My memories of Tim Burton’s inaugural film are two-fold:
1) Pee Wee’s Rube Goldberg-esque wake-up routine
2) the legendary “Pee Wee Dance” which everyone tried to emulate back in the day
I purchased the film on DVD many years ago and tried to watch it a couple of times but I couldn’t ever really get into it. Sitting with JJ though, this is the way to experience beloved things of your youth. It’s like watching something familiar through new eyes.
Of course, JJ got terribly stuck on trying to figure out the Large Marge sequence and kind of missed the subsequent fifteen minutes, but that’s what happens with kids. They ask questions (JJ’s pretty good in a movie theatre, though).
For a film from 1985, it holds up incredibly well. Paul Reuben’s man-child living in a day-glo world that’s a surreal mix of the 1980’s, the 1960’s and the 1950’s has a strangely timeless feel. Pee Wee’s adventure takes him across the country in search of his stolen bike, encountering escaped convicts, bikers, ghost truckers, rodeo bulls, Milton Berle and Godzilla. The film has a wide-eyed innocence to it for the kids, but also a rather wry sense of humour for adults, which was always the intent behind Reuben’s Pee Wee schtick.
JJ and I both enjoyed it on two entirely different levels.
I had lasik surgery done on my eyes in 2005, and it was the best decision I think I’d made in my life up until getting married. It still ranks #2, although I’m sure fatherhood will supplant it. Still, it’s great to not have to deal with glasses and even more not to have to fidget with contacts. I had glasses from grade 6 onwards, and I don’t think I make for good glasses people.
Owning a home leads to nothing but stress and a never-ending to-do list. I don’t regret buying our house but I’m sure wishing I was far more confident and knowledgeable a handyman to keep it in repair. There has been a trickle of water coming from under the washing machine to the floor drain pretty much since we bought the place. I thought it was the washing machine, but yesterday, with all the rain, there was far more water on the floor and far wider spread, that upon further investigation I could see it seeping through the walls in the south-east corner. The rest of the basement walls are bone dry, but there it’s right damp.
Going outside for a look I could see the exactly where the problem was, when the fence was put it, they dug a hole to pour the cement and wound up creating a sink in that area. The ground around there was soft and completely saturated which means I’m going to have to figure out how to build up a grade there that flows the surface water away from the house and won’t wash away the grade. Le sigh.
Okay, if you’re cooking long-grain wild rice, which generally takes about twice as long as white rice, keep an eye on it, because when the moisture’s all gone and it just kinda sits there, cooking to the bottom of the pot, it doesn’t taste so good afterwards.
A CSI/Without A Trace crossover was rebroadcast last night. Like in comic books, it’s fun when TV shows cross over, like Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon, or the X-Files and Simpsons. I’m not a religious watcher of CSI, but with the non-stop Spike repeats and the occasional new broadcast, I’ve seen the majority of the episodes and find it absurd, but entertaining. Without A Trace, however, I’ve never bothered with, and after subjecting myself to the second part this rather unruly, illogical and half-assed crossover I can see why. The CSI side of things was pretty much CSI as usual, only Anthony Lapaglia took center stage. Somehow, even though the story took the show well out of Las Vegas and way out of his jurisdiction, Willaim Petersen’s Gil Grissom found himself shoehorned into Without A Trace land, working in the New York FBI headquarters, and not actually contributing very much, as if the WAT writers didn’t know what to do with him. The WAT supporting cast also get the short shift, though really it’s the “bad guy” getting the spotlight in the second half, and the incessant, kitschy flashbacks were downright painful. In the end, I realized both shows were Bruckheimer productions, making this an incestuous crossover. Fair enough, but it didn’t work.