Yesterday was a long day. After the tweekers left, we boarded a school bus with the 4-week high schoolers for an excursion into Detroit Lakes. Our first stop was a Super Wal-Mart-- you'd have thought those kids had never seen one before! Then we were dropped of at the mall (I use that term loosely) for the afternoon to wander, see a movie, eat, etc.
I went with a couple of kids to see War of the Worlds and left the theater with more than a few questions, such as... Why do the aliens in most contemporary science fiction movies run around naked, without so much as an intergalactic fig leaf on (maybe intelligence and modesty don't go hand-in-hand)? Perhaps we're not the smartest carbon-based life forms in the universe, but when we travel into space, we hermetically seal ourselves in spacesuits for protection from any cosmic cooties. And if you're so smart that you can pre-stage an attack on a planet by burying your newfangled death-ray tripod gizmos underground for who knows how long, wouldn't you also be smart enough to figure out that there might be some microorganisms in the same place that might kill you in the end (seems like an awful waste of time and space)? Spielberg did an okay job with special effects and there were a few pockets of suspense, but WHERE DID THESE ALIENS COME FROM? What was the point of the meaty red root-y/vine-y growths (were they just needlessly killing people or were those tripod thingies also huge human mulchers?) And why give the aliens such procyonine qualities (in one scene, two or three aliens are in a basement looking for a trash can to tip over-- okay, not really, but that's the impression I got-- when one of them sees a bicycle hanging on the wall, spins one of the tires, then jumps back startled)? Why make them smart enough to get here, but not smart enough to figure out a bicycle wheel (that scene reminded me of those simple aliens in Mel Gibson's Signs-- you know, the ones that never bothered to test the water, so to speak, and were brainy enough to fly millions of miles across the universe to a cornfield in Smalltown, America-- naked, of course-- but weren't brainy enough to know that a baseball bat could be used as a weapon and that turning the door handle will let you out of a kitchen pantry)? When the aliens eventually discover-- if they haven't already-- what we've done to them on the big screen, will they giggle at our stupidity or be offended enough to anhilate us with their death ray? And, when they DO get here, surely they will have their handy-dandy pocket-sized universal translators with them SO WE CAN TALK TO THEM!
Well. I didn't mean to rant so long about that movie... I guess it was worth the $5 I paid to see it.
And, speaking of movies, after we stopped at a laundromat for a couple of hours, we returned to camp at about 9 p.m. and let the students watch a movie in English. Sadly, it was Anchor Man. Sadly, I had to sit through it. That is one of THE dumbest movies ever made-- however, it's humor at a high school level, so it the kids enjoyed it. Will Farrell can be a funny guy sometimes, but, honestly, after Anchor Man and Elf, I wonder how he can sleep at night...
Today at noon I'm off for 24 hours... Woo-hoo! I'm going to wander Detroit Lakes and sleep. Then sleep some more...
That's it for this installment.
Poka for now!
P.S. By the way, I noticed that there are three barber shops on the main street that runs through little Detroit Lakes... Sort of an oddly inproportionate number, don't you think?
