The Yankees’ magic number to win the AL pennant is 10, and they have the late west coast game against the Mariners tonight. The Sox are in Baltimore (a match-up that could really go either way) but I’m optimistic that one way or the other I’ll wake up tomorrow and the Yanks will have a single digit in the E# column. That would mean the race could be over inside of a week, but there doesn’t seem to be much drama left in the AL East right now. Expect a resurgence in my enthusiasm (or obnoxiousness) once the playoffs actually begin.
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The great “will little Zebulon walk or talk first?” wager remains unsettled. He’s making progress on both fronts but has yet to cross either marker definitively. He’s got the walking motions down, and his balance when he’s standing still is solid, but he won’t move his feet unless he’s holding onto something. Cruises up and down the sidewalk with quite a spring in his step, honestly – but only if he has his Tonka push-truck to lean on.
The noises he makes are getting more word-like, but aren’t quite there yet. The closest he’s come to articulating anything recognizable is “uh-oh.” I think that’s a borderline call as far as being a word or just emotionally inflected noise. Zeb’s discovered gravity, and I’m reasonably convinced that he somehow absorbed the idea that when anything falls down or gets knocked over (or gets thrown off the highchair tray) that “uh-oh” is the correct accompanying sound. Or I was reasonably convinced, until today when he just started a sing-song “uh-oh, uh-oh” loop for no discernable reason. Cute and all, but that’s not gonna win daddy any friendly wagers.
So yeah, no first step, no first word as of yet. Just Zebulon tugging at me to get up, holding on to just one of my fingers, wobbling along beside me and guiding me to the fruitbowl in the kitchen, then pointing at the bananas and going “Dis! Dis!” At this rate he’ll probably learn how to scale up the vertical surface of the cupboards to get to his precious golden fruit before anything else.
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Last night I watched The Host, a South Korean horror flick that was released in the U.S. about two and a half years ago. It was what I considered Hipster Homework – something I had heard good things about and which was far enough outside my usual pop culture consumption habits to be horizon-broadening (and if I ever found myself at a cinephile cocktail party where someone asked me if I was familiar with the work of Bong Joon-ho I’d have something to say. Everybody envisions scenarios like that, right?)
I’d have to say the movie was a mixed bag in most ways, which was kind of frustrating because going in I wanted to like it. I was impressed by how many things the movie tried to be all at once: political allegory, social satire, action-adventure, family drama, monster movie, psychological horror, disaster movie, black comedy, and probably other things that were lost in translation. (I saw an overdubbed cut and I kind of wish it had been in Korean with subtitles. When movies get overdubbed I think they focus way too much on getting the dialogue to sync up, and it just ends up sounding stilted and unnatural, which is a major problem in a movie that swings in tone so much because it’s such a patchwork, and at any given moment it’s hard to tell if a scene is supposed to be funny or serious and the off-kilter translation of the dialogue is no help.)
Anyway, it was a pretty entertaining movie, especially if you’re into two or more of the many genres thrown into the mix, or even moreso if you’re amused by genre mash-ups. Parts of the middle dragged but there were some insanely brilliant moments that more than made up for the pacing problem. Highlights:
- The CGI of the horribly mutated monster was really well done, a striking but realistic visual. Unfortunately the climax of the movie involves a coordinated Molotov cocktail assault, and the CGI flames look cartoony. Apparently my brain doesn’t have any prejudices about a man-eating polyploidal amphibian’s appearance, but it knows what flames are supposed to look like, dangit.
- Why did I call it a horror movie when it crosses so many boundaries? Because a lot of horror movies don’t have happy endings. Consider yourself warned, then.
- The flick has no shortage of bad guys in addition to the monster: modern science, the South Korean government (especially its equivalent of FEMA), crooked cops, the U.S. Army, and basically all of self-interested stupid humanity. The extent to which each of those groups is responsible for, or simply worse than, the monster itself is left as an exercise for the viewer.
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And I’m spent. Gotta finish getting ready for tomorrow's festivities.
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