I went to Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde yesterday.

Eh.

If you’ve seen the first one, then you’ll find that this is such a total re-hash of the original’s jokes that you wonder if they didn’t just take the first movie’s script and massage it a little. And the thing about that is the first one felt sort of fresh and fun; it’s not fresh anymore because it’s a sequel.

Not to mention in the first one I could suspend my disbelief enough to say, “Yeah, okay, maybe she’s a big dork, but she somehow was able to make her way through law school. I’ll buy it.” I’m sure it could never have happened in real life, but it was acceptable in the movie. In this latest adventure, they take the valley girl into Washington DC where she proceeds to throw out every bit of protocol that 200 years of government has worked to establish and somehow, magically, it all seems to work out for her. Representatives who would normally have considered the financial impacts of certain bills and voted the way that would make the economy (and their own pocketbooks) work somehow decide that it’s time to “do the right thing.” Sorry, folks. Welcome to the land of the pork-barrel project. Doing the “right thing” is a gray area, and rarely is it what you and I would consider “right.”

Anyway, all of that pretty much shot my suspended disbelief in the head. I sat there, checking my watch, wondering when they were going to get anywhere or maybe do something funny or original… and it never happened. So, if you’ve seen the first one, cherish it, and maybe consider renting this one on a night you feel like getting drunk.

If you haven’t seen the first one, rent that and call it a day.

Can I say anything positive about it?

Hmmm.

Well, I always like Reese Witherspoon, and her Elle Woods character is reasonably entertaining to watch. She’s fun and quirky, and watching the stuff she and her dog get into is funny.

I just think that next time (and, at this rate, let’s hope there is no next time) they need to start with only the idea of Elle Woods, from scratch, and write from there. Unless you’re Mike Myers, rehashing the same thing is probably not going to work for you.

A while ago I was talking about how I was going to order some Zaino car wax because I had heard some good things about it and it was reasonably affordable.

Well, I placed my order (I did snail-mail, since at the time that’s all they offered, but they just recently put up a web-based ordering system, so next time…). But I thought of a question that I wanted to find out the answer to - they mention on the site that they have applied the polish “in the Arizona sun,” so I started wondering if that was in direct sunlight or what - I mean, you can really mess up your finish if you do that with normal polish, right?

Thus, I emailed the company’s support contact and asked my question.

The president of the company wrote me back and answered. (You can apply it in direct sunlight, but you will use up more product than if you don’t. He recommends against, but it doesn’t mess you up like regular polish/wax will.)

That’s customer service.

I finished reading that damn Tom Clancy book last night. After fighting through 1067 odd pages and reaching the conclusion, I feel pretty cheated. I’m of a mind to write Mr. Clancy and tell him that if he wants me to work that hard to get through a book, he really needs to make the payoff worthwhile. As it is, I’m having a tough time justifying the $6.98 bargain table price on that one.

I was thinking a couple of days ago about friends moving in and out of your life… and no sooner did I say that, then all these people started sending me emails. My man Gerb, he and I are like best buds, I hadn’t heard from him for, like, ever. Got an email from him to say he’s moving into my neighborhood, which is cool because we can get together and hang out. Another friend of mine, Brent, fell off the face of the world about a year or so ago, leaving no contact information at all, and he just dropped me a line. Even Jenn is getting into the mix - she got in contact with her old roommate from a couple of years ago. Jenn hasn’t talked to her since they moved out, so that’s good.

The Fourth of July weekend approaches at an altogether too rapid pace. I’ve got two weeks of training coming up, and I’m not even close to finished with the stuff I need to get done here in the office. I suppose it’ll all be here when I get back.

Friday (the fourth) I’ll be setting up a professional fireworks shoot with my boss (a licensed pyro) and a couple of the guys from my department. That should be fun, and with any luck I’ll actually get to light one or two of them off between taking turns manning the fire extinguishers.

Beyond that, there’s nothing on the schedule, but there are still the standard household maintenance jobs to perform, so before I know it, the weekend’s going to be gone (again). Hopefully I’ll get in a little time to start the new Harry Potter book. I’ve had it sitting here for a while but needed to finish that Tom Clancy bomb before I started a new book. Now’s my chance.

I went to lunch with my friend Liz over at Red Robin and had a nice chat with her (it’d been a loooong time since I’d last seen her) over a Baja Chicken Burger (no tomato).

It was good to see Liz again and hear all the latest that had gone on with her. Plus, she keeps in contact with an old friend of mine, Kristin, who I haven’t seen or talked to in… I can’t even remember how long.

You ever have that feeling where you just miss your friends that you haven’t seen forever? Sometimes I miss Liz and Kristin. I used to see them both every day at work; now we all work in different places and I only see Liz every once in a great while, and Kristin I see never. I guess peoples’ lives and schedules change and you just can’t keep up with everything. It’s a shame.

I did get my movie back from the guy in my department who kept forgetting it. Maybe I was a little hard on him, but I think the general principle still stands. I talked to Liz about it and she seems to agree - Dogs and cats living together… Mass hysteria!

Oh, and I discovered another pet peeve I’ve got - people who shuffle their feet when they walk. Pick up your fucking feet, people!

I’m about 100 pages from the end of The Bear and The Dragon, and let me tell you Tom Clancy fans out there - this is not the book to recommend to a Clancy newbie. It’s been the hardest read I’ve had in a long time, and not because of anything to do with the language. I mean, I like how Clancy pays attention to the political side of battle in his books because it adds a verisimilitude that other war novels don’t have. That said, this one was almost entirely political and I spent more time wondering when the SEAL team was going to show up than I did enjoying the heavy politics and behind-the-scenes.

So, as some of you know, I have a pretty hefty CD and DVD collection at home. What can I say? I’m a media whore.

Anyway, I normally don’t loan these things out because I typically have bad luck getting people to return things, much less return them in the pristine condition that I keep them in. See, when I borrow stuff, I return it within a week because I figure if I’m going to borrow anything I should probably get around to looking at it in a timely fashion and return it in a timely fashion as well.

I went against my better judgment and brought a couple of movies in for some guys in my department to borrow. I figured I would get them all back in a week or thereabouts, pending on the schedules of the guys in question and when they would be able to check these things out. I was even out of town in training the following week (last week), so that’s a good two weeks to get things back to me.

I got all but one of my movies back in my allotted “patience period.”

I asked the guy who didn’t return my movie if I could get it back. “Oh, yeah, I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

Tomorrow came. Where’s my movie? “Oh, I, uh, forgot it at home.” Hmmm. Okay, I guess. Well, it’s Friday, so bring it Monday.

Monday arrived. Where’s my movie? “I was at a friend’s house all weekend.” And how, precisely, does that affect you returning my God damn movie?

And now it’s today. I’ve been told the movie was once again forgotten at home but this time he’s going home at lunch to get it. Here’s hoping.

Where am I going with this? Well, basically, my point is that I guess some people have a certain inherent level of responsibility and some folks don’t. Now, I’m not at all saying this guy is irresponsible, just that some people don’t “forget it at home.” He’s a younger guy, and what I begin to wonder is if all young people today are the same way, where certain levels of responsibility (or respect?) don’t exist (or don’t matter?), whereas my generation has a more inherent sense of such things. Then I wonder whether it isn’t the same way between my parents’ generation and mine - do they think we lack responsibility and/or discipline? Probably so.

And that sort of worries me, because if the trend continues then what I see on the horizon is anarchy rather than salvation. Maybe too much freedom and not enough discipline is not necessarily the best way to bring kids up. Or maybe I’m extrapolating too much from a single isolated case.

Finally, I got a message a bit ago from the guy in charge of YouBored.com, a site where I have entered contests before and won free movie passes. Remember my Malibu incident? Well, they’ve since updated the look, feel, and quality of their site and they seem interested in enhancing that quality further by recruiting yours truly to become a volunteer staff writer. I’m waiting to hear back on the details, but it could be a cool thing. I’ll keep you posted.