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The Passion of The Christ

I’ve been excited about this movie since I first heard about last year. I finally got to see it tonight and I have to say I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Granted, I would like to see it again, so I can focus more on the artistic elements of the movie, rather than being overwhelmed by the initial spectacle, but I think it’ll be a while before I’m ready to see it again.

I think it’s a great film because it’s a somewhat tangible example of the fundamental tenet of the Christian faith: a man, born supernaturally, was tortured and murdered in spite of his own innocence so that the rest of mankind could be reconciled to its creator. I think that idea is articulated very well in this film. It’s also great to see a good piece of “high budget” art produced by a Christian and for an explicitly Christian purpose.

I also think it’s great that the movie is making so much money at the box office. Skeptics seem to think its success is reason for them to make claims that those involved–Mel Gibson, namely–will be making a lot of money. I suspect they’ll eventually be sorry for trying to use the film’s financial success as a means by which to criticize it (ie, claiming that Gibson was interested in the monetary benefits of making the film more than the moral implications), since I think it’s inevitable that Gibson will donate most or all of the profits to charity and the Church.

I could be wrong, but I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t. All in all, I’m glad he made the movie and stuck with it and I’m confident that it will serve a great purpose.

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Through The Horse and His Boy

I finished up the third book of the Chronicles of Narnia this past Sunday and I’m working on Prince Caspian. I’m starting to get into new territory, meaning I haven’t read these books before, so it’s all fresh and new and I’m really enjoying it. Normally, I’m not a big “fantasy” or children’s lit. fan, but C.S. Lewis just does such a great job painting word pictures and articulating concepts through metaphor that it’s impossible for me not to enjoy his writing.

California: attempt 2

Well, I’m going to try to go to CA again next week. This time, I think it’ll happen and the timing seems pretty good. I’m going to e-mail my co-worker out there tomorrow so he can give me a list of places to go and things to do while I’m out there. I figure I’ll use it as sort of a field-trip to learn about L.A. and that general area. It’s been about, oh, 20 years since I was out there, so we have a lot to catch up on.

The Passion

Well, I’ve been itching to see it since I first heard Mel Gibson was working on it and I’ll finally get to catch it tomorrow night. I’m going with a friend who’s already seen it, but he says he’s excited to see it again. I’ve already heard lots of opinions on different aspects of the movie, but the great thing is that I already know what happens, so I can watch it simply to appreciate the gravity, intensity that the movie is said to create.

Pay day approaching

I get paid again on Thursday afternoon. This way of life is so different from being a college student, I still can’t get used to it. In college, my bank account would spike once every four months or so, then it would slowly decline as I spent my scholarship and loan money. Then, as a new semester began, so the cycle would recycle. Now, I get a fresh influx of cash every two weeks and I have a lot of freedom regarding how I spend or invest it. Right now, I’m focusing on paying back my student loans and the other “debt” I incurred this past year at school. I say “debt” in quotes because although it is technically debt, I’m not paying any interest on any of it, so I don’t stress about it too much. If all goes as planned, I’ll be paying back all of this past year’s living expenses by October without having paid a penny of interest on that money. Then, I can start whittling away at the real debt.

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The Academy Awards were on tonight…

And, as anticipated, The Lord of the Rings and company nabbed several awards. I wasn’t too surprised at that, but what did surprise me was when the announcer said that it had won 11 awards, tying Ben Hur and Titanic for the most awards given in a single night. I thought it sounded strange that Titanic had won that many awards. I mean, it was a pretty good movie, but 11? Maybe I should watch it again.

I was happy to see that Lost in Translation got Sofia Coppola an Award for Best Original Screenplay and, although I was sorta’ pullin’ for Bill Murray, I was glad to see Sean Penn finally get an Award (I thought he was robbed a couple years ago when Denzel won for Training Day). I haven’t seen Monster, but from the clips I’ve seen, Charlize Theron earned every ounce of her Oscar. I thought Billy Crystal did a great job hosting, but then he’s been doing it so long, I bet it’s old hat for him by now.

Overall, it was a good show, but I have to say I’m glad Lord of the Rings won’t be up for any Oscars next year. I mean, they were all good movies, but I’d like to see some other films get a chance at some awards. It’s gettin’ old seein’ the same people winning all the awards every year.

Aaaaaand my weekend is officially over.

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The book buying begins…

When I was here a couple summers ago, I spent most of my free time at Barnes & Noble, either reading or buying books. Well, I went over there today to buy a copy of The World According to Garp and though I couldn’t find it, I managed to find some other books that needed buying. Here’s what I left with:

J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man
Wendy Northcutt’s The Darwin Awards
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
Stephen Viscusi’s On the Job: How to make it in the real world of work
Gabriele Crepaldi’s The Impressionists
and a copy of Car And Driver magazine

I also went to Target and bought a few things including two lamps for my end-tables. I’m afraid the lamps might be a little small, but I have receipts and time, so I’ll get it right eventually.

It’s a Wonderful Life

I am back to watching classics and I really enjoyed this one. I realized that I’ve never watched the entire thing before, mostly because I would gripe and complain any time it was on. Turns out it’s a really good movie that makes a good point in a clever way. Ironically, all I remembered about the movie was the sequence where Clarence, George’s guardian angel, takes George around town to show him what the world would be like if George had never been born. I didn’t realize that was only the last twenty minutes of the movie. It seems there’s also a pretty good hour and a half of movie before that. Who knew?

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Gratuitous necessities

So, I spent a little money today… but, when I heard about the Atari 10-in-1 system, I had to have it. It’s an Atari joystick that takes four AA batteries and plugs into a component video input in a TV. It has 10 games inside including Centipede, Missile Command, Breakout and Asteroids. The one discouraging thing about it is that the box says, “A blast from your parents’ past!” That means I’m old and I guess I should be a parent with kids old enough to play Atari games.

I also bought Lost in Translation. When I first saw this movie, I was convinced it would get a few Oscar nominations and I’m not surprised to see that it’s up for four awards. I also wasn’t surprised when it won three Golden Globes including best actor. I think Bill Murray has a good shot at nabbing the Oscar for Best Actor as well.

Finally, I bought The Simpsons: The Complete Third Season. This one, I’ve been meaning to buy for a while and just hadn’t gotten around to it. The Simpsons is definitely one of the best sitcoms of all time, animated or otherwise.

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S.W.A.T.

One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Final decision on digital camera

I’ve all but decided I’m buying the FujiFilm FinePix F700. It’s a good camera, good specs, good price. I’ll probably order it tomorrow and I hope to have it by next weekend (that’s an optimistic estimate).

Back to basketball

I played basketball this morning for the first time in almost two months. Things went about as I expected:

I came out shooting early and made most of my shots, but, as fatigue set in, my shots started going long. My defense was a little better than I expected, but I gave up several jumpers because I wasn’t closing out well on the perimeter (I was afraid I’d get beat off the dribble because I’m outta’ shape and slow). In my last game, I had three good fastbreak layups and a few nice assists. I expect I’ll be improving as I continue to work out and get into shape. I hope I can go back in a few weeks and show those guys that I’m not normally as bad as I was this morning.

Computer desk shopping

I’m about to mail off my claim forms for the computer desk that was busted up during my move. I figure it’s about time to look into replacin’ it. I’m not sure what I want–corner desk or regular one–but I’ve pretty much decided I want something in cherry wood (or at least vaneer or finish). Hopefully, I’ll find something soon, so I can continue getting settled.

Church tomorrow

If all goes well, I’ll be at a local church tomorrow morning at 10:45. It’s less than five miles away and it looks like a decent church… but I’m learning that one can never be too sure before he’s in the doors.

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Plano: Day 11

I’m officially back online and I don’t know how I ever went without the internet. Anyway, I had been keeping my weblog on my computer, so I’ve posted the past 10 days’ posts. Most of it’s really boring, I’m sure, but I thought it would be good for me to record my transition to DAL for future reference. I’m not sure how, but I feel that I might eventually learn something from all those posts.

Up late

It’s after 3 am and I’m still going strong. My coffee table/end tables arrived today, so I went ahead and put them together tonight. I’m really happy with them aesthetically, and they’re pretty sturdy, too. They’re not “real” wood, but are apparently a combination of various woods and “veneers” or something. Anyway, they look good to me and I hope they last.

The dining room set I ordered was cherry wood, so at least that’s the real thing. The color of the woods should match pretty well, even though they’re not the same. Regardless, I’m ready for my stuff to get here, but I’ll have to be patient and keep comfy and occupied while I’m waiting for it to get here.

I’ve also been working on getting my TiVo online… It’s a pain ’cause the stupid thing was designed specifically to use a dial-up connection to download the information it needs to get for daily programming updates and such. There is a workaround in that it has USB ports that can be used to connect it to the internet over a wired or wireless network, but that’s turning out to be a hastle. I’m hoping to get a little adapter at Best Buy tomorrow that will allow me to get it all setup. Once it’s setup, it’ll be pretty super, but I have to be patient until then.

Spring Break

I’m thinking about taking some Paid Time Off (PTO) during UF’s Spring Break. I guess I need to find out what all’s going on, so I make sure I don’t waste a week of PTO to go hang out in an empty city or by myself on the beach. I told my boss today and he seemed to almost encourage taking some time off and he said it wouldn’t be a problem. Right now, plane tickets are about $300 American, but I’m hoping that’ll drop a bit before March.

Along Came Polly

A friend and I went to see this flick tonight and it was pretty good. It’s definitely not Ben Stiller’s best work (I think he was much better in Zoolander and The Royal Tenenbaums), but it was still a funny flick. Jennifer Anniston did a great job and was fun to watch. Philip Seymour Hoffman was funny and constantly impresses me as a character actor. Anyway, it was nice to get out and do something and I discovered there’s a huge Cinemark movie theatre about a block from here; it has reclining seats and everything.

Ok, I’m going to try to get to sleep now… I’ll have to see how that goes.

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Sick and stuff

So, I got back from Conference on Thursday afternoon, had a good day Friday and then woke up Saturday feeling a little under the weather. By last night, I was a lot under the weather and by this morning, I was feeling much better. I’m hoping to be back to 100% by tomorrow or Thursday. The upside is that I’ve gotten lots of opportunities to catch up on my sleep and feel justified in laying around on the couch; I only wish I could have enjoyed it more.

Apartment

I’ve officially got an apartment in DAL (actually, Plano) and I think I’m really going to enjoy it. It’s about 900 sq. ft. and has 1 bedroom and a “den/study”, which I’ll use as an office or guestroom. Unfortunately, the reviews I was able to find for the place aren’t stellar, but that seems to be a trend for apartment complexes in general. It’s not really like me to go signing a 13 month lease on an apartment sight-unseen, but desperate times…

Awakenings

A friend of mine suggested that I see this film, so we rented it tonight. I have to say I was very impressed and I have no idea how I’d never even heard of it before. It was a great story told by great actors and I enjoyed it immensely. No, it isn’t “feel good movie of the year”, but it was solid and made some excellent points, not the least of which was essentially carpe diem.