Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Missed Opportunity
The one moment in Robin Hood where I thought to myself that the movie could redeem itself was a brief hallway confrontation between King John's advisors, played by William Hurt and Mark Strong. If the movie had just focused more on interactions between those characters and less on, well, just about everyone else, I think it would have been much more interesting.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Robin Hood: Don't Let The Thieves Get You
Well, I must say, that was a colossal waste of time and money.
It started ponderous and melodramatic, and ended on a utopian note, with so many coincidences along the way that you might think the screenwriter was required to end the movie with Robin Hood and his merry men in the forest of Nottingham as outlaws.
Oh, wait.
By now, Russell Crowe is synonymous with Epic Heroism, but he came up small here. There simply wasn't much to do with the role. He simply had to be in the right place at the right time. Over and again.
Which reminds me: is England a large country? As best as I can tell from the movie, one thousand soldiers could conquer it, and it's possible to ride across the entire island in a day or two, with most villages in spitting distance of each other.
The movie from the very beginning screamed "Epic, epic, look at the epic." Unfortunately, it simply had the trappings of an epic, with all the story quality (and seemingly budget for extras) of a B movie.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Lessons from a week plus on the road
First, I gotta say: the iPad is a phenomenal travel device. I didn't expect to find any differently.
Perhaps its most notable failing is that it's difficult to use for navigation while driving, but that's not a terribly safe operation anyway.
My uncle and I used it twice to reserve hotel rooms, including once from the parking lot of a rival hotel across the street. We arrived at the desk before our reservations did.
Beyond the iPad, this trip made it clear that I'd love to spend more time traveling. Shame travel is so bloody expensive.
The Everglades are a remarkable, precious resource. I'm grateful we awoke to the value of wetlands before we wiped them entirely off the map. I'd love to see what northwest Indiana looked like when it was one vast wetland.
Sunscreen is a valuable resource too. Three hours of driving with the top off through central Florida on the first day nearly prematurely ended my vacation. Hard to enjoy 90+ยบ weather when any direct contact with sunlight causes pain.
Oh, and random AirTran clerk? When I tell you I want a window seat, I don't mean a seat at the rear of the plane on the outer edge but with no window. Even the row ahead of me, which was graced with a window, was treated to a view of the engine and nothing else.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Perhaps its most notable failing is that it's difficult to use for navigation while driving, but that's not a terribly safe operation anyway.
My uncle and I used it twice to reserve hotel rooms, including once from the parking lot of a rival hotel across the street. We arrived at the desk before our reservations did.
Beyond the iPad, this trip made it clear that I'd love to spend more time traveling. Shame travel is so bloody expensive.
The Everglades are a remarkable, precious resource. I'm grateful we awoke to the value of wetlands before we wiped them entirely off the map. I'd love to see what northwest Indiana looked like when it was one vast wetland.
Sunscreen is a valuable resource too. Three hours of driving with the top off through central Florida on the first day nearly prematurely ended my vacation. Hard to enjoy 90+ยบ weather when any direct contact with sunlight causes pain.
Oh, and random AirTran clerk? When I tell you I want a window seat, I don't mean a seat at the rear of the plane on the outer edge but with no window. Even the row ahead of me, which was graced with a window, was treated to a view of the engine and nothing else.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Cycles Of Irony
Hanging out tonight with Sarah^2, short Sarah mentioned her friends who live on the reservation in Arizona, and how little they're looking forward to being forced to prove their citizenship on a regular basis.
The irony of Native Americans being forced to prove their "immigration status" is a bit much.
In late 2008, I was fortunate to hear a presentation by Richard Rodriguez at the University of Indianapolis titled "The Hispanic Immigrant in American Culture". The most memorable point of his lecture for me was the fact that history is a circle; specifically, that the Mexicans who are "invading" the southwestern US are largely descended from the Native Americans that we drove out of the southwestern US.
They could have been our brothers, but we evicted them from their homes. Perhaps this time we can learn to live together.
I'm not holding my breath.
It's happening
Haven't updated in a while, and there are countless articles I could link regarding how the world now views the iPad, but here's one that captures my feelings, and apparently the feelings of hundreds of thousands of fellow users as well.
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