So I discovered my buddy has been holding out on me, Part 3

Intro

My buddy Colin and I saw The Adjustment Bureau tonight. Colin remains an upper-middle manager in a shrinking local Theater chain. Wednesday/Thursday are usually dead-nights at all theaters everywhere in the USA. This is the ideal time for staff members to see movies and bring friends and family in to see movies. So it was this evening.

What did I think of the movie? I loved it. It’s a fantastic movie. The amazing thing is that I had no idea that this is yet another adaptation from a Philip K. Dick movie. Was not Philip K. Dick the greatest writer of the past 200 years? It seems like 9/10^th of the great movies I’ve loved in my life were adapted from Philip K. Dick books.

I will write a full-scale review of the movie later. Suffice it to say was a tad more gentile and chick-flicky than I had supposed, but it didn’t spare the metaphysical horses when the time came for key exposition. This is my favorite movie of the year so far, and I doubt it will be surpassed.

Better still, I ate movie theater popcorn for the first time since Gastric Bypass. It went down easy. It did not come back up. I was surprised. My new digestive tract seems to love anything with corn: Polenta, corn bread, corn chips, popcorn. So far everything with corn has worked. Of course, I haven’t tried bourbon…

Not so with meat. Nothing with meat has stayed down, including my Chili con Carne.

Onward to the key point

One of the key elements of this movie are the dimensional doorways that allow Adjustment officers to move rapidly from place to place in the world. Naturally Colin had to show me the secrete doorways and passages in his theater which lead to service elevators that lead down to the street level. I thought this was a fairly hilarious way to reach my parked car.

“You just had to show me the secrete passages down to the street level, didn’t you”, I asked.

“Yeah sure! Why not!” Colin said.

I am not sure how the conversation twisted around but we got onto the subject of on-rushing romance life. It must have run this route because this movie was so blood damned romantic. Incidentally, I have lost nearly 42 pounds lately, and I am over 42% of the way to the final goal. There is quite a dramatic difference. I am fully mobile again. I don’t limp or walk slowly anymore. I look different as well.

Colin felt he needed to point out things that David Harris (Matt Damon) did especially well. This was for my edification. Bear in mind this is a 37 year old married guy giving tips to a 44 year old single guy. Hilarious! Married life usually robs a man of his dancing steps. Naturally, I thought this was a bit condescending, so I formulated a quick retort:

“We’ll see how all of these techniques work on your Sister in Law (hereafter SIL) in a week or two.” For those who don’t remember, Colin has a 12/27/1980 Capricorn SIL, and I score over 200 points versus her in several synastry categories… according to the computer.

Colin looked like he had seen a ghost. “I don’t know about that…”

I replied, “Sure! Why not! If you are confident of these methods, they should work fine on your sister in law. Obviously, they worked on your wife, and they share the same gene pool.”

You know, my logic is utterly brutal some times. Don’t fuck with me, logic-wise.

Colin explained that he was worried about arranging an introduction. He felt it could be costly… politically speaking. He had difficulty explaining why. Water people are like that. They run on intuition, not logic and mathematics. He took at least three rough stabs at answering why he might think this was risky proposition:

1. I am 12 years older than the oldest boyfriend said SIL has ever had.
2. Though I have never once met his in-laws, they have a hear-say impression of me, which is purportedly good. It is hard to understand why a hear-say impression (which is good) would be a reason not to arrange an introduction. Perhaps the hear-say impression is bad?
3. Colin said “In some two months time, you will look very much like the boyfriend of 8 years she just broke up with.” He did not go on to elaborate. He seemed to think this would lose me points, rather than gain me points.

Naturally, this whole conversation began as a retort to condescension, so I had no real goal or intension of arranging anything this evening. However, I put a final point on it by saying the following:

“Your thinking three moves ahead, Colin. The objective is not to get to home plate with your SIL, rather it is to test the computer and see if it is a liar. If there is no chemistry between us, the computer is a liar, and I am happy to know this fact. No harm. If there is a 200+ chemical reaction between us, your SIL will be very excited. No harm there either.”

Was this a true statement of motive on my part? Absolutely. Readers of this blog should know well that I am a little obsessed with meeting girls born on 3/12/1986, as this is the theoretically perfect date. Last time I checked 12/27/1980 is not equal to 3/12/1986.

I am a little frustrated that I have not been able to arrange a predictive test of this Synastry software yet. I can look at past relationships I have had, and see that the Synastry software makes very interesting and true declarations about them. So far, I have not been able to arrange a predictive test, where I match two candidates afresh based on what the computer predicts. Colin’s SIL would be a nearly perfect predictive test.

What if it’s all true? What if Colin’s SIL and you hit it off at a 200+ chemical reaction? Hey! Wonderful! I wouldn’t complain about that. Would you follow through? Sure, why not. However, my life and future happiness do not depend on this outcome. I still have 3/12/1986, and 1/31/1980, and 4/13/1979, and a plethora of others to look at.

A feather in the cap?

Still there is one thing Colin said during that conversation that has stuck with me hard: “In two months’ time, you will look very much like the boyfriend of 8 years she just broke up with.”

If you are a logical man, this has to raise your antenna. You know and I know that every last one of us has a phenotype we prefer. There is a look and size and schematic to woman that you prefer as a man. The same is true for women. There is a guy type that each and every woman prefers most. This may be different for every woman, but rest assured, she has a type. Yes, you can be occasionally pleasantly surprised by how attracted you may be to someone outside that preferred phenotype. Nevertheless, there is a phenotype you prefer, and you know it.

Supposedly, in two months’ time I will look very much like the boyfriend of 8 years she just broke up with. I would suspect that such a long-term dude would be a representative of her preferred phenotype. ‘Tis a pitty if he is not. If I do look like him, I would say this constitutes prima facie evidence that the synastry software is on track.

I’m actually excited about going to the movies again

Intro

On 3/5/2011, you would think a guy of my ilk would be pretty excited about the fact that the NFL owners have not locked out the NFL players. Excited? No. Optimistic for the first time? Yes. Strangely enough, I am excited about the movies this morning. I was not excited about movies throughout the majority of 2010.

Folks, they never should have held the 83^rd Academy Awards ceremony. They should have canceled the Chicky-Super Bowl this year. Hollywood did not deserve any gold statues for what happened during 2010. The fact that they held the ceremony was travesty and miscarriage of justice.

What we should have done is round-up all the heads of each major studio, and all the major Hollywood producers, taken them out behind the woodshed and kicked them in the nuts 20 or 30 times each. That is what they deserved for last year’s cinematic output. It was a fucking lousy year for the movies. The movies of 2010 stank, by and large.

Better still, let’s get Adam Vinattieri to kick them in the nuts 30 or 40 times each. I’m talking about a full soccer-style kick too. After that, we’ll get Deacon Jones to stuff them all into a burlap sack and beat the sack with a baseball bat. Or we could stuff them in a food processor and then an industrial microwave oven…

Now it’s 2011

As I surf to movies.Yahoo.com and look up my favorite local theater, I am absolutely astounded to find a fairly exciting list of choices here. Two movies just opened up yesterday that are on my must-see list: Rango and The Adjustment Bureau. There are several other reasonable choices also.

Rango looks like the first brilliant 3d movie since How to Train Your Dragon, and I think it’s going to be considerably better than that. The animation art looks truly awesome. I have high hopes. This is basically western with anthropomorphized animals, with a Looney Tunes style of humor. The preview looked good. I hope it does not disappoint.

The Adjustment Bureau looks like the bright star on the horizon. This movie has a chance to windup on my short list of all-time favorites, if everything works out as it should. I was intrigued by what I saw in the preview, but more so by the NPR interview I heard last night on the drive home.

The Adjustment Bureau is a heavy existentialist and mystical piece, wrapped up in the look and feel of a modern Sci-Fi movie. The question is deep: can a man control his own fate, or is your destiny controlled by something else? Is the leaver controlling your destiny in your own hands, or are their unseen--but keenly felt--beings or forces in an unseen realm, pulling strings and punching buttons, making things turn out the way they see fit? If there are such shadowy figures manipulating your outcomes, is it possible for you to resist them, and re-set your course as you prefer it to go? Is it is wise thing to resist them, just because you don’t like what they are doing?

At its core, this is actually a sweet romance about a man and woman who really love each other, and want to be together. She’s a ‘dancer’ and he’s a politician. It’s difficult to determine which profession is more slimy, but the politicos don’t want their bright star muddied-up with this greazie girl. Forces conspire to push them apart. They resist.

It’s a good thing that the casting directors chose a pretty Pisces girl (Emily Blunt) to play the love interest. That’s one way to catch my attention. Pisces is on my 7^th House.

Folks, this is the kind of movie I really go for. Neptune is in Scorpio in my natal chart. I am part of a 14 year group of people who are attracted to and fascinated by strange, weird, unusual, mystical, macabre and bizarre subjects. The weirder and more paranormal it is, the more entertaining it is also. This is reflected in the music, art and fashion of our age cohort. We’re the guys who love Chariots of the Gods, UFO stuff, 2012 documentaries, the X-Files, Lost, and Unsolved Mysteries.

Uncle Broonmee

In spirit of the last paragraph, I should include the 3^rd interesting release of the week. If it weren’t enough that they opened two must-see movies this week, there is a third option in very limited release. It’s called Uncle Broonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That is quite a mouthful.

Evidently this is a Philippine movie about man who is dying. He has decided to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside, away from the public. He’s a good man, and better than Al Davis. Didn’t I mention this subject recently?

He has a number of very strange supernatural visitors. The closer he gets to death, the closer he gets to the other side. The more contact he makes with those on the other side, the more he learns about his past incarnations, and accumulates hints about his next incarnation.

Wow… sounds pretty damn weird, macabre, paranormal and entertaining. I want to see this one for sure. As Spock would say: “Facinating!”

But wait! There’s more!

As if it weren’t enough that there are three must-see movies opening this week, there is still more! I Am Number Four has been getting pretty good word of mouth inside my circle of friends and associates. Those who have seen it have praised it as a good adventure.

I’ve been building an interest in this movie all week long. It also helps that this movie features an absolutely ravishing (and I mean ravishing) Pisces female named Teresa Palma. You want to talk about a knock-out bombshell… Believe me, she puts about 850 foot-pounds of torque on my crankshaft. One of the interesting things about Teresa is that she was born on 2/26/1986; just 2 weeks, or 14 days, away from my theoretical max birthday of 3/12/1986. This is close enough to give Teresa a very impressive set of scores. Believe me, I’m feeling that synastry.

But wait! There’s more!

As you all know by now, Liam Neeson opened a new mystery/thriller a week or two ago called Unknown. We can describe it as a drama about identity theft on a whole different level. Of course, it helps that he has a stunning Cancer woman named Diane Kruger in that movie. I don’t mention it often, but Cancer and Virgo are very good together. We don’t have particularly good scores, but I admire her anyhow.

The general forecast for 2011

I spent a good part of last week hauling down some 63 movie previews from trailers.apple.com. If you own the pro copy of Quicktime, you can export these .Mov files as .Mp4 files. There is no transcoding, it’s just a different meta-wrapper. Once these files are in the .MP4 package, I like to drop them on a USB2 memory stick, formatted in Fat32, inside a directory called “VIDEO”. I can then plug that memory stick into my PS3, and watch all the previews I want on the big screen.

There are many other ways to do it, but this is how I like to do it. The speed of the flash memory means instant starts and instant stops. It’s very cool.

Looking at these 63 previews suggests that it is going to be a very interesting year indeed.

Surprisingly enough, it looks like they have done a re-origin and reboot on Marvel’s Thor, and it looks like it just might turn out to be entertaining after all. I sure hope so. The information about Captain America is currently too sketchy to determine whether this might be good or bad. It looks like they are playing it close to the comic book origin. No reboot here. That’s all I can tell you right now.

Kill the Irishman is actually based on a completely outrageous true-crime mobster story. I’ve seen several documentaries on this epoch of Cleveland history, and it’s truly a case where truth is stranger than fiction. If they do that story well, it could turn out to be one of the all-time mobster classics.

The Bleeding looks like the next hilarious grindhouse comedy. I am convinced that they didn’t have a serious bone in their bodies as they made this movie. This is camp stuff, and played for laughs. I loved Planet Terror, John Carpenter’s Vampires, and Black Dynamite. Machete disappointed me, but I hope this one won’t.

I am deeply worried that Green Lantern won’t turn out well, but still, I hold out some hope. It looks like they have spent quite a bit of money on special effects, and they won’t dumb down the Sci-Fi journey’s of the Green Lantern Corp. Still, I worry that this will be the next Fantastic Four. That one didn’t come together or work out well.

These are just a few of the movies that have caught my attention. There are many others.