Okeedoke--here's the short version...

Friday--Haul kids to Grandmom and Grandpop, tell them not to tear each other to shreds, leave them with a big sigh of something other than relief, go to lovely Palace Chinese restaurant, share order of hot and sweaty soup, steamed dumplings, and Kung Pao chicken, finish up and wander around the shopping center looking at stuff and at the 5k8tr kids loitering and trying their hardest to be menacingly gothic. How sweet. Went back to the theater and got 40 cents worth of popstarch and carbonated water for 6 bucks, then went in prepared to enter...The Matrix.

Movie Review Time: All I have to say (well, not really, but work with me here) is that despite my craving for some good-old, two-fisted, Robert Mitchum/John Wayne/Kirk Douglas non-chick-movie moviegoing, this derned thing was a girlie movie, too. Sorry. The whole [SPOILER ALERT--READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL] deal with groping around looking for a computer bullet in a computer girl body and the weepy tearsomeness and wild-eyed amazement is just silly.

I will give it this--the visual effects are absolutely incredible and seamless and really cool looking. But, still--if you have the wherewithal to create a gigantic underground city with huge, cyclopean iron machinery to open and close the doors and stuff, can't you people at least create a dadgummed sewing machine and washing machine?! I mean, all the neat looking people in the air traffic control center are crisply tailored and bleached--do all the rest of you have to wander about in the stuff you used to wash the car? Needle and thread and some soap, that's all I'm asking. Why can't you look more like that nice Agent Smith? So nice and well groomed and polite.

And what's the whole Woodstock/Altamont/technorave in a mudhole deal? I know it's underground, but can you not put down a nice concrete pad and lay some carpet? Or tile? You've got the ability to mentally transport into the mind of a machine, and you can't go to Crate and Barrel and get a nice cheap throw rug or two? And just where is it that all these giant whizzing electronic ships go? I mean, they're underground, you know, so they just wander around in a bunch of tunnels? And why do they have to leave the Complex Industrialized City of Hippies in order to plug into The Matrix? Why not just hook up the chairs and Coiled Wires That Signify Technology right there in your unpainted iron house and dispense with all this other flummery! And isn't it just a tiny bit odd that all cars within The Matrix are manufactured by General Motors? I'm not sure what that says more about, GM or computers--and I'm not sure I want to know.

Personal notes for the cast: Larry Fishburne--please quit cancelling your dermatologist appointment. And maybe in the next one, Morpheus can use his magic lasso. Oh, wait, that's Cowboy Curtis. Never mind. Carrie-Anne Moss--please visit the craft services buffet just a little more often--a couple of double cheeseburgers with fries and a chocolate shake wouldn't hurt you a bit. Just look at Monica Bellucci! Yow! Seems to have done wonders for her. Keanu, dude--Wonderfully expressive--those acting lessons from Al Gore have really paid off.

But, you know, this is really not a bad movie, but one probably best enjoyed with your buds so you can sit around afterwards eating Doritos and saying to each other stuff like, "Whoa, dude--what if, like, the whole Matrix thing, is like, just a subprogram within ANOTHER program, and like it's all contained, like, you know, in ONE cell in your thumbnail or something." "Yeah, that'd be weird, broh." "Y'know, it's still a chick-flick, though." "Yeah."

ONWARDS!

::sigh:: No bloody way. I took a break from this little exercise in finger tapping to go eat lunch with the lovely Miss Reba. (At the new Quizno's, which was quite tasty). Got back, sat down, leaned over to get a piece of paper off my desk and my eyeglasses just snapped in half at the bridge. Pop. Tinkle. !@#r!asssa%$##!! Where's the everlovin' stinkin' danged Scotch tape.

Guess where I get to go? My friendly neighborhood Trussville Wal-Mart Supercenter Optical Department. There is no backup pair, no just doing without. I have uncorrected vision of approximately 20:5,280, so I HAVE to have glasses to see beyond my nose. Or blog.

SO, once again, I am off the clock to go do something totally mindless, and once again, I fall further behind in both duly delegated employment duties AND in dishing up the mindless boring details of my life. And I only got up to Friday! ::sigh::

Oh, well. Maybe tomorrow.

See you all then.

(If I have glasses. Otherwise, you'll all just look like fuzzy blobs. Which might be appropriate for a fuzzy blog.)
posted by Terry at 12:12:00 PM