The Big Day.

First off, I am writing this from my phone since all my computers are packed away, so if there are a lot of typos, don't be shocked.

I am lying here in my bed, in the comfort of my hovel for what may very well be the last night. Tomorrow is the big move, and by the evening, I don't expect much of anything of mine to be left here in the hovel. I don't want to get all sappy, but I really feel like I'm approaching a turning point: I am entering a new house with new roommates (old friends, just new as roommates), I am inching dangerously closer to the big three-oh, and, for the first time in recent memory, my car is actually working absolutely like it should. Yes, to be able to make that last statement, I had to shell out almost $750 to my friendly and talented mehanic, but for the way I feel today, it was definitely money well-spent.

I was honestly caught off guard by how happy a properly functioning car made me. I think it's twofold: first, I have been car-less since early Wednesday morning, so I was just plain itching to get back in my driver's seat, better yet without the worries of overheating. Secondly, I think that being in a car that's struggling and not performing correctly, I am immediately transported back to the last year or two that I drove my old hooptie, the '78 Cadillac. I re-live the stress of trying to understand why your car just won't do what you ask, the feeling of helplessness when it starts to break down or idle roughy or sputter when you accelerate. It is a broad, broad comparison, I know, but it's kind of like being alongside a friend or relative in declining health. That car was my first car, I understood it and it understood me, it really felt like a family member at times. And for me to see it slowly slipping, and eventually sitting idly in front of my house when I got my current car was a hard thing for me to do. Harder still was watching someone drive off with it.

But alas, I digress. Today I feel like a kid in a candy store: I have a new home to get all set up, and I honestly feel like someone has handed me the keys to a brand new car. It's rare that I can sit back and enjoy these rare moments of undiluted joy. At this very moment I am not worrying about my finances (something that is short lived - the worrying not the finances themselves I hope), I'm not wondering about a job (again, just a momentary reprieve), and everything else is coming up Bill. I'd say I should play the lottery, but I'm not that dumb.

So here's hoping for a good move, good times, and a great weekend to all of you. I might be sans Internet at the house for the next couple days, but I'll try to update as best I can via either my phone again or by free cafe Internet.

Pages of the Past.

Yes, this is another "packing everything I own into boxes post", but luckily for you it isn't a bitter or cynical one. Rather, it's a nostalgic one.

This afternoon I tackled one of the final boondoggles in my packing: the top drawer of my dresser. Save for getting out the occasional pair of sunglasses, I don't ever even look into this drawer. I open it once every two to three months, and it served as a refuge in my youth for many random whatnots that didn't have a place elsewhere in my bedroom. I found a very stylish beret (yes I am saying that completely without sarcasm, I promise), old cub scout projects, science fair ribbons, and a giant bag full of old letters.

I did what any good person would do, I went to the couch, put a recycling bag at my feet, and spent almost an hour walking down memory lane. It was one of the more enjoyable and heartwarming experiences I've had in quite some time. I saw letters from friends back in grade school and high school, kids from confirmation camp, a pen pal I'd forgotten we'd set up in the third grade, and, naturally, lost of old schmooze letters from former girlfriends. It was so fun, I damn near want to find addresses for old friends just to send them an honest-to-goodness letter.

Naturally, this made me think about what happens these days. Do kids still write letters to each other? The girl I dated when I was a freshman in high school and I used to write letters all week long to each other, and give each other overstuffed letters with everything in there - pictures, guest notes from our friends, all that cute high school stuff. What do kids do now? Is it all reduced to cell phone conversations at lunch, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and constant text messages? Is there no permanence to their communication? It makes me a little sad to think that freshmen in high school these days will not be able to look back seventeen years from now and see what kind of inane stuff you used to write about that special someone you were completely convinced was going to be the love of your life forever and ever. I got to today, and it was amazing.

The other thing about this reminiscence is that, probably for the best, that era has passed. Imagine if now, at almost 30, I sat in the office all day writing about how much I missed my hypothetical girlfriend. I could talk about how the boss busted my balls, and how if she had been there to give me a hug, it would all be okay again. I could go into the lunchroom and have my friends that I sit with write little notes to them, and say how much they can tell that I miss her. I could even doodle a little picture of me, bored in my cubicle, with a thought bubble of the two of us just cuddling. But do you know what would happen? Either the girl would run screaming because that's kind of insane, or everyone around would refer to me as "that guy". Then again, if I found a girl who thought 14 year old Bill affection was just the bee's knees, I might be a little worried too. But I suppose the opposite would be true - if I found a girl when I was 14 who was content with a meal and some drinks every now and then, I probably would have convinced myself that she didn't give a damn about me.

It's Been Done.

In the madness of my moving and packing, I have officially packed away my DVD player, PS2, and Xbox 360. This means that I have to watch regular television. Yes, there are far worse fates than watching television, but it also means that I am once again exposed to commercials, which is a little foreign to me.

I saw one commercial, today, that was truly jarring. Apparently, as of today (or yesterday, or some time recently) you can purchase the DVD or Blu-Ray of Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2.

Yes. Let that sink in. Smell it. Taste it. Root around in its hideous mess.

Now, let's think logically about this. This is a sequel to a movie that starred primarily latino actors doing voice work for a bunch of CGI dogs who make bad puns and discuss how hard it is to be a lapdog for a spoiled princess. I am sure it's chock full of fart and poop jokes, which, don't get me wrong, are great, but it's not enough to carry a whole movie. Which leads me to my inevitable follow up question: why in the hell do we need two of these movies? Hell, why did we need the first one? Why do we need a third "Fockers" movie? How many more Scream movies are they going to make? I thought the whole idea was that was a trilogy. Why the hell are they doing a fourth?

So just for funzies, let's take a quick peek at what's out there right now:

- True Grit, a re-make of the John Wayne classic. Yes, it was fantastic, and if anyone can pull of a remake, it is the Cohen brothers.

- The Green Hornet - This one double dips: it was both a television show and a comic book.

- Little Fockers - I don't even have to go there. The first movie was great, but yeah, that's all I want to say.

- Tron: Legacy - I have to admit, I really want to see this one. It may be derived from a movie made nearly thirty years back, but I feel like they're at least going about it the right way. Plus Daft Punk does the soundtrack, so it can't be that bad.

- Yogi Bear 3D - Of course, used to be a pretty legit cartoon, but I heard the movie is so bad even the kids don't give a damn. Might be the very worst movie made all year. Might well be the worst idea for a movie I've ever heard, and it makes me shed a little tear when I think that Tom Cavanaugh agreed to do it.

This is just of movies that you could go out and see tomorrow. I won't try to catalog the number of re-makes, re-workings, adaptations, or needless sequels are out there from the past few years, or are in development. Naturally, this makes me think: has the state of entertainment gotten so dire at this point that we can't come up with decent original movies, and if we do make decent ones, can't we leave it at just one? I know, I know, everyone makes their money opening weekend, and the current economic system of movies is to churn out as much drek as humanly possible. I just wish it were a little more sustainable.

However, there is another way of thinking about this that I don't know if many people consider, and that is that the amount of borrowing ideas is not entirely unique to movies. I would never think to re-write something like Hamlet, nor would I try to change punctuation of an e.e. cummings poem and try to re-sell it as another poem. I suppose the closest comparison on the literary front would be adaptations like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" but having read both the originals and the re-imaginings of both those titles, I can tell you that a NUMBER of liberties were taken with the originals. Still, aside from parody, you don't see a lot of replication of work in the literary community. Yes, I realize in music it is much more prevalent; a point that was driven home with a vengeance when I saw a couple of cover bands last Thursday. So I suppose in that respect, re-making a movie is pretty comparable to covering a song. Despite that similarity, cover bands make money and get people to come out at shows, but the primary difference is they're not re-recording albums from the bands they cover and selling those.

So what are your thoughts? Is this whole movie-remake gripe limited to me? Should I look at it like theater arts, where people re-imagine and re-invent plays all the time? Or am I just a crotchety old coot who should just be happy they still make movies and that I can then get them months later on Netflix and gripe about how much I didn't like them to the internet?