He wrote a what?

Jesus. I’m kind of glad my brother’s leaving London for a week today. Maybe the nuttiness will die down…

Here’s what the Vatican can do: the Vatican can kiss my pale maritimer ass.

From CNN: Vatican paper denounces gay marriage in Canada.

A couple of weeks ago, while waiting in Gatwick to fly home, I picked up two magazines for the flight: an Economist and a UK version of GQ. One of most the interesting articles in that GQ was about which movies make men — 50 of whom they interviewed — cry. Though I myself haven’t cried since I was 12, it got me thinking about which movies get me choked up. Warning: spoilers. If you haven’t watched the movies listed, don’t read this. I give away too much.

• Hotel Rwanda. As I wrote about last year, seeing this at the film festival — and seeing who was there — just about put me over the edge. Closest I’ve come to crying since my kitten died in 1987.
• The Godfather Part III. This film, unfairly maligned in my opinion, culminates in one of the greatest cinematic expressions of pain I’ve ever seen. Only Pacino could get away with something as groan-inducing as a silent scream followed by a hair-raising wail as his daughter lies limp in his arms. And really, while we’re on the topic, had the daughter — played by Sofia Coppola, the weakest part of the movie — been played with any sort of proficiency at all, this might’ve gone down as an all-time classic cinema moment. But even as it is, with Michael Corleone’s mind racing past all the women he’d danced with and loved, all of whom were now dead or despised him, when you the realization that his whole life had been leading to the death of his daughter, he just implodes on the screen. It’s hard to watch.
• Braveheart. I know, I know. Cheese. But the moment where, as he’s being drawn & quartered, he yells “Freedom”, it still produces a lump.
• 61*. The scene at the end, where Mark McGuire gets choked up when he talks about Roger Maris.
• In The Name Of The Father. When his father dies. Duh.
• Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King. “My friends…you bow to no one.”
• Dead Poets Society. The doozy. It’s certainly one of my favourite movies of all time, so every time I watch it I’m completely into it. The scene that gets me is, of course, the scene at the end where they all stand on their desks and say “Oh captain my captain!”; probably the only thing that keeps me from losing it every time is the horrible synthesizer soundtrack. It’s truly dreadful, and it’s the one thing that ruins the moment. But it still takes a minute to collect myself afterwards.

Earlier this week we ordered our film festival coupon book. Yup, just one; normally we get two (and can thus see ten movies together), but since I’ll be away for a week in the middle of the festival, we have to keep it to five.

Yo, CBGB…get on the bus!

One more upside to having cats: this morning my wife discovered that one of the hairy fuckers had vomited on my work bag.

We closed the bedroom door so that they wouldn’t wake us up in the night, so I figure this was retribution.

Tonight was the last of the summerlicious outings: Bruyea Brothers. None of us had been, but it came highly recommended.

It finished just as strongly as Square and Lobby had set the pace. It turns out that I like venison a lot (my brother might be right when he says, “the cuter the animal, the better it tastes”), and the creme brulee — despite having it for the second time in a week — was a great way to finish it all off. Even the starter — a pedestrian-looking salad — was excellent. Very tasty.

I think I liked all of these places because the style is similar…high quality food & service, but laid back and unpretentious.

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Oh, and before the restaurant, I met some colleagues from a former life for drinks. Six of us, who’d worked in the Professional Services department at Delano (a tech bubble victim). Some I see fairly often, some I hadn’t seen in years. It’s too bad I could only stay for an hour; it was funny to catch up and swap stories.

We saw Wedding Crashers (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. Some thoughts:

• First 1/4: bad. Last 1/4: bad. Middle 1/2: OK.
• Vince Vaughn was funny about 10% of the time he was on the screen.
• Owen Wilson is never funny.
• Christopher Walken was good, but I don’t think he knows any other way. Jane Seymour was amusing, but she disappeared about halfway through the film. Poof, gone.
• My friend T-Bone was right: Rachel McAdams was beautiful in this movie. I barely recognized her before this, but I will now. Acting-wise she was very good. I felt bad for her; she seemed to be putting too much effort into the movie.
• Isla Fisher was far and away the funniest (and best looking) part of the movie. She made me laugh pretty much every time she was on the screen. By herself she was worth the price of admission. Maybe.

Save your money, go see Murderball.

Is anyone else kind of underwhelmed by this year’s Mercury Prize shortlist?

Man, reports like this bug me. From eMarketer:

A new survey finds that the average American worker wastes over two hours a day — much of it online — costing industry billions a year.

So…why not publish similar reports that tell us how much time employees waste on the phone? Or getting coffee? Or doing their nails, or talking to co-workers, or taking a piss?

People use the internet for lots of stuff, just like they use the office phones and mailboxes and bathrooms. Get over it.