NaNoWriMo Day 5/30: Sunday Blues

Got my fun writing on my new novel done early today, which I’m a little sad about Too much work to do this afternoon and evening. I am now perched on a respectable nest of 8,444 words though, and Tim’s world is looking better than ever. Writing has been pretty consistent, and I’m only going back and making edits when there are logistical issues that require changing some prior page of exposition. It is a struggle to stop at my daily 1,667 words, but that’s probably a good thing. I need to build up some momentum to get me through Week 2, and I don’t want to exhaust all my fun ideas this week.

I guess I can always find a way to hack into Berserker’s WordPress account and find a way to steal some of his ideas if I get stuck. All his talk about hacked voting machines really has me thinking….

DVD Review: RV (2006)

I must have really bad taste in films.  Good thing I’m not over in the Film Department half of our school.  Carole and I watched RV last night — you know, the movie with Robin Williams as the Type-A worker bee who drags his family along in a ginormous RV on a business trip under the guise of a bonding family vacation?  This movie got really awful reviews from both users and critics on RottenTomatoes.  Worse even than The Omen, which I also thought was not too bad.  Maybe it’s something about the expectations I have for these movies; I’m not putting a whole lot of stock into them, so when I actually get around to watching them on DVD, I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised.  Such was the case with RV.

Thing is, I thought this movie was hilarious.  I always love physical comedy, even if the plot is ridiculous or underdeveloped, and Robin Williams can do physical comedy like a champ.  Like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation, poor Robin keeps digging himself deeper and deeper.  Something about seeing someone who has it worse than I do, I think, is the key here.  Aside from his homeboy/white boy from the hood routine (which Steve Martin also did to ridiculous effect in Bringing Down the House) I was laughing pretty much through the whole movie.  It was good to see Jeff Daniels again, and it’s also nice to see Will Arnett and Tony Hale in something again (I was sad to have learned about the series Arrested Development recently, on DVD).  I also deeply identified with the lack of sleep Robin’s character experienced.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of slapstick comedy and don’t take it too seriously, I think you might get a kick out of RV. 

The Good: The scenes where poor old Robin had to empty out the septic tank and where he had to try and maneuver the metal behemoth through Diablo Pass had me in stitches. 

The Bad: I’m a little tired of the “fully-grown-upper-middle-class-white-man-acts-like-a-homey-from-the-hood routine” which I guess some people think is funny.  I have to disagree.  Martin’s version was bad, but almost bearable.  Williams’ version was even worse.

Grade: A-

Brighton Goes to the Park

It was a beautiful day yesterday, so we took Brighton to the park. He enjoyed the swings, and would have liked to eat some of the rubber pseudo-mulch, I think, but he mainly just concentrated on his thumb and pacifier.