Transplanting a Seattleite

San Andreas does not have gigantic animals, natural or unnatural. It does not have aliens from outer space, nuclear weapons, a pandemic or terrorists. Other than that, it has All the Disasters. It has buildings on fire. It has buildings falling down. It has people falling off of tall things. It has helicopters crashing. It has planes crashing. It has a really big earthquake. It has a dam breaking. It has a tsunami. It has boats sinking and crashing into things. It has people trapped on upper floors. It has people trapped in subterranean areas. It has erratically available communications.

Against the backdrop of all of this, there’s a pretty anodyne (and I had to look it up, but yeah, that’s the word I want) storyline about a family disrupted by tragedy that is reunited in the course of the larger tragedy, but in a different configuration with more / different people.

I can’t say I actually _watched_ the movie; I sorta did the movie equivalent of skimming it — I hit the 30 seconds forward button _a lot_. This is the porniest disaster porn movie ever. Whoever designed the pano shots of scenes of epic destruction (about to happen, happening, and then the aftermath) _really_ _loved_ _wrecking_ _California_. I mean, they got off on it. Which is, you know, a disaster movie thing.

Also last night: I tried watching Mortal Kombat again — I had some weird sound problem when I tried watching it when it was first available that I never could resolve. Sound problem is gone, but after watching the movie kill the really awesome black man relatively early on, I bailed out. I just couldn’t. It’s got standard Mortal Kombat / movie based on hyper violent game blood splash just non-stop and honestly, I am not into that. ETA: Before you say anything, yeah, I’ve now read the wikipedia entry and Jax comes back so, maybe. I’ll think about it.

I put together the BB-8 Brick Sketch today.

I had a delightful phone convo with J.

I had a delightful phone convo with K.

I walked with M.

I watched a movie! I watched _Mr. Right!_, which is a very odd movie and was exactly mine kind of movie. Basically, hit man did not love his job and wanted to quit, but The Corporation did not want him to, so his handler / mentor / partner tried but failed to kill him leaving him with an entertaining scar (back story).

OH ALSO SPOILERS!

At the beginning of the movie he is skipping through his new non-profit / charitable work, in which he basically takes job offers (and the initial or total payment — this is never made clear, which is fine!) and then kills the person who tries to hire him to kill someone because murder is wrong. Hard to argue with! In so many ways.

Anyway, his old handler is still trying to capture / kill / WTF him.

He meets Our Heroine in a drug store (no, like the CVS kind, come on!) and it is definitely Meet Cute when the condom package display is knocked over and Our Hero catches a bunch of boxes neatly stacked in his hands, and Our Heroine catches at least one and then wants to know how he did that. You know they are meant for each other, because these are Chaos Ballet Dancers — creating epic, physical melee and sliding through (relatively) unscathed. She spends a lot of the movie basically pretending to be normal, and relapsing into passivity whenever her inner Chaos Dancer is triggered, but eventually, she is motivated (ha ha ha! That is such a great scene! It is like that torture scene in The Long Kiss Goodnight, but not so drawn out and distressing, and without the personal connection) and Takes Action Herself. It is pretty cool, altho I could wish she had had a bit more training than a casual Play Catch with Knives session. OTOH, training montages kinda suck, so, sorta awesome that a lot of what this pair do is presented as being Naturals.

I think the very best thing about this movie is that he promises to stop killing people because she has a really negative reaction to seeing him kill someone. He had been very honest about what he was doing, but she thought he was joking. Obviously, not killing people presents him with a much more difficult problem when dealing with multiple attackers (gotta worry about the ones you put down getting back up, when they are not dead). And he develops some new social skills in the course of this! He says things that strongly encourage people to run away. Ultimately, he also specifically befriends (?) a couple of the black men hired to come kill him. So while all the other men hired to come kill him (and the man who hired them) do wind up dead, one way or the other _the two black men survive_. They are not totally unscathed, but this is a movie that does not gratuitously kill the black guy early on. This is so amazing in an action movie. It is so ridiculously pathetic that this is amazing in an action movie. And yet, here we are.

I do not think I will be watching the director’s earlier two movies (The Appeared is horror, so not my thing, and Rage does not look that appealing to me). However, I will be keeping an eye out for more from him, and may take a look at some of the TV episodes he has directed.

My son is at sleepaway camp. My daughter has a full day of day camp. My husband is at work. I only have two scheduled activities today, and one of them was canceled or at least delayed by the other party anyway. I did have to cancel my walk, however, which is a bummer.

I do not know if I just had too much soy milk (cereal for dinner) or if I ate something that had gone bad or what. No one else in the family is sick (knock on wood or whatever).

I watched Bumblebee today. I did not really feel like reading more, but was awake enough to move downstairs to the couch. I picked a movie that was not a kiddie movie (options there would have included live action Disney movies), and which we already owned. I was sort of hoping for Fantastic Beasts 2, but apparently we never bought that? I may give in and correct that soon.

Bumblebee is a Transformers movie. It is a prequel (I guess?) set in 1987 when Bumblebee is sent as a Scout to Earth to ensure the Autobots have a place to regroup to continue their resistance. Or whatever. Hailee Steinfeld is good in a role that could have felt way too much like Lindsey Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded. As it was, it felt like that on occasion, but more in a feel good homage way and not in a OMG what were you thinking sort of way.

I was the age in 1987 (down to within a few weeks, as near as I can tell) as Charlie is in the movie, so that was all kinds of weird. I tried to keep the carping about hairstyles down to a minimum. Her job at an amusement park results in some really fantastic backgrounds in those sequences. I could have wished that Memo had a bit more of a role — he was fun, and the interactions between the two were really relatable. I guess I now have a better sense of how people felt when Peggy Sue Got Married came out, who were that age in 195x and had pretty mixed feelings about that movie. The reference to being made about no reception and missing Alf was pretty hilarious. I sort of wished that the animated Transformers movie could have gotten an Easter Egg, because that came out the summer before this movie is set. I worked at a movie theater during those years, so it was really on my mind as I watched this.

I took T. to martial arts. After that we were going to go see Murder on the Orient Express at 10:20 at The Point, but the next show was at 11, so we saw the 10:30 Star Wars instead. Which is what I wanted to do, but T. had been trying to get to the Agatha Christie thing and I wasn’t opposed.

HEY SPOILERS! Go see the movie then come back and we’ll talk.

Wow, did I love Rose! OMG love love love love Rose. I loved that she was excited to meet Finn, but was totally capable of seeing that he needed to be stunned and stopped from deserting. She spends a lot of her time in the movie stopping Finn, but in a good way. I hope we see a lot more of Rose. I think she may actually be my all time Star Wars character ever (not sarcastic).

I loved that there were so many great women characters. Leia, Rey, Rose and Phasma, but also Holdo (Laura Dern), and what I assume were a bunch of women on the island. (If they weren’t women, I still loved them, and totally get where they are coming from, being irritated with the powerful newcomer who keeps busting things up.) I loved Yoda calling down lightning and just setting The Tree on FIRE! That cackle. It is the best.

I have no idea where the last movie in the main sequence is going to go with things, but I hope that the ending of Rogue One (Jian being perfectly okay with dying, as long as she doesn’t get left behind by someone who loves her yet again) and Rose’s remark after saving Finn from his overly heroic impulse and Leia’s comment to Rey (“We have everything we need right here.”) are where we wind up. Salvation comes from cherishing what we love, not destroying what we hate. Can’t really find a clearer depiction of that than in the character of Kylo Ren, who is an adolescent wrecker writ large.

After the movie, we went to lunch with friends at Evvivo Cantina, where the service and the food were absolutely wonderful. I can’t believe I haven’t been there before and I plan to go back soon. I’ll have to find out if the bar is good.

T. and I had lunch at Applebee's. Then we went to the horse. After that, we went to Burlington AMC, where we saw _Valerian, and the City of a Thousand Planets_. That is a Luc Besson film, more or less of the same flavor as Fifth Element, altho I would argue with a substantially more coherent plot.

Spoilers ahead!

Valerian and Lauraline (sp?) are partners, and Valerian is either trying to add Lauraline to his long list of romantic partners, or he's truly gone for her and wants to make this partnership one of those foolish work-and-life things that so rarely turns out well. The movie follows them on a series of related assignments: to retrieve a thing / creature, a pearl (sort of) that the thing/creature can replicate that is immensely valuable / powerful. Once they have the items, all hell breaks loose, because the items are

HEY I DID MENTION SPOILERS!

related to the coverup of a genocide that was not completely successful. The victims of the genocide are hoping that by retrieving the pearl and the thing/creature, they can reconstruct their world and race and so forth. There are beaches. There are chase sequences through the city with all the different people from all the different planets. There is a makeover sequence. There is a pole dance by Rihanna / a creature which is sort of a cross between a chameleon and a jelly fish (I did mention that this is a Luc Besson movie along the lines of Fifth Element, right? I'd hate to think you might have trouble understanding a cross between a chameleon and a jelly fish).

Because Luc Besson, the women are Amazing, and yet simultaneously demonstrate a bunch of traits that may cause your eyeballs to break because you are rolling them too often and too far. There are Speeches about Love. And about women changing their minds. And worse. There's a whole appalling sequence about tarting Lauraline up so that a bad guy alien can try to eat her brains, that has left me permanently unable to figure out whether I should be more offended about the fairly obvious head hunter / savage stereotyping or the sexism.

Tradeoffs.

It's funny. It's fun.

I ordered a rye manhattan from MacGuffin's, the bar at the AMC. It was acceptable (Martini & Rossy red and Templeton were the components, and when asked, they did produce some angostura bitters), but, predictably, neither cheap nor powerful.

After the movie, T. and I went to The Cheesecake Factory.

I apparently misunderstood the commuter rail fare rules. I bought two tickets for T. and I to ride the train from South Acton to North Station (conveniently located downstairs from the Garden), but apparently they don't charge for kids his age? So I only used one on the way down. I had thought we wouldn't be able to make the 10:40 (and wouldn't want to wait for the 12:10) to go home and figured we'd get a taxi or Uber or something. However, in the event, T. really wiped out at around 10, so we left at 10:15 and had no trouble getting the 10:40 train. Fortunately, the remaining ticket on my phone works either direction so off we went.

The opening band was Deerhunter. A little nerdy, and the front man is kinda low energy. I was somewhat disturbed that the front man broke out a tamborine, but fortunately it was just for that first song (the tamborine came back for later songs but not distractingly associated with the singer). Maybe it is just me, but lead vocals and tamborine just always feels a little like someone hasn't figured out what to do with their hands or something (I will grant you that is a significant issue for people performing music and props to all the people putting in the hard work to figure that stuff out). I have no objections to the band or their music otherwise, which if you don't go to concerts might not sounds like much, but OMG, it is rare for actually be able to tolerate openers in good spirit -- someone who is actually sort of appealing is rare (unless you are there for the opener and leaving before the main band arrives, which is a whole other thing).

Kings of Leon is truly over their issues. They put in a nice, tight set off the new album (are R. and I truly the only people to keep seeing the Beautiful South album cover whenever we look at the koL album art? *sigh* We must be old), along with older songs. Since we left early, I have no idea how they closed things out; we walked out to walk away. Heh. The video show had the inevitable side screens, but they had a really neat thing going for the first few songs with silhouettes (I loved the tree!) and they had a whole retro '70s thing going with blocks of color. Nice design.

Separate from the band, the going-to-a-show experience at the Garden (look, it is a sports arena; let's just grant that the acoustics are not wonderful and leave it at that, okay?) was excellent. Event Staff was professional and courteous. Line management, bag check and security screening was speedy and seemed like it might actually find things that were genuinely problematic. The overpriced food and beverage was well within normal range for overpriced food and beverage. The bathrooms were clean and the lines were manageable. I had a drink before I left the house; I thought about getting something there, but decided against it (I still have a cold); as a result, we never did wait in a line for more than a few minutes. R. dropped us off at South Acton. Short walk up the escalator to the venue. Short walk and another escalator to our seats. Short walks and stairs to 'strooms. Reverse everything to return home. Heated train. No waiting in traffic entering or exiting a garage because ... train. OMG. Train. The arrival and departure aspects of cultural events are the WORST. And this was a lubricated dream. I will totally go see a crappy band at the Garden vs. a decent band somewhere else, because the experience is so painless. Not that Kings of Leon is at all crappy.

Roland and I had lunch at Rapscallion earlier in the day. I also finally got around to watching Star Wars: the Force Awakens. I think Rogue One is a better movie, because the complexity of Force Awakens as a series entry is so massive. But I really liked it, and I kind of think Finn may be the single best character the Star Wars universe has ever had (sorry, R2D2, but dude, sanitation engineer. We got Marvin in Rogue One, but we finally got a sanitation engineer in Star Wars! KRYTEN! Yeah, and autocorrect just tried to turn that into kitten.).

Also, Friday the 13th and a near full moon! Lucky day!

ETA: I took the holiday cards down from the mantel. That's always a big project. Also, R. went for a bike ride.

An important component of the plot of _Home_ (an animated movie) revolves around the main Boov dude screwing up with a message, using "Send All". In this case "Send All" would include the enemy Gorg that the Boov are hiding from, and he has sent their location. Oops.

A related plot point is that it is possible to recall the message, but to do so they would need the Boov dude's password, and it is unique so they can't. They have to get him to do it. (And when he does enter it, he initially enters it incorrectly because caps lock is on.)

There are other tech moments. During the little flashback moment explaining Boov childhood, we get a view of the "warming oven". There is an adult Boov playing some sort of game on one of their little circular, transparent mobile devices. As the Boov children are ramping up to yell for food, the adult Boov -- without taking his attention off the game -- presses a button and a bunch of food lands on and around the Boov children.

It's a great movie in a lot of ways: the Boov are like cognitively/academically precocious spectrum kids who don't yet understand pronouns and generally have theory of mind issues. They are unreconstructed imperialists who think they are doing a favor for the peoples they conquer. There's a bunch of stuff about running away/running toward danger, and attachment, and why otherwise gentle people become violent either personally or as a group. And it's completely accessible to my daughter, which is a rare thing in a movie -- as my friend J. predicted, it is just as attention holding as the equally wonderful _Monsters vs. Aliens_.