Catch up...

Alright, I have a bunch of stuff and there's not a lot of time to dilly-dally.


First, Tammy Faye died. I'm sure most of you know this. I can still see her and her husband sobbing "I have sinned" after it was found they were embezelling tons of cash. Her bio is here. I don't really care about this, but it seemed pop culture worthy.

Second, I saw Transformers last night. Oh my God did I love this movie. Some might not remember the older Transformers movie, which my friend Steve showed me. That was good. This is better. The characters were great. John Turturro and Bernie Mac were perfect in parts that didn't eclipse the movie. Also, in a world of CGI and unbelievable action scenes, most people aren't that impressed. I was throughout this entire movie. Very well done melding of CGA and real life action.

I didn't like the fact that this movie, just like the 2nd Matrix was a very long GM commercial, but I guess the sponsors needed to get their bucks worth somehow.

My favorite reason for loving this movie was that sitting in a crowded theater in Burlington, MA surrounded by families and their kids, I felt a kinship with this movie. When Optimus Prime growls "Autobots, roll out," I had this big grin on my face. I watched the cartoon and played with the giant clunky plastic toys, which any normal child will tell you was 10 times cooler than the lame Go-bots. And so there was a great joy in seeing my childhood brought to life, and I secretly loved that I got it and most of these kids just thought this was a cool movie.

Finally today, I am almost all packed for my trip down to Paraguay. I am excited. However, I need to travel through Brazil, which has not been scoring points on aviation safety recently. First there was this. Then there was this last week, which I posted about earlier. And finally this morning, the radar across the country went dead with planes in the air thanks to a short circuit. And the radar snafu happened after Reuters wrote their little summary entitled Brazil's Deepening Aviation Crisis.

Awesome. But the way I look at it, if I can survive Harlem and a few summers of the Rucker, then landing in the Brazilian rainforest is nothing. I hope to post from down there. Don't know about any photos, but I'll at least write a little bit. If I miss you all and need a little America, a place just opened to help with that.