Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Avengers: A Movie Review

I liked it. It was good.

IMHO, however, it did not live up to its hype.

My nephew said he hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. I merely chuckled.

I felt as if I were missing pieces of the story. I've been assured that not seeing The Hulk didn't matter. X-Chromo said I should have seen Iron Man 2 (it's TV Stevie's fault I haven't seen it) to learn more about the Black Widow.

If a person isn't familiar with the comic book canon, one might feel the same way I did.

There were three things that really irked me.
1) all the women wore really tight clothing and too many shots were of their butts as they walked away from the camera, fannies swaying.
2) After September 11th, Manhattanites are not going to stand in the windows of their office buildings and watch the destruction of their city.
3) The Hulk can't control his rage. The Hulk can't control his rage. Now the Hulk can control his rage? What's the motivation for that abrupt change?

My biggest issue is I was expecting a fabulous story and didn't get it. What I got were special effects, which bore and annoy me after about 60 seconds. As TV Stevie and I have discussed almost every time we see a movie based on Marvel Comics, he found the same problem with the comic books themselves: not enough story, too much BAM! POW! KA-ZOW-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (We're DC people at heart, but DC can't do movies worth a hoot.)

What I loved: Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark.
Still.
Iron Man is still the best superhero/comic-book based movie I have ever seen.


Saturday, May 19, 2012

Apologies to Mark Gotham

Mark Gotham teaches/taught 7th grade math at Y-Chromo's middle school. At open house that year, Mr. Gotham told me that "Y has a mathematical mind."

I started laughing. I mean, really. Come on.

I'm not laughing any more. Mr. Gotham, you were right and I was wrong.



Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, Summa Cum Laude, with departmental honors.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Family Ties: Prologue

No, not my family. I have cousins by the dozens and I've always loved having such a large extended family.  TV Stevie wasn't quite as lucky growing up.

After his father's death (when TV was 10), there wasn't a lot of contact with his Dad's side of the family, except through Uncle Bill. The final breech was when Uncle Bill died. TV was in college.

Not long before Uncle Bill's death, a young man approached TV in one of his film classes and introduced himself as TV's cousin. TV's response was: no you're not. But he was. Richard is actually TV's first cousin once removed.

A few years later, when TV was working as a director at the PBS station in his college town, a "famous" psychologist who dealt with agoraphobia was a scheduled guest on one of the programs TV directed. Turned out Julian, too, was another of TV's first cousins, once removed.

In 1991, when Richard was living in Ithaca, TV and I had dinner with Richard and his wife, plus Richard's parents. Richard's father, George, was TV's first cousin. There is quite an age difference between TV and his first cousins on his father's side of the family. His dad was the youngest child by several years, married late, and Steve was the youngest of his siblings.

Flash forward to November 2011. TV Stevie and I arrived home one Saturday evening and checked our phone messages. "This is Calman G* and I'm looking at a lovely photo of my Uncle Kermit H*, and if you are the Steven H who is his son, please call me because I'd like you to have this photo."

Chills ran up and down my arms.

That single phone message launched an on-going journey of discovery and re-connection.

Saturday, May 05, 2012

Underworld and a Super Moon

Gorgeous spring evening. The Super Moon is stunning. Venus is also very bright tonight.
Super Moon
TV Stevie and I went to the Capitol Theatre in Rome to see Underworld, a 1927silent film which essentially gave birth to the gangster genre.  Bernie Anderson accompanied the movie on the Captiol's original installation Moller organ.
Original installation Moller organ at the Capitol Theatre in Rome
Unfortunately the moon was behind us as we drove home, so I watched Venus instead.