Rand Wacker

I’ve been remiss in writing a lot here lately, my apologies. I figure the best way to rectify this is to continue with some more utilitarian posts about recent rants/raves, so as to keep up this blog’s usefulness as a social collaborative filter. To start with, let me offer three quick movie reviews:

• Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Mans Chest - When Lex and I went to the first installment of this series we came away mightily impressed. We had pretty much zero expectations because this was after all, a movie based on a ride. Johnny Depp was able to turn Captain Jack Sparrow into one of the more memorable characters pieces in recent film history (which he does quite often), and the store/pace were good. So, this of course gave us high hopes for the second, which we definitely shouldn’t have had. Every time I go to a movie with high hopes I come away disappointed. The second was long, overplayed, and not much more than a simple setup for the third. The special effects were of course quite good; but these days, who cares? There were a couple of good lines in the film, but two thirds through I was looking at my watch wondering when it would be over (warning, its also long).
• Clerks 2 - From the “a few catchy lines does not a movie make” department, Clerks 2 was another sequel I had to see based on the strength of the original (cripes has it been 10 years?!?). I didn’t actually have super high hopes for this one, as I think Kevin Smith has been on a downward curve since “Chasing Amy”; although I quite liked “Jersey Girl”, the least Kevin Smith of his movies. I saw the main actors and all I could think to myself was “do I look like I’ve swelled that much in 10 years?” There were definitely a couple of funny moments/lines (always room for more Jay and Silent Bob), but there were way too many looooooong periods of not much going on, and some very bad musical interludes. Definitely wait for video on this one.
• Lady in the Water - Finally, something to restore my confidence in film! (And yes, I know that the previous selections were my own fault) I’ve liked every one of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies since “The Sixth Sense”. “Signs” scared the heck out of me (I like subtle thrillers more than in-your-face horror), and “The Village” was great (if not a tad predictable). “Lady in the Water” is, as all of his movies are, a study in characters, and there are some great ones here, played by a fantastically off-beat cast. There’s not much I want to say about the story itself other than if you liked (most of) his other films then I would highly recommend this one.

Alexis and I just got back from 3 days in Upper Peninsula Michigan; the part of the state that is actually part of Wisconsin; and area that has called itself “The U.P.” for a lot longer than that stupid TV show has been on; an isolated and rural slice of middle America.

We went to attend a friend’s wedding at their family cabin on the shores of Lake Superior. Turned out to be a very small, very informal event, with about half of the event’s 30 or so guests staying in the 500 square foot log cabin. It really was right on the shore though, and very peaceful and relaxing.

Alexis was an attendant for the wedding, and I busied myself hopping around taking photos, filling in for what the pro photographer didn’t catch. After the ceremony, dinner, and tremendous drinking, the family rolled out a $1000 stash of fireworks they had collected for the event. Let me just say, California fireworks suck compared to what you can buy in Michigan…Giant artillery mortars with huge sky-bursts, flat-pack boxes with 350 to 750 to one thousand different explosions that you light once and that go on for over 20 minutes. The brides father and his old army buddy took it upon themselves with a couple of other folks to coordinate the best damn amateur fireworks display I’d ever seen, eclipsing even some of the “professional” displays I’ve seen at various fair grounds and parking lots over the years.

Wednesday we drove an hour back to the small local airport, caught a puddle jumper back to Minneapolis, had a 4 hour layover where we got dinner with a high-school friend of Lex’s at the Mall of America, then finally arrived at SFO about 8:30pm. We were supposed to then be immediately getting on a plane for Sydney for a week and a half of work/vacation in Australia and New Zealand, but due to mounting work piles for some upcoming events my boss asked me to postpone that trip (along with the week in India afterwards), which actually worked out very well because Alexis wasn’t feeling very well by the time we got home and I developed a pretty nasty head cold the next day that kept me sprawled out on the couch.