Minutiae

After the jump, photo evidence of my car passing the 10,000 mile mark. My little Tucson is growing up, ladies and gentlemen.

The fortunate thing is that I was stopped when I took the picture, so it was,What's the depressing thing about the milestone? It was, not surprisingly, spent driving from my house to Upper Darby Performing Arts Center. Hey, at least it wasn't on my way to work in the morning.

( Click to pic... )

This past weekend, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became the highest-grossing opening weekend movie in history, surpassing 2002's Spider-Man and this spring's Aquaman. When I went to the theatre to catch Pirates, I was struck not by how many people were out to see it, but by the diversity of the crowd. Young or old, geek or prep, people showed up in droves to see Johnny Depp swashing and buckling. Why? Because pirates - the 16th century kind that are portrayed in the Caribbean movies, at least - have a wide appeal. Where aliens creep some people out and superheroes might only entice those familiar with their pulpy comic origins, pirates live the kind of life we all wish we had: free of the law, out on the sea, snatching up all the booty, booze, and beauties that they can find. As I was walking out of Dead Man's Chest, I began to think about another series that featured a newbie pirate, an island of cannibals, and quite a bit of quirky humor. After much consideration...okay, fine, in the time it took to walk from my seat in the theatre to my car...I came to an important decision: I want to bring that series to the silver screen. After all, if Pirates of the Caribbean can succeed, so can this. And so, I announce to you, my readers, the next big project for Minutiae: developing and selling a screenplay for the 1990 video game The Secret of Monkey Island.*

( You are a bunch of foul smelling, grog swilling pigs... )

One of the unfortunate things about working in a several-hundred-employee company is the amount of useless e-mail that comes through your inbox. As if seedy suggestions to "update your Chase Manhattan banking information" when you don't even have an account there is enough, you have to deal with the senseless event invitations and classified ads that your coworkers send around. Thankfully, my workplace created a special e-mail alias that these wastes of time are supposed to go to, because too many people were abusing the employee-wide address. Unfortunately, because I manage the company events calendar, I have to remain "opted in" to the wasteland alias, in case anything important comes along.

Today, someone sent out an e-mail asking for ideas for a cheap place to stay in Wildwood. Last week, it was suggestions for restaurants. And let's not forget the congratulatory art gallery reviews that nobody cares about outside of that one department. After today's rather pointless e-mail, some of the folks in my department came up with ridiculous requests we could flood the "company classifieds" alias with, in hopes that it would make the thing go away for good.

( These are the top 20 requests that we came up with... )

So I was looking at some movie trailers on iTunes yesterday, which I should have never discovered, because it will turn into a major waste of my time. But while I was looking for the trailers, I clicked on the "Soundtrack" genre in the iTunes list, and saw the soundtrack for Over the Hedge...featuring...BEN FOLDS. How did I not know this? I remember him saying he was working on a film soundtrack when I went to his concert a few months ago, but why didn't this register higher in my consciousness when the movie came out? Who's been hiding this from me?

Now I'm going to have to go see this movie. Just for the Folds love.

It seems out of character to be writing this, because I dedicate so much of my time to making sure this blog nearly screams levity. For the same reason, it seems wrong to expect you readers to pay attention to something serious that I write. But I feel it's necessary to put my feelings down in writing. With all due respect to the American soldiers who lost their lives in past wars, Monday saw the world losing one of its toughest fighters: a fifteen-year-old named Paul Chrest.

Paul was the youngest son of one of my dad's best friends. He was born with cystic fibrosis, a respiratory disease that, over time, breaks down your entire body. As a result, Paul was born with one foot in the grave and an immune system so weak that his other foot couldn't gain the strength to keep him out of it very long. CF claims most of its victims before they turn 30; it took Paul's older sister Lauren seven years ago, at the age of fourteen. When Lauren died, I didn't quite understand the gravity of all of it. I recall standing outside in the February chill, waiting more than half an hour in the line to pay respect to Lauren and her family, so impressed with the turnout and what it surely meant to the Chrests that I never gave a thought to how devastating it was to lose her, no matter how much it was expected.

( Saying goodbye to an inspiration... )

Head on over to my MySpace profile (link at the bottom of the sidebar) if you agree with my musical tastes, especially those like The Decemberists, The Shins, and Brendan Benson. I've put a new song on the profile: Tegan and Sara's "Walking With a Ghost." It's stuck in my head right now. If anyone is familiar with the band, last me know what other songs to preview on iTunes that might just push me into wanting one of their albums.

Kind of wishing I had something interesting to say today, about the season finale of LOST (summary of last two minutes: huh?) or the results in the American Idol finale (Soul Patrol, rock on with your hokey self). But, before I get too meta on y'all, I'll do what all bloggers do when they don't have anything interesting to say but want to keep a regular once-a-day, Monday through Friday schedule going: I'll link to something.

I just came across this today, a fact that, considering I used to go to the site daily before I realized its once-a-week schedule, is rather surprising. With Barry Bonds on the cusp of surpassing the Great Bambino, everyone's pretty much sick of hearing about him, and yet I couldn't help but read this article on Tomato Nation. Sars does a wonderful job of explaining why we'll never accept Barry right now but, thirty years down the road, we'll look at him like just another Ty Cobb. It's worth a read.

3:30 Update - officially changed the title of this post to "Linkology" now that there's going to be a link that has nothing to do with Mr. Bonds. Follow this link to AOL's in2TV, where you can karaoke your favorite cheesy TV themes. My personal favorite? Perfect Strangers, of course. And you can watch a full episode after the song plays, as long as you have the right combination of digital rights management, the latest version of Windows Media Player, don't try it in Firefox...it's nigh impossible to get everything you need to view the episode, but damn is it worth it.

3:31 Update - GET OUT OF THIS CITY! It looks like there's several episodes available for your viewing. I know how I'm spending the better part of my evening. I'm so happy, I do the dance of joy!

I used to really....really dislike the animation on those Charles Schwab commercials. I mean, come on, you're an investment firm. Stop trying to be interesting. Just tell the baby boomers what your rate is and put LOST back on the set.

Then I saw the trailer for A Scanner Darkly, the upcoming movie based on the Philip K. Dick novel (which I haven't read, but PKD has carte blanche in my book).

Now, whenever I see one of those commercials, I get a little bit excited.

Update: Oh, and here's an interesting article on AdFreak about the animation process...and another one from Slate about the Schwab ad campaign.

You know those radio commercials for NBC? The ones where it's as if a morning crew comes back from break and talks about nothing but NBC shows?

Yeah, those commercials make me want to invest in some hemlock or something.