I had said a couple of reviews back that I don’t normally watch the big budget special effects movies…now I remember why.  I rented this one based on a friend telling me it was the best movie ever!!  Well, it certainly had lots of explosions and action.  It gave my surround sound system a good workout and that was fun for a while, but it quickly got repetitive and silly and without any story it just seemed like one large commercial for a toy.  First off, who would imprint a map onto a pair of glasses that were already cracked and could easily be broken.  I know I know…don’t think about it, just enjoy it.  Well, I can’t, sorry.  2 stars for a bit of fun that went on way too long.  I’m not going to bother with a best line either…too much work to find the dialog between the explosions.

That’s about all of a review this film deserves.  For mindless shooting and explosions, it’s the best movie ever!!

I’m not a big fan of musicals nor was I ever a big fan of The Beatles, but when I saw that Julie Taymor had directed this movie, I decided I needed to see it.  Taymor is probably best known for her work on the stage production of The Lion King, but I remember her from her work on the movie Titus.  I saw that movie many years ago and I didn’t necessarily like it, but what stuck with me were the visuals.  Some of the images from that movie still bother me.  The scene where Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, has had her hands cut off and tongue cut out is still frightening.  What should I expect, it’s a story based on Shakespeare’s play Titus Andronicus, but it’s the way in which she presented the story that was memorable.

But this post isn’t about Titus, it’s about Across the Universe, so on to the review…

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Now that I’m back and I can sync up my iPod, I’ve been catching up on my podcasts and I ran across this TED Talk.  I had heard of this guy, A.J. Jacobs, but didn’t follow up on him back then.  Leave it to TED to deliver him to my iPod.  If you’re not familiar with the name, this is the guy who decided to spend a year trying to live within the bounds of biblical law by following the rules of the Bible, literally…for a whole frickin’ year!  The video is about 18 minutes long but well worth watching.

I’m surprised he could actually do it and it’s an interesting comment on the concept of Bible literalism.  One that is probably lost on those who think they are living that way.  He also makes some interesting comments on the concept of traditions.  One that I eluded to when I wrote about the Mofu and their rain stones a while back.  The point being who is to decide which tradition is ridiculous or silly.  It all depends on what you are familiar with.

I’m not the kind of movie watcher who typically rents the big budget special effects movies.  Not that I don’t sometimes indulge in them, but I prefer a movie that tells a more human story.  And I like movies that have what appear to be real characters, you know, ones you can somehow relate to.  Even when the characters are evil, I still want to understand where they are coming from.  In the case of this movie, the characters are all too real and the human story all too believable.  In fact, they seem like completely normal people you might actually run into in the course of your day.  Yes they have their issues, but they aren’t overblown or completely idiosyncratic, they are human.  And the fact that all three of the main characters did an excellent acting job made it seem like this could have been a documentary.

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When you’re stuck on a plane for 10 hours at a stretch and you can’t sleep, you turn to the in-flight entertainment to try to pass the time.  This was the case on each of the 4 legs of the journey over to India and back.  The good thing is, each passenger has their own little TV embedded in the seat in front of them just above the tray.  The bad part is, they’ve loaded it with a selection of movies that pretty much sucked.  The other problem…the choices were the same for all 4 flights…now that’s torture.  How many times can you decide NOT to watch Drillbit Taylor before you finally cave in and then feel like you need a shower afterward.  For me it was on the last leg home and I’d watched four other movies that went from mediocre to not bad.  In that order they were…..

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I spent the remaining two and a half weeks of my trip in India.  We arrived after midnight at the brand new Bangalore International Airport, and I must say, it’s a welcome improvement over the old airport.  By the time we got out of customs it was nearly 1:30am.  My wife’s sister and her husband met us and we began the journey into town.  At this time of the morning, traffic was relatively light, but with the airport being about 40km outside of town, it took nearly an hour to get to my in-laws house, well, we also got lost on the way, but that’s another story.

The memories of India began to come back as soon as I heard the car horns.  It’s a common thing in India…the horn is used to let the vehicle ahead of you know your coming up on them and want to pass.  Since the cars, trucks, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, two-wheelers, pedestrians and ox-carts all seem to ignore the white lines on the road, the horn is necessary to get them to move over.

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To continue with the stories from our trip, when we arrived in India and opened our four bags to unpack, we found a notice from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in two of them.  We didn’t notice it in Paris as we had packed everything for that part of the trip in one bag, so that was the only one we opened there.

Basically, the notice says that they inspected the bag “To protect you and your fellow passengers“.  Below is a picture of the notice, click for a full size version.  I pulled this picture from here, but it’s the same as the one that was placed in our bags.

I guess it’s good to know that someone is inspecting the checked bags, but it’s kind of creepy to think someone opened up your bag and rummaged through it.  Mixed in with our clothes were some food stuff the wife had packed that she thought we may not be able to get while in India.  Just some things for the daughter as there are obviously some cultural differences between the food here and there.  Also in the bags were some gifts for the family and various relatives, but nothing was removed from the bags, just shuffled around a bit.

This is just another reminder of the state of the world in which we live today and another place where our privacy is forfeited in the cause of containing global terrorism, or whatever the excuse is.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I certainly do feel a bit more secure knowing that someone is checking the bags, but I also feel a bit violated thinking about some stranger handling my things.

On the good side, this was the only time I felt this way.  Going through customs in both directions was no problem.  In fact I went straight through without hardly a question.  But then again, I don’t fit the profile they are probably looking for.

I’m not going to say much about this since I already said my piece back when the legislature passed the bill allowing Bible classes in Texas public high schools more than a year ago…but now it’s back in the news as the Texas State Board of Education, that bastion of creationists, decided on how the class should be taught…and what do they do?  They leave it open to the local school districts.  Hmm, shouldn’t be a problem, right?  Why should we have consistent standards on such a touchy subject?  What could possibly go wrong?

Our trip to Paris was not well planned.  Although we had months to figure out where to go and what to do, we basically got there without any agenda.  The only pre-planning we had done was to buy our tickets for the Louvre so we wouldn’t have to wait in line.  Also, we knew we had to go there on Monday since it’s closed on Tuesday.  Other than that, we were basically winging it.

So our first full day was filled with site seeing and included one incident that I call our “dumb American” moment.  It left us laughing for the rest of the evening and spawned a catch phrase that stayed with us for the rest of the trip.

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On our way over to India, we decided to break up the journey and spend a few days in Paris to see the sights.  We’ve never been there before and it seemed like a good choice, and frankly, we weren’t disappointed.  However, our first meal was not what we expected.

We landed on a Sunday afternoon at Charles de Gaulle airport and took an expensive cab ride to our hotel in the Paris suburb of Neuilly.  The room was nice, but pricey…a common theme for this part of the trip, thanks to GW and the falling dollar.

To make the most of our few days of site seeing, we decided to go explore and find the nearest metro stop and figure out how to buy the tickets.  It took us about 15 minutes to walk the kilometer to the station.  It was a nice walk along tree lined streets through a quiet neighborhood.  The metro station, Les Sablones is on the busy road Charles de Gaulle in view of the Arc de Triomphe.

By the time we had found it and figured out the ticket machine, we were ready to eat some dinner, so we looked for a nice place.  We saw many people sitting out and drinking, but I guess 6:30pm was too early for the dinner crowd.  Also, being a Sunday, many of the cafe’s and restaurants were closed.  After walking around for nearly an hour, we went to the only place we could find…a McDonald’s.  The place was packed.

Now, we certainly didn’t expect to end up there, but I have to admit I was curious to see if the Quarter Pounder with Cheese is really called a Royal Cheese as mentioned in the movie Pulp Fiction.  Sure enough, it is.  So I ordered that and the wife ordered a chicken sandwich.  I’m not sure if it was because we were Americans, but the girl taking our order asked us if we wanted the large meal…we said no, medium was fine.  I was happy with my choice, although the bun was a bit stale.  However, the wife was not.  It seems their chicken sandwich is not a breast of chicken that is grilled or batter fried, but instead is ground chicken with a strange sauce slathered on top.  Frankly, it looked disgusting, but she ate it anyway.  And as they also mention in Pulp Fiction, the fries are not served with ketchup, but with some form of a mayonnaise sauce.

It certainly wasn’t a gourmet meal, but we made up for that with the remainder of our dinners.  We also found a nice little corner grocery store near our hotel where we could pick up some ice cream and snacks at reasonable prices.

Then it was time to get some rest and try to adjust to the time difference before we headed out for site seeing the next day.  All in all not a bad first day in Paris.