Any World That I'm Welcome To Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Recapping...

Spent the weekend at the WTJ-in-laws' for a birthday and a couple of baptisms. Many cute cousins to delight me and the Mrs., many doting aunties to baffle and distract Wrong Turn Jr. A particular highlight was my reintroduction to Wrong Turn Jr.'s "Thing Two": a cousin born just a few weeks after him. About as placid and catlike a baby as I've ever seen. Virtually weightless! Another bright spot: The Birthday Boy, a spunky little bruiser, got a fabbo castle playset and armloads of Ye Olde Action Figures to stock it with. I was ready to bump him out of the way and man the ramparts myself. (At one point, he had the jester figurine mince toward the king and say, "Now I'll make everybody laugh. Poo poo caca!" Works for me!)

The baptisms were fine too, from what I saw of them: Wrong Turn Jr., in his Damien way, melted down a couple of sentences into the homily and forced us both outside. He only quieted down when I took him into a quiet grove of trees with a statue of Madonna and babe. It warmed my Isis-worshipping Catholic heart. (The aesthetics of the church itself, by the way, were swell in and of themselves: stern white panels along the wall, simple stained-glass windows showing the history of the R.C. in the U.S.A.)

When I say "melted down," by the way, I'm not being entirely fair: There was some wailing and gnashing, but mostly just gabbing. Wrong Turn Jr. has moved up to nonsense syllables! Although I try to read as much into "Dadadadada" as I can.

Yesterday, Sith. I went in with rock-bottom expectations, Marianas Trench expectations. The movie offered plenty of stuff to justify those fears: subliterate dialogue, barely-there plot logic, dopey character names and PlaySkool politics. For all that, I loved it. It had the reckless goofy spirit of the original movie, relentless pacing and the kind of tension we haven't seen in one of these movies since Empire. I'll go one better: If Lucas had spent the past two films making us care about these characters, this one would've been better than Empire.

No spoilers till everyone's seen it. Pax till then.

@ 5:28:00 AM,

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