Spring is coming! It's not really that warm out, but there's a definite spring-like odeur. That, and the sun is at that angle. There's an angle it hits right before everything goes dark for the winter, and again right before everything wakes back up again. The sun is at that angle today.

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Got my corporate taxes sorted and mailed. There's another chunk of change gone to The Man. Now to start the personal taxes.

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I got my REI statement in the mail yesterday. I've got about 85 REI-bucks to spend this year. Woo! Plus there's a 20% off one time coupon in the mix, so that's all good. I also got a "we miss you" e-mail from Nashbar this morning with another 10% coupon. Apparently, I haven't bought anything there in a while. They sent a paper catalog last night, so I think this is headed for my shopping e-cart.

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This is very cool

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The American death streak continues unabated. Today's entrants: Kirby Pucket and Mrs. Superman. Or should that be "today's exits"?

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Did you know MySpace.com belongs to Rupert? I didn't.

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Mystic River
[Netflix] [IMDb]

Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins), and Sean (Kevin Bacon) grow up in Chelsea, Massachusetts on the banks of the Mystic River. As a boy, Dave is kidnapped and held by a sexual preditor for four days before he escapes. The experience colors the rest of the three boy's existance. The three drift apart until re-united by the murder of Jimmy's daughter. Dave is still a neighbor, and Sean is the State Cop assigned to the case (along with his assistant, Laurence Fishburne, as the Sgt.).

The three boys lives follow paths that are radically different, yet are grounded in the inescapeable neighborhood. Sean becomes a cop, Jimmy is a criminal, and it's never clear to me what Dave ended up as except totally messed up. This is a tragic tale, and well told for the most part, at least until the end when it all falls apart in an ending that seems totally cobbled together. The solution of the mystery is presented in what amounts to little more than a postscript narration, and involved characters only tangentially in the story up to that point.

Some of the interaction between the characters was good, but Sean Penn was too over the top in his tragic loss and lost me. How did that get Best Actor? I mean, only James Lipton would love that character. He was convincing as a thug, though. The music was very heavy handed, so thankfully it was used sparingly. (I was surprized that Clint Eastwood wrote the music, too.)

I'm not familiar with Chelsea, so I can't say whether it accurately represented the neighborhood or not. My impressions was that it did. I don't know if it's co-incidental or not, but Chelsea is really insular and difficult to get to, even from other, nearby towns. Like the Charles, the Mystic is a big river, but unlike the Charles, there aren't many crossings. Even the Tobin Bridge (the big green one in the backdrop of the movie) passes over Chelsea and you have to double back to get there. That parallels with the insular nature of the neighborhood the characters live in.

would not watch again.