When Good Movies End Badly

You know, when Return Of The King had that janky over-long ending, I forgave it. Clearly, Peter Jackson loved the subject matter, and was just having a hard saying good bye to the characters. And, honestly, at the end of 10-hour epic, it was kind of appropriate.

When the Academy decided to give Return of the King 11 Oscars, I figured that was just a way of them acknowledging that they should have given more to the far better films (Fellowship and Towers) that went before it.

Little did I realize it's because Hollywood doesn't have a fuzzy clue how a movie should end. Seems that ever since then, movies have just been trying to emulate the multiple false ending motif of RotK.

(Spoilers in white text, so you have to highlight, or copy and paste, to have the movie ruined. Aren't I nice?)

• This week we watched Shooter. It's a smart, tight action film. To it's credit, they clearly did their research, on sniping and on conspiracy theories. Even more impressive is that the heroes are both likable and believable, which isn't common in action films these days. But then they screw it up with this weird anti-climactic ending on a mountain top, followed by a weird anti-climactic ending in the attorney general's office, followed by a weird anti-climactic ending in a log cabin, followed by a completely unnecessary "driving into the sunset" shot that seems to serve no other purpose than to illustrate that Marky Mark is the kind of jerk who parks a wheel in each lane as he speeds recklessly down the highway. Then again, that scene is probably in Montana, so maybe his poor road manners are forgivable.
• A couple months ago I saw Hancock. It's a fairly clever twist on the Superhero genre, with some good laughs and a fairly satisfying ending, followed by a cheesy bad ending, followed by another cheesy bad ending, then the credits roll for 15 seconds, only to be interrupted by yet another cheesy bad ending. I felt like that poor beached whale, dehydrated and miserable and knowing the only way out was to be thrown end-over-end at a sailboat.
• Even when they manage to make a movie end just once, they still end it wrong - Another almost-great film we recently viewed was The Jacket. Artsy, intelligent, thought provoking, I was hooked 3 seconds after the opening credits were done. It was at times a tiny bit predictable, but only in the right ways: it used that predictability well, setting up "ooh!, are they gonna do that? I sure hope they do!" moments. I kept thinking that this was one of the best films I'd seen in a really long time. Right up until the last minute and a half of the film, then it completely blew it's own premise and self-consistency by making a dumbass amateur mistake. If you're gonna deal with Time Travel, you gotta do it right. What they really needed was a "Twelve Monkeys" ending - that movie stayed true to it's own causality logic, yet was just vague enough that stupid American audiences could lie to themselves (or just not get it) and think it had a happy ending. Something like that would have been much better. The director knew it, too, as evidenced by the four alternate endings on the DVD, all of which amount to single shots attempting to undo the 90 seconds that went before them.

Stupid. The state of cinema in this country really saddens me. And that's coming from a guy who's made Pizza Face Death, A View To A Clone, and CameraMan, so you know my standards aren't very high.

Re: Blasphemy

Trying to pick a fight :), a friend recently posted this "Blasphemy" elsewhere. Because it might be fun, I decided I'd take the bait...

Batman is a boring superhero. He does nothing for me.

Lord of the Rings is generic, redundant, and gratuitous.

Star Wars Episodes I - III weren't that bad.

Matrix Reloaded was the best movie of the trilogy.

Heresy! Blasphemy! My dander is up! I feel the need to respond! Listen to me roar:

I agree with you on 2.8 out of your 4 points.

Oh, I guess that wasn't as much of a roar as I was expecting. I'll proceed point-by-point, and see if I can get motivated to argue about anything. No promises, though...

I'm probably not saying anything that wasn't said before by someone else, when I say:

• While Batman doesn't bore me, I do find that he appeals less to me than many other superheroes. I think it's because at his core, he's just a spoiled rich guy. I've never had much sympathy for the rich.
  He's also more vigilante than superhero, the attempts of the last few decades to make him darker and edgier have just turned me off to the character - but, admittedly, I'm still a film behind (and yes, I've cued it on netflix to remedy that).
  My biggest complaint about Bats is that he doesn't quite fit in to his own setting - all the villains are over-the-top goofyballs with superpowers, but he's just a bitter guy with expensive weapons. Would Wonder Woman still be cool without her lariat and invisiplane - hells yeah, 'cause she's super-strong, is descended from Gods, and she fought the Nazis. Would Aquaman still be cool without his... um... what's he got? A fishbowl? Without it, he'd still be good at... at... at bobbing for apples! Okay, so Bats is grudgingly cooler than Aquaman...
  I think the point I should be making is that I can appreciate several other superheroes more than I appreciate Batman, because I may one day be bitten by a radioactive spider - but we all know I ain't never gonna be rich.
  
  
• Star Wars Episodes II & III weren't that bad. Ewan McGregor channels Alec Guiness well, and it's awesome wish-fullfillment to see the Jedi battles, especially Yoda. Mace "My lightsaber's the one that says 'Bad Motherfucker' on it" Windu was icing on my cake.
  Episode I wasn't that bad, either, except for the fart joke... and the other parts with Jar Jar... and the Midichlorians... and most of Anakin's scenes... and Darth Maul may have looked cool, but he failed as a villain because he didn't do anything that was actually villainous until 3 seconds before he died. Okay, so it's clear that the things that most geeks loved about Eps 4-6 are not the same elements that Lucas loved about Hope to Jedi.
  That said, I agree that Eps 2 & 3 weren't that bad, and maybe 2 or 3 scenes of Ep 1 weren't bad, either. Could have been worse, too - he could have put Ewoks on every planet, or made Ep 3 revolve around "Darth Binks".
  
  
• Matrix Reloaded was indeed the best film of the trilogy, even with the 45-minute chase scene.
  Every time I watch the original Matrix, I can't shake the feeling like the first draft of the script ended with Trinity being The One. It must have just tested poorly with male audiences so they went with the boring and predictable Keanu-worshiping ending. Felt like they missed an opportunity to really make the script stand out. Reloaded works a little better for me as a result.
  Revolutions, on the other hand, sucked tactically-inept mech-ass. It may deserve a post of it's own for that rant.
  
  
• And now, Lord of the Rings... Here comes the part where I express my outrage. Generic, Redundant, and Gratuitous, huh?
  It ain't generic. The story may seem generic, but that's only because every fantasy novel, film, and RPG to have released since Tolkien has stolen from him. When it was first written, there was nothing generic about it. It's like calling the Wright Brother's first plane generic and unimpressive because every plane since then has had wings.
  Consider Dwarves in any other fantasy property - they're just short bearded people. Maybe they don't like elves. That's straight out of Tolkien, and Jackson knew how cliched it had become. So he built them a visual culture, based partly on passages from the book, but mostly just his own crew's imagination. We learn about Dwarves not just from Gimli's whiney monologues, but also from the knotwork on his axe and helmet, from the grandiose architecture, and from his peoples desire to hide in their mountains instead of martial an army against Sauron. Just one Dwarf on screen, but you could write a book about their culture as evidenced in the films. The same goes for the two enclaves of Elves, the many differing cultures of man, the hobbits - heck, even the Orcs get four different identifiable cultures! Four cultures of orc! The films are visually and culturally loaded - and thus as far from "generic" as any fantasy can be. The only way it could possibly be less generic would have been to take a lot more liberties with the story - and then our complaints would be rather different. I'm sorry friend, but you're smoking pipeweed when you call LOTR generic.
  Redundant and Gratuitous... well, if you're talking about Return of the King, I can't argue against your point. False ending after false ending after false ending after false ending. It fades to black while Sam and Frodo are on the rocks - it could have ended there. Fade back in, and an Eagle comes to save them - it should have ended there. Fade in again, and Frodo's recovering in bed, and all is well - I could have lived with it ending then. After that point, there's another 40 minutes of teary-eyes, royal processionals, consolation gifts from the elves, Frodo and Sam sharing secret smiles, long heartfelt goodbye hugs for all the Nazgul, Palpatine's statue being torn down on Coruscant, etc. It just never ends.
  It's hard for me to swallow "we didn't have time for The Scouring Of The Shire" when I'm waiting for an hour of epilogue to finish before I can go to the bathroom. I mean, come on, cut the sappy "we're going to miss these movies" crap and let me watch returning Hobbit adventurers kickin' the asses of Wormy and the Sackville Baginses. That would have been worth the kidney stones to sit through.
  Other than that last hour, though, the first 2.7 films of the trilogy were amazing and flawless, and you, my friend, are a heathen for insinuating otherwise.
  

You happy now? :) Sorry I wasted your time.

Taxonomic study of the Smaller Lego Troll

I wandered in to Top Ten Toys the other day, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Lego now makes orks. Or rather, they seem to call them Trolls, for branding and copyright purposes. Suffice it to say, that name struck me as misleading. I tried to figure out what it's genetic ancestry is.

It's got bright green skin and big red eyes, like a Games Workshop "Ork". Oversized lower tusks, too. The two circular "buckles" painted on that torso (see left) feel like they were lifted off the glyph chart in my old 40k Ork Codex.

But it's got the normal human body proportions, making it a bit like a Tolkien-Jackson "Orc". See how it's legs are longer than those of the accompaning Dwarf? The sword is a bit like those of Moria goblins, but the rest of the accoutrement suggests otherwise. Most importantly, T-J Orcs lack discipline, and appear as a mongreloid* mix of statures, features, colorations, and shapes, whereas the Lego "Troll" comes in only two sizes, the smaller of which appears in only one color, with minimal variation or individualization.

The human-length legs also keep it from being a D&D goblin, since they're size small. Neither is it a D&D Orc, since they tend to a more grayish skintone, and are fairly hirsute.

Yet, despite those various differences between this new Legoid species and established breeds of Orks and Goblins, I'm finding within myself great reluctance to accept Legoland's characterization of these as Trolls. There are likewise several breeds of troll, as evidenced by this photo-op with a presidential candidate.

It's not the hulking, lumbering, regenerating, hook-nosed D&D troll. Nor is it the every-bit-as-hulking T-J/LOTR troll, (despite having the same lack of nose). And it clearly doesn't exhibit the neutral fleshtone and ridiculous hair of the variety of troll that is closely related to Kewpie dolls.

Most importantly, this new form of Troll doesn't at all look like other Lego Trolls (see left). The larger "Troll" has a stooped posture, is far taller, sometimes grows horns, and has greater range of coloration variance (appearing in gray and two shades of brown, as well as green). There's also anthropological indicators that suggest these are not the same culture. The smaller "trolls" have mastered metal work, where as the larger "trolls" seem to only work in bone, stone, and leather. (These larger Lego Trolls, by the way, do have rather much in common with the T-J/LotR trolls.)

As such, I am convinced the two Legoid breeds of "Troll" are not indeed interrelated, and that they are merely lumped together by the ignorance perpetuated by Lego Knights, whose kingdom has not a single accredited university and has never produced a peer-reviewed scientific treatise. I shall remain so convinced, at least until such time as lego produces a "Spawning Pool" set that suggests the smaller Troll is a "tadpole" stage that later develops into the larger Troll.

*: Concerning the use of the term "Mongreloid": I don't mean this as an insult, the fact that The Elephant Man can rise to the rank of General in the Mordor army is a testimonial to the inclusivity and warm-hearted nature of orc and goblin culture.

A Sequel By Any Other Name (a rant about movies)

What's in a name? A rose, by any other name, would probably smell even sweeter, but you'd sell fewer of them in February. Consider the following:

• Star Wars: Episodes 1-3
  
• Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines
  
• Predator 2
• Starship Troopers 2
• Alien 3
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick (aka Pitch Black 2) and the animated version
  

The above films all suffer in comparison to the other movies in their respective series. In fact, with one exception (which I'll leave to the reader's inner geek to pinpoint), the above movies would have been better films if they'd wiped all reference to the original(s), and implemented just a hint of new (and mildly original) branding.

When you're changing the premise so drastically and/or ignoring facts of the canonical series history, why even call it the same movie? The answer, of course, is to make money off gullible fans of the original. Blood-sucking betrayers in the production office put short-term profit above the fan's long-term satisfaction.

• If Revenge of the Sith wasn't a Star Wars film, we'd all be happy with "Well, it ain't Star Wars, but it's slightly edgy space opera with a bigger budget than most such movies get, so it's kinda fun." We could all forgive some lackluster performances and let the film stand on it's special effects budget alone if it just wasn't associated with Star Wars. But since it is a Star Wars film, "it ain't Star Wars" is the most damning thing you could ever say. What's more, the Greek Tragedy elements would have played out better if they weren't hobbled by the viewer constantly thinking "in the past 20 years I never once imagined this story played out like that."

At this point, you may think I'm about to pan the new animated Star Wars film. I'm not - though perhaps only because I haven't seen it yet. It looks kinda fun, but I'll wait for it on netflix. There was a time in my life where I had to buy (and pay full price for) anything with the Star Wars brand, but that brand has burned me, so now it's just a rental. (There's a lesson there, if you're listening, Hollywood: Don't dilute your brand.)

No, I am here to discuss something else. I'll get to it in before the end of this, I promise. But, as I often do, I'm going to engage in some verbal meandering on the way there.

You see, I've clung to the above concept (namely that most sequels would be better films if they weren't labeled as sequels) for years. I've walked out of films shaking my head and saying "they either needed to be more respectful to the original, or create a new product identity entirely." When a new film has a pre-established name, we hold it to different standards than we would a random film without the champion pedigree.

It goes beyond that crass measuring stick, though. Sometimes a film can be innovative, and merit-packed as the original, but still somehow unsatisfying because too much changed.

• I love Twin Peaks - but Fire Walk With Me was so different it probably should have been a new Intellectual Property with a parallel story. Lynch's Dune also had little connection with Frank Herbert's Dune, and might have been better under it's own flag. Lynch figured that out though, learned where the line was, and his later films are better for it. Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and all of Twin Peaks probably take place in the same universe as Blue Velvet, but are stronger films for only sharing visual and thematic clues with each other, not treading directly upon one-another's cannon and metaphysics. Wild At Heart is great for existing simultaneously in that world and another more famous setting, but certainly would have sucked if titled "Twin Peaks 2" or "Wizard Of Oz 2". Lynch's genius there is learning that it's better to be "the new film from David Lynch" than to be "Blue Velvet VII."

Lynch isn't the only one to figure this out. Quentin Tarantino learned the same lesson, and managed to do so before his second film released.

• There's little threads that connect Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, not just to each other, but also to Jackie Brown (and thus Rum Punch and several other Larry Elmore novels), From Dusk Till Dawn, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Curdled, and The Getaway (The Jim Thompson novel with it's creepy sci-fi ending, rather than the various film versions). There's this huge shared universe, but you can dislike any one film in the series without it impacting your enjoyment of others.
  You don't watch Jackie Brown and say "I wish they'd incorporated the Aztec vampires, it hardly feels like Reservoir Dogs 6 without them," for which we are all very thankful.
  
• Kill Bill does much the same with every Kung Fu, Samurai, or 70's Exploitation film ever made, including a couple of Pam Grier flicks, loosely knitting it all back to his other films.
• Strangely enough, there is a From Dusk Till Dawn 2 and 3, so not everyone involved in Tarantino's films learned the lesson. One of those FDTD films features Ambrose Bierce as a character, and he takes vampirism in stride like his short stories were nonfiction. One of Bierce's stories included a supernatural creature named Hastur, which Robert Chambers then developed further in The King In Yellow, which H.P. Lovecraft later incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos. As a result, this net of interconnectivity could be taken to ridiculous extremes that even Tarantino probably didn't expect or intend. By a certain strange way of looking at things, Dracula, Cthulhu, and Randall Flag all exist in the same world as Vincent Vega.
  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a way to get from Mallory Knox to Gozer the Gozerian without once having to resort to traditional Kevin Bacon methods.
  

All of these subtle connections enrich the viewing experience, without dragging the other films down.

I imagined it to be the great truths of motion-picture story-telling:

• #1: alluding to other tales in your movie enriches both films
• #2: if you're changing the premise significantly, it's better if it's not an official sequel

Last night, watching total crap via netflix, at least one of those two concepts was at disproved for me. I'm thoroughly convinced that 10,000 BC couldn't actually have stunk any worse if it was named "Stargate 2: The Prequel."

• The CGI was better than I'd been warned - only the Sabertooth tiger really looked fake, mostly just in it's second scene, and fur is hard to do right on a computer.
• Some folks took issue at mere existance of the terror birds - those folks just haven't watched the right BBC specials. Those suckers were the dominant hunter for a couple million years before mankind and sabretooth cats. While there's no evidence they and man lived at the same time, it's less inaccurate then cave-men vs dinosaurs, which most people take in stride.
  
• The multiculturalism was pretty refreshing, and I was okay with minor anachronisms and the unrealistic multicontinental travel. Like Lord of the Rings or Indiana Jones, there's something really compelling about a story set before a sweeping epic panorama of history and culture.
  
• The anticlimactic 300 reference ten-minutes from the end was a little more overt than it should have been, especially coming so soon after the film adaptation of the same. 5 years from now that same event would be a cute homage.
  
• The acting sucked as bad as everyone said it did, and the director made it worse by portraying the "hero" as a self-hating spineless idiot for the first 45 minutes of the film.
  
• But the thing that really ruined the film for me was the decision that 7-ft tall alien gods have no magic because magic isn't real in our setting, yet later in the same damn scene, it turns out the peyote addict with a brain tumor can raise the dead hero from 2,000 miles away. Integrity, self-consistency, high-concept, or just a theme: whatever you call it, movies need it, and this one lacked it.
  
• The year 10,000 BC is itself only a theme if you include only things that realistically existed in 10,000 BC - the terror birds likely went extinct around 2,000,000 BC, the pyramids at Ghiza were started around 2,500 BC (by a very different culture than depicted in the film), the Sahara was a fertile wetland between 12,500 and 8,000 BC, Plato's Atlantis didn't sink beneath the ocean till sometime around 9,500 BC, horses were domesticated circa 4,500 BC and the stirrup invented between 800 and 500 BC. Despite putting a date in the title, the film couldn't decide what year it was actually set in.
• Why the heck did the entirely non-supernatural arab slave raider have the weird Goa'uld voice affect? Why did the films obvious StarGate alien not have it?
  

Those last three flaws in 10,000 BC bring up one more "truth" of motion picture story-telling...

• #3: The audience will accept any one crazy notion, no matter how outlandish, if you summarize it in the opening 15 minutes of your film.
  They'll do the same if you put your one crazy notion in the last 3 minutes of the film ("the twilight zone ending") but some percentage will resent you for having tricked them.
  If you have more than one crazy notion (with no logical connection between them), or introduce your crazy notion in the second or third quarter of the film, no one will be able to suspend their disbelief, and everyone will resent you.
  Craziness up front works, surprise ending can work, but waffling never works.
  

McCain rocks the troll vote

Trolls - universally reviled by everyone that's ever legitimately logged in to a forum, message board, or blog - have finally found a candidate who represents their interests. In fact, Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain doesn't just represent Trolls, he encourages them. Here's the latest news on McCain's strategy in courting the Troll voting block, via Wired.

McCain Asks Supporters to Invade Liberal Blogs, But Few Respond

...
The McCain campaign in late May launched a new blogger outreach section on its website that encourages supporters to lobby for their candidate across 94 blogs
...
The strategy reinforces the central role that blogs have come to play in shaping and framing the issues in the 2008 presidential election. The question is whether sending supporters to do grassroots lobbying in the comments section of activist blogs like DailyKos, whose membership is dedicated to defeating the Republicans in the general election, will really benefit McCain's campaign.

No, it will just piss people off. But that's the point. Recent polls of Trolls have found that "pissing people off" is one of the key issues most likely to win the Troll vote.

According to a special gallup poll, here's what Trollish-Americans are most looking for in a Presidential Nominee:
95% of Trolls want a President who "Pisses people off, just 'cause he can."
82% seek a White House that will "defend our constitutional right to eat Dwarves."
63% of Trolls indicate the quality they value most in a political candidate is "Regeneration: 5".

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has announced it's intention to appeal to Trollish Americans by selecting a running mate with neon hair that stands on end when you comb it.

Edit: If you didn't get the above joke, please read the comments.

Mystery-Cult Etymology

When I was a kid, I read tales of Centaurs (half-horse, half-man) and Minotaurs (half-bull, half-man) and assumed they had something (other than Greece) in common. Foolishly, all throughout my youngness, I assumed "-taur" must mean "half-man". How very silly of me.

These days, I understand the Harryhausenian tales of my youth a bit better. I know that the Minotaurs roots are "Minos" and "Taurus" - it was, after all, the Bull in the labyrinth of King Minos.

Yet, applying the same logic to the other creature just didn't seem to work. Centaurs aren't bulls, they're horses! Then I realized, it's just a case of the doubled "t" being dropped. Cent-taur. I now see that the name was intended to let us know that the original story was merely a parable or metaphor. It wasn't a true tale about real creatures. Instead, it was 100% bull.


P.S.: Don't confuse Etymology with Entomology. They sound similar, but mean totally different things. One's about bull-centipede crossbreeds, the other is about those tree-guys in Lord of the Rings.

moviemistakes on Two Towers

From moviemistakes.com...

Revealing: Just as Gandalf and the Rohirrim are riding into the Uruk-hai and they clash, go slowly, frame by frame. Legolas will be on the right of the screen. Keep going frame by frame. You'll soon see a few pretty clear frames of Arwen with her sword, on her white horse. She's sitting to the right of Legolas. Her long hair is pulled back into a braid. She's wearing pink sleeves. She's the only one on the screen with that color, so you can't miss it. (She is perfectly visible without slow motion.)

I've never noticed that. How cool that she's there, getting involved in the fight. Clearly, there was a major script revision somewhere in the process of filming.

I, for one, wish they'd done more with it. It'd a big departure from the books, but then, so is just having elves at Helm's Deep in the first place. Perhaps, for the 25-year anniversary, Peter Jackson will release "LotR: The Final Cut" with extended scenes of Arwen as a badass, mowing down Uruks like there's no tomorrow.

Anaheim blues, point-by-point

• We recently "celebrated" our 5-year wedding anniversary - it was December 30th.
  
• I use quotation marks, because we didn't really do anything for it. We'd exceeded our budget in November and December by... well, more than we should have... and we had a lot coming up.
  
• For example, this week, Sarah is in Disney, for this big work convention. In fact, in just a few minutes, she'll be taking this uber certification exam that will lead directly to a raise and the opening of numerous doors in her already rocketing career.
  
• The company shall reimburse her for all reasonable expenses. We still needed to have the money in the account for her to eat at Disney though, since reimbursement takes at least a week.
• As a result, the anniversary celebration was postponed until later this month. Neither of us were happy with this, but the certification is too important to skip.
  
• Why a medical diagnostic coding seminar would be hosted in the Magic Kingdom, I do not understand, but that's beside the point.
  
• Even more boggling, is why UW Physicians Group considers the price of meals at Disney to be a "reasonable expense". She called last night to say that she was eating in a giant pirate ship rigged with christmas-tree lights.
  
• Despite a dozen people from her company attending, they put her alone in a two-bed suite with a waterfall right outside her window. How can any of this be cost effective?
• Don't get me wrong, she's well worth such expenses, but most of her coworkers aren't.
  
• This is not the first time we've ever been apart overnight.
  
• I've had multiple work trips of my own over the years, attending GTS (the Game Manufacturer's Association Trade Show), and once judging Grand Prix: Phoenix.
• Wow. Do not confuse GTS with GTS. Trippy.
  
• I've never been the one who had to stay home alone. This is new to me.
  
• When you're at a big event, there's so much going on (and so much to think about) you don't have time to get homesick.
  
• When you're home alone, the emptiness is quite noticeable. You find yourself doing strange things you'd never normally consider.
• I wrote up a dozen new Knacks for my Scion RPG campaign. This was not a strange thing - it was a bit prolific and excessive, but it was also a low-priority task that I'd been putting off for weeks.
  
• Then I popped over to the white-wolf forums to post said knacks, and got distracted by contributing to a couple threads. Again, fairly typical.
  
• Before I knew it, I found myself in a flame-war.
  
• This was a strange thing. Some dork was trying to pull a fast one on his GM, and it offended me. I rarely let my posts devolve into such pettiness, yet last night I embraced it as a way of ignoring the disruption to my regular schedule.
• I'm usually the voice of reason in such situations, making a single post that summarizes the salient and non-inflamatory points of each view, coupled with "Can't we all just get along?"
  
• Instead of going to bed at my usual 10 pm, I sat at the smoking computer till 11:30.
• Then I decided it was a good time to start watching the extended edition of The Two Towers.
  
• I'd watched the whole LotR trilogy over a dozen times before - always with Sarah. I guess it's the visual equivalent of comfort food.
  
• It's also really damn long, and I was already up way past my bedtime.
• Instead of kicking the cats out of the room as we usually do, I let them lay on the bed till 4 am.
  
• They did that annoying "knead you with my claws" thing (Sarah calls it pitty-patty) and I didn't even complain.
  
• Then I got up at 7:30 am, because, damn it, that's an hour and a half past when my alarm normally goes off.
• I think tonight, I'll just start reading a book at 5 pm. It seems a lot healthier.
• Perhaps I'll reread Carl Hiassen's Team Rodent. Which, by the way, is a very enjoyable book - though I imagine one can either enjoy it, or enjoy a trip to the Magic Kingdom, but not both in the same lifetime.