So I finally saw The Watchmen. I specifically only wanted to see the Dirctor's Cut of the movie because I'd heard it made more sense and was really the film that was supposed to be in Theaters before some studio dude thought that people who'd already sat through a 2h & 40min movie couldn't take 20min more.

Anyway, Netflix doesn't carry the Director's Cut for some reason and neither did my local 'cool' video store (the counter guy said he'd sold his last rental version of it to some guy about two days before I came in asking for it). Blockbuster, for some reason, would sell the Director's Cut of the film but would not rent it. They had like half a dozen of them just laying around and they wouldn't rent them.

What to do? I really wanted to see the movie but I didn't want to cave and see the inferior version of it just because nobody would rent it. Well, thankfully, On-Demand came to the rescue. That's right, my friendly cable box was more than willing to show me either version of the film in HD whenever I wanted. The downside, I had to watch the whole thing in 24 hours.

Normally, these days, I watch movies in part. For example, it took me about a week to see all of Beowulf not because it was long but because I seldom have two straight hours to indulge myself in crappy nerd films that only I want to watch. Frankly, if Rachel and I have time to just hang out I'd rather watch something we both like, like Lost for instance, than subject her to a nerd movie I'm only watching because I can't help myself - example number one of this phenominon was definaly Beowulf, it was amusing and inoffensive but not great.

Anyway, long story short, after doing all of my chores I sat down last night, while Rachel was out at a party for her song writing class, and watched all three hours and seven minutes of the movie in one chunk - although there was a bathroom and snack break after the two hour mark.

What did I think? Well, Watchmen is one of those comics that blew my mind as a kid. I think I was 13 or 14 when I read it and I'm sure half the crap in it went over my head. Also, its not like, in retrospect, the ideas in it are really revolutionary but, like somebody's older brother who first turns you on to Punk Rock or something, I'll always think of it as pretty damn cool.

That said I really, really liked this movie. I can't imagine, with the exception of one tiny little sub-plot, how the hell they could have cut 20+ minutes out of this movie. I thought the pacing was excellent (especially for such a long movie), the characters perfectly fit my memory of them (and in some Rorschach scenes even surpassed my memory), and despite the reworked ending I though all of the things that made the original Watchmen worth pondering back in the 80's were still there. In fact, I've thought about it most of today. In many ways I found the commentary on Right Wing extremism just as spot on now as then and, weirdly, I still think this is one of the best post-9/11 stories around even thought it was written fifteen years before 9/11. I know it's not a perfect fit but there are themes and ideas here that are much freakier after 9/11 than before.

Over all, I know a lot of nerds gave this movie some shit (Hell, Alan Moore as king nerd himself gave it a lot of shit) but I don't think it deserves it. There were whole half hour chunks of the movie that were so close to my original memory of a particular issue of the comic that I almost wish they had started with the cover for that issue. I mean it was like comic book deja vu.

In the end I think I really loved this movie. Yes, there are probably two scenes I would cut because they were kind of dumb (The smiley face on Mars was dumb as was the scene with Rorschach walking down the street getting bothered by hookers) but two dumb scenes in a three hour movies isn't bad at all.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys super hero movies or genre pictures. After all, if you can buy the premise, this really is just one awesome film noir anyway. I would definitely watch this again when it's on cable, and that's high praise indeed.

Henry has learned the word "Hi" and he not afraid to use it. It's extremely cute since he's still so little and his voice is so high. His voice sounds like a cartoon character, a very small cartoon character with really big eyes.

Today we signed up for a new gym by our house. As much as we liked the YMCA they were just far enough away to inspire laziness on our part and their childcare, as free as it was, was more like a subterranean toddler thunderdome than any kind of organized child friendly place. So while we were signing up at the new place (It's the Galter Life Center which is this gym that's part of a local hospital which is nice since there is a real health and wellness component and not a lot of freaks on steroids - also, it took forever since we had to fill out tons of paper work much of it collecting duplicative information which is just like a..... doctors office. I was thinking of Pres. Obama and heath care reform the whole time.) Henry refused to sit so I went walking in the halls with him while Rachel did her paperwork - I did mine later while she took him to the park across the street.

Anyway, as he toddled down the hallway he'd wave and say "Hi!" to everybody he passed. Every person, from the serious old dude clearly there for rehab to the nice old Asian lady who was just sitting in the hallway with this permanent smile on her face, they all laughed, waved back and said "Hi." Most mentioned how cute he was. That, of course, only made Henry do it more.

All I know is he sure is one friendly little dude.

So, I've been trying to get more into playing my guitar in 2009 after about two years of not taking any classes and just practicing on my own. I started by diving into this class where we play songs by The Cars and now I've been in the Reggae class for several months. Below is a class outing we did back in May where we played in a bar here in Chicago.

It was fun being a bar band for about an hour and we will be doing it again this Sunday as well. I think these turned out pretty well considering we'd only been playing as band for about eight weeks (once a week every week on Thursday nights). Notice on the first video, after the sickening shaky-cam action at the start (it does settle down) how often I forget what the hell I'm doing and have to look at my notes (I'm the dude way in the back next to the keyboard). Rock star I'm not.

Anyway, my job is to lay down the ska train guitar rhythm and I think I do that fairly well. The secret to be an extremely okay guitar player is to be in a band where everyone else is better than you. I wish the sound was better on I Shot the Sheriff because Ramone's guitar solo really was sweet. That guy can play.

Sweet N' Dandy



I Shot the Sheriff

Today I watched Thundar the Barbarian with Henry for the first time. I loved this show when I was a kid (granted I was much older than Henry but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway) and seeing it again for the first time in years was a lot of fun (sorry about that apocalypse in 1994, I wonder what happened to that anyway?). The best part was that Henry would make this weird growling sound whenever Ukla the Mock would make his weird growling noise and also anytime a bad guy laughed manically he would also laugh manically which, if you've even seen the show, is a lot.

Needless to say Henry cracked me up.

The down side? Henry got so into the show that the fell of the couch. Thundar ended shortly there after in tears. I guess we should wait a few more years before trying again.

So I haven't been posting on LJ much mostly due to not having access at work and playing scrabble on Facebook. Stupid Facebook.

Anyway, I thought I'd just post some random developments over here in an attempt to get back in the LJ swing of things:

* At the playground with Henry this week I saw the coolest toy. It was a medium sized blue motor cycle with buttons on the side. When pressed one button made a motorcycle sound and another made a deep gravelly voice announce "It's Ninja Wheelie Time!" at which point some shredding guitar erupted and the bike took off on it's own and, with the help of some little wheels on the side, it started popping a wheelie all over the place. The 3 year old plus gang was enraptured, Henry and the under 2 crowd would rather play in puddles.

* I'm about half way through season 1 of Lost and while I'm can admit that I'm finally enjoying it I still don't like it as much as Fringe yet. I have a feeling over time I'll really like the characters but right now there are just so many of them it's taking forever to get to know them.

* Why, why, why is nobody talking about Star Trek on here? I'll just come out and say it - Best Star Trek ever - maybe, just maybe, better than Wrath of Khan. Hell, it made me not just accept, not just like, but love the funny alien sidekick. What the hell is wrong with me?

* Books read recently: The Road - Really enjoyed it but can't imagine why anyone would pay $10 to see the movie version * The Man Who Was Thursday - Weird book from 1905 about anarchists in England. Very weird but kind of fun. * The Terror - Super fun epic book by Dan Simmons about an English exploration team trapped in ice near the north pole. Featured mysterious eskimos and a terrifying monster that randomly eats people. The end is a little mystical but pretty damn satisfying. I've never really thought about how horrible scurvy is before. * The Serpent and the Scorpion - fun romance/mystery book Rachel bought. Completely enjoyable tale about a gallant English woman who solves mysteries in early 20th Century England. Think unrequited love meets mysteries of the late English empire. It was book two of a series and probably would have been better had I read the first one.

* Was a weird month work-wise. Nearly lost my job since the contract that makes up 80% of may pay vanished. Fortunately I found another government sugar daddy at the last moment to keep me alive for another year. While I really like working at Northwestern this finding work to keep my job stuff kind of sucks. Also, I really enjoyed the last year plus working at CPS and will miss it dearly. I'm back to working on foster kid issues at DCFS now and I'm grateful for the job. I'm looking at this next year as one long opportunity to find another job. One where I don't have to worry about my funding getting cut all the time. I'm not sure such a job exists but I will not rest until I find it.

* Really loved the latest Kills album Midnight Boom. So very good.

*I'm greatly looking forward to my Mother bringing an ax with her when she visits this weekend. There is a bush in front of my building that must go. The ax will make that much easier.

My back is killing me. I've spent more time on the floor in the last 48 hours than I have in years. The culprit? I took up a bunch of sod in the back yard this weekend then then took Henry to the park where I started swinging him around. That pretty much did it.

Anyway, I'm feeling better but I've missed two days of work and I still can't pick anything up - including Henry who's just about had it with Daddy-no-pick-me-up.

Okay, so I haven't had time to call the Nielsen people and reply to their generious offer but.... they've come to my house not once, but twice in the last two days and rung my bell wanted to just stop by. It's kind of creepy. It's like I get the letter on Monday and by Tuesday they are already at my door wanted to just drop in to chat.

I've turned them away twice now simply because they show up at the worst time (usually when Henry is either in the bath or trying to take a nap). I'm a little worried this is some sort of scam. Fortunately I have a work friend who used to work for the Nielsen people so I'm going to run this past him.

Big down side to Chicago, there are a lot of door to door scams down here (like, I work for the gas company let me distract you while my partner breaks in the back door and steals shit). So now I'm suspicious.

So we've been asked to be a Nielsen Family. No, not just a fill-out-this-survey-here's-$10-bucks Nielsen Family but an honest to god we come to your house and hook up a box to your TV and collect info on everything you watch. We haven't decided if we're going to do it or not yet (not like it's really that big of a decision really) but it's note worthy if, for no other reason, than as I kid I wanted to be a Nielsen Family almost more than anything (I think the two things that would have beat it would have been cable TV with all the movie channels and an unlimited comic book allowance).

I think my passion for the Nielsen Family status stemmed from the repeated cancellation of TV shows I loved. I could never understand why people didn't see the brilliance that I saw in Automan, Manimal, Battlestar Galactica (the old skool version), Crime Story (Michael Mann's other brilliant TV show), and countless other beloved TV friends. Once I figured out that some company, the Nielsen company, was in charge of deciding what lived or died on TV I wanted to have some influence, no matter how small, over that outcome.

So while I've done the journal for Nielsen in the past and accepted their $10 payoff for completing surveys several times this is the first time I've ever been offered the thing I really, really wanted when I was like 8 years old. Funny, while appealing in a way it seems too little too late in some ways. I feel like thanks to HBO and a zillion cable channels, not to mention the Internet, most of what I like I get to see now and most shows I enjoy seldom get canceled they just end on their own - a notable exception being Veronica Mars which was a fantastic show done no justice by idiots at the CW.

If I find the time I suspect I'll do this if for no other reason than to cross off a boyhood fantasy. Looking back on it it's really not surprising that I ended up involved in statistics and numbers for a living if my boyhood fantasy involved being part of a nationwide survey. Shouldn't it have been to be a giant robot smashing things or something?

Rachel and I took Henry to the playground today since the weather was nice. We let him run around with the other kids and discover all of the various things that park playgrounds have. He was quite attracted to the slide which he's seen several times in the YMCA daycare we sometimes leave him at while we work out. Of course this slide was much bigger and had kids sliding down it - something he had never seen before.

We decided put him down the slide once to see if he'd like it. I put him on the top of the slide and Rachel stood at the bottom to catch him. It was about a 4.5 or 5 foot tall green plastic slide with little side rails - so much safer than the 8 ft tall metal monsters I remember from my youth. He slid down the slide with his little brows furrowed as thought trying to figure out how the whole thing was working. At the bottom he just laid on the slide and had a fairly neutral to blank expression on his face, so much so we decided to put him down the slide again just to see if he liked it or not. On the second attempt Henry started half smiling on his way down and at the bottom he broke into a full grin. With evidence that he enjoyed it we tried it one more time and this time he had a huge smile on the face from top to bottom.

Later we showed him how to climb up the stairs to the top of the slide on his own. After that all he wanted to do was go down the slide. It was pretty awesome. I can't wait for more first this summer.

Today, as I was leaving for work, Henry came running out of his room, arms wide, and said "I love you Daddy." for the first time. That made today the best day ever.