Casa de los Babys: Goddamn you, John Sayles. Why do you keep making well-acted, well-written, quality sensible-budget features starring amazing actors and actresses that I don't want to see? Except for Lone Star, which I've seen about three times, all of your films feel like homework. They are the kinds of films that I know I ought to be watching, but when it comes right down to it, it's just easier to flip over to Pootie Tang or even Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood because at least then I don't have to think about race and identity and cultural dissonance; I just have to think about whether that pool scene in Color of Night led to Bruce Willis' divorce. I have a script for you, John. It's called Batman Goes Bananas and stars Colin Farrell. Or maybe a production with Jim Henson's Creature Factory for Spanish-language TV called Muppets de los Babys.

Good Boy: I'm not going to even justify this with a response. Although if you got me really drunk, I'd probably admit that talking animal movies are kinda cool.

House of the Dead: Even for a videogame, this title was very skimpy on plot, which was little more than shooting shit with a lightgun. I imagine the movie will be an even less coherent experience.

Intolerable Cruelty: Good lord do I want to see this. The potent combination of George Clooney playing goof, the Coen brothers directing, Edward Hermann starring and the always-pantingly enjoyable visage of one Catherine Zeta-Jones (if anything her marriage to a burlap sack and child bearing has only made her more attractive to me in her painful unavailability)... these are elements that combine to form a cocktail the likes of which I would be loathe to refuse. I loathe refuse of the kind I have to put in a bag and toss into a large platic bin outside, but loathing to refuse is even worse.

Kill Bill: Maybe you've heard of it? I knew there'd be mixed reviews of this, but within our own staff? Yikes. Seriously, though, I'm seeing this. You can't stop me.

Mambo Italiano: Omar Don'tcareiano.

T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous 3-D: Rebecca and I saw this years ago at a TWOP gathering in Las Vegas at the Luxor hotel. People, it sucks. Peter Horton! Dinosaurs! 40 minutes of running around in the jungle with plastic dinosaurs popping out at you. We could have seen the Blue Man Group, but instead we watched this piece of crap and both got headaches. Screw you, IMAX.

DVDs: Way more than I know what to do with given that this weekend is the Austin Film Fest where movies including Mystic River and Elf will be showing. I probably won't even be home.

I haven't updated because there hasn't seemed to have been a spare moment the last few days. (This is someone else's spare moment. I had to borrow it.) Aside from the usual LCP stuff (we did a small gig at St. Edward's University Tuesday), and the usual work stuff, I also now have a desktop video card that decided it doesn't want to be a souped-up videogame-playing card. Instead, it wants a simple life showing me my Windows desktop, capturing episodes of Smallville and randomly giving the blue screen of death on startup.

But play some Halo multiplayer? No, good sir. There's been quite enough of that.

I had to reinstall Windows XP, roll back drivers, all that shit, and it's still not fixed. I think it's a hardware issue because I hadn't installed anything or messed with any hardware between the time it was working perfectly and the time it crapped out. It's really beyond annoying because I just went through all this with my laptop. It's as if they're taking turns playing sick. I've got the Ferris Bueller computer twins up in this bitch.

Luckily MSI has a THREE YEAR WARRANTY on its video cards. Three years! That's like insanely customer friendly. Have you ever heard of this? I assumed I was out of luck because I bought this video card last year, but it seems as if I picked a winner, manufacturer-wise. If it truly is the hardware that's at fault, they'll fix it or send you a new one (or as has been whispered in forums in reverent tones), send you a BETTER card to make you all happy and replace your discontinued-ass card. Ah, MSI. Why can't you be the government?

I'll do "Movies this week" tomorrow. Right now my brain's just not in it.

New XL Blog has been posted. I'm going to start calling the floating head "L'il Omie."

I had no idea how much I missed doing them: My recap of the Smallville season opener, "Exile," is up at Television Without Pity. It's on the long side of ones I've written, but damned if there wasn't a lot of plot in this one.

A rare, but potent journal entry about a trip to the damn day spa. I was fresh and so clean, clean.

Plus, I forgot to link to this last week: A review I wrote of "Final Fantasy Advance Tactics," which has sucked about 21 hours out of my life and counting. [[[EDITED: Damn, sorry about that bad link on the game review. It's fixed now. -- omar]]]