Month: July 2002

“I know you miss the Wainwrights, Bobby, but they were weak and stupid people — and that’s why we have wolves and other large predators.” — today’s cartoon on my Far Side calendar

I debated scanning the image (a little boy and his father at a fence, watching wolves run through the house next door), but then I came across this letter from Gary Larson.

Oh dear god, no:

Independence Day producer Dean Devlin told SCI FI Wire that he and partner Roland Emmerich came up with the storyline for a sequel in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “Since September 11th, [director Emmerich] and I did a lot of reflecting on the movie,” Devlin said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Eight Legged Freaks. “It started because people were asking us about images that were fantasy images that then looked so frightening real in the [wake of] horrible events that took place.”

Found at Science Fiction Weekly. Personally, I’ve gone out of my way not to see Independence Day a second time, since it…well, since it sucked. I’ll admit, I enjoyed it at the time, but the minute I started thinking about it…whoo boy. Someone once said that, as a moviegoer, he really did enjoy the film immensely but that, as a fan of intelligent science fiction and story and writing, he wanted to burn every minute of the film to the ground. I thought that someone was J. Michael Straczynski, but, despite quite a bit of effort, I haven’t been able to find that quote anywhere.

If you can’t find something on the internet, does that mean it doesn’t really exist?

From Roger Ebert’s recent interview with Tom Hanks:

“I think there are periods of time when you’re a father,” he said, “when truly the only thing you have is regrets. All the wonderful qualities of your kids are mysteries to you and all you can see is the way you’ve scarred or burned or somehow neglected those kids. The feeling passes, but it’s true. If you have omitted a moment, if you have bypassed a day, you’ll never get it back.”

Well, I’m back from a much-needed (and pleasantly boring) three days in New York, visiting family over the 4th of July weekend. The house is a little quieter without a dog running around it, and my parents have recently had the kitchen and upstairs bathroom redone, so it was a little like staying in your own house with somebody else’s house attached in strange places.

It was nice to be home, though. I took a few photographs, seen here, more because I felt like I had to, because I promised, than because I saw anything particularly memorable. There was never really an opportunity to use my camera, and I didn’t do much, not really — which was, in a way, sort of the point.

I got a new pair of shoes and a colander, both surprisingly difficult to find in Pennsylvania, and I thoroughly failed to find a CD copy of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, to which I thought it would be nice listen on the drive back. I visited my grandmother, who has been in a rehabilitation center for her legs for the past couple of weeks and is understandably eager to return home. I re-read Alan Moore’s Watchmen, after Sharon discussed it on her weblog two weeks ago. I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on AMC, inherited my parents’ old kitchen table and chairs, and on Saturday we visited the Museum of Natural History, which was nice, but not especially exciting, and you don’t see any pictures from there because I had accidentally left my camera at home. At least I now know the proper pronunciation for coelacanth.

All in all, I enjoyed it. It’s a little disorienting to be back, here at work, but my parents are driving out in three weeks to help me move to my new apartment, and we’re celebrating my grandparents’ birthdays in mid-August, so I’ll have plenty of opportunity to see everyone again. And, amazingly enough, I didn’t get lost driving once.

So, how was your weekend?