I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by hummingbirds. My parents have several feeders at their trailer up north so I’m used to seeing them hovering around throughout the summer days I’m up there. I have noticed that for such little birds, they really don’t show much fear of people. In fact, if you’re still they really don’t seem to be aware you’re even there and will often feed at a feeder just a few feet away. I’ve never thought of actually trying to feed them by hand though. I may have to try it this summer. Here is some video shot by a guy who has had success at it.
Kansas - The Great Ja’sul, leader of the Xenite’s Flock Religious Cult proclaimed last week that their God Xeni spoke to him while he was in the midst of an American Idol-induced trance and assured him that on January 6th, 2009 nothing much would happen.
“I can say with the utmost confidence that the world on that date will be a boring, banal experience, and that nothing of major importance will go down.”, stated Ja’sul.
Ja’sul, 23, who’s real name is John Hinkler, made this proclamation from his parents basement where he currently resides. ‘I was watching a rerun of American Idol as commanded by Xenie when I entered a trance like state shortly after heaing Chris’s rendition of Queen’s ‘Innuendo’. While in this state of blissful detachment, Xenie came to me and revealed the vision’, Ja’sul continued.
Ruh’kyra, 21, one of the cult’s 3 active members did not take the prophecy’s news with delight. ‘Hell no, I’m not happy. I’m sick of watching this stupid show. My life is boring enough without John, sorry…I mean Ja’sul, telling me it’s not going to get much better anytime soon.”
Yesterday I left Milwaukee at 6:25am bound for Portland Oregon to attend a friend’s wedding. Julie (the friend) was born in Oregon, moved to Milwaukee to attend UW-Milwaukee to complete her doctorate in ornithology (or maybe it was biology) before leaving her new-found Milwaukee friends to start her professional career like we all do…working for pennies in a menial, degrading, and ultimately pointless job in a dirty, depressing environment. Except her first job was working towards saving native birds from extinction. In Hawaii. Yeah. My first job after school? Working in Burger King saving fat people from being thin.
Anyway, while Julie was in Hawaii saving animals from extinction and suffering through countless days of soul numbing tropical breezes and insufferable sun-soaked beach-side weekends, Eric, her boyfriend back in Milwaukee was practicing dancing. In particular he was perfecting his Blue-footed Boobie mating dance technique. I have since learned this is somewhat akin to a secret handshake for Ornithologists and for Eric to become part of the club he had two options. Get a degree in Ornithology (in which they teach you the dance as part of your degree), or marry one, in which you’re on your own and need to watch a lot of Animal Planet and youtube videos of Blue-footed Boobies hitting up the chicks…so to speak.
Suffice it to say, Eric’s Blue-footed Boobie dance must have passed mustard as he and Julie were engaged last year. Now, since Julie met Eric in Milwaukee and was working in Hawaii when he proposed, and since Eric was born and worked in Wisconsin, it’s only natural that the wedding be held in Corvallis, Oregon (or so I’m told). Thus yesterday at 6:25 I began my first pilgrimage to a location west of the Rocky Mountains.
This was the first flight I had taken in a few years and the first ever on Frontier Airlines (Headquartered in Denver). As I stumbled bleary-eyed out of the cab arriving at the airport I happened to look down at the shirt I was wearing and suddenly wondered if I’d be calling Julie explaining to her I couldn’t make the wedding because I was being shipped to some secret base on suspicion of being a terrorist. My thought process went something like this…
Huh…look at that, I’m wearing my ’snakes on a plane’ T-shirt, and I’m getting on a plane. That’s kinda funny
Hmmm it doesn’t actually *say* ‘Snakes on a Plane’ anywhere on the shirt. It just says MFSOAP which stands for Muther F’ing Snakes on a Plane’ and it has a bunch of symbols above those letters
You know, those symbols aren’t the clearest most concise symbols in the world either…Just a crudely drawn symbol of a plane, then a ‘+’ sign, then a crudely drawn symbol of a bunch of snakes which kinda looks like a bonfire, then an ‘=’ sign, and then a crudely drawn symbol of a plane with the snakes on top of it…which looks an awful lot like a burning plane.
Oh dear…for someone who isn’t in touch with internet pop culture or a movie buff this shirt looks a lot like it says: ‘Fire” + ‘Plane’ = ‘Plane on Fire’, with some ominous looking letters under it.
Well at least TSA employees would need to be well-educated, reasonable, and critical thinking individuals to do their jobs right?
Shit. I’m fucked.
I thought briefly about ducking into a bathroom and changing shirts, but at 5am in the morning, no way was I dragging that huge fucking suitcase into a stall and digging for a new shirt. So it was with a growing sense of dread and resignation that I got inline at the security checkpoint and mentally went over how I’d explain what my shirt meant.
‘No ma’am, those are not flames, those are snakes.’
‘No, I am not threatening to bring snakes on this plane’
‘No it’s a movie, called ’snakes on a plane’
‘You never heard of it? Well yeah, that’s because it bombed in the theatres’
‘No I did not just say I was going to bomb theatres’
*sigh*
In the end the TSA was much more interested in my shoes than my T-shirt and I got through the security pretty easily.
About an hour later I was in the air.
First Time Flyers and Cougars with their Cubs
I had just settled down into my seat (an aisle seat) and hoped that the two unoccupied seats next to me would stay that way. I had perhaps 2 hours of sleep and in my foggy state had failed to ask for a window seat during check-in. Had I asked for and got a window seat, I would be out like a light once the plane took off. However, being in an aisle seat and unable to rest my head against the window and unwilling to rest it on the shoulder of some stranger (how rude!) I was hoping the plane wouldn’t be packed and I’d be able to move over once boarding was complete.
Unfortunately, it was just seconds after I sat down that I spotted her coming down the aisle peering with fearful confusion in the general direction of my row. She was cute, about 20′ish, but she had the telltale signs of a first-time flyer…the confused look, the ashen color on her face, and furtive glances out the windows…it was unmistakable.
Please god…no. I know she’s cute, and I’ve asked you for that before, but not today ok? Please? I’m just too tired.
I tried not to make eye-contact. Experience has shown me that eye-contact with a frightened first-time flyer somehow imparts to them that you are their best friend and are more than happy to play the ‘just keep talking to me about anything so I’m not constantly thinking about dying in a flaming ball of fire and metal’ game. On most days this wouldn’t bother me and I’d be happy to chat, especially if the frightened flyer is a cute 20-something, but I was way too tired and my social energy banks were on empty.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, and stupidly, I looked up. Eye contact. Sigh.
“Excuse me, I’m in the seat next to you…I hope we don’t crash”
Ok, she didn’t actually say the last part, but I could tell she was thinking it.
As she settled into her seat, and began studying the emergency procedures brochure I tried to lay back in my seat and try to get some sleep. I had actually started to relax a bit and begun to drift off when the flight crew started their pre-flight “in-case-we-crash” spiel. The crew had a routine, and it was fairly light-hearted and humorous. They were cracking a few jokes during the process which managed to catch my attention and prevent me from drifting off completely. Then I swore I heard the following sentence, “Finally, Frontier Airlines would like to thank you for choosing to fly with us, and we hope you enjoy your flight with the cougar and her cub”
What? I lazily opened one eye, expecting to see some kind of reaction to that last sentence…but there was nothing. I looked over to the girl next to me and was going to ask her if they had just thanked us for flying with a cougar, but she was still busy counting the number of rows between her and the various exits.
I was pretty damn sure I heard them say it though. At first I thought perhaps I had drifted off and missed something…like the part where they explained they were transporting a cougar and her cub from Milwaukee to the Denver Zoo or something. It was about then I noticed the flight crew consisted of an older woman in her 50’s and a young guy in his mid to late 20’s. No way… I started to laugh to myself…wow, that’s pretty edgy…I can’t believe they’d get away with that, Cougar and her cub indeed. I eventually decided I must have misheard them, but then right before we landed they said it again…’Thank you for Flying Frontier Airlines and we hope you enjoyed your trip with the Cougar and her cub’. I looked around the plane again for reactions to this, but nobody seemed to notice or consider it strange. It wasn’t until my next flight I found out what the Cougar and Cub really meant.
The flight itself was fairly uneventful. The frightened girl next to me would grab the armrest between us suddenly each time their was a bit of turbulence, and finally after about the fourth or fifth time I opened my eyes turned to her and said, “First time flying?”
“No, second time. First time was Denver to Milwaukee, last week”
“Ah, well I’ve noticed this turbulence is making you nervous. Trust me this is nothing. Planes are designed to handle turbulence way way worse than this. When the flight crew straps themselves down, and the turbulence is so bad that things bounce and fly off your seat tray and you look out the window and see the wings of the plane bending up and down like rubber, then you can start to get concerned.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ok. Thanks, I’m just very nervous”
“I know, it’s fine.”, and then I tried to go back to my state of semi-sleep.
I’m guessing it was about 20 minutes later or so when I was woke up by a pretty severe jolt. “Holy crap!, what the??”
The plane was bucking up and down, the crew were strapped in their chairs, and I looked out the window and the wings of the plane were flexing back and forth like rubber.
I was going to turn to her and point out the window and say, “Ok, now this is good turbulence”, but one look at her face told me I’d probably make better use of my time to prepare myself for getting thrown-up upon.
Thankfully the worst of the turbulence only lasted a couple of minutes and she never got sick.
Once we landed in Denver, I finally saw what the Cougar and her cub really was. Frontier Airlines paints a different animal on the tail of each of their aircraft. Ours had a Cougar and her cub on it. Sigh. I liked my original interpretation much better.
Hair Salons in Foreign Locals
After finally arriving in Portland, I got my luggage and went to the rental car office to pick up the car I had on reserve. Another friend of mine, Evyn, was to be the maid of honor and her flight got into Portland from Chicago about 30 minutes after mine, so we decided we’d share the car.
After her flight got in we headed off to Corvallis. Corvallis is a small college town (home of OSU) where Julie’s parents also live. It is about a 90 minute drive form Portland. All the bridesmaids we’re going to be staying at Julie’s parent’s house the first night, so I needed to drop Evyn off there before going to the hotel where I could finally get some actually sleep.
Once we arrived at Julie’s parent’s house Julie requested that I take some hand outs back to the hotel and slide them under the doors of all the bridesmaids and certain female guests staying at the hotel. There was to be a wine tasting party (ladies only) that night and the handouts had directions from the hotel to her Parent’s house on them.
I was really quite tired and having problems concentrating on just exactly what handouts I needed to get to which parties, so I asked Julie to please write down exactly what I needed to do. It was then Evyn turned to me and said, “Wow, your hair is getting kinda long Craig”
Julie looked up and agreed.
It was true. I had a hair appointment scheduled a week before this trip, but I had to cancel it due to an emergency at work. I figured I’d find someplace in town to get a trim and while I was at it I’d get my highlights redone as it had been about 7 weeks since the last time I had them done and I may as well look good for the wedding.
Julie started suggesting salons and places I could go. I was too tired to care or remember any of this I just wanted to get to the hotel, pass out whatever documents I was supposed to pass out and then take a nap.
After getting everything I was to hand out, I said goodbye to Julie, Eric, and Evyn and headed to the Hotel. Once I got there I started talking to the clerk and explaining to him I needed the room numbers of the following guest so that I could slip these directions under their doors. While I was doing this, a line of people was forming behind me and suddenly my cell phone went off. It was Julie.
“Hi Craig, I just spoke to my Mom, she said you could probably get an appointment tomorrow at ‘The Retreat Spa’ for coloring and a cut. it’s on 9th street the same as the hotel.”
Being conscious of the line of people behind me, I just wanted to get Julie off the phone, so I did not write down the name of the salon, but I did make a mental note of it was on 9th street.
Eventually I got a list of room numbers, placed the directions under each of the doors and got to my room. I recalled Julie saying I should probably call for a reservation today if I wanted to hope getting in tomorrow for a haircut. So I pulled out the yellow pages book in the room and started looking through the beauty section. I had completely forgotten the name of the salon told to me just 5 minutes earlier, but I did recall it was on 9th street. So I began looking through all the entries for any with an address on 9th street and found one called , ‘The Golden Key of Hair Design’. It looked like it was just down the street form the hotel. Sweet! I called and asked if they would be able to fit me in tomorrow for a cut and color. They said they had a spot open at 1:30pm. Excellent.
With all my responsibilities now done, I went to bed.
The next day, I looked around town a bit before heading over to The Golden Key. It was a small beauty salon in a strip mall. I walked in and saw a very cute , but very young receptionist who gave me a bit of an odd look as I walked up.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m here for a 1:30 appointment for a color and cut”
She looked confused for a second, “Oh..last name Kreig?”
“No, first name Craig”
Something wasn’t right here. She was reacting as if something was wrong. Finally she said, “You’re stylist is still with a costumer. it will be about 10 minutes, have a seat”
It was then that I actually looked around the salon and realized why she had been acting so odd. It was filled, wall to wall, with grey-haired little old ladies. Some in curlers, some getting their white-grey hair colored to something that still looked white-grey but somehow I guess isn’t actually white-grey, some sitting in those chairs with the big blow dryers built in, and some getting their hair cut.
Now somewhere in the depths of my brain, the lazy fat dwarf that manages the security center must have woke up and noticed all the red flags going off, because it was right about then I got a good shot of adrenaline delivered to my system.
Being fully awake now, I also noticed that every single one of the hairstylists was also a little old lady, though perhaps only in their 70’s or 80’s. I also noticed I didn’t see any tin-foil or hair color darker than old-lady grey-white, or anything that would lead me to believe they had any idea how to actually color my hair.
I looked for the receptionist hoping, I guess, for a look of pity or understanding, but she was no where to be found. The old fat dwarf in my brain must have found the emergency procedures book because my fight or flight response suddenly kicked in big-time. As I began to mentally prepare what I would say as I ran hellbent out the door, one of the little old lady hairdressers came over to me and said, “Kreig?”
I took a deep breath and meekly replied, “yes?”
“So, you’re here for…um, a color and cut? Hmmm. What color do you like?”
“Black with light highlights”
“Black highlights? oh dear…”
“No, Black hair, light highligths”
“I think, maybe there’s been some kind of mistake…I don’t know how to do highlights.”
I felt like a 100 pound weight had just been lifted from me. “Oh? That’s OK. All I really need is a trim”
“Oh, well I can do that for you”
In the end it turned out OK. I mean how badly can you really mess up a trim. Now truth be told, if I try and spike it, it looks a bit chunky, but overall it’ll be fine.
It’s supposed to me 95 degrees for the wedding tomorrow, though they tell me it’s a ‘dry’ heat. Whatever. I’m wearing a full tux. Trust me, by the end of the day, for me at least, it’s going to be a wet heat.
Last night at 11:30pm I held Seether on my lap, she was curled up, her head resting lightly on my right hand while my left hand slowly petted her. I knew she was not afraid, her tail twitching each time I spoke to her in the manner it always did when she was content. Only the halting jerking motion of it belied just how sick she was. I knew it was time.
Just 30 minutes earlier I watched her on my futon next to me. She looked so tired. Her eyes only half open, her head drooping without the strength to lift it. Every few minutes her shallow breathing would change and she’d take a long deep breath and exhale it haltingly. I knew she wasn’t going to make the morning.
I kissed her forehead and told the Dr I was ready. She pushed the syringe and her head slowly slid off my hand. It was over in 6 seconds. She was gone.
It wasn’t fair. She was only 6 years old. She deserved more, but her little body was spent. No more treatments, no more forced feedings, no more needles.
Last weekend I had noticed she wasn’t herself. She had a chronic upper respiratory condition since she was a kitten so she was always sneezing and sniffles were common occurrences. This time however it was clear she had a full blown cold. She had taken to hiding under my computer desk throughout the day and was not there in the hallway to greet me when I’d come home…something she had never failed to do for the last 6 years. So last Monday, I took the morning off from work and took her to the vet.
He told me she was dehydrated which was strange since she had been drinking quite a bit of water lately…though she had not been eating. The vet took some blood work and would have the results the next day. He thought it was possible her cold might be preventing her from smelling her food and she had always been somewhat of a finicky eater. He gave me some anti-biotics for her cold and they gave her some saline under her skin to attempt to hydrate her and we went home.
The next day he called and said there some serious problems with her labs. Her Blood Urea Nitrogen (BUN) level was at 230. Normal is around 20. Her Creatinine was at 16, normal is 2. He said her kidneys were in failure and given the levels he was amazed she was alive and that I needed to bring her in immediately and that I should start thinking about euthanasia.
The only question he had was whether this was due to her ingesting a toxin or if it was a chronic condition. If it was chronic, given her values he said her prognosis was poor. Chronic renal disease in cats is terminal. If it was due to a toxin it was possible some if not all of her kidney function would return if should could make it through the next few days. After another examination and after I stated she had been urinating frequently, the vet told me those were signs of chronic failure…as acute failure usually presents with reduced urination while chronic presents with increased.
CRF (Chronic Renal Failure) is common in older cats. A normal cat’s kidney’s have 70-90% more functionality than the cat needs to remain healthy. Kidney function in cats can degrade for many reasons - age, sickness, genetics, but until they lose 70% or more of the functionality their health is normal. Once that threshold is crossed though, they tend to go downhill very quickly. The vet in his examination said when he felt her kidneys, they were very small…and the most likely explanation is she was just born with smaller than normal kidneys.
I asked if she was in pain. The dr. said that based on what people with kidney failure feel it is believed that cats are not in pain..at least not until their last few moments. They most likely just feel very poorly…akin to a person with a bad hangover. Given this information and the fact she was still somewhat active once roused I opted for treatment.
He cautioned the odds were long and that the disease was terminal…that treatment was to maintain life quality and not a cure, but some cats could go on to live active quality lives for several years. His prognosis for Seether was not so optimistic, with luck she might get a few months of quality time. They would give her intravenous fluids to hydrate her and tube feed her and do what they could to teat the nasal infection.
On Thursday the report was encouraging, she had started to eat on her own a bit and when i went to visit her she was alert, happy, active and though I could tell not 100% there was very much of her old self there in the clinic.
The plan was to keep her until saturday and I could take her home at noon when they closed for the weekend. We would see how she was doing Monday and go from there.
On Saturday I picked her up and could see she was not as active as she was on Thursday. I had hoped that maybe she was just tired from being in the clinic. They took her blood again and the result were not what they had hoped. Her BUN had only dropped to 170 and her creatinine was only down to 11. It was hoped they would have dropped at least twice that.
I would need to give her sub-q’s each day (inject 75ml of saline under her skin to keep her hydrated, giver her some antibiotics twice a day, an anti-acid three times a day, some vitamin B supplements twice a day, and a phosphate binder once per day.
I took her home. She would not eat so I tried to syringe feed her liquid food. She did not like this one bit. By Sunday her nasal condition has cleared up considerably, but she was still not eating. By Monday she was noticeably weaker.
Monday evening I was feeding her via syringe and she was not making as much of a fuss. I thought at first this was a good sign. By 10:30 though I realized it was because she was too weak. Through it all she remained the sweet cat I had known since getting her as a kitten form the Humane Society. She spent all day by my side or on my lap, but by 10:30pm I knew it was over. Her eyes told me all I needed to know, and I knew in my heart she would not make it to the morning. I am forever grateful for the few extra days I had with her and knew my last duty was to make sure she did not suffer in her final hours. I know she did not. She was not afraid, she was not alone, and her last memory was of my hand gently petting her and me softly calling her name.
I wish that would be enough for me, that it would somehow ease the sense of loss and grief but it does not. At least not yet. I know in time it will, but for now I am lost. My little girl is gone.
UPDATE: Some pics of Seether as a kitten. I’ll try and get some pics of her as an adult up soon.
It’s funny how much warmth a single soul can bring
to an otherwise empty home
beginning as a tiny ember
so small, so frail.
But with time and care will build in strength
until its fire casts light into every dark corner
and heat into your bones.
Tonight I came home and the rooms were cold
and shadows bled from the floor
I returned tonight to an empty home
for my little Seether was not there.
Ok. So I picked up this Cisco 870 series router last weekend when I was shopping at the Best Buy in Burbank. Normally I wouldn’t be caught dead in there but I heard they are one of the top chains for CD sales and I figured I’d go in to make sure they had my CD on the shelves. They like totally didn’t. Can you believe that? I mean, oh my god. So I marched over to one of those people behind the counter, you know that wear those hideous blue shirts…with tan slacks? I mean really. Blue with tan? Yuck, anyway, and I said I want to talk to your manager right now.
Well the girl behind the counter kinda froze for a second. You know, like she’s thinking…’Oh my god, Paris Hilton is actually talking to me!’ I take a lot of crap in the press that’s so not fair…and here is a perfect example of what I have to deal with. I’m telling her I demand to know why my CD isn’t on the shelf and that it’s pretty hard to sell millions of CD’s when my fans can’t find them and I can totally tell she’s not hearing a word I’m saying. I call it the ‘Paris Effect’. So I say to myself, ok Paris calm down…she’s not used to being in the presence of celebrity so I look at her name tag and grab a pen and find a candy bar wrapper in my pocket and sign it ‘To Angie, Paris Hilton’ and hand it to her.
Well now she gets this glazed over look on her face and I say, “Honey it’s OK. You don’t have to pay me for it or anything’
So after all that you know what she does? She rolls her eyes. Like what the hell? Then she says, ‘I’ll be right back’. So now I’m fuming. I mean I have gone above and beyond here and she’s going to make me wait!? I was going to just turn around and stomp right out of the store, but then I realized my fans would still not be able to buy my CD so I took a deep breath, crossed my arms and waited. Well this girl, ‘Angie’, went back behind the curtain where I’m sure she’s telling someone back there that I’m cheap cause I didn’t give her any money or invite her to a party when this guy with the worst comb-over I have ever seen comes to the counter holding my autograph in his hand. ‘Ms Hilton’, he says, ‘Employees are not allowed to accept gifts, it’s against Best Buy policy’, and then he hands my autograph back. Then he says, ‘What can I help you with?’
Now I’m going to tell him about my CD but I see he’s not even looking me in the eye. No, he’s looking right at my tits. I was just about to blow up when he kinda points at my chest and asks if I could please cover up as there are children in the store, and I look down and well…I guess in my anger and in crossing and uncrossing my arms, one of my tits fell out of my top….like this doesn’t happen to everyone once in awhile. So I pull my top up a bit and tuck in and ask him why the fuck my CD isn’t on the shelf? Now he gets that frozen look on his face and he starts to say, ‘It’s not on the shelves because it’s not sell…ing, err not in stock. It’s sold out. Yeah, that why…I forgot we sold the last one yesterday’.
Oh. Of course. So now I feel pretty bad. They can’t keep them on the shelves. So I tell him well I understand and that I’m sorry about my tits and that next time it would really help my fans if he could order more CDs at once so they won’t sell out of them.
Anyway he agrees and tells me he’ll make sure they order a ton more and then asks if there is anything else he can help me with. I’m about to say no, when I look over and on the counter is just the cutest thing I have ever seen. So I ask him what is that? He tells me it’s a Cisco 870 router, and then starts to turn away as if I wouldn’t need one or something. Whatever. So I grab it, put on my charge and go home.
Now I’m pretty excited, I mean, I have OnStar in my Audi but let me be honest with you. Sometimes talking to those people is such a drag. Like the time I called OnStar on my cell and told them I locked my keys and panties in the car and I needed them to open it for me and then give me directions to this new club that just opened. They wouldn’t do it. They said I sounded inebriated, and that they could not allow me back into the car!! I told them I wasn’t drunk, that I only had three martinis and smoked two joints, but they still wouldn’t open that damn door for me.
So screw OnStar. I figured why talk to some stuck up OnStar person when I can have a router tell me the route to my next party.
So anyway here is my review, and it’s not a good one.
I do not recommend the Cisco 870 series router to ANYONE. First off, the instructions that come with it only tell you how to hook it up to the internet. Now I realize it needs to get its maps and directions from somewhere, but the problem is, it ONLY tells you how to hook it up to the internet IN YOUR HOUSE. Hello?? Some people may need directions AFTER they leave their house. I mean really. So there are no instructions on how to get it to work in your car where it might like, really be useful? The other problem is it doesn’t tell you how to use it for directions. It’s got three lights on the front which I figure light up for ‘Turn Left, Go Straight, or Turn Right’, but until I can find someone to install it in my car it’s just sitting in my closet.
On the plus side, it’s really cute. Very cool looking. It would soooo totally accessorize with my silver Porsche. It just sucks the instructions are so bad.
So in closing, don’t buy this router, and ta ta for now.
I had to laugh when I saw this. Apparently someone decided to create a giant donut-waving Homer Simpson which is only visible from the air right next to a giant ancient pagan symbol. Now the pagans are all up in arms over it.
Whatever.
Last I heard, druids and shamans didn’t have a monopoly on giant aerial-view only idols.
It seems that Pixar and Brad Bird (Director) can do no wrong. His previous Pixar effort, ‘The Incredibles’, is still one of my favorite super-hero movies and his animated ‘The Iron Giant’ ranks in my top 20 all-time best family films. He strikes gold again with Ratatouille, a movie about a rat with a passion for food and a dream to become a chef.
Remy is a country rat with a gifted sense of smell and taste. Food for him isn’t just a means of survival, it is a true passion. While the other rats in his pack are happy to eat garbage and are thankful for it, Remy has a more discerning palette.
For Remy, any given ingredient or piece of food he samples is akin to a composer listening to a particular musical instrument . Like the deep resonance of a violin, or the haunting etherealness of a flute, each taste of something brings to Remy an explosion of sensory fireworks. What’s more, he understands how to put these pieces together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. He is an artist, a rat chef-prodigy.
The problem of course is, he’s a rat, and people generally don’t like rats in their kitchen. His own family doesn’t understand him either. His father considers his heightened sense of taste and smell useless until he realizes it actually allows Remy to detect rat poison. His father makes Remy the clan’s official food tester thinking this will improve Remy’s spirits as well as help the clan. It helps the clan, but Remy finds it a waste of his time and talents.
Remy though, refuses to give up his dreams or passion, and this is part of the magic Bird and Pixar have become known for. They don’t make movies that try to be cute, or ‘in the know’, with a wink to the audience at their cleverness in fitting in yet another pop-culture reference (ala Shrek). They make movies that focus on character and story.
Though many of the themes of Ratatouille are common (follow ones dreams, look past differences and appearances), it touches on a few others that you don’t see too often in animated family films. One such theme explored is the idea that people who follow their passions and live by them can also become cynical and jaded after a time. In essence, these people having sought out the best there is while following their passion, begin to experience disappointment more and more frequently as they realize they may have already tasted the best cooking, heard the greatest music, saw the best film, and now just live from one letdown to another in a vain hope to once again experience greatness. It’s quite a sad concept. To begin to hate the thing you once loved. This theme seems tied loosely to one in Bird’s ‘The Incredibles’, that great artists or those with great abilities should be celebrated and revered, for through their works they have the ability to to bring us out of these cynical ennuis of the soul.
The animation is superb. From the hairs on Remy’s body, to the soft glowing glory of the city of lights, to the textures of the foods, it is all just perfect. In fact the food is rendered so well in this film you will get hunger pangs just watching it. Do NOT see this film on an empty stomach.
The characters and story are all wonderfully fleshed out, and the plot goes in directions that are surprising sometimes. After a series of events, Remy finds himself in Paris at the very restaurant of his idol, Chef Gustave. One of the plot devices concerns who the owner of the restaurant should be (Gustave died well before Remy’s arrival…partially in reaction to a poor review by food critic Anton Ego), and a lesser studio would have used the resolution of this conflict as the ending of the film, not so with Pixar which resolves this conflict around the half-way point and instead uses it as a springboard to continue the story to a much better conclusion.
As with all Pixar films, the voice talent is spot on. In particular Peter O’Toole, as the voice of food critic Anton Ego is fantastic.
There is just so much to love about this film, I could write for pages. But I’d rather you see it unfold yourself and will not go into to detail. However, one moment that comes to mind that I must mention concerns Anton ego’s character. You’ll know the scene I’m referring to as soon as you see it. I’ll just say that it will give anyone who loved the animated classic, ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, a lump in their throat, and a tear in their eye.
I must admit I have somewhat mixed emotions about this movie. On the one hand, taken purely as an action packed summer blockbuster, it delivers the goods and is quite entertaining. On the other hand, there are just too many things wrong with it to give it more than middling grade.
First, the good:
The special effects are great. Really, really great. Of course computers have always been able to render metal and rigid materials better than organic objects so the subject mater in this movie plays to the strengths of computer generated animation and it does not disappoint.
The action sequences are fast and furious and given the number of people who bite the dust, I can see why the movie almost got an R rating for violence.
Now the bad:
Everything else. The biggest problem this film has is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. It tries to be a movie for kids at times. The prologue (a voice over) sounds like it came right out of one of the Saturday morning Transformers cartoons. Briefly explaining how the two races of Transformers came in being. The problem is it’s long on vagueness and short on details. Any ‘message’ in the movie is pretty much restricted to black and white good/evil archtypes. Evil means humans are lower life forms and should be killed or exploited, while good means killing people is wrong. Comic relief seems to be restricted to having the autobots speaking in 21st century pop-culture slang. Yo! Yo! Yo! Optimus is in the hizzzhaus! Yeah. Whatever.
At other times it tries to be a violent, gritty, action flick along the lines of Die Hard or perhaps Alien. The result for me was a constant cycle of tension and excitement followed by periods of eye-rolling induced groans.
Another problem the film has is many of the action sequences are cut so fast and so tight that it’s very difficult to know which transformer is fighter who. In the end it just became robots fighting robots for long periods of time.
Had the movie chosen to either be a kids flick or an adult-aimed action film, I probably would have enjoyed it much more.
The human element in the film is not bad, the two leads Sam Witwicky (Shia Le Beouf ) and Mikaela (Megan Fox) are passable, although I really had trouble understanding what Mikaela saw in Sam or why she stuck around once cars started turning into 50′ tall killbots. The best characters in the movie are actually Sam’s parents and the scenes with them are some of the funniest as well.
In the end, Transformers is fun, it’s just mind numbingly shallow and stupid…but then that’s what it’s supposed to be I guess. I’d certainly rent it and watch it again with friends or for a party, but I won’t be paying $9 to see it on the big screen again.
I’m now running on a Ubuntu Linux (7.0.4 Release) LAMP platform. I’ve upgraded WordPress to the latest version (v2.2) and everything seems to be working well. Hopefully this will eliminate the down periods I was having under my older Novell server.
The only thing left to do now is to customize my theme so I’m not using a generic default theme. Time to give the site a little bit of style and personality.
