fine whine

Jessica and I were out today on a shopping expedition, of sorts, and I found myself noticing something that hadn't attracted my attention before.

There are Honda Odysseys all over the place. I'm not sure if this is the 'look for something fairly common and you'll find it' phenomenon, but there seem to be an awful lot of them on the road. Few miles went by without one parked in a nearby lot or passing us in another lane.

Jessica was getting annoyed, I think, as I continued pointing them out well after the novelty of the idea wore off.

I suspect that this will be like the rash of intresting novelty plates I saw last year or so. Eventually I'll stop noticing them, and then things will return back to so-called normalcy.

I must point out, however, that I pity anyone who buys an Odyssey, unless by chance it is a maroon one from two 'generations' ago, as those seemed to be the rarest both for age and for color. Most people drive the second most recent model in a beige or light grey, it seems.

So tonight we watched Collateral, the highly-touted adrenalin-infused thrill ride starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.

Well, I didn't put the adrenaline there, the people who write things on DVD covers did. I didn't see too much in the way of adrenaline except for a couple of running chases. Those, for what they were worth, lasted seemingly much longer than humanly possible.

Which you could also say about the whole movie. I don't think that Michael Mann is capable of a movie shorter than 110 minutes. The few he's done that I've seen (Heat, Manhunter, and The Insider) all seemed interminably long at points. They all seemed to take place in Los Angeles, though I'm pretty sure Manhunter took place quite a ways from there.

In general I seem to have difficulty with movies set in L.A. (though I failed to mention it much) and in particular I seem to have trouble with Michael Mann's. There's just something about those movies that I just don't enjoy, critical accolades aside.

It's not just the length of the movies that I don't like. I also am not fond of the visuals he seems to employ, lighting-wise and otherwise. Nevermind the fact that so much of the movies happens after dusk (and yes, I realize that Collateral takes place over a single night) in some nearly-neon-lit cityscape that looks like Toronto built out of rejected bits of Las Vegas. Nevermind the harsh lighting, the blues and greens and reds washing out entire scenes in bold color. Nevermind the shaky cameras at key points moments equally shaky.

Really, this time around, it was Tom Cruise's really fake greyish hair. It's entirely possible they're trying to make him look older, or moreover that they're trying to make him look like he's trying to look like he's older, or that it's just bad hair.

I paid a little attention to the music, here and there, since the visual stuff was so spread out time-wise, and many a time it seemed that the 'score' was an attempt to stretch out the instrumental bits of recognizable songs. I barely noticed it when they slipped in one with lyrics, something by Audioslave in fact, except for the fact that it was utterly pointless and completely out of character for the film.

I guess I just didn't like it. Jamie Foxx did well for an early bout of serious acting, but Tom was relatively unconvincing, coiffure aside. He just didn't strike me as a tough guy, even with the guns.

Come to think of it, maybe it was the hair.

So I've got that "Well, Duh!" desk calendar. Saturday's entry was this:

Dumb Things Famous People Said
We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?
--Lee Iacocca, automotive business executive

My calendar is not the only source with this quote. It's all over the place, but unfortunately never in any sort of context. I searched Lexis-Nexis and a few other resources, but for now have found no new information. By itself, it's amusing, but I'd really like to know when he said it and to whom. Perhaps this is a job for some of those intrepid librarians...

I still don't like Heist, but at least I understand what it is. Before I only knew it was a heist film (hence the name) but now I understand that it isn't naturalistic or realistic or many other things that end in -istic. The film takes place in a fabricated world where everybody is really cool ("so cool when he goes to sleep, the sheep count him"... what does that mean, anyway) and speaks in simple, but rhythmic barbs and jabs that just barely approximate a conversation.

Of course, either strengthening this point or obliterating it entirely, is a scene with Delroy Lindo's character and his girlfriend in the car outside a diner. Gene Hackman's character is inside, and Delroy is explaining that the two of them were talking about fights or something else (not heist-related) and so on, but the point isn't that conversation from the diner but the one in the car, where everything suddenly seems normal and realistic. Through the driver's side window onto that bench seat we see one of the only glances to the rest of the movie world, the one without cool criminals and witty backtalk. There are real, uninvolved people, but only one gets much in the way of screen time. Everybody else is in on it, in one way or another, and subject to the alternate reality. So it goes.

The film's definitely a Mamet, and having paid closer attention to Spartan recently I'd wanted to watch this one again just to see if knowing what David is doing has any effect on how much I enjoy the film.

It matters, but very little. I still don't like Heist, but I don't dislike it nearly as much as I formerly did.

And darnit, Ricky Jay just rocks.

For a couple years now I've been wearing black every Monday at work*. I don't always wear the same shirt, as I seem to now own three short-sleeved black polo shirts, another one with long sleeves, and two button down dress shirts (one is silk even). I can't recall if I was doing this back in the days I was wearing t-shirts, but I have a number of black t-shirts as well.

This is the sort of thing I'm supposed to be documenting here, so that I can go back sometime in the future and know, oh yeah, on November 11th of 2002 I decided that henceforth all Mondays I shall don the black shirt and thusly I have e'er since... but alas, I never did. I have no idea when I began doing this, save for the fact that nearest I can recall I had no such routine back up in Chicago nor could I wear black shirts to work at Arthur Treacher's when I worked there.

Anyway, today is certainly an appropriate day to wear black, and not just to mark the passing of the weekend. Today my cubicle mate (and departmental counterpart) is turning in his notice. As in, he isn't going to be sitting next to me after next Friday.

He's merely the latest person to sit by me to leave the company. I'm up to three now, four if you count neighbors over the wall. I'm not sure what to make of that.

* And when I have Monday off I generally wear black on Tuesday, or whatever day I return to my desk.

I saw quite possibly the greatest statement about consumerism and car culture today.

It was affixed to the bumper of one of those (Toyota) Scion xB boxes.

Of course it's also possible the driver was a fan of television...

It was IDIOT BOX.