Saw "The Dark Knight" last night with Lori and Rachael and Mike and Kurt. I've already read 100 million reviews, so I won't say too much. If you don't want to know anything, skip out, but let's give the movie a B+.

Consider this fair warning for spoilers, ok?

h
a
h
a
h
a

ok.

Firstly, and most importantly, as Mike Sterling points out:

Dude, Batmanuel as the mayor of Gotham. Fantastic. Was that particularly heavy eyeliner he was wearing, or does he normally look like that?

This was the first thing Kurt and I spoke about upon leaving the theater. And after seeing him as Batmanuel, continuing to refer to him as such on Lost and now this, I can say — he normally looks like that. It can't be eyeliner; unless maybe, maybe, he is actually Brett Michaels and/or it is somehow tattooed on.

Secondly, most of the things I had seen about the Joker, about the pacing and the length of the movie were true. To me, Kurt disagreed. (That is: Joker is amazingly fantastic, the pacing suffers when he isn't onscreen and esp through the romantic subplot and that the movie is a little on the long side.)

Thirdly, the trailers. Since these aren't actually spoilers, I'm going to post about them later.

Fourth, do you think Ledger would have reprised his role had he not died? I spent the entire movie wondering if, like every superhero movie, the Joker would die at the end. And then he didn't, which made me wonder if Ledger would have come back. Or if there would be a "Dark Knight Returns" made. I'm sure there is already some kind of plan in place, but still. I want more of him in that role.

Also, don't you think the police would have removed the makeup when they took him into custody?

(I started this post 10 days ago, so it's timeliness is up for debate. But work/training ate all of my last week, so I'm only finishing this now.)

So let's get this straight up-front: I am reviewing this movie as a 32 year old man. And I give it a big fat C-. Yeah, that's right.

I didn't really like the movie. This isn't a huge surprise — of all the Jones movies, I like Crusade the best. This one had too many moments of groaning, too many suspensions of disbelief, too much absurdity.

I don't want to give anything away, so I'll try and skip over much of the things I didn't like. I will say that a 10-year old me would dig this movie. In all the ways the 32-year old me didn't.

Thanks to April, I did find out there is a movement to replace 'jump the shark' with 'nuke the fridge'.

Anyway. C-.

Right off the bat, I'm not criticizing the quality of the product. But, loathe as I may be to anger the ice cream gods (please, please don't cut me off! I need it!), I noticed something in my local freezer case that really chaps my ice-cream-enlarged ass. Behold.

Notice anything… odd, shall we say? Yes. Some of these containers are bigger than the others. It seems my good buddies at Edy's have found a new way to keep prices in control. That is: charge the same (notice the tags) for less ice cream. There are a lot of times when "less" is a good thing. Less pollution, for instance. Less crime. Less cancer.

Less ice cream is not one of those times.

Now, I figured I was already a pretty easy going guy, letting it slide that a "half gallon" of ice cream was somehow only 1.75 quarts. I got a degree in engineering and did some pretty far out math with differentials and such, but at no time did I ever find out how you make 2 directly equal 1.75. But did I lose my cool? Did I say "Yo! Where my other .25 quarts at, bitches?" Noooo. I didn't. But passing off one and a half quarts as a half gallon? It's time to throw down, motherfuckers. What's next? Shave off another quarter quart next summer? Shit, soon I'll be paying $4.39 for a novelty cup! I'll be telling my kids stories about them good ol' days when, yes, children, a half gallon really was 2 quarts.

This shit is simply … un-American! Everybody wants to know where bin Laden's hiding? I say check out Edy's HQ! I'm. So. Pissed. Right. Now.

If only there were some soothing, creamy confection to cool me off right now … ARGGGHHH!! YOU BROKE MY HEART!

This is a quickie, but I'm tossing it up anyway.

This book popped to the forefront of my mind when I decided that I was going to focus on happiness and look at it in my own life. And I went to the library and got it.

As I walked out, thumbing pages and wondering how silly I was being, I couldn't help think what a waste reading this book was going to be. It leans more on the science side of things, but in that "Blink" / "Freakanomics" tone.

Great, knowing how my brain fires isn't going to make me happier. That's like reading a book on my digestive system to fix colitis.

Boy, was I wrong. On every count. The book was fantastic. It did help me understand various firings in my brain. And I have adjusted based on tis knowledge and have actually gotten less tense/anxious as a result.

I never realized how much time I spent thinking about the future. Well, I did. And I knew that it was detrimental. But it took the book to make me realize that I had to stop. And I have. Which has made the whole "Rachael going to Harvard" a little easier to swallow. I have managed to stop worrying about what my life will be like in 6 or 8 months and have focused instead on right now.

There are some quotes from the book I want to talk about, but I returned it to the library already. Thankfully, it is being checked out again so that Rachael can read it.

Obviously, this one gets a strong A, though your mileage might vary. Even if you don't share my focus at the moment, I would still give it a strong recommend (and maybe then an A-).

Now that the election has passed by a bit, I can throw up the links that have been sitting in my browser for days.

• The best New Yorker cartoon ever.
• I should have posted this before today, but I didn't want to be too snarky or negative: Clinton sat on the board of Wal-Mart and didn't lift a finger to support unions.
• The Wire has been a staple in my life for the last year or so. We timed it perfectly (and accidentally) — watching an episode or two a week landed us finishing season 4 just as season 5 began. I believe it is the TV strike that has put so much attention on this show as it has moved into it's final season. It seemed for a few weeks, you couldn't turn around without bumping into an interview or article.

  But I have to be honest: this season isn't doing it for me. As in, it might be my least favorite. It's moving faster in crazy ways and slower in others. I'm terribly disappointed. Of course, some of the hype might be because some critics aren't even bothering to watch it before making a review.

• I have very purposefully not linked to '2 girls, 1 cup.' I'm not going to start. If you know what this is, your life is forever tainted. If you don't, please be aware: I have seen many, many awful things in my life, thanks to the internet. This is, without a doubt, far and away the worst thing I have ever seen. I'm not kidding. If you want to hold onto your humanity, don't watch this. (But here is a wikipedia link about it. Seriously though, I'm not fooling. This is beyond gross.)

  That aside, Slate has a nice slideshow talking about the reaction videos of people watching 2girls, 1cup. I wish I had taped friends watching it a few weeks ago. Most lost it, but one friend sat through it calmly. It was a little frightening.

  Also, in the slideshow, the grandmother's reaction is awesome. She keeps freaking out but can't take her eyes off the screen. It's amusing.

• If you haven't kept up with the Colbert/Conan/Stewart silliness about Huckabee, here is the latest couple of chapters.
• April has good taste. This is the girl who got me on Bendis' Daredevil, years ago. Her movie reviews are generally solid, when she isn't suggesting movies picked by her vagina. Eagle and Shark is the latest one she got me to rent and it was good. (She previously got me to rent 'whole', the doc on people who want to become amputees.) Dark-ish, in a way that made me yell at the characters. But some of it was brilliant, even if I hated the main characters for being fricktards. Check out her review and if it sounds good to you, rent it. You won't be sorry. b+
• Finally, a video of Chris Cunningham doing some mash-up fun with electronic music and Star Wars at 2005's eletrcoglide festival. The worst part is still feeling the sting of missing this show — we were in Japan about a week before it happened. I'm still bitter.
  

There might be more links later, but that almost cleans out all my open tabs. Go me!

Goodness, a bunch of things on my mind. I've had tabs and tabs in my browser open for days and days, waiting to post. When it rains, it pours. Let's start:

• Saw The Host and Talk To Me. c and a-, respectively. Really, really enjoyed Talk To Me, though I found some of it a bit odd structurally.
• I'm enjoying American Gladiators still, which is something I shouldn't be admitting publicly. But it has filled that gap in my life where, once a week, I like to have a couple of drinks and yell horrible things at the TV. Kid Nation was also primo for this and, surprisingly, AG has filled that gap nicely. Although, some people believe the old version of the show was better.
• There is someone who is watching all the Criterion movies and blogging about each one. It's interesting and many of the reviews are quite fun to read. But oh, how I was delighted when I cam across Armageddon. Seriously, I always forget this and The Rock somehow snuck through. Oh, and at the bottom of his review for Rushmore (which Roxy has never seen!) is a nice in-joke about Armageddon as well. Highlights from this review:
  

  • There's an entire commentary track with the "science advisors," a NASA employee and a former astronaut, who tried to make the movie as scientifically accurate as possible. Listening to these guys talk about their constant battles to get Michael Bay and company to make the film at all relate to the world of science (for example, when Mir explodes, it explodes, like it's in an atmosphere) is a case study in cognitive dissonance.
  • The Armadillo, the drill car they drive around on the asteroid, has a chin mounted chain gun. You might wonder when NASA started putting weapons on their vehicles, or what they were expecting to shoot at on an asteroid, or even how they expected bullets to fire in a vacuum. But in fact, this wasn't NASA's decision so much as Mattel's; there was a toy version of this car, and toys with guns sell better. I'm not kidding; plot points were decided on by the toy company.

• Cola increases the odds of kidney issues/problems hugely. Though I don't drink much cola, so that ain't my issue. But seriously, time to give this shit up. Tea, coffee, water, maybe juice and milk. That's all you're allowed to drink.
• Finally, Hank, I expect a full review of: Strawberry Cheetos, salad flavored water and cucumber pepsi. And if you can pick up a few of those masturbation cans*, that would be cool. Oh and I won't be sad if you can find a similar haircuttery to this:

  [via: the consumerist, fimoculous and joey devilla]

• Finally, and perhaps most exciting, a new Gnarls Barkley track has been spotted. Released. Leaked. Anyway, it's call Run and now you need to go grab it.

Seriously, this is from the FAQ:
"7. Is it safe to drink the lotion inside the cup?"
Who are these people who think its ok (or a good idea) to drink the lotion that comes inside a sex toy?

Saw Juno on Saturday night. Was (and am) unimpressed. It came across as trying way to hard to be hipster: references, sets, even dialogue structure made me hurt as if my teeth were sensitive. It wasn't a bad movie, but I would suggest having a high tolerance for "things" that try too hard. More sadly, Michael Cera and Jason Bateman were flat, uninspired characters, given virtually nothing (beyond a TicTac fetish) to work with. I feel generous, because I enjoyed the movie, even if I spent the entire time thinking "No 16 year old girl behaves like this. This is 27 year old woman speaking to me."

b-

Saw There Will Be Blood on Monday night. This one is a bit tougher to talk about (and I know someone will be snarky here and point out that I fell asleep during it. This is true, though total time sleeping was probably 10 minutes, and probably a minute or 2 at a time.). All in all, a fantastic performance and an interesting film. But at the end of the day, it was a character study. A very competent film, well made and superbly acted. Recommended, but only for those of you who are patient and enjoy fine, but ultimately unneeded, items. Yes, this movie is like a very fine bottle of scotch.

b