Dolphin’s Dock

Below the Bradford Pear trees so popular around here are in full blossom with their tiny white flowers which make each branch appeared to be covered in snow (and thanks to the bizarreness of Virginia weather, this “spring snow” got a taste of real snow in a short flurry just this morning). The same temperatures that have birthed the blossoming trees have also offered a blossoming of activity in the skate park a few streets over. I’m no skateboarder, yet there’s something refreshing about getting to peek in on a group who can find such enjoyment out of what is ultimately a cement hole in the ground. Between them and the river an old building is being torn down. As the demolition equipment crumbles away the brick walls, I’m getting an excellent view of the skeleton of concrete columns that hold the whole structure up, at least until such point as the walls are gone and the workers turn their attention to these newly exposed bare bones. The river is doing battle with a lone kayaker who is desperately paddling against the current. He’s winning, but then the river isn’t really trying. It’s just lazily trekking across the state where it will expand from the couple of hundred feet in width that is outside my window to over 5 miles across as it passes through my hometown before dumping into the bay. Turning to the left, I can the purple and blue silhouettes of the mountains looming into the clouds and today being obscured somewhat by a haze that I’m sure is rain though the clouds over head are white and fluffy and allowing fair amounts of blue sky to peak through.

Maybe that bird doesn’t have so much on me after all. Unlike that bird, my point of view doesn’t change, but when I decide to look away from the computer screen in front of me, I do see a view not all that dissimilar to that of the bird’s and sometimes, if I allow myself to be opened up to it, I can appreciate just how beautiful and good it all is before returning my gaze to my computer screen fully refreshed. I’m not so sure the bird allows itself that time, and it’s a shame.

As a Christian, he agreed with much of what Falwell said (alot of Falwell’s message wasn’t particularly controversial after all). He, of course, also vehemently disagreed with the comments of Falwell’s that we’re all too familiar with (from the “Civil Wrongs Movement” to “you helped this [9/11] happen” comments and everything in between). Believe me, nothing in his words or behavior could have led anyone to believe that he agreed with those kinds of statements from Falwell. Such statements were/are antithetical to his world view.

Yet despite the fact that those comments seemed to be a steady flow from Falwell’s lips and not simply four or five incidents over the course of decades, my friend weighed his distaste for some of Falwell’s views with the rest of his college experience. He liked his friends, he liked his professors (even though certainly some of his professors likely shared the very views of Falwell that my friend despised), he liked the education he was getting. He knew where he stood on the issues where he disagreed with Falwell and, though it pained him to hear those words coming from a man who was responsible for an otherwise good thing for him, he decided that it was worth the positive college experience he was having to stay there at Liberty.

If I had held him responsible for the reprehensible views of Jerry Falwell, I’d have missed out on a great friend.

Stargate: Ark of Truth

Put simply, if you enjoyed Stargate SG-1, you’ll enjoy this movie. If you were not a fan of SG-1, you won’t even understand what’s going on in this movie (even if you enjoyed the original Stargate movie, so much has changed in the 10 seasons of the show that that movie inspired, and this movie starts where the show left off). This wasn’t as much a “movie based on a tv show” as it was a TV episode of Stargate SG-1 that was too long to play on the air. I enjoyed it, and it nicely finished the Orai plot line that was left fairly open at end of the final episode of the series.

Jerome Bixby’s Man from Earth

I’d never heard of this when TheBoyfriend™ handed it to me in Blockbuster. I flipped it over and read the back which essentially described the plot as a college professor has quit his job and is leaving town when is friends (other professors) show up unexpectedly to see him off and question why he is leaving. He decides to tell them his secret; that he is a 14,000 year old cro-magnon man who has to move on every so often when people begin to notice that he isn’t aging.

How freaking corny does that sound?!?! Well, don’t let it fool you, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite awhile. Modern movies (especially in the SciFi genre) seem ready to spend their big budgets on visually dazzling special effects that are all too often designed mostly to divert your attention from the apparent lack of money they spent on writers. This movie doesn’t take that route at all, and in fact, the entire movie takes place in a rustic cabin packed and ready to be moved out of, devoid even of most of its furniture. Beginning to end the “action” is nothing more than a conversation between colleagues. Yet it keeps you intensely engaged beginning to end. It has the feeling of being based on a book, and I was unhappy to find that it was not. Seems to me that they could have explored the plot much deeper than they did and was hoping a book would have done so. Even still, it was definitely a worthwhile movie.

Highlander: The Source

TheBoyfriend™ bought this as an impulse buy. After watching it, even he was wishing he could go get his money back. Probably because the first movies came out when i was too young to be interested in them, I’ve always thought of Adrian Paul as the real Duncan MacLeod, so I was glad that he was cast in the role in this film. That was where my enjoyment of it ended. “The Source” utterly butchered the original highlander mythology and the mythology it attempted to replace it with was poorly thought out, underdeveloped and inconsistent. Even ignoring the fact that the film seemed oblivious to the entire Highlander story up to that point, as a standalone movie it was poorly done. Seriously don’t see this movie if you enjoyed the Highlander movies and tv series. I’m trying my best to forget this movie so as not to tarnish my memories of the rest of the Highlander franchise.