Ah, another day and another 500 miles of driving with little sleep. As usual, I only have myself to blame. I had a load that could pick up later this morning, but Epes called early yesterday evening and told me that the customer had pushed out my load by a day. So they put me on this load, which I was told was already ready.

Well, I could have gone to bed early and got some decent sleep. I also could have left last night and made an early pick-up and had plenty of time on the way to my final to get some sleep. But why break tradition and do anything that makes sense?

I thought I'd lay down about 20:00 but watched Freddy vs. Jason. Then I figured on 21:00, but wound up watching K-Pax. Fine. 23:00, then. But Mara came in during the last twenty minutes of K-Pax and then we watched the new Doctor Who together.

So we went to bed just after midnight and I got up about 04:00. I would feel so much better now if I had gone to bed at 20:00. But I guess I just hated to give up any more home-time than I just had to. I didn't get home until Saturday afternoon. Then I had to go up to Greensboro to deliver (which I put off until midnight. I delivered around 02:00 yesterday morning and was home and in bed by 04:00. So I haven't really felt like I've had any home-time this week. I think that's the reason I put off leaving as long as I could.

Okay, I'm babbling. I'm mostly keeping my mind busy until I get to the shipper. The sun is trying to come up. Once it does I'll be alright for awhile. Right now I'm really sleepy. Writing this helps.

Okay. So. How about some reviews?


Jason X sucked. This movie was so bad that it made the original Friday the 13th movies seem like art by comparison. Lexa Doig from Stargate SG-1 and Andromeda, who is quite a good actress, was very out of place among the other actors, who were almost all achingly bad. I realize that these kinds of movies are purely for entertainment, much like an amusement park ride. But I found myself laughing at the movie so often (actually complaining at one point because Jason was getting lazy in the way he was killing people, dispatching too many victims by smashing their heads against walls) that I wondered if this movie was patented Hollywood High Concept and was approached by the director as a parody not just of the slasher genre but of the Friday the 13th series itself. I don't expect much of movies like this. I know that they're just supposed to be fun. This movie was not fun.

Freddy vs. Jason: I got a little carried away writing down my opinions of Jason X. That shouldn't be a problem here. Freddy vs. Jason was exactly what it was supposed to be. Campy, well-made fun. It's not high art, but it seemed to respect the genre without taking it too seriously, and it never talked down to its audience. Mara said that the premise behind Freddy vs. Jason was just silly. But I pointed out that it was no sillier than the premise behind the two main characters. But I concede that while the first movie in each series (Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street) were scary in their own rights (at least in their time), this movie felt like ritualized combat. It was this generation's Frankenstein vs. The Wolfman. Just as the movie Frankenstein is not remembered for the terrible Frankenstein movies that followed (which were just campy fun intended to cash in on a brand name), neither Freddy nor Jason will be remembered because of this movie, but in spite of it. As critical as that sounds, I had fun.

K-Pax: I understand why this movie didn't do better at the box office. It was a bit cerebral for the masses. Long story short, the central character claims to be an alien from the planet K-Pax. Naturally this leads him to be in a mental institution where he has some other-wordly influence on the other patients and exhibits some apparently inhuman abilities, such as being able to see ultraviolet and being aware of specifics concerning a distant star where he claims his home planet, K-Pax, is located. Dude is scheduled to return to K-Pax on a certain date, and so his therapist rushes to find out who he is first, fearing for Dude's mental stability when the date comes and goes and he is still on Earth and human. I won't spoil the movie by revealing too much, but I will say that the movie never really answers the question as to whether or not Dude was an alien. It ties up a lot of loose ends, but leaves enough of them dangling to allow the viewer to come to his or her conclusion. In summation, I enjoyed this movie. It's always fun to watch Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges is, as always, solid in his role. I don't don't know if I enjoyed this movie enough to want to own it on DVD. But I really would like Mara to see it. At the moment I an keenly aware that I have far worse movies than K-Pax in my DVD collection.