Watchmen

I know the story of Watchmen. I know it very well. The reputation the book had of being ‘unfilmable’ was well earned. I say ‘was’ because Snyder blew me away. The biggest take-away I had was that it was the first movie I saw that was paced like a comic book. Sure, Sin City was an amazingly recreation of the story (with all it’s strengths and weaknesses) but it was paced like a movie. It used all the shots from the book, but they would speed up or slow down. Watchmen took it’s time.

I get the concerns with the slow motion fighting, but for me, it worked, because in comics you might get three panels of a single fight move, how else can you tell that story, except to slow it down and let you catch every blow just as they would happen for an individual trained to the utmost in their fighting.

There was no squid. For me, the squid was a huge mind-fuck in the comic. It was out of nowhere. The new ending (not to ruin it) felt organic, and if you did not know, it felt like the original ending. It kept it more contained and removed the subplot of the writer of The Black Freighter, which I do look forward to seeing on dvd. Snyder busted his balls on this and it shows. Alan Moore might not care to ever watch it, but to Alan I say what I have had to say to many fanboys over the years. At the end of the day: “It’s just a comic book”. Just like I will also say “It’s just a movie”.

• Watching: Burn Notice
• Listening: Kidney Thieves
• Reading: Apathy and Other Small Victories
• Playing: Little Big Planet
• Creating: 1 Page Comic

“Three Olive Martini Guy”

I was at the bar at Gordon Bierch having gotten my beer killing time with some friends before heading to the Columbus Blue Jackets game and some guy pushed up to the bar after me to order a drink. He motioned the bartender over and ordered a “Vodka Martini with THREE olives!”.

• The emphasis was his.

The bartender asked what kind of Vodka he wanted. The man said he did not care, and inquired what the house vodka was, and said it was fine, but, make sure it has three olives!

• He.Did.Not.Care.About.The.Vodka.

Seriously? It is a VODKA Martini, the vodka is first for a reason. An Olive is a garnish. Would you ever order a steak with extra parsley and not stress the cut of the meat, or the amount it was cooked? Sometimes people focus on the one thing that doesn’t matter and completely miss the big picture. People will fixate on a car they want to buy because it has a cool feature and not look at gas mileage, or talk to a mechanic before buying it.

• Side note: Find yourself a great mechanic and run your future car purchases by him. We have one now (too late for my wife’s car) but I will run ANY future car purchase by him and pay him for his time. I would never have known that the Ford Focus’s transmission dies between 60k and 80k in every car he has worked on. Ours died at 38. The Warranty ran out at 36. So, buy the 100k warranty on a Ford Focus.

Not to go on too long, but next time you are faced with a choice take a second to make sure you are focusing on what really matters, and not an olive.

• Watching: StarWars: The Clone Wars
• Listening: Afro Samurai 2: RZA
• Reading: Apathy and Other Small Victories
• Playing: Little Big Planet
• Creating: 1 Page Comic