Saturday and Sunday
I slept in Saturday morning. Did a bit of sporadic cleaning… and it was sporadic because I kept allowing myself to get distracted by all sorts of more interesting things. I did have a nice conversation with . Three hours and some change. Aside from “Hi” or “Bye,” in passing, I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in months.

Around 9:00, I got the urge to rearrange the furniture in the living room. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t have been too bad. However, as it was 00:40 before time to go bowling… *shrug* Let’s just say that the room was left in a serious state of disarray when 9:45 rolled around. Bowling and post-bowling dinner, as usual. I came back home to: Furniture Wars – Episode VI: The Return of the Entertainment Center. I finished (more or less) around 6:00 this morning.

I woke up around 10:00. This was not good. Well, “waking up” was good. It was the “10:00” part that wasn’t so hot. So, I did the second thing that came to mind – I turned over and went back to sleep. (The first thing was: “Why am I up this early?!?”) 11:45 seemed a little more appropriate, so I got up, showered, got dressed and headed to Borders for more drawing time. I also woke up with a headache that seemed to go away about a half-hour after awakening.

I went to Borders. I had cheesecake and a Cafe Mocha. I drew. Life was good… until the headache decided to return. And I didn’t have anything to take for it. BAH! I suffered through it until I got home. Then, I put two Aleve tablets to work. They seemed to do the trick.

Tonight, we saw Hulk. I’ll start off by saying that I liked it. Yes, there were a couple of plot and continuity holes, but… it was a comic book-inspired movie. In that regard (and just in my opinion), it did a good job. No, it wasn’t X-Men or Spider-Man or Batman or Superman. It wasn’t meant to be. (…and it’s probably good, as none of their names were in the title of this movie.) I’m not sure if people were more disappointed by:

  • The changes in the origin story. Saying that Banner was caught “…in a gamma bomb explosion…” worked in the Cold War-era 60s… but it’s not going to fly as well today. Tying it to genetic manipulation is more modern. AND, it also ties into the “new” origin that Marvel created for it’s Ultimate universe: Banner was trying to recreate the Super-Soldier formula that created Captain America, wound up testing it on himself… and the results were not good.
  • The CGI Hulk. As much as I liked the TV series when I was younger, I think that using CGI as opposed to an actor painted green was a good idea. And, I don’t think that it was too “cartoony.” Also, they tied something else from the comic book in here: “The angrier Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.” It made sense for the adrenaline surges to trigger further mutations in the creature, i.e.: adding strength and mass, resulting in a bigger Hulk.
  • Too much drama. *sigh* Cry me a river. When you have a character who goes from average guy on the street to raging force of nature, it helps to know “why.” I think that Ang Lee did a good job of exploring the underlying reasons for Banner’s rage/frustration.

I liked it. It was a good reinventing of the character for the modern day. I’ll even buy it when it comes out on DVD.

After the movie, we headed to V.I. for dinner. This was good… even with Shelley dropping half of our orders. The dinner conversation was good, too. We also saw someone who looked like the spitting image of Bruce Davison (Senator Kelly from X-Men and X2: X-Men United).

And with that, I take my leave.

Namaste.