I'm back in Washington (state) until January, visiting parents and friends. Give me a call if you're in the area.

On the flight from Toronto to Seattle, I saw Chicken Run. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised, but boy, did they pack in the references and allusions. Geek that I am, I started writing them down on my Palm Pilot while I was watching. Without reading too much into it, I caught textual references to the World Wars, Marxism, women's rights, unions, various pop culture analyses, war time swing dancers or "flappers", western plot formats, and the notion of rhetoric without wisdom, as well as obvious visual references to Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Star Trek, and James Bond. I suppose it epitomized what is referred to these days as a "pastiche". And that's just the stuff I caught in my sleep-deprived haze of travel.

I saw The Hustler last night. Amazingly good movie; Newman's had a lot of verve, and the character acting and dialog were excellent. I was reminded that there was indeed a time when it was ok to make well crafted, complex movies without happy endings. Nowadays, I'm positive there's some Hollywood exec standing by, ready to pull the purse strings to make sure that happy ending gets tacked on. I guess that's why I pretty much avoid Hollywood movies anymore. I'm a bit slow to catch on to these things sometimes.

Oh yeah, I'm all done with school for this term. Whew.

Sometimes I wonder whether the message about Iraq that I paste into the entry every day is relevant, but I'm quickly amazed that I would think that the US would let off. They won't.

Onion: Scrappy Band Of Lovable Misfits No Match For Rich Kids. Genius. The Onion has been really spot on these days.