The grocery store had pork tenderloin on sale the other day, so I bought two and decided to try Alton Brown's recipe for .Pork Wellington. Basically, you stuff a pork tenderloin with dried apples, wrap it in prosciutto, wrap that in puff pastry, and bake until delicious. And it was delicious, but I thought I could do something better with a savory rather than sweet filling.

So, I took some onions and some mushrooms and sauteed them down. Then, in my bad-ass cast-iron skillet, I fried up some D & G bacon from the Farmer's Market. While that was cooking, I sliced the tenderloin and stuffed it with the onions and mushrooms. I took the bacon out of the skillet and laid the pieces parallel to each other on my cutting board. While the bacon was still pliable, I used it to wrap the tenderloin. Then I wrapped all of that in the puff pastry and stuck it in the oven.

Meanwhile, I threw some Farmer's Market potatoes into the skillet with the bacon fat, added salt, pepper, rosemary salt, fresh rosemary, and some ancho chili powder from Penzey's Spices. The potatoes looked fan-fucking-tastic. But don't take my word for it:

When the pork was done, I let it rest for a few minutes, then served it on the cutting board with the potatoes:

I sliced it open and, goddamn, that shit was delicious:

Chelsadilla and I both preferred my version to Alton Brown's, although his was really good, too. But the main part was that I developed a little bit more confidence in my cooking abilities. I can't wait to see what I do next.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Fun Shit I've Done , Reviews

I remember this one time in high school. Me and some friends were in my friend's car. My friend's brother was also there. He was listening to HIStory on his Walkman. I made fun of him for it. I made fun of him for it because I was weak and stupid and because I was more concerned with being perceived as cool than I was with being honest. Because, although I railed against Michael Jackson, the truth was that I loved Michael Jackson.

I remember being ten years old and buying Dangerous on tape. It was the first album I remember buying (though not the first CD--that was Green Day's Dookie). I remember listening to all of the songs and being blown away, but also feeling like it was vaguely too adult for me. Still, I loved it.

After that, I started listening to all his older stuff. Thriller and Bad were friggin' mind-blowing. It was like every song on those albums was a perfect little piece of infectious earwormory. I loved the spoken-word part in "Thriller," the innuendo of "Dirty Diana," and the energy of "Smooth Criminal." And I didn't mind the preachiness of "Man in the Mirror" one bit. In fact, that remains one of my favorite songs.

I listened to Michael Jackson before I listened to rock music. I loved Michael Jackson long before I had any idea who Billy Corgan or Kurt Cobain were. Michael Jackson was the first musical figure outside of the Smurfs or the Chipmunks that I listened to over and over again. My appreciation for whatever sort of music I listen to now starts, on some level, with Michael Jackson.

The man was probably crazy, and he may have been a horrible sexual deviant, but he was undeniably an amazing singer and an unparalleled performer.

I might be in the minority, but I, for one, think that the musical world has suffered a loss. And I'm sorry that we won't get to see what the Moonwalker had in store for us in the future.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Music Reviews , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

I've known for a while now that one of my favorite books, Youth in Revolt (if you haven't read it, go do that now--it's fucking funny), is getting made into a movie. This knowledge fills me with an difficult to understand mix of emotions.

On the one hand, I'm excited to see these characters and scenarios on the big screen. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the movie probably won't be as good as the book. Out of all of the numerous adaptations I've seen, the only movies that are anywhere near as good as their source material are the Lord of the Rings movies. So while I guess it's possible to really hit all the right notes with an adaptation, it's just so unlikely.

I was also disconcerted when I learned that Michael Cera will be playing Nick Twisp. Cera would have been good for the role seven years ago, but now I think he's just too friggin' old: he's twenty-one and Nick is fourteen. But also, I guess I never pictured Nick as a George Michael Bluth type. Nick's an awkward teenage nerd, but he's more deranged, outgoing, and aggressive than I've ever seen Cera be.

And now there's a poster for the movie:

I don't know. What do you guys think? It leaves me feeling very "meh."

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Book Reviews , Existential Nonsense , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

Perhaps I should have included South Carolina on my poll of ridiculous state governments. I woke up this morning to a headline telling me that their governor was missing. "Missing," I thought, "Like some stranger offered him candy and now police are combing the neighborhood looking for clues?"

How the fuck does a governor go missing, exactly? The real story is much lamer than you might think. It turns out Mark Sanford wasn't abducted by aliens or terrorists or anything. No, instead he went for a long walk after getting his ass handed to him by his state's legislature. And it turns out that he didn't tell anyone he was going. Not his wife or his children (even though he was gone over Father's Day), or, you know, anyone in the state government he's responsible for running. His cell phone apparently went straight to voicemail. And now his office is saying that they knew he'd be checking in infrequently for a few days.

Let's think about this for a second. Let's say I'm still an undergrad or law student and I need to miss a few days of school for whatever reason. The first thing I'd do is e-mail my professors and let them know, asking them to send me any homework we're going to have to do over that period of time. I'd tell my friends I was gonna miss, and I'd ask them to e-mail me their notes.

Let's say I'm the CEO of a major corporation and some personal emergency requires that I leave the city where my company is headquartered. I'd ask my secretary to clear my calendar, tell her where I was going to be, and ask that she forward urgent matters to my Blackberry.

Let's say I'm me, a criminal-defense attorney in private practice, and I have to fly to California for a few days to deal with something important. The reality is that I probably wouldn't be able to do it, but in order to even think about it, I'd have to spend hours on the phone with various courts and I'd have to strike up some deal with my partner in order to have him cover whatever court dates I couldn't reschedule.

In other words, very few people live lives where they can simply disappear for a few days. And it looks like jobs with increased responsibilities are generally those where it is harder to disappear. So one would think that the governor of a state has a job where he can't just disappear. But apparently, in South Carolina, that's cool. The governor can disengage from the entire world whenever he needs a few days to recharge, get away from it all, take his mind off all of those meddlesome governing duties, and just really concentrate on himself. Never mind that he's the only person able to act in certain situations, that being unavailable but alive renders the authority of his others in the government questionable at best, and that it's just plain strange to leave your family on a holiday weekend. The guy really needed to get away, it seems.

But here's what I think'll be really interesting: what's the fallout from this whole thing going to be? I'm envisioning protesters in Columbia (which is apparently the capital of South Carolina) holding up giant milk cartons with the governor's face on the side. Honestly, if that happens, I'm going to root for more governors to randomly disappear.

Update:
I saw this morning--and then Santi pointed it out to me--that Sanford wasn't on the Appalachian Trial as had been originally reported. In fact, he wasn't even in the country. Or on this continent. No, instead he headed to South America! Argentina, specifically. With no security and apparently without telling his office where he was actually going.

Wait a minute. Argentina? According to The Superficial, Bill Clinton was in Argentina recently. And he was busy hanging out with strippers.

Coincidence?

Second update:
Are you fucking kidding me? He was banging his Argentinian mistress and he couldn't come up with a better cover story than "I was hiking. Umm . . . . I needed some time to recharge . . . . I was hiking to recharge. Except that I was in Argentina. I was hiking in Argentina? I was driving in Argentina. Yes, that's right!" I'm honestly surprised that his statement didn't include the phrase "Yeah, that's the ticket!"

And read the excerpts of the e-mails--they're like the love poetry of an over-achieving sophomore nerd. Take this passage:

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light--but hey, that would be going into sexual details . . . .

Fucking seriously? "Two magnificent parts of yourself"?

This guy deserves everything he's about to get if for no other reason than that he's a fucking idiot. Wow.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit , Political Rants , Rants on the News

I love t-shirts. They're comfortable and versatile and, best of all, they give you a great platform from which to express your love of a band or your irreverent sense of humor. In high school, I had enough Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts to last for two weeks without repeats. I also had several shirts from Hot Topic because, hey, Hot Topic was awesome when i was thirteen. Fucking deal with it.

But the problem is that most t-shirts are sort of boring or just far too cliche for people to really wear. For example, the first time I saw a "Trust me, I'm a lawyer" shirt in the law school, I thought, "Ha, that's sorta funny." But then when everyone had them, they started to be really annoying. This is why I love Woot Shirts.

They have a new design every day, and they only cost $10. The shirts are designed by members of the Woot Shirt community, so the designs are extremely varied, even though they tend heavily towards varying iterations of geek. But still, the people who design these things are talented.

Shirts are only available for $10 for one day. After that, the twenty-five most popular ones are available for $15, until they drop off of the top twenty-five (i.e., the reckoning), at which time they become completely unavailable. There's a different design competition--called a derby--each week, with the top three most popular designs being the Woot Shirts for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Past derbies include steam punk, bbq, and something about the literal representation of expressions.

Some of these shirts are really, really awesome. As a bit of a grammar dork, I really liked "The Quick Brown Fox." I think that "The Impostor" is really cute. I'm not sure which one is my favorite, though: my time-travel geek side prefers "It Came Out of Nowhere," but the side of me that likes cute penguins and steampunk prefers "The Aviator." So I did the only reasonable thing: I bought them both.

In fact, that's the only problem with the Woot Shirts: they're really fucking addictive. At this rate, I'll have enough Woot Shirts to last me a year without doing laundry. Which, I guess, wouldn't be an altogether bad thing.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Reviews , The Smashing Pumpkins , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

I have two cats. The oldest one, Smash, is a pretty standard cat. He's playful and he requires constant attention. He chases my ceiling fan and meows. He loves cuddling and being pet.

The younger cat, Lily, is another story. She's the most bizarre cat I think I've ever met. For starters, she never meows. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard her do a straight meow. That isn't to say that she doesn't make sounds. She barks and grunts and whimpers. But no meows.

She also hates to be touched. She'll come up to you and make some cute little whimpering noises, but then recoil the second reach out to nuzzle her behind her ear. If you manage to pin her down and rub her belly, she'll grunt and claw at you. But then, sometimes, I'll be sitting at my desk and she'll put her front paws up on my thigh and stare at me with her giant eyes. And I'll reach out and she'll let me pet her.

Lily thinks that she can climb the walls. If something on the ceiling catcher her fancy, she'll do her best to run right up to it. Or jump--this last weekend, I swear she jumped four feet straight up.

She hates being picked up and, like I said, he doesn't really like being petted. But every morning when I'm getting dressed, she'll follow me around and play with my feet and pant legs when I'm putting on my pants. And she'll usually follow people around, making sure to put her body right where a foot is about to be. One day I'm going to fall though my sliding-glass door because I was trying to avoid stepping on her.

Oh, and she absolutely likes chelsadilla more than she likes me. That's just not cool.

Of all the pets I've had, I think that Lily probably has the most distinctive personality. She's cute and independent and, when she's affectionate, she's really adorable. If I had to choose only one of my cats for some reason, I'd choose Smash. But Lily adds a lot to the household, and I'm glad I got her.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Things I'm Irrationally Attached To

My friend Mr. X graduated from college one year ahead of me, by which I mean that he rushed through the subject matter in four years while I took an extra year to really let things soak in.

Anyway. Mr. X went off to grad school and came back talking about how much he hated undergrads and how annoying they were. I, still being an undergrad, thought he was crazy and out of line. Then someone reminded me that it was my turn in beer pong, so I screamed at the top of my lungs and chugged a beer while haphazardly tossing my ping-pong ball towards the far end of the table.

Within seconds of arriving in Madison, I thought to myself, "Jesus, undergrads are fucking worthless." I realized that I had sold myself out, but I didn't even really pretend to care. Not only was I older than the undergrads, I was better than them. In every way. Or maybe not.

But undergrads really do look like they're twelve years old. They are more self-centered, more self-involved, and more filled with a sense of entitlement than should be allowed. And they're loud and obnoxious to be in bars with. I'm speaking generally, of course. Some are pretty amazingly mature people. I'm looking at you, The Reeg. But for the most part, not so much.

The thing about it is that I'm sure I was just as bad when I was twenty-two. In fact, I know I was much, much worse. But it's still strange to see some kid drunk out of his mind on game day with his shirt covered in his own vomit and think about how that guy will probably be a doctor or lawyer or engineer or something.

And the other thing is that I sometimes find myself being extremely jealous of the undergrads. Sometimes I'll be walking towards my car downtown and pass one of their house parties. There'll be a beer-pong table set up on the porch, raucous music coming from inside (every now and then something like Outkast's "Hey Ya!" will come on--an oldie for them), and red plastic cups strewn everywhere. And you know that somewhere in that house, there's some SERIOUS, IMPORTANT conversation going on and a Scarface poster hung slightly off-level. And a little part of me is extremely jealous and nostalgic.

Being an undergrad forever would be both a great reward and a terrible punishment, I think.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

So the vast majority of you agree with me--not to mention reason and good sense--that "Gangsta's Paradise" is Coolio's best song. Some of you voted for "Fantastic Voyage," which I guess is respectable. One of you voted for some other song, which frankly makes no sense to me. I think this should lay our previous disagreement to rest, Mr. Vice.

In any event, the new poll also got its impetus from a conversation I was having with a friend. Morenononsense and I were discussing various state governments, and I asserted that New York's is clearly the most ridiculous. He pointed out that Illinois and California were pretty fucked up, too. But I still think that New York's takes the cake. Here's a brief summary of the why each of these states is up for consideration:

New York

Parliamentary tactics stall all business for a week after a coup that involved, in one way or another, all of the following: a billionaire power broker who is not a member of the senate; two state senators--one accused of slashing his girlfriend's face with a bottle, the other accused of taking illegal campaign contributions--who defected from their party on the grounds that it wasn't being aggressive enough about seeking ethics reform; a locked door; a literal search for a lost key; ridiculously parliamentary tactics; a complete disregard for the actual functioning of the state government.

California

A recall election featuring a porn star, a dwarf, and about 90 percent of the state's population which lead to the election of an Austrian former actor and Mr. Universe as governor wasn't bad enough. Now the state's facing a nearly $25 billion budget shortfall and could literally run out of money in the next few weeks if they don't figure something out.

Illinois

Rod "LEGO minifig" Blagojevich.

My vote goes to New York. The shit that's going on there is, in my opinion, the most ridiculous nonsense that's happened in a state government in my life time. I'm impressed that the New York State Senate is able to be that incompetent and petty. Just wow.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit , Polls

For the most part, being an adult is going alright so far. I guess it comes with more responsibilities and the consequences of fucking up are probably greater, but the tradeoffs from childhood are probably worth it. Independence, self-determination, fulfillment: these are good things. I mean, yeah, I can't get totally wasted every weekend, but I don't really want to. And sometimes I miss blowing off responsibilities to do something more fun, but I get a real sense of satisfaction from my work, so it's not that bad. All in all, I definitely prefer being an adult to being a pseudo-adult or student.

Having said that, there is one area in which being a college or grad student is infinitely superior to being a working adult: the whole wake-up time thing. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I woke up before 7am in law school on one hand. Now, I probably wake up at 6:45 three or four days a week. And you know what the strangest part of it is? I don't even mind it that much. I wake up and I hate my life for a second or two, and then I get out of bed and do what I have to do. And I'm ready to think and work and advocate by, I don't know, 8am.

One of the judges I frequently appear before likes to tell stories about how he's usually up at 3:30am, working in his garden or whatever else. I used to think he was exaggerating or outright lying. But now I'm not so sure. Now it seems like the extremely early-morning hours might be an excellent chance to be productive.

Jesus, I'm old.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Funny Shit

I went to the bank the other day to deposit a check. I had seen a lot of ads and stuff for these new ATMs where you don't have to put your deposit in an envelope. Cool. So, assuming that this was the sort of ATM I was dealing with, I started my transaction without first putting my check in an envelope. Of course, I was completely thwarted by the ATM, which was not prepared to take my naked check. So my transaction timed out, I put the check in an envelope, and I started the whole thing again. This time, I was successful.

I came home and checked my balance. I saw that there was a credit for the amount of the check, a debit for the amount of the check, and another credit for the amount of the check. Though it didn't make any sense that it would work this way, I understood what it meant. But then I saw that there was a discrepancy between my "present balance" and my "available balance." Specifically, the discrepancy was in the amount of $291.00. That was not the amount of my deposited check. I quickly checked my "pending" transactions to see if they added up to $291.00, thereby explaining the difference. They did not.

I looked up the number for my local branches. I found the one for the branch I usually go to but, realizing that things might get ugly, I called another branch. I explained the situation to the woman that answered and asked if she or someone there might be able to explain the discrepancy to me. She said "Well, have you recently made a deposit?"
"Yes," I told her.
"That's probably it," she said.
"Oh yeah? But my deposit wasn't for $291."
"Oh right, I see that. Well, sometimes a percentage of the check is made available immediately, and then the rest becomes available after the check clears."
"That makes sense, except $291 isn't a round percentage of my deposit. It's not like it's 5 percent or 10 percent, you know?"
"Yeah, I see that. Well, then it must be the pending transactions."
"Yeah, but those don't add up to $291."
"It looks like one of these was a restaurant. Did you write a tip on top of the total?"
"Yes, but it still doesn't add up to $291."
"Huh. Let me get someone else--I don't usually deal with these sorts of situations."

So she got someone else. I could hear her talking to him in the background. They kept trying to come up with an answer but, eventually, they told me that they had no idea and that I should call the 800 number. I thanked them sincerely--they were polite and they tried to answer my question, even though they failed--and dialed the 800 number.

Things got sort of ugly at that point.

The woman I got was immediately confrontational. I calmly explained my problem. She said something like "Well, sometimes available and present balances are different. Just wait for things to clear." I told her that I understood that they're sometimes different, but that I would nonetheless appreciate it if she could explain to me why the difference between my two accounts made no sense. She refused to admit that there was a problem.
"Well, you recognize that there's a difference between the two balances?," I asked.
"Yeah, I see that."
"And what is that difference?"
"I don't know, sir, I'm not your bookkeeper."
"Ok, but you can subtract the two numbers, right?"
"I don't have a calculator, sir."
"I do. The difference is $291."
"Ok. So what's the problem, sir?"
"No one has been able to explain to me why that's the difference between the two balances."

Then she walked me through my recent transactions, having me subtract those transactions from my last known balance. We arrived at the larger of the two balances, which I knew to be correct. She seemed very satisfied with herself. But she had nothing to say when I asked her why the two balances were showing up as completely different. She put me on hold.

Eventually, she came back and gave me a little bit of an answer. When you deposit a check, it is apparently my bank's practice to make $100 instantly available. Since I made two deposits, I was automatically credited $200, even though the first deposit was immediately voided. The "present balance" was the amount of money I would have after the check cleared. The "available balance" was the my previous balance plus these two automatic credits. Again, the woman seemed pleased with herself. Then I pointed out that her explanation explained a large portion of the discrepancy between my balances, but still left a $9 difference unexplained. She literally said "Well, I know you're not going to go back and forth with me over $9." This set me off.

I told the woman that all of my money was in her bank--both my personal and business accounts. I told her that, while I was sure things would get sorted out eventually, I found it disturbing that neither she nor anyone else in her organization was able to give me a clear, concise explanation for the discrepancies in my balances created by their accounting practices. I told her that the discrepancy now might be $9, but that I had no reason to believe that it wouldn't be $900 in the future. She put me on hold again.

Eventually, she came back and told me that the extra $9 was a "courtesy" in case I used ATMs from banks other than mine. I didn't even know what that meant, but I accepted her explanation because I was sick of the conversation and I thin chelsadilla was sick of listening to it. So I asked her what my balances would be when all of these transactions fully posted. She said they would be "the same." When I pressed her as to which would be the same, she said both. Then she corrected herself and said the higher balance was correct. Then I hung up on her.

Am I the only one who thinks it's disturbing when a bank can't give a clear explanation for how they arrived at a given balance? Fuck, I hate banks.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry

When I'm in California visiting my parents, it's not so much of a shock to see ridiculously expensive cars driving around. You see Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys on LA roads fairly frequently. Still, I think I saw more fancy cars per capita in Miami.

The point is, though, that those sorts of cars don't show up in Madison very often. I mean, let's be honest: if you were worth as much as you'd have to be worth to spend that much money on a car, how much time you spend in little Madison, Wisconsin. So yesterday was kind of surprising.

Chelsadilla and I met a bunch of people down at the square for the farmer's market. We parked at the ramp by the downtown Great Dane and, as we were crossing Doty, I realized that there was a fucking Bentley sitting right there, parked at a meter on the street. Chesadilla immediately noticed that the meter was expired, which we thought was funny. I don't know what model this thing was, but it was clearly a fucking Bentley.

Who does that? Who a) buys a Bentley, b) drives it downtown on a rainy day, c) parks it on the street, on the corner, with the front end way out in the road just begging for someone taking the turn too tightly to hit it, and d) doesn't put enough money in the meter? What kind of a human being is that? The mind baffles.

Anyway, later in the day, we met up with some people to watch The Hangover--a movie I can whole-heartedly recommend, by the way. When we were leaving the theatre, I saw a very sick-looking car. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was yet another Bentley. A silver one that looked like it was breaking the sound barrier just sitting there. Upon later research, I discovered that this was a 2005 Bentley Continental GT.

It was kinda funny to see two of the most expensive cars I've ever seen on the same day and at completely random places. I sort of wonder who it was that owned those cars. I mean, these cars cost more than the average house--who in Madison is that rich?

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense

We went and saw Up this weekend. It was really good, but surprisingly adult oriented. It was definitely the most adult Pixar movie I've seen, which I guess isn't too surprising considering that it's rated PG. There are spoilers in this review.

You sort of know that this is going to be a fairly grown-up movie right away. It starts by introducing a young Carl Frederickson. He's a cute little kid who enjoys watching newsreel footage of adventurer Charles Muntz, who's off in South America trying to clear his name or something. Carl immediately meets Ellie, a little girl who shares his interests. A montage of their lives quickly follows: they're friends, they get older, the date, the get married. At that point, I realized where this was heading: the movie's about an old man, not an old man and his wife. They were gonna fucking kill his wife!

The montage continues, and it's really very touching. The couple keeps trying to save money to head down to South America, but they keep having to spend their money on other things. Then Ellie has a miscarriage. Or they find out that she's infertile. Something. In any event, we see them--after Ellie silently makes it clear that she wants lots of kids--at a fertility doctor of some sort, and Ellie's crying. Carl makes her feel better, and the montage continues. Carl buys tickets to South America, and then Ellie dies. This is about ten minutes into the movie, and you're already invested in Carl. It's really effective and touching, I thought.

What follows is what you see in the trailers: Carl decides to head to South America by tying a million balloons to his house in order to set it aloft. He's joined, unexpectedly, by a little scout guy named Russell. We eventually learn that Russell's parents are divorced, that his dad is seeing another woman, and that Russell misses his dad, who's doing a poor job of staying involved in his son's life.

The South American portion of the movie is pretty satisfying. There are big, colorful characters and loud, exciting chase scenes, but there are also quieter moments that are really very well done. The movie goes in a direction I didn't expect--Carl and Russell have to save an endangered female bird named Kevin from Charles Muntz--but it was a lot of fun, anyway. And all the while, Carl and Russell are tethered to Carl's floating--but increasingly less buoyant--house. The man is literally dragging his entire life around.

There's eventually a conflict between Carl and Russell: Carl wants to get his house to its destination but Russell wants to abandon that mission in order to save Kevin. Russell unties several of the balloons on the house and goes flying off on his own. Carl realizes that he's been being an idiot and that he has to go after him, but the only way to do so is in his house, which now doesn't have enough balloons to keep floating. So he goes into the house and throws everything that isn't bolted down out of it. He's literally throwing his old life away.

As a metaphor, it's a little heavy-handed, but as a set up for a fun climax, it's perfect. Carl and Russell--with the help of Dug, a talking dog--face off against Charles Muntz and his pack of talking dogs in an attempt to save the giant, colorful Kevin, who just wants to get back to her children. The whole thing is exciting and fun, but the end is also surprising: Charles Muntz dies by plummeting thousands of feet to his death. I didn't see that coming: a villain in a Disney movie actually dying, and in a rather painful and terrible way.

Anyway, the movie rocks and I would recommend it. Also, seeing it in 3D is the way to go.

The other thing I wanted to point out was that after seeing the movie, I checked it out on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 98 percent freshness rating. That made me wonder what kind of reviewers gave it a negative review and what those people had to say, so I started reading one. I was about two sentences in before I got extremely outraged, and then I realized why: the author of this review was none other than my old friend Armond White. Here's what he has to say about the montage I liked so much:

Even the montage showing Carl's marriage to childhood sweetheart Ellie (their wedding, companionship, childlessness, then Ellie's illness and death), is over-sentimentalized.This silent interlude (which first seems to stretch the genre into seriousness) is no more daring than the utterly conventional Wall-E: It concludes with Carl, alone, holding a blue balloon at Ellie's funeral. Sheesh.

This is a montage in which we come to genuinely care about a character before we see her go through a good amount of pain and then die, having failed to achieve one of her greatest dreams. In a children's movie. How is that not daring.

But any credibility that Mr. White might have had is thrown away when he refers to Wall-E--a robot love story that is essentially silent for almost half of its run-time and whose main character cannot speak more than a few syllables--"utterly conventional."

What a fucking tool.

Posted by Ismael Tapia II at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)| Filed under Existential Nonsense , Movie Reviews , Rants About Things That Make Me Irrationally Angry