Review: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 is the first of the big summer releases for 2010 and has already made a zillion dollars in its opening weekend, as Box Office Mojo reports. I had not read any reviews before going in but from headlines and such the gist seemed to be “not as good as the first one”, which is probably not surprising, since the original was a lot better than many would have expected.

And I’d agree. It was fun, not as sharp as the first, but still very entertaining. Robert Downey Jr. continues to play the role of Tony Stark with perfect comic timing. The supporting cast is generally solid, although Rhodes, now played by Don Cheadle, seems a bit more straight-laced than when he was played by Terence Howard. Mickey Rourke is a hulking revenge-seeking Russian physicist, ex-Siberian prisoner and apparent master hacker, breaking encrypted systems with a few deft taps on a keyboard. Movie computers must use ‘password’ or ‘abc123’ as passwords or something. Sam Rockwell plays Justin Hammer as an evil buffoon, sort of the underachieving younger brother gone down the wrong path. While never generating any actual menace, he is regularly amusing (and annoying). Garry Shandling is brilliantly cast as a supercilious senator investigating the Iron Man and he clearly relished playing the acerbic character, sort of a callback to his Larry Sanders days, but even less likable (he is playing a politician, after all).

The story is pretty simple — bad guy seeks revenge on Iron Man — and the final mano-a-mano-a-mano battle ends rather abruptly, but things move along at a brisk pace and the cast seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves, so it’s hard not to get swept up in the fun.

The science, as always, is pure comic book (read: nonsensical) and people who pick it apart are missing the point by the proverbial country mile. It’s like attacking the accuracy of the doomsday scenario in 2012.

The effects are quite good, as one would expect, and there’s another teaser at the end of the credits, just as with the first movie. The credits, by the way, would have been shorter by listing the people who had not worked on the movie. Ay caramba, the size of the crew on the movie was bigger than Tony Stark’s ego.

Captain America’s shield had an awesome cameo.

Iron Man 2 is not a great movie, but it is great fun. Recommended.

The face of nostalgia is…Simon Le Bon

Duran Duran is one of those bands that I always made fun of but secretly liked. Sure, they were very pretty and had ultimate 80s hair, but their music was catchy and the videos were fun, even if they eventually turned into bloated spectacles (hello, Wild Boys).

Today I spent $7.99 to pick up the one album of theirs that I owned again, so I now have a digital copy of Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Listening to it, I finally realize those pops I thought were a bad copy of the cassette version I bought in the olden days of 1983 are actually in the recordings themselves, preserved with remarkable clarity in Apple’s shiny AAC format. I don’t find it annoying, though. It’s actually kind of quaint.

The album doesn’t sound as dated as I had expected, which is probably just another sign of getting old. I promise the next music I buy will be from this century.

This is not the May weather I ordered

A few weeks ago I read a news story about Environment Canada’s “spring forecast”. They predicted that the entire country — yes, the whole dang thing — would experience warmer, drier conditions this spring. What they didn’t mention was the rain and wind, the endless high wind. From The Weather Network website earlier today:


Wind Warning : Greater Vancouver
Issued at 3:51 PM PDT Sunday 2 May 2010

Summary

West to northwest winds up to 80 km/h will develop overnight. This is a warning that potentially damaging winds are expected or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements.

Details

An unseasonably strong cold front will move southward across the British Columbia south coast tonight. High pressure building rapidly behind the front will cause strong westerly winds up to 80 km/h to develop over much of Vancouver Island and the inner coast overnight and early Monday morning. Winds will gradually ease beginning late Monday morning or Monday afternoon.

***

Nothing says spring like potentially damaging winds! So yeah, patiently waiting for real spring to arrive and this silly faux wintry stuff to take a hike.

May day! May day!

May 1st, to be precise.

Continuing with the theme of “embarrassing pictures from my youth” here is a blurry photo of me taken from one of our summer trips to Lake Osoyoos back in the late 60s/early 70s. I’m probably about 5 here, so that would place this shot around 1969. I really can’t recall why I was aiming water at my crotch but it’s one of those things that’s perfectly logical to the mind of a five year old. I’m going to at least state that the sizable puddle at my feet was already there before I arrived. Yep.

I have no good explanation

Hair (not the musical)

As I mentioned in the previous post, as a teenager I became concerned that my ears were big. Too big. So big, in fact, that they must be hidden from the world, lest their bigness lead to certain catastrophe. This is evidence of my ear paranoia.

The photo below is undated but I believe I was 14 at the time, which would place it around 1978 or ’79. Note the glasses aren’t even close to being on straight but who cares? I had tinted aviators and was stylin’ big time. But really, your eye is drawn to the Hair, which appears to be reluctantly avoiding swallowing up my entire head. That is serious girlie hair. I mean, it’s almost pretty and really, it shouldn’t be. There’s also an admirable synergy between the crooked glasses and that immense mess of golden locks in the way the hair grows down to the top of the glasses and then seemingly along them in order that I may still have an unobstructed view of things.

I sometimes harbor a fantasy of growing my hair long again. Pictures like this tend to cure that.

(click to enlarge — if you dare!)

1971: The Year of the Stare

I have nearly all of my class photos, which in a way is kind of amazing. I’m scanning them in over time and the one below will eventually get added to the proper photo gallery with the rest. For now, here’s a look at my grade 2 class photo or “What I looked like 39 years ago”. Yikes! I am the last one on the right in the middle row, wearing a fashionably striped shirt. Our teacher was Mrs. Buckingham and we sometimes (out on the playground, never in class) called her Buckingham cigarettes because it was a popular brand at the time. How did a bunch of seven year old kids know about brands of cigarettes? Advertising! It amazes me how many of my elementary school teachers look exactly like the classic school marm stereotype. She was a pretty good lady, though. The kid with the ears two over from my right was not only the only kid in class who could always color inside the lines, he was freakishly good at drawing in general. It was because of him that I learned early on in life that there’s always someone who can do something better than you. I wonder if he kept pursuing art.

(click to see full-size)

On the right, middle row, glassy-eyed

Here’s a close-up:

Sail away

Stylin’ spectacles and a blank stare that suggests no current brain activity. I later became famously concerned that my ears stuck out too much. This becomes evident based on the hair “styles” I adopted in my senior school years. You’ll also understand why I put that word in quotes, too.

Dear Tiger: Shut up (also, today’s run)

Today was my first run in a week and I was a bit worried because I could feel The Spot in my leg even as I walked down to the park.

15ºC, cloudy and a moderate wind blowing. The trail was in good shape, only one other jogger briefly sharing the path with me.

By about the 3 km point I could definitely feel the sore spot in my left leg acting up. I even briefly felt a bolt of pain race up from The Spot to about my knee, possibly by landing on it just right (or wrong). That’s the bad news. The good news is it didn’t bother me enough to hamper my run significantly but I still chose to err on the side of caution and end it at 5k instead of doing a full 10. I’ll try for 10 again on Monday. The other good news(ish) part is the leg doesn’t feel nearly as bad after the run as it did last Friday. I’d probably be fine without icing it, though I’m going to do that, anyway. So I am moderately encouraged overall. Oh, and my times were much better this Friday than last, with my average pace a full six seconds better (5:16 vs. 5:22).

And the title of this post is not a plea for Tiger to not go on Oprah and blubber out another sincere apology for ‘indiscretions’ but rather for him to stop piping in on the iPod at the end of my runs. Today — for the third time in about as many weeks — he came on to congratulate me for running another 250 miles. First, I’m tracking my distance in km, not miles, you backwards silly American and second, running 750 miles would be really impressive. Superhuman, even (I’ve run a little over 450 km).

Results:

Distance: 5.03 km
Overall average pace: 5:16
1st km: 5:03
2nd km: 5:06
3rd km: 5:09
4th km: 5:12
5th km: 5:16

The No run

Today I was planning on resuming my running and in fact after extensive poking and prodding of the sore part of my leg I could no longer feel any pain. However, I’ve decided to be more cautious this time and will wait till Friday instead. That will put me a week between runs, which shouldn’t make it too hard to get back into the routine again. I’m hoping I’ll finally be able to put all this nonsense behind me and just focus on the actual running part.

Now on dailymile (or daily1.6km if you prefer)

Using the buddy system for encouragement and support, I am now on dailymile and have made friends with a couple of Quarter to Three regulars, Jamie Madigan and Ephraim. It is not without irony that I note that now that I have an ‘audience’ I have been running piddly short runs and skipping days because of a tender shin.

I am hoping to get back into a regular routine of 10ks starting tomorrow (Wednesday).

Angry Carrot in 3D (special glasses not required)

Do you ever get the urge to go back and finish some project you started years ago? I do from time to time but the reality is even if I decide to, I rarely complete a once-abandoned project, probably because I had a good reason for abandoning it.

A few years ago I began making a model of my cartoon character Angry Carrot out of plasticine. I only had green and orange plasticine, so I couldn’t do the black bits (face, arms, legs). Instead of going to a store to get the missing black, I just put what I had started in a cupboard and let it sit there for a couple of years.

Today I suddenly got it into my head to check the art supply store DeSerres while I was out. I figure if any place would have black plasticine, it would be an art store.

And lo, they did!

It was a brand they are not carrying anymore, so it was on clearance for, as you can see, $1.95. The clerk told me there would be no refunds or exchanges because of this. I’m thinking, “Dude, it’s modeling clay and it’s less than two dollars. Who would bring it back for a refund? Someone who thought it was licorice?” I then realized this is exactly what would happen, so I simply smiled politely at the clerk.

For reference, here is a panel from an Angry Carrot comic:

I realized a couple of things as I slapped on Angry Carrot’s limbs:

  1. He would fall down and not get up in real life. If real life featured man-sized sentient carrots with anger management issues, that is. As it was I had to insert a bit from a screwdriver and lean him against a wall to keep him from tipping over.
  2. I need a better workspace than the tiny spot I can clear next to my keyboard.
  3. I need better tools for the actual sculpting.
  4. I need better lighting.
  5. I need more practice! He’s not the right shape and his stalk is too small.

Still, for a ‘proof of concept’ it’s not too bad. It is recognizably Angry Carrot.

Close-up:

Scary perspective shot from below!

And one more from above:

It was fun exercising my fingers without using a keyboard for a change. I’ll probably start another model of Angry Carrot from scratch with some sculpting tools and a better workspace and see how that goes. My ultimate plan would be to use actual modeling clay, probably the self-drying kind as I don’t have a kiln handy.

Ol’ four eyes

With the prescription for my glasses recently updated I have started perusing various optical shops, casting about for a new look for the eventuality of getting new frames. Today I visited the optical department of Sears as I was passing through Pacific Centre. These are about the boldest pair I tried on and apart from being too big for my narrow face, I rather like the way they look. They’re a fair bit different than what I have now and I’m kind of in the mood for different.

Smoke run

Cloudy skies, 13ºC and little wind on today’s run.

I knew I was in trouble when I could feel my left leg acting up on the brisk walk down to the park. Although the soreness seemed manageable by the time I got to the 5 km mark, I decided to cut the run short to be on the safe side.

Perhaps fearing rain, the park was nearly devoid of people. I had the trail entirely to myself for the first 3 km. Other than the leg, I again felt fine. I iced it for a good long while after getting home (ironically reading Runner’s World as I did so) and while it remains sore I can’t say it actually is painful, more annoying. Nonetheless I am taking the weekend off and will see how it feels on Monday. I made need to give it more time to fully recover.

While the park did not smell of manure today, there was the distinct scent of a wood fire drifting through one area. I’m not sure why someone would light a fire on such a mild day but as I’m fond of saying, people are weird.

Results:

Distance: 5.04 km
Overall average pace: 5:22
1st km: 5:12 (another tentative start)
2nd km: 5:15
3rd km: 5:17
4th km: 5:19
5th km: 5:22

The one positive I take away is that my pace was fairly consistent, so I don’t think I’m running on an actual injury. But I’ll be cautious for now.