketing tool for bands and media companies than an actual community. It's the one thing LiveJournal hasn't become. I guess it comes down to the fact that people want community, but don't really want to be bothered by what would actually make the site a sucessful ommercial venture.
That being said, I'll probably give in and join Facebook sometime soon, but I hate those little "sell your friends" games.
I'm out of questions. This may be a good thing, but we'll see. I'll still take them. If you have a question, comments are screened if you go to THIS post. Keep asking away.
Here's a few more questions that I need to answer:
1. deanosota asks: Will you be seeing The Watchmen this weekend?
Well, that was a yes. I saw it at the midnight showing on Friday. It was a theater filled with nerds and geeks, so an audience that would know the material. I thought it was good, but didn't have the spark to really be considered great. Many scenes looked like they were taken directly from the comic, and that was good, but the movie lacks something as an adaptation.
Let's face it, Watchmen is a character study. Who are costumed heroes? What makes them tick? If we put them in a really desperate situation, would they really come out as heroic as comic books make out? Only Dr. Manhattan is really a superhero, per se, and his powers make him so different that he no longer connects with humanity. It's a cynical, but likely realistic thought.
The ending in the comic book is more there to finish the plot than it is to give a big action sequence, so it doesn't really translate well in a superhero move where people are looking for the big fight. I'm sure that will disappoint many casual viewers who are expecting something more.
Luckily the audience knew the story and knew what to expect. They expected penis. You could tell who in the audience didn't expect that coming. Frankly we really need to get over this whole "you can't show male full frontal". It's really silly. No one made a big deal of the breasts in the film. In many of the negative reviews of the movie the reviewers were more shocked by the big blue than they were the graphic violence and blood. Personally I'm squeamish, and I can't watch horror movies - this was coming pretty close for me as far as gore goes. I say less violence, more penis.
Oh, and the soundtrack. Yikes. i understand using poplar songs to evoke a time is to help the viewer, but man, could you try to find songs that were less clichéd. When I heard "Hallelujah" and "All Along the Watchtower" it really took me out of the scene. In fact "Hallelujah" got many unintentional laughs from the audience.
Lastly, since it is a character move, and the reasons for the heroes motivations are really deep in the book, it's sad that the Silk Specter wasn't really given as much depth. She's the whole reason for Dr. Manhattan's actions in the present, but it doesn't really connect on screen how she was pushed into the superhero life by her mother and how she's the last connection to humanity for Dr. Manhattan. Part of it is because her mother didn't seem like the sad character she was in the book. Nite-Owl and Rorschach were handled pretty well.
Worth seeing, but I think that more adaptation and less cribbing from the comic could have made the experience a lot richer in the end.
2. An Anonymous reader named Curious and Alone writes: How did you meet your husband?
We met right here on LJ. About six years ago I had just started here on LJ. Chris had been on for a while. In connecting with friends of friends here, Chris commented on a post or two and eventually wanted to meet with me.
Chris was supposed to surprise me and come down to the Dallas Diablos and Houston Roughnecks Rugby game where I said I was going to go. I instead responded to an invite to go to Austin that weekend and meet cristalskye, lostncove, and mattycub, who were there to see one of Randy's plays at the fringe festival.
So we missed each other that weekend, but Chris then messaged me about meeting for lunch one day before he would go back to Dallas, and we met. It was over chicken fingers at Skeeter's near my office in Greenway Plaza. I talked - a lot - because I was so nervous. I remember a hug and how I walked away back to the office in a bit of a cloud of excitement!
Chris and then met a few more times when I would visit my sister who was living in Dallas at the time. Eventually the visits to Dallas were to visit Chris rather than my sister, then eventually I moved in. The rest is history.
3. Another anonymous questioner asks: Why aren't you on Facebook?
I go back and forth on this, but really, I'm not too crazy about another site. I'm on Linked In, Flickr, and Twitter and sadly on MySpace (there's nothing to see there, really). I'm not sure I really want something else to look at. Besides, remember Friendster? Yeah, well MySpace is already going the way of Friendster and I think we can all say that Live journal is less vibrant than it once was (sadly - it was the one place you could find people who could write a whole sentence). I'm worried that Twitter and Facebook will be yesterdays news pretty quickly.
I guess I'm trying not to join Facebook because I know that will be the moment that Facebook will have become totally uncool. Not that I'm worried that much about cool, but I know that the parade would have moved on somewhere else. I just wish I knew where it was moving to.
Oh, and I love Twitter, but it's already reached the point where it is now being marketed to, and then it fills up with more folks trying to advertise than actually trying to connect. It's like when MySpace became more marketing tool for bands and media companies than an actual community. It's the one thing LiveJournal hasn't become. I guess it comes down to the fact that people want community, but don't really want to be bothered by what would actually make the site a sucessful ommercial venture.
That being said, I'll probably give in and join Facebook sometime soon, but I hate those little "sell your friends" games.
I'm out of questions. This may be a good thing, but we'll see. I'll still take them. If you have a question, comments are screened if you go to THIS post. Keep asking away.