Monday, Monday

It took me until Sunday to get to the IMAX theatre in the city to see The Dark Knight.  It wasn't perfect, but it was plenty good enough to make you not care.  It's like they're saying: it's not so much a superhero franchise movie as it's a movie unto itself.  

 It's like Heat or The Usual Suspects. On the edge of my seat the whole time.  

   Ruined it a bit for myself by saying "Now they're going to wreck the Batmobile.  Now they're going to wreck the Lamborghini .  Now they're going to kill the girl.  Now they're going to wreck the helicopter." and so on.  

  The only place that the CGI was out-of-place and poorly done was the helicopter crashing, which was videogamey bad (with the two SWAT team guys twice saying "This is NOT good!" which, ironically, was the only dialogue in the movie which WAS not good.  It was not good to have them dropping in Speed-grade dialogue into a movie with so many quotable lines.  If I were the commanding officer of some SWAT guys who said "This is NOT good" when things started going wrong, I'd slap them and tell them to learn to deal with crisis, as this is their job.) 

   Oh, and Two-face's scarred face wasn't scary, burn-victim messed up like it could have been.  The Joker's face was disturbing, but Two-face's was cartoonish and "stuck on with a computer" looking.  Still, didn't matter. 

   Batmanuel from The Tick was the mayor.  Mickey from  The Equalizer was a cop.  The Scarecrow showed up twice in unimportant roles which tied this movie to the other one without getting bogged down in so doing.  There was never a moment when the Scarecrow, the Joker and Two-face stood shoulder to shoulder and took on Batman.   

   So, I enjoyed the full-on well-written, giant-screen, superloud speakers glory of it.  Heath Ledger as The Joker was so mesmerizing that Batman and the rest looked boring when he was onscreen and you wanted him back when he was off. 

    I went out to my car, and managed to hook back up some wires Dad unhooked from my engine, without using a single tool, nor removing the stuff that was in the way.  I just squirmed my hands in around the wires, pipes and hot metal bits and got it back together.  Then I bought lots of groceries. 

   Had a long conversation with M__ on the phone because his wife was supposed to call me earlier, and did, but my cat had managed to tear the phone wiring out of the socket and I didn't notice until she'd gone to bed, but he was awake. I had been researching "Nice Guy Syndrome" online, as it's been suggested I suffer from it.  It turns out a lot of people mean a lot of things by it.  I'm not a nice guy in the sense of being scared of conflict, and addicted to pleasing and placating everyone.  I'm not like that at all.  I am a "nice guy" in not going after what I want, being timid about that kind of thing, and being willing to do anything for anyone, including listening endlessly to the complaints of women who will never date me, about the guys they ARE dating.  I approach women with the "nice guy" problem in full bloom, but the rest of my life is less like that.  Nice guys make unspoken contracts with themselves such as "I'll let her not call me back when she said she would three times, and then I'll not phone her at all for two weeks" and the whole time the woman is unaware, and doesn't feel the "punishment" or anger of the guy, as he's keeping it to himself too much.   

   Today I talked online to various people about various things, did laundry and made another crockpot of chicken gumbo, trying for less smoky, and putting celery in, and a dash of wine.  It worked out pretty well.  I did dishes, cleaned the cat's litter box out entirely and tidied a bit.  I also watched miscellaneous things I'd downloaded.  Then I proofed the first batch of yearbook pages they sent me.   Tomorrow I am supposed to drop my car to be looked at by a mechanic, and will probably take some gumbo for my family to eat, and get dropped off back here by someone.