What could have been...

You know what pisses me off? Almost awful movies. Not movies that are entirely bad, but movies that are mostly bad, but show flashes of greatness.

Like Attack of the Clones, which I finally got around to seeing tonight.

The thing is woefully miscast. Hayden Christiensen sounds like a whiny brat when he's supposed to be showing his dark side, and Natalie Portman just. cannot. fucking. act.

They're also crippled by dialogue so bad I thought my eyes were going to roll out of my head entirely at a couple of points, so that's of no help.

But there is a scene towards the end STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW THE PLOT where Anakin is battling the evil bearded guy in the dark and their faces are only lit by the lightsabers and the music is just drums and it's fucking fantastic.

And it shows what the movie could have been, which made me so much more pissed off than Phantom Menace did, since that was simply an unabashed piece of shit.

Unabashed pieces of shit you can at least just laugh at. Hell, that's why I own copies of such utterly awful movies as The Quick And The Dead and Volcano.

Dammit, George Lucas. Either learn to direct actors or let someone else direct the fucking movies. Grr...

Dude, I was a Flintstones Kid!

Weird things you randomly discover about your co-workers:

1. Jingle Jumble

Mike, one of the audio guys I work directly for, co-wrote the "We are Flintstones kids..." vitamin jingle (remember? Ten million strong and growing?).

Him and his partner co-wrote it in 1985 (I would have been four), and those are Mike's kids singing on it. The one who gets the solo "and grooowing" at the end is now in college.

I found this terribly exciting. It was like finding out you know someone who was a rock star once or something.

2. Flamethrower

Marc, the boss of all the interns where I work almost burned the damn place down yesterday, with the help of a "self-cleaning" oven.

Kids, if you have a self cleaning oven, make sure you check for grease at the bottom that might burst into flames before you turn on the self-cleaning mechanism. Which essentially melts all the crap off the sides with high heat.

Marc also hadn't realized that the oven hasn't been working for the last 2 weeks, since he's been off on paternity leave, since his wife just had a kid. So he turned on the self-cleaning mechanism, and left.

About 20 minutes later, the people in Scheduling, which is next to the kitchen, noticed a smell, and noticed that, whoops, the oven was on fire. They got a fire extinguisher and Don The Tech Guy to put it out.

Except the oven latches closed and won't open until the self-clean cycle is done, presumably to keep some idiot from sticking their hand in there and getting singed.

I don't know how they eventually got the fire out, but they did. This all happened after I left yesterday, and I found out about it when I came in and smelled an odd smell and saw half the kitchen covered in this white crap from the fire extinguisher.

Apparently, the owner of the place found out in a very similar manner, because nobody called him and told him about it, he just sort of wandered in in the morning and went, "Hey, what's that smell?"

Which is probably good, because he would have had an aneurysm if he had found out the night before that his place had almost burned down.

A glimpse of the future?

Did you ever meet someone you're convinced is what one of your friends will be like in 20 or 30 years?

I had that happen to me with this client from work who's been doing one of the odder projects I've heard...well, ever. The woman who's producing it makes me think of a much older, flakier version of my friend Stephanie.

It's really odd. They've got similar hairstyle, voice, build, etc; the Client's just about 20 years older...and on quite a great many more drugs, judging from this bizarro thing she's been producing.

Stephanie: She's back -- in crazy middle-aged producer form!

Of course, I'll probably see Steph in 20 years and she'll be nothing like this woman, but it's interesting to project.