I saw 'Transformers' last night. I think I have been waiting 25 years for this movie. It did not let me down. Oh sure it had nobody actors, a slightly weak plot, and all the other things film critics uses to rate a movie, but goddamn it, it had giant robots. Big wonderful believable robots that had parts whirling and clicking on them. And theses big wonderful robots had fights with other big wonderful robots. It was sheer bliss.
I liked the storyline from the original comic better, that being where the transformers crashed on earth millions of years ago and an earthquake revived the ship they were on, and the ship thinking that automobiles were the dominate life form on the planet repaired the transformers bodies to mimic those forms. In the movie they just sort of dropped out of the sky and picked a random car and turned into it. I can forgive them for that though, because they still made that wicked cool 'EEH-AH-AH-EH' transformers sound when they changed, and Optimis Prime had the same deep booming almost fatherly voice that was used in the original cartoon (they hired on the same guy). So, I give transformers big thumbs up. However, it's probably one of those movies that will not have the same impact on a television screen as it does in a theater where you can see each and every part whirling around.
While on the topic of movies, over the weekend I saw 'Tenacious D and the pick of destiny'. It was a wonderfully stupid film, but the part I liked the most was towards the end when Satan climbed out of hell and started to play Heavy Metal.
The 4th of July was fun. I had a few people stop over and we had a Luau in Alan's cave in my back yard. I was drinking a drink I dreamed up, plum wine mixed with Champaign. It was really tasty, however I underestimated how much booze was in it, so after a couple of blue-plastic-cup fulls I was buzzing heavily. For my birthday Ron had gotten me some 'Doctor Jeckle and Mr. Hyde' dual mixing booze that turned out to be pretty tasty. One bottle is berry flavored, and the other bottle is 'herbal' tasting of clove and anise seeds. You mix them together in a shot glass that creates and interesting sensation in the mouth when you down it. By time fireworks time came around, I was stumbling about.
By this time Sanford was simply packed. People were parking all the way up to my house two blocks away. We went down to see the fireworks, however I think it was more because 'some' people had gotten a sudden funnel cake hankering. Once the fireworks were over the vast hoard of people grabbed their stuff and shot back to their parking places. It was like watching the Jews exodus out of Egypt.
Godamnit, This post was much longer but my computer crashed and I lost half of it, the lost content mainly mocking 'Starship'. Well, I am too lazy to go back and re-type it all out, so here are a couple of pics:
The Dungeon door to Alans lava tube.
Fire Maidens basking in the lava glow.
A shot of Alan's buffet table and an unflattering pitcure of alan in mid-bite.
A pic of me and my friend K, who I visited in Ocala last week, just because she is so cute.
Quick videoclip of 'starship' playing down in sanford.
2026 Update
Nineteen years ago, Ed got drunk on plum wine and told the world he'd waited 25 years for robot fights. Let's ride.
Ah, 2007. The era when a giant-robot movie could still feel like an event because watching it at home meant a bulky plastic rectangle showing a fifth of the pixels and none of those whirring gears. Now those robots fight in our pockets, streamed at four-k clarity while we pretend not to be checking the chat. You also put luau photos on your blog like they were exotic artifacts; now the same pictures would vanish into a Story in thirty seconds and be replaced by someone's funnel-cake close-up. And your computer ate half your post like a gremlin, because auto-save was still a rumor, not a constant whisper. Municipal fireworks now have to compete with drone constellations and public-safety texts, but the real change is simpler: back then getting drunk on Jekyll-and-Hyde shots was just a personal decision, not a personality profile served with a subscription fee. I almost miss it.
“2007 Ed, after your computer, like an old friend or a tiny demon, devoured the half where you mocked Starship—did you ever bother to rewrite it, or is that lost tirade still haunting the ghost of your hard drive?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, that lost half is still out there somewhere, probably nesting in whatever digital graveyard my poor HP crawled out of. I never rewrote it, no. I thought about it maybe twice, then I got distracted by a beer and the thought of those giant robots again. Honestly, the mocking of Starship was probably pure gold, the kind of rant that would've made me laugh for a week, but my laziness won, as it usually does. I figure that tirade is haunting the ghost of my hard drive like one of those dead animal spots my cats leave in the bedroom, only less smelly and more ethereal. If I ever dig it out, I'll let you know, but don't hold your breath. I've got puttering to do, and the mead won't brew itself.
