Open the pod bay doors, HAL

The latest Netflix movie that bethje and I watched was the Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I'd never seen it before, but I expected to like it. The only other Kubrick films I can recall having seen were Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, and Eyes Wide Shut. I liked the first two quite a bit, and the last one was all right. I ended up finding 2001 somewhat disappointing, though. It was well-filmed and all, but it was just very slow. I mean, everybody always talks about the part with HAL, but it was at least an hour before HAL and Dave Bowman were even introduced. Not that the stuff before that wasn't important; it's just that scenes tended to go on much longer than they had to. It's not exactly the best movie to watch when you've already been up for over sixteen hours. I looked at some IMDB threads about the film, and apparently it's pretty common for people to be bored with the movie on the first viewing, but then grow to love it. (Actually, I've heard something similar about Napoleon Dynamite, another movie I didn't like as much as everyone else seems to. Those two movies couldn't be more different, though, could they? {g}) On the positive side, I did like the scenes with HAL, the monolith theme was interesting, and the ending mysterious and kind of creepy. The spaceship designs they used were pretty neat, if weird. (What was with the incredibly long ship they used for the Jupiter mission?) On the negative side, so much of the film dragged. There was even a long segment of blank space before the movie actually started, as well as another one at the end. At least music was playing over the end, though. Maybe the producers figured that, since they paid to use The Blue Danube, they'd play the whole thing, no matter HOW much longer it would last after the credits were over. Seriously, though, I'm glad I watched the movie, even if I think it's kind of overrated.

I actually tried to read Arthur Clarke's book before, but I couldn't get very far. I understand that he explained some things that Kubrick wanted to keep mysterious, especially toward the end of the story. I guess he'd pretty much have to, considering that there were sequels and all. I understand that, where the movie contradicted the book, the sequels actually went with the movie continuity. Unusual, certainly, but I suppose that's Clarke's prerogative. I probably should take another stab at reading the novel. It wasn't that long, from what I remember. And I actually read another Clarke book, Childhood's End, which I enjoyed. For any They Might Be Giants fans reading this (and you know who you are), it's interesting to note that a character in that book stowed away to another planet in a display of a sperm whale fighting a giant squid. I think one of the Johns said they got the cover of Apollo 18 from a pulp sci-fi magazine, so perhaps the picture in the magazine was an intentional Clarke reference, making the album cover an unintentional one. I'm not saying that a picture of a whale and squid fighting is necessarily a reference to anything, but when they're in space, I do have to wonder.

Today, we went to a birthday party for Nathan, Beth's cousin Marji's son, who is now one year old. We gave him a shirt and a musical shape sorter. We also got to see Beth's cousin (and Marji's brother) Johnny's dog Punisher, who's an enormous but very friendly pit bull. I know pit bulls have a bad reputation, but all the ones I've met (which, admittedly, hasn't been all that many) have been nice. It annoys me that people discriminate against this one breed of dog because they've been bred for destruction in the past.