This new movie from Jake Kasdan sounds great. I'm almost positive it's based on his experience with Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Speaking of Undeclared, the DVD set is finally coming out on August 16th. I'm excited.

So I got to thinking about Mr. Neal today and whether or not we'd ever hear from him again over here. I don't know the answer to that question. I'm hoping to get down to the bottom of things at my birthday party next week. Hopefully he and Wendy are coming. If not, it may remain a mystery forever. And don't give me any of that I've got a job and a kid junk. I've got one of those, how hard can two be? I kid, I kid. But we miss you man.

Which keyboard do you think is geekier, this one or that one? The latter is definitely more expensive, but the first one lights up and looks cool in the dark. I honestly couldn't see myself buying either one since I would never spend that much on a keyboard, but if money were no object I would probably go for one of these.

Wow. I totally thought I was slacking at my job and my boss just came up and congratulated me for being three times more productive than the gal I replaced. I can't imagine what would happen if I really picked it up. Maybe they would let me run the company for awhile.

If you didn't have the priviledge of being forced to read this in Nature of Math, check it out here. Since I never actually read the whole thing, I couldn't tell you if it's any good or not. It's really short so it shouldn't take you long. Let me know if it's worth a read.

You Are the Quarry [Deluxe Edition] by Morrissey

Surprisingly enough, in the world of comic heroes, Batman has always been my favorite, yet the only Batman movie I saw before this one was Batman Returns. Ric and I just rented the original Batrman so I could see where it all began and understand why Ric thinks Keaton is the ultimate Batman; we're only halfway through, but so far my impression is that Burton's Gotham is great, but the characteres are almost too cartoonish. I'm still deciding what I think of Keaton (whom I envision as Mr. Mom, Beetlejuice, and the funny guy in Much Ado About Nothing -- and let's not forget: opened-mouth guy in White Noise!).

I read the Batman Begins script out of pure work boredom last summer, which I somewhat regret because I remembered everything that was going to happen while watching the movie. I think that kind of took some of the spark out of seeing the movie for me, although I enjoyed it.

I really liked the casting, although I thought Cillian Murphy was too young and too twitchy for the Dr. Crane I had envisioned, although I never read the comics so that could just be a stupid preference on my part. However, he became sufficiently freaky when turned into Scarecrow. My other problem was with Neeson, which surprised me too. I almost felt like he didn't believe the role; he just seemed a bit lackluster to me, which kind of made the final confrontation sort of anti-climactic.

I liked seeing the Batman story being taken seriously and made realistically. Gotham looked great, I enjoyed watching the whole Bat-setup get started, and seeing the characters develop was fun.

Overall, I liked the movie a lot and admired the struggles in Bruce's mind and many of the little bits of advice Alfred gives more than the action... although watching the first Batmobile rip up roofs and jump buildings was pretty cool..

The gas light on my car turns on when I get below 1/4 of a tank. This pretty much is useless to me since my tank is only 11 gallons. So I kind of have to guess when I really need gas. I'm still getting used to it since I've only had the car for less than a week. This morning I was driving on the 605 and my car ran out of gas in the middle of the freeway. Yeah, that kind of sucked. I called CHP and they were there in less than 5 minutes. They towed my car to the gas station and I was back in action. I was only 5 minutes late to work! So I guess those tax dollars are doing some good. This could have been much more of a disaster. It probably would have been if I was still out in Missouri or some place.

I've got a busy weekend ahead of me. Today is my friend Janelle's birthday. Tomorrow is my birthday but my friends Dan and Janine are having their birthday party already so I'm going to that and having my birthday party next week. I was going to go down to T-Town to get my new phone but it looks like it won't be there until Monday so I probably won't be able to go down until next weekend. I'm heading down there anyway next Saturday for my friend Anjela's birthday. First, though, I'm headed to Stash West for the Degrassi signing. Should be fun. If anyone else wants to go, let me know. Next Tuesday Joy Electric is playing at Spaceland with Junior/Senior. I'm definitely there. So yeah, life is busy out here, but very exciting. It's good to be back.

So I played volleyball last night for the first time in about a year and a half. It was pretty sweet, I enjoy it a whole lot. It is quite possibly my favorite sport that I haven't played competitively. There is something about volleyball that I really enjoy, and I really wish I could play it more often.

I really want to go swing dancing too.