The New Musings of a Quiet Geek

Related in the order it appears in my head: 1. My parents and I watched two movies on TV. the 1939 Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara; who isn't Scarlett's sister, we explained to my father, because Scarlett is a fictional character...This was on TCM so it was unedited. I thought it was being shown because of Halloween approaching but my feeling at the time of that thought was that this movie is even less of a Halloween movie than Frankenstein since it's just about a guy who's deaf and deformed. It turns out it was actually shown because of RKO's anniversary which is a much better reason. I loved the part where Quasimodo was throwing stones off the bell tower on the attacking peasants and then, when he dumped the vat of molten metal, I laughed so hard! 2. We also saw The 40 Year Old Virgin on NBC. (With an 8pm start time no less!) Yeah the language was edited out ("Forget you!") but I really don't think it's appr...

Last night, and finishing this morning, my roommate and I watched Evan Almighty with Steve Carrell and Lauren Graham with Morgan Freeman reprising his role from Bruce Almighty as God. Carrell plays Evan a newly elected congressman who is charged by God to build an ark for the coming flood. I was expecting a much less religious movie with raunch but this actually would work in a middle school aged church school class. Including where to find it in the bible (Genesis 6:14). Go find it!

Recently, I finished reading the fourth book in the Dark is Rising series: The Grey King . I had hopes for this book given that it won a Newberry Medal when it came out in the late seventies. At first, I was willing to concede it was better than Greenwitch but it was hard for me to figure out how this won anything but now that I've finished it, I was, to quote a certain turtle from Finding Nemo , "like whoa." As any good writer should do, Cooper takes her story from this myth and that myth and combines them really coolly in my humble opinion. (A certain fan of Celtic mythology would like these books...) I found myself oddly interested in the Welsh countryside as well. Up until this point, all I really knew was that Doctor Who and other shows were filmed in Cardiff... Now a word or twenty about the Red Sox making to the American League Championship series versus the D...Rays. The Rays have a great young team this year and what they've accomplished is amazing but I j...

How the Vice Presidential Debate should have gone. (Or is it how it went?):

I came across this article the other day and have been dying to share it with you. Thank God this wasn't thought of in '84... This leads me to my thoughts on the VP debate. While Palin wasn't a "deer-in-headlights," this really wasn't a good performance for her. There was one question Biden totally didn't answer and others he answered frankly half-assed but Palin was not answering questions all night and actually said at one point "I may not answer the questions you want me to answer..." Then why are you even at this debate? The debate was, well, sedate. I wanted a "You're no Jack Kennedy" moment or an old guy wondering where he was but, sadly, it didn't happen... I was admittedly surprised that the Red Sox won both games in Anaheim. Sure, they've dominated the Angels in the postseason but I really thought the trend of the Angels dominating in the regular season then choking in the post wouldn't continue. We only need ...