So, what is the answer and the context of my equation title?

Sorry I haven't blogged so much recently, I have been kind of preoccupied with a few things. First off, NCAA '07 is amazing, buy it, love it. Secondly, stuff to do. Lots of work, lots of overtime, lots of fast cars.

I also feel in a creativity low. My job right now just kind of sucks it out of me. I am not required to think too horribly creative, so I have a hard time doing it. So I try to keep my blog lively by being creative and not just being political and stupid, plus I feel into that trap in the last week. So today, I am posting.

I feel rested. I only worked 8 hours today, I want to dance, I drank Dew, and I ordered a $.22 pizza. Can life get any better?

I finally started a photobucket account. I put up picture that I personally have taken there, you should go take a look at them
sometime. Check out the ALMS one.

The answer to my question of the title is 2.479 and it is how much gas I put in my tank and how much it cost.

Also I know the picture is huge.

Erika and I got the chance to see a preview of this last night at a drive-in. It was kind of cool, since they were having a promotion with VW buses and filled the first several rows with them! KROQ was there for the promotion, but who cares?

Anyway, the movie is cute, though filled with a lot of obscene humorous moments.

Alan Arkin steals the show as the grandfather to Olive, an unlikely beauty pageant contestant, whose family sets out to drive over 600 miles in a pretty pathetic VW bus to get her to a competition in California. Arkin is Olive's pageant coach, and is an even more unlikely person to be involved in that type of business, since he's recently been kicked out of his retirement community for living life a bit too large with his drug use and sexual promiscuity. He is hilarious, though. Really.

Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are perfect as Olive's parents. I love Kinnear's character, who is obsessed with not being a loser and dedicates himself to promoting his 9-step success program.

The rest of the family is just as messed up. It's all a bit contrived, what with the uncle played by Steve Carrell who failed a suicide who has to go on the trip because he needs supervision and the big brother who has taken a vow of silence (inspired by Nietzsche) until he becomes a pilot. But if you don't think about it too hard, I think the movie actually works.

I wouldn't call it hilarious, but there were plenty of laughs, as well as a few unexpected true-to-life moments. One thing I would fault the marketing of this movie for is giving away almost the entire plot and most of the funniest moments, all of which would have gotten a bigger audience response if they hadn't already seen everything in the trailer. The plot goes a bit bizarre toward the end after having felt relatively realistic for the first half, but I still thought it was a fun experience.

The more I think about this movie, the more I appreciate it. I haven't read the novel it was inspired by, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The premise is enough for it to stand on its own. The story is basically about actors who are making a film adaptation of Tristram Shandy. So we go back and forth between the movie they are making and the actors themselves--not to be confused with a documentary--the actors play themselves as actors who are making a movie, so there is a lot of fun play on the personality of the actors, Steve Coogan's sense of self-importance in particular.

Speaking of Steve Coogan, after watching this movie, I'm beginning to think he is sort of the George Sanders of our generation, although I'm not sure how many of you know who George Sanders is. Haha. Anyway, he's just got the perfect balance of amiability and smugness.

Basically the movie they are making tells the story of Tristram's conception, womb experience, birth (and related breaking of his nose), and naming, all of which are told out of order when interspersed with the behind the scenes scenes. By the way, if you ever want to see the downside of being a successful actor, just watching Coogan's interruption-filled busy day should suffice.

I really enjoyed the playful nature of the film, and the constant back and forth between "reality" and the movie make it move along very quickly. There are also two hilarious sequences in which Coogan is inserted into a fake womb to play Tristram Shandy before he is born, one being the test run and the other being a surreal moment in the movie.

At any rate, now that I'm sitting here typing, I find it very difficult to describe any aspect of this one, but I think it would be enjoyable to most audiences, although I can't remember if there was anything obscene in it. Oh wait, there's a really funny nude part about the pathetic conception of Tristram. Watch out for that. :)

We did it. Honzo, Danny, Luis and I recorded a conference call on Gizmo. The show was fun, even though I ducked out early, but the quality of the audio su-ucked. So it looks like we're going to go back to Skype. If more people want to get involved we can just rotate the guests. So consider this a test run. We talk about Clerks 2, Comic-Con, Danny's Prius, the Israel-Lebanon conflict, and a few other things.

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So Comic-Con almost ended up being a giant bust for me this year. I left super early but it was much more difficult to find parking. Last year there was no line to register for one day badges. This year the line was like 2 1/2 hours long! It was INSANE. But I stuck it out and I made it in. I knew things were looking up when I immediately found my friend Adam from the VA Board and he took me to the Cartoon Voice Actors panel. It turned out to be a great day. Here are some highlights:

• The voice actors panel with the guys who voiced several of the transformers (including Grimlock), Duke from G.I. Joe, and The Brain from Pinky and the Brain
• Since I didn't even try to get into Hall H (where all the big panels are), I got to catch the Veronica Mars panel. It was totally sweet. Kristen Bell is just as beautiful in person. Everyone was cool.
• I met Richard Taylor at the Weta booth.
• I met the Chiodo Brothers. Not only are they responsible for Large Marge and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, they also did the puppets for Team America: World Police. They were super cool.
• I got to talk to Richard Kelly again at the Graffiti Designs/View Askew Booth. He's a really cool guy. I'm really looking forward to the next Southland Tales graphic novels and the movie.
• Kevin Smith was late for his original panel so I got to finish my day by going to his make-up panel. It was hilarious, as always.

I've decided I'm definitely coming down for the whole con next year and getting a hotel room near the convention center. It will be my uber-Geek vacation and it will kick large amounts of ass. If anyone else wants to come, let me know. Check out all my pics from the con in the Gallery.