It's May! Duck! Oh, and a Movie Review
2005-05-02,

Speaking as someone who is most probably the last geek on Earth to not have read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I can say that the movie this weekend was enjoyable. Yes, purists will rail against me, but I'm speaking here on the film itself, not the translation from book form (obviously). The thing that I liked most about the movie was, for once, the acting-- something unheard of in a sci-fi flick these days. It seemed obvious that there was a lot of improv going on between the four heroes of the story, although the natural banter between them made the parts that were more scripted seem more... scripted. Like anytime someone spoke to Marvin the Paranoid Android, they sounded like they wanted to just speed through their lines and get them over with so they could go back to their real acting. It almost seemed like the main actors were fed up with the director spending too much time on the effects coordination and not with the dialogue, so they went off on their own to work things out.

Sam Rockwell is increasingly becoming my hero. He was fantastically over-the-top, even if the two-head thing was a little awkward-looking. The man who played Arthur Dent was pleasantly British (an element which seemed overly lacking throughout). Mos Def was great. And Zooey Deschenel reminded me of a couple of women I've known in life, who expect the extraordinary and take it in stride. (Then again, most women do that to some degree, do they not? Must be all those princess stories they get inundated with as little girls.) Some women walk through life expecting the magic to happen at any moment, that the first paragraph of their 'story' might just be being written right then. Too much to live up to, certainly.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, it's May. Time to sit shivering in dread and wait for this year's Hammer of Doom to fall, should it chose to do so. A year ago at this time, events were clicking into place that would lead to my losing my insurance job. And here, I though I was just getting ready for a musical revue.

Oh, I remembered two more songs with phone numbers. Silly me, I forgot about the whole two-letter beginning of phone numbers thing they used to do back in the day:

• Beechwood 45789 (BE4-5789) - by the Marvelettes; and
• Pennsylvania 65000 (PE6-5000) - the classic by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra

I'm sure there's more like that, but really, how much time does one want to spend on such things? I'm a busy man with headier prospects on my horizon. Anyway, I think this is a practice that should be reinstated, as it is quite simply the bee's knees. And what would our home number's letters be, you ask? How nice of you to inquire. Well, without actually giving you our number, the first two numbers are 72, which gives us the following usable combinations:

• PA;
• RA;
• SA;
• SB (only if I wanted to use Sbarro, which I don't); and
• SC

Lots of options there. PAlooka? PAthogen? PAvlov (which would work with the whole ringing thing)? PAstel? PAthetic?

RAdiation? RAbid? RAthbone? RAmses? RAmses II? RAsh? RAphael?

SAtan? SAvior? SAtire? SAskatchewan? SAmpling? SAlve? SAcrilege?

SCatological? SCorpion? SCarred? SChedule? SCientific? SCabies?

Endless possibilities, my friends. Feel free to contribute your own unique ideas. All the above and contributions will be thrown into a hat and the one drawn from the lot will be featured as our new letters-starting-our-phone-number, at least for a few minutes until the novelty wears off.

-- End Transmission --