"It is up in the sky. It's up there very high..."
Mostly sunny and warm today, though some clouds began moving in late in the afternoon. Our high was 82˚F, which might make today our warmest day so far this year.
This morning, I did 1,126 words on "Two Monsters Walk Into a Bar." Then I spent the afternoon on paleo'.
Later, I decided to torture myself by watching Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). The last time I saw it was May 2005, just before the release of Revenge of the Sith. Was it as bad as I remembered? Oh, yeah. In fact, it's really a lot worse. For one thing, the digital effects, which were always uneven, have not aged well. And Jar Jar Binks is not only not funny, he really is a breathtakingly racist character. Given that Lucas directed and wrote the screenplay, it's impossible to tell where the failures of the one begin and the failures of the other begins. Talented actors – Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Terence Stamp, Keira Knightley, et al. - give some of the most wooden performances imaginable. Way back when the film was new, a friend of mine described it "a beautiful, empty thing." At it's infrequent best, yes, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is exactly that. Probably the only scene I found even remotely entertaining this time around is the pod race. After this mess. no one should have ever let Lucas anywhere near a camera again. But they did.
And I read "Geologically oldest Pediomyoidea (Mammalia, Marsupialiformes) from the Late Cretaceous of North America, with implications for taxonomy and diet of earliest Late Cretaceous mammals" in the most recent JVP.
Later,
Aunt Beast
10 p.m. (last night)
This morning, I did 1,126 words on "Two Monsters Walk Into a Bar." Then I spent the afternoon on paleo'.
Later, I decided to torture myself by watching Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). The last time I saw it was May 2005, just before the release of Revenge of the Sith. Was it as bad as I remembered? Oh, yeah. In fact, it's really a lot worse. For one thing, the digital effects, which were always uneven, have not aged well. And Jar Jar Binks is not only not funny, he really is a breathtakingly racist character. Given that Lucas directed and wrote the screenplay, it's impossible to tell where the failures of the one begin and the failures of the other begins. Talented actors – Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Terence Stamp, Keira Knightley, et al. - give some of the most wooden performances imaginable. Way back when the film was new, a friend of mine described it "a beautiful, empty thing." At it's infrequent best, yes, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is exactly that. Probably the only scene I found even remotely entertaining this time around is the pod race. After this mess. no one should have ever let Lucas anywhere near a camera again. But they did.
And I read "Geologically oldest Pediomyoidea (Mammalia, Marsupialiformes) from the Late Cretaceous of North America, with implications for taxonomy and diet of earliest Late Cretaceous mammals" in the most recent JVP.
Later,
Aunt Beast
10 p.m. (last night)