Enough people have asked about this that I may as well come out with it. It’s true, I’ve strayed a bit from my previous orthodoxy.

Over these past few years, I’ve accepted pho bo vien into my heart. Yes, I know… it’s soup. I’m one of *those* people.

Wait, hear me out. Look past the surface, and what do you see? Noodles and meatballs! Sauce, soup, are they really so different? Ok, it’s not tomato based but I think that He’s bigger than that. This earth of ours is 2/3 water, so why is it so hard for people to accept that the sacramental noodles would be good in soup?

I’ve heard all the snide little jokes and insults. I’ve “watered down” my faith. You’re all so clever.

Anyway, that’s where my heart is. I hope you can accept me.

“… and a dear, dear friend.”

Could this be? Do my eyes and ears deceive me?

Is Saturday Night Live funny again? I never… *sniff* umm… I mean… *sniff*

Sorry. Got a little choked up there. I just never thought I would type those words.

Oh, Barak, Bringer Of Light, is there nothing you haven’t made better?

I think that what Democrats of my cohort (30s and 40s) really want from Obama is a do-over of Clinton’s first term. Only this time with no bimbos, travel office “scandal”, trooper tales, or land deals. No health insurance road shows starring Ira Magaziner. No government shut downs. No Vince Foster conspiracy theories. No Gennifer. No Paula. No cigar. No blue dress. No Monica.

Definitely no Monica.

People used to quip that Clinton was the first black President. Well, maybe it works both ways. Maybe we want the first black President to be Clinton.

We had noodles for dinner the other night. Not just any noodles, they were fresh ones made in Japan. This never ceases to amaze me, and the kids and I spent a little time imagining the the trip these noodles had made. They’d come half way around the world just to be our dinner.

This led to an observation: Almost nothing on our dinner table was made or grown anywhere near us.

The plates were made in Malaysia, the glasses are from Italy and Turkey, the flatware comes from Germany, the table cloth was from El Salvador and the napkins were made in Guatemala. The noodles were from Japan. The tofu and veggies were from California.

How about you? Take a look at your dinner table tonight. Where did all that stuff come from?

Yeah, yeah, the theme is busted. I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 and, apparently, that was a violation of his parole or something. Patrick will be back, I promise.

Most people take sleep for granted. You get tired, you go to sleep. No problem. I’ve never been able to do that. Maybe I was out the day they went over it in kindergarten. Maybe I did something to anger the Sandman (Bastard, I bought your comics!).

Bad chemistry? Bad stress? Bad karma? Who knows. Anyway this isn’t a sob story. The point is that I spend a fair amount of time awake at strange hours, too tired to think. So I watch movies.

Now, let me say up front that the things that make a movie great at 4am are very different from the things that make a movie great at 9pm. The later it gets, the more I’m willing to forgive plot holes, leaps in logic, or acting quality. I want novelty. I want a new approach on an old story, a clever dramatic structure, or something completely out of left field.

Last night’s The Signal was just that kind of movie. It got some decent reviews, so I gave it a shot.

The story goes something like this: A mysterious signal suddenly appears on every TV and radio, causing about half of the people who hear it to start calmly killing everyone around them. We follow a woman and her lover as, in separate stories, they each try to escape her husband and get to the train station so that they can Amtrak together to happiness. Unicorns and shiny, shiny rainbows for everyone!

This was a strange movie. Really strange.

Structure. Subject. Performances. Strange.

At 4am, it was awesome.

The story is told in three distinct acts. The beginning and end are the same sort of action/horror movie with desperate escapes and murder-fu. Scary, dark corners. Characters are beaten up, shot, and beaten up some more. Then everybody hallucinates for a while.

Right in the middle, though, it turns into a different movie for about half an hour. Same story, same people, picking up right where part one left off, only now it’s a “satire”. They play the situation for “laughs”. Except that sometimes characters seem randomly to realize what’s going on and get upset about having committed murder or being surrounded by corpses … but then it’s right back to the zany. Isn’t it funny how they don’t care that they’re killing each other? And then one character casually blinds another so we get to see her stumbling around, trying to find her husband whom she’s forgotten that she had murdered earlier. Ha ha!

Then it’s right back to the straight horror film for the final third. Must. Find. Girl. Hallucinate for a while. Amtrak. Ambiguous, unhappy ending.

So it’s horror, then satire of that horror, then back to horror again. Huh? The satire in the middle kind of undercuts the horror that comes after it.

And no, they never tell you what the signal was or why or who did it. There’s some nutty rambling by one character, but I don’t know if it was meant to be taken seriously. Another keeps yelling, “THE SIGNAL IS A LIE”, but he might have just thought he was watching Fox news.

If you’re awake at 4am, tired, have low expectations, and don’t mind dumb sci-fi/horror movies, then this one is different enough to keep your attention. Which makes it great.

Awake or before midnight, you probably won’t make it to the half way point.

Hm. I probably need some sort of rating system here. I give it four fluffy pillows, or.. uhh This is a two Ambien Screamer… no, maybe… This Movie Gets Good At: 3am. Yeah, I like that. My rating represents the time of day when the cleverness of the premise outweighs the awfulness of the production.

The Signal starts to look good at around 3am. Steve says check it out.

Got any recommendations? I can’t sleep. What should I be watching?

Elvis Costello has a TV show.

Bravo is going to show it in the US, starting in December. They’ve made 13 episodes. One guest per show, to talk about their music.

* Yeah, sure, it’s a cheap joke. Mea clupa. I’m a weak, weak man.

You already knew that the song, “Tunak Tunak Tun” is so climate changingly great that one listen cures bad breath, gives you a better haircut, and heals a sick kitten… but did you know why?

Me, either.

One thousand thanks, then, to the mighty Buffalax who has translated Daler Mehndi’s magical incantations from his native Punjabi into English for we lesser mortals.

I think he speaks for us all when he sings,

All around, got Miss Mary very hostile
and your fiddler’s very rusty
it’s a very merry bus full

If you have not seen this before, make sure that you DO NOT MISS the Amazing Dance of Awesomeness that begins at about 1:50. If you are not happy after watching this video, I will refund double your money.

Bless you, Daler Mehndi, and bless you Buffalax.

I think that I’ve figured out how Battlestar Galactica will end.

This is all wild speculation, of course, but I think that it not only fits but would be amazing television.

I know that some of you don’t like to think about this stuff and don’t want to potentially ruin the surprise, so it’s behind a “more” link. Click below to bask in my cleverness.

(more…)

Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator! It’s got what plants CRAVE! It’s got ELECTROLYTES!