Cometh the time, Cometh the Pete

Hi, folks.

Well, I’m back. I wandered off for…what…a week? It wasn’t that long. It also wasn’t, to clear the misconception, me going away so that I could focus on writing tons and tons of words and really pull ahead in the Tea Debacle. Nah. I’m continuing to gleefully compete against two people, I’m having a mountain of fun doing that, and that’s as far as it goes.

No, I went off everything but e-mail (and, very briefly, an IM chat) because I was getting too buried in it. When I get too immersed in AW, I ban. This time, I banned, but found that so much of my attention had already shifted to peoples’ blogs, I enamored with those. So by publically announcing that I wasn’t going to comment, I could shut myself off for awhile, regain some perspective. I don’t have middle gears, something of a life problem with me. I’ve mentioned it before. So I do what I can, when I can, to balance myself out.

December 1st, we’ll be announcing something very cool, here and elsewhere on the net. January 1st will be something very cool that you will all laugh at, and I will not care in the teensiest little bit. Nyah.

…

“You want to come over for dinner, then watch a movie?” A friend asked me tonight, on the phone. I consider for a moment, because I’m busy and my wife just got home, and we’re tired from Thanksgiving* and everything.

“Absolutely,” I say. Because he’s my best friend, I adore him and his fiance**, and there’s very few things better than spending an evening, the four of us. (Five, if you count Zach. All right, four and a half.)

So after a tasty dinner, we settled in and we all watched Reign Over Me. They had seen it. My wife and I hadn’t. I have to say, that might be one of my favorite movies ever. That was a powerfully told story, it was a movie of its time, and was timeless despite of that. And it was a brilliant performance by both Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. That’s a big thing for me to say. Adam Sandler’s comedies never did very much for me (Little Nicky was awesome, though). His best work, comedically, was on Saturday Night Live (remember? It used to be a comedy). Punch Drunk Love was okay, it was trying too hard to be art.

This was great. It was moving and raw and it had a happier ending than I thought it could find. Great, great movie. If you haven’t seen it, see it.

It didn’t have the raw emotional power of The Pursuit of Happyness (which was almost painful and definitely exhausting to watch. And, as a parent, it was terrifying). But it worked, and it stuck with me the rest of the night, and I count that as a success. I wish I’d written it.

…

Nightwish has a new CD out, and it’s really good. This is their first with their new female lead, and she does a great job. Some people say she isn’t as good as the last lead singer whose name I also cannot pronounce (they are a Scandinavian band. Very good stuff. It’s not Once, which was one of the coolest CDs ever, but it’s a good CD anyway.

And I’m off to bed. Chow.

* Thanksgiving was great. We cooked, and we cooked all sorts of stuff. There was a serious lot of food for three people (myself, my wife, my sister). We got very sick from eating too much. Today, I rose and ate too much again. It was wonderful.

** My friend and his fiance are getting married, obviously. “Are you considering a date yet?” I asked him, one day. “Yeah, we’re planning for September 13th right now.” He says to me. I smirk and laugh and reply, “That’s a terrific day to get married, in my experience.”

And then I explained to him, as I am explaining to you, that September 13th…is our wedding anniversary. He didn’t know that. So this coming September, on my fifth wedding anniversary (holycrap!), I’ll be participating in some capacity in his wedding. And because we’re friends, I’m going to do two things for him I don’t otherwise do very often: 1) Wear a suit. 2) Shave.

NOW, to bed.