web-goddess

IT DIDN’T SUCK!
As God is my witness, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones didn’t suck. That doesn’t sound like a very positive review, but it is. In fact, I will go on the record as saying it rocked. I love me some Ebert, but he dropped the ball on this one. Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but I really, really enjoyed myself. And it seemed like everybody else in our screening did too! Some (spoiler-free) thoughts:

• The plot, which many TV critics have called “complicated”, wasn’t hard for me to follow. In fact, it actually made me think that Episode 1 was a better movie. You realize that more was set in motion in that film than you thought.
• Very little Jar-Jar! And in what can only be a nod to disgruntled fans, his one major action in the movie is to make a colossal mistake (and not a funny slapsticky one, either).
• The action scenes were awesome! The last half hour alone is worth the price of admission. The beginning was really exciting too.
• The dialogue and characterizations, which sound really stilted and bad in the trailers, actually aren’t so bad. The new Anakin really impressed me. And Natalie Portman did a good job of playing a more womanly character. She kicked some ass too!
• It was funny! I don’t remember laughing at anything in Episode 1, and we laughed a lot in this one! Apparently George Lucas needs a co-writer to give him a sense of humor. And I’m happy to report there wasn’t a fart or poo gag in the whole thing.
• The romance is cheesy. Resign yourself to it. Anakin is a stalker with “date rapist” written all over his forehead. The audience was laughing out loud during the love scenes. Thankfully these constitute only about 10% of the picture, so don’t worry about it.
• Obi-Wan is the man. Y’all can have that Tobey Maguire fellow. I’ll take Ewan McGregor any day.
• I love finally getting some continuity with the “latter” three films. The scenes at the Lars farm, the secret weapon plans… All great.
• Americans probably won’t get it, but all the Australians thought it was insanely funny that the storm troopers all turn out to be Kiwis (New Zealanders).
• Yes, Yoda fights. No, it doesn’t look silly. Our audience was cheering at how much ass that little dude kicks.
• The Snook’s and my favorite line? “Jedi poodoo!”

I could go on and on, but it’ll be more fun to wait til y’all see it and we can have a real discussion. If you’re in doubt at all, listen to me: go see it NOW with an audience full of fans. It’ll make all the difference in the world. Seriously, you guys, the Snook and I ranked this one second only to Empire Strikes Back. We’re definitely going back to see it again (hopefully in digital). May the Force be with you!

(And yeah, that’s us in the very front row of the theater. Hey, if you can’t get in the dead center middle, might as well be dead center front!)

ONE HOUR TO GO! I’ve finally woken the Snook from his nap and we’re ready to leave. Destination: a galaxy far, far away!

Snopes tackles one of mankind’s biggest mysteries: “Was Kristen from Days of Our Lives a transexual?” The truth is out there.

Greetings to Snookums’s work buddies, who (I’m told) are giggling at the fact that I’m now the #1 Google search result for “Katrina Big Brother nude”. What a lovely first impression… 🙂

“I’m sick to death of being held responsible for the cultural and aesthetic life of a city. I’m tired of having to pioneer things such as the three-quarter-leg pant; of having to go the hard yards in Birkenstock clogs so that Despina and friends at Rockdale shopping centre can wear them without embarrassment. I’m tired of having to find good restaurants and brunch places just so that a month later I won’t be able to get a table because the cafe is packed with Bill and Mary, with Jordan in a stroller.”

A gay Sydneysider complains (albeit humorously) about a recent article arguing that a city’s livability relates directly to its population of gay men. I don’t think I’ve been living here long enough to have an informed opinion on this. Is your city particularly vibrant and fun? Are gay men the cause of it?

Ebert’s written a longer essay about Attack of the Clones and George Lucas’s vision of an all-digital movie experience. It sounds like those of you lucky enough to see it in a digitally-equipped theater will have a very different experience from the rest of us.

And speaking of Episode 2… only seven hours to go! Be sure and check back tomorrow morning for my first impressions. 🙂

I upgraded my web browser to the OmniWeb 4.1 Public Beta yesterday. I just used it for my morning blog read and it worked really well. My thoughts:

• Tables do seem to load faster. This was a big beef I had from the old version.
• CSS support is much better. I think I finally saw Beau’s site as intended!
• I love the little drop downs on the forward and back buttons that give you an abbreviated history. Absolutely necessary for the way I surf.
• Okay, this is the one negative. When I hit certain sites (like Chris’s and Max’s), the Download Manager would get tripped and download some bogus “index.html” document to my desktop, and the original page would never appear in my browser. At first I thought it was happening on sites where the default document isn’t “index.html”, but Max’s site disproved that. I have a similar problem using IE 5.1 too, where certain sites (like web-goddess) cause the browser to think it’s downloading a gzipped file. Has anyone else had a problem like this? What the heck is going on?

Anyway, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives. If you use OmniWeb, I suggest upgrading.

Okay, there’s this job that I really, really want, and I’ve made it through the first round. I don’t wanna tell you guys what it is yet for fear I’ll jinx it. But I’ve got to answer some questions for them and I’ve hit a wall. Can you help? I need to know how “my friends would describe me”. You guys are my friends, right? What would you say? Answers quickly, please; I’m sending this off in twelve hours.

It is Christmas? Because I feel like Santa Claus! GoddessBlog is now ready for the general public. I’ve still got a few modules to write, but the basic stuff is all there. Have fun, kids!

Today’s Act of Domestic Goddesshood was the creation of crock pot beef stew. I’d never actually made it before, and to be honest, my favorite kind is good ol’ Dinty Moore. I had real difficulty finding a recipe that looked like it would emulate Dinty’s chunkified, canned goodness. I finally settled on this one, since I had most of the ingredients. It was good, but the tomato soup base was still unsettling to me. I want nummy beef gravy! Anybody have a good stew recipe? Of course, I won’t be able to use it til next winter, seeing as how I made so much of this batch we’ll be eating it for the next ten months…

Incidentally, I had no idea that Dinty Moore beef stew was such an icon for the survivalist set. Check out this Google search. Half the results are for Y2K nutcases discussing supplies for their fallout shelters!