We really will have the governor here today. I couldn't care less. He's a friend of the company president, so he comes here every time there's so much as a press blurb put out by the company. The rest of the company is all twisted into knots about it though.

We've even got dozens of people from the plant wearing those black t-shirts with SECURITY printed in big block white letters on the front of them. How cute.

You know how the governor's visit effects me? He'll be blocking my normal exit from the building right about the time I want to leave. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to use the other door.

BREAK

So, I went to one of the local music shops yesterday to pick myself up an inexpensive wooden bow to tide me over until I bother to replace my violin. It's one of those little all-inclusive shops that carries guitars, drums, PA systems, keyboards, recording equipment, you name it, they've probably got it. Way off in one corner there's a little section for band and orchestra instruments. They run a school rental deal out of there and also have a few step-up instruments of various types in stock, and can order anything else you might want.

The guy who runs that section? He gets lonely. For about a month on either side of the school year he's busy as can be. The rest of the year, he just sort of hangs out, waiting, hoping, praying for a customer. And accepting rental payments from parents.

I was that poor unfortunate soul yesterday. Not that he's such a bad guy. But you know how salespeople are, always hungry for conversation, even at the best of times. For him, these are not the best of times.

It took a lot of talk to convince him I didn't really want to spend a hundred bucks on something that's likely to become nothing more than a backup in about a year's time or less. I really just wanted a wooden bow so I could get rid of my plastic one. And one with clean hair so I could properly rosin it from frog to tip. My current bow was prepped by methods taught by a somewhat odd orchestra teacher. She believed you should leave about three inches between the frog and the first hint of rosin on the hair. What that gives you is a smaller usable length on the bow, with a big patch of dirt right behind the rosin.

So, forty minutes later I emerged with my cheap Chinese bow, chosen from the pile as the first one that didn't curve sideways as it was tightened. Also, a new stick of cheap, dark rosin.

Poor guy working there. If I wasn't on my lunch break, I'd probably hang and chat with him for a few hours if no one was there that needed help. I like chatting up music store folks when they seem to know their stuff. It nets you all sorts of weird discounts down the line. And this guy seemed pretty on the ball, just lonely.

Once I got home last night I filed the shine off the rosin and sat down and applied a hundred strokes in each direction to the new bow. Mrs. NFB asked what that was about so I patiently explained the horse-hair/rosin/violin-string relationship to her. She asked to feel the horse hair before I got much rosin on it, then wanted to see the rosin dust once I was done with it. She seems somewhat fascinated with the violin. Far more than she was with the guitar.

Outside of that, a pretty non-descript evening at the NFB house.

BREAK

It occurs to me that I forgot about our weekend movie watching yesterday.

Death Sentence - An interesting entry into the revenge film sub-genre of the action main genre. We watched the un-rated version. There were some pretty hard-core scenes. The basic story is Kevin Bacon's kid gets killed in some random act of violence, he decides to get even, the gang decides to kill his family, only they do a bad job of it. Very well played family death scene, where you swear that has to be the end of the movie, and then they turn it around, sort of. In the end, he turns into the ultimate bad-ass and goes after the gang on their own turf. Hard core brutality in that final scene. A shoot out of epic proportions. This was an excellent movie. Can't recommend it enough. Kevin Bacon is not the type of guy you'd think could pull off the bad-ass motherfucker type. Well, you'd be thinking wrong. He does the switch from loser office-boy to hard-core killer in a way that will absolutely creep you out while still leaving you sort of admiring him. And while part of the ending is somewhat hackneyed, the main baddy and Kevin sitting together in a church pew, having a casual conversation after their final battle, the rest of the movie more than makes up for it. I can not recommend this movie enough. More like this Hollywood, less like. . .

Superbad - Where to begin? Seth Rogan - what the fuck? Somewhere along the line Hollywood decided that detestable characters, and not characters you love to detest, made a great movie. 40 Year Old Virgin started that trend for me, and made me never want to watch Knocked Up. A cube-mate handed me Superbad and told me it was absolutely hilarious and awesome and. . .blech. If this is the new awesome, color me unimpressed. I prefer comedies that are sort of funny, or at least characters where you're rooting either for or against them. These guys? Aside from hating the lead so much I cheered when he got hit by the car, there's really not much else I felt towards anybody. McLovin was as close to a likable character as we got, and likable would be pushing the description quite a bit. And on the disc there's a sneak peek at a Judd Apatow movie involving two of the old Freaks and Geeks freaks. Not one second of funny in that entire sneak peek, but you can tell they thought they were absolutely HILARIOUS. This new comedy thing, it's like watching a special kid perform stand-up. Sure, they think they're funny, but really they're just pathetic as hell. You laugh uncomfortably every once in a while just because you don't want them to feel bad about themselves, but there's no genuine joy or funny involved. Just, no. No more modern comedy for me. Bring me funny, or go away. I'm obviously not in the right audience to accept this definition of funny.

10,000 B.C. - not bad, but not super-de-duper-de. I'd watch it again, because there's some pretty good stuff in there. Nothing that makes me want to turn away. And the main girl is hot-hot-HOOOOOOOOT. It wasn't quite what I thought it would be based on previews, and that's always a nice surprise. I'd recommend this one, but not with a huge endorsement unless you had a thing about pre-historical stuff. Or really hot chicks in furs.

And that'll do. Laterz.