Sunday, October 7, 2007

Movies and Music and Designer Dogs, Oh my!

So, this is kind of a weekend in review post, I guess.

My parents just sold the video rental store that they used to own, and since then we haven't been too wild about watching movies. As it turns out, 11 or so years of watching every half decent and every piece of crap movie ever launched on to the market really burns you out on movies. So we had a bit of a movie drought. And enjoyed it. By the way, if you happen to be considering investing in an independent video store, let me save you a lot of trouble....don't. The time you put in and the money you lose (to Netflix and Blockbuster and Wal-Mart) sure aren't worth it. Ugh.

But when I saw that Reign Over Me and Evan Almighty were coming out, it was time to call a stop to the drought. Evan Almighty was all right....Bruce was better. I'm a Christian, so it's nice to have some humor that I can feel special because I "get it." But yeah, the end was kind of lame, and this was one of those movies where the preview kind of wrecks all the funniest moments because by the time you get to watching the movie, you've seen 'em all.

I saw Reign Over Me at the theater with a friend. At the time, I wasn't sure if I loved it, but it kept me thinking, and when I saw it was coming out on DVD, I had to see it again. And I think I love it. I love Adam Sandler doing serious stuff. I can't help myself. I'm a huge fan of Spanglish and 50 First Dates (which, while not totally serious, was more serious than your average Adam Sandler movie up to that point). Having seen it a second time, I'm pretty sure I love it. Sandler does a great job of bringing this super damaged character to life, and it's good to see that the plot follows it through. You can't fix something like this in a few days, and the movie doesn't attempt to do it. That's why it's a great story. One you can really envision happening in real life and one you feel like you can sympathize with and relate to even if nothing of this magnitude has ever happened to you or will ever happen to you.

The biggest disappointment of the night, however, was looking up the soundtrack on Amazon. Here I am thinking that the soundtrack of this movie is going to be great - Pearl Jam covering "Love, Reign O'er Me," a couple of excellent Bruce Springsteen tunes, and some other stuff I'd love to have all together on a CD. But what do I find when I look up the soundtrack? It's just the instrumental score. I'm all for instrumental scores and I have a few soundtracks of them that I love. But what a bummer to see that all these great tracks aren't a part of it. So now, not only can I not simply ask for a CD for Christmas, I also have to track down the songs and download them, because they're in my head now, and I'd much rather they were in my CD player!

In other randomness, I wish I was the guy who had the brilliant idea to breed a pug and beagle together to make a puggle. I mean, can you imagine? Here you are sucking $500 or more out of people for something that folks probably wouldn't have even adopted from the pound a couple of years ago. My aunt and uncle (who apparently have money to spare) bought one. It's a girl and they named it Pluto. Now disregarding the obvious problems with the confusion caused by the name which is the same as that of the Disney dog who is, indeed, male.... the last thing this family needs is a dog like this. The poor thing has no idea what to do with herself, she's crazily hyper and has about as much discipline and training as well....as my aunt and uncle's kids. And, if you haven't gathered this by now, that's minimal. So spending time with this family, plus there psychotic dog is akin to keeping company with a traveling circus. And this dog, I think the pug side of the equation won out. It just looks like a really tall pug. It's not as cute as it is frickin' weird looking. And I fear that the whole puggle craze is going to be akin to the dalmatian craze. I worry that everybody who's "anybody" is going to run out and get one of these before they realize quite what they're getting into and that they're going to need to actually exercise and actively train this type of dog in order to enjoy a happy life with it, and when everybody realizes they're not the right type of dog for them, they're just going to end up a bunch of poor "mutts" waiting at the SPCA for someone to adopt them. And what a bummer that is....

But on a happy note, hey, I just wrote in my blog. Maybe it's not a lost cause after all!

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