Ten Observations

I've been dealing with stuff breaking down all week, so I'm gonna be lazy tonight.

1) Doing a buttload of data entry in order to open a video store hasn't gotten any easier since the first time I did it several years ago. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that the movie companies have invented new and interesting ways to hide release dates, screen formats, ratings, and other important information.

2) Speaking of release dates, a lot of movies I still think of as reasonably new are actually rather old. It's part of the whole "time running together thing" that I've noticed for the past, oh, 15 years or so. I blame it on two things that happens once you leave school: (1) No summer break; (2) Years at your job don't have convenient names like years at school.

3) I can think of a million smart-ass remarks to make about Hellboy (involving puppets, Elric, monsters with the "Unable to attack a major character" Weakness, and a bunch of other things). Ultimately, though, it's a fun movie so I won't make fun of it.

4) Step Brothers is just as funny as you think it will be. What some people might not expect is the percentage of the funny that's contributed entirely by Richard Jenkins.

5) I didn't give a rat's ass about the new X-Files movie to begin with. Now that I've spent way too many minutes of this week waiting for its ad to load on MySpace (which a few of my friends still insist on using) before my login would go through, I actively hate the new X-Files movie.

6) To the city of Lexington: Letting a vibrant and historic downtown block be destroyed to make way for a gigantic phallic symbol that nobody wants despite huge pubic outcry and the fact that the developers are openly dishonest and have a terrible track record when it comes to their grand schemes is really fucking stupid. When Cock & Balls tower stands empty and tumbleweeds roll through downtown while the Webb Brothers giggle about the amount of tax money they stole, maybe you'll understand.

7)To the city of Paducah: Your attempt to bring the creative class into your downtown area is admirable, especially compared to Lexington's apparent attempt to drive them out. Unfortunately, your program isn't really bringing in the creative class. It's bringing in people who briefly considered creative endeavors, realized that they don't pay terribly well, and got day jobs. Any creative energy these wannabe Bohemians may have had has been sucked out by years in the straight world. The real creative types were the ones who lived in the downtown area (because it was run-down and chaep) before you started your "artist relocation" program.

8) To Barack Obama: Every time you pander to swing voters, you undermine everything that made us vote for you in the primaries. Quit it. This kind of pandering is the reason the Democrats can't win an election and the definition of "far-left liberal" is now somewhere to the right of Nixon. If you stick to your guns, you've got this election tied up. If you fuck it up, you destroy a lot more than just your own political aspirations.

9) To the family in the Mexican restaurant on Broadway last week: I immediately disliked all 20 or so of you from the moment I walked in, all for different reasons (with special distaste for the couple who changed their baby on a table in the middle of the restaurant). I liked you even less when I heard one of the gentlemen actually bragging about leaving the server a 15% tip after he'd spent at least an hour (probably more) making sure your entire table was happy. But you really proved yourselves to be truly awful people when two members of your family actually had a conversation across MY table without even seeming to realize that you were doing something incredibly rude. I hope you all die in spectacular and embarrassing ways.

10) To whoever decided to remake Death Race with Jason Statham: You rock! The first time I saw the trailer, I tried to convince myself that it didn't look awesome. Now that I've seen it a few more times, I can't keep deceiving myself.