Of Running and Movies
Weekends should be at least three days long. Here I am, on Sunday morning, starting to feel relaxed, and then I remember that I have to go into the office tomorrow. I don’t let the thought ruin my day, but two days is not enough. Not nearly enough time to recover from the idiocies and ravages of cubicle-world.
In any case, I’m still enjoying the weekend (no matter how short it is with 12 full weeks ahead of us, goddammit). Yesterday I was able to pull myself away from the computer long enough to go for a seven-mile run in Rock Creek Park. This marked a point of divergence between IP and me; we’ve been gym buddies for quite a while now, but when training runs get longer than six miles, I cannot stay at a treadmill that long. I once did a 10-miler on a treadmill and it damn near sapped all remaining intelligence out of my skull. So he went his way, enclosed in a temperature-controlled building with free weights, racks, and ellipticals at his disposal, while I ran outside and cursed myself for not bringing gloves. My hands were frozen by the time I returned home, but the Forerunner read seven miles. I haven’t done more than six since 2006. Sweet. Next week? An eight-miler.
And on this running topic, I’d like to note that I just ordered new shoes on Friday. My New Balance 858s have essentially given up the ghost, and because I am incredibly lazy about finding deals on shoes when they’re still being manufactured, I had to upgrade to the New Balance 859 since the 858 is kaput. We’ll see how this goes; the shoe is pink and gray and not anywhere near as cool as the orange and blue of the 858 (hell, these are our wedding colors). But as long as the shoes give me the cushioning and stability I need, though, I’ll grudgingly appreciate them. My 858s are terrible at this point; yesterday’s run proved that when, after taking a shower, I noticed a dark spot on the inside of my foot (where I have a rather prominent callus thanks to my 30-miles-per-week years, but it rarely bothers me). I brushed at the spot, thinking it something I missed in the shower, but no; there was blood on the inside of the callus. And the area was extremely sensitive and hard to walk on later in the day. Yuck. I took care of it last night and it feels much better. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
Upon returning from my run, IP was in the process of making his lunch. I did some puttering around for 10 minutes before I decided a long, hot shower was in order so that I could return some feeling to my hands. While I showered, I downloaded Dead Like Me: Life After Death from iTunes. I’m not one to spend much money on movies; I prefer music and reading as entertainment, and movies in general tend to disappoint me. However, Dead Like Me was a smart show that, like all smart shows I like, ended up canceled after two seasons (to be fair, at least Deadwood made it to three). So I figured I’d monetarily support their efforts to get the show back on the air. I don’t know if it’ll succeed, but I would pitch in; it’s not like I’ve purchased the series DVDs (and I really should as the show cracks me up), so I figured that $14.99 was not a terrible price to pay in order to express my support.
The movie is decent, but it’s sorely lacking Mandy Patinkin (whom I have loved since The Princess Bride) as Rube and Laura Harris as Daisy. The actress who replaced Harris as Daisy did not make the character her own; instead, she attempted to mimic Harris’ portrayal. Everyone’s character regresses in the movie since the moral center (Rube) is gone, but Daisy’s character regresses significantly more thanks to the poor portrayal by Sarah Wynter. From the first moment we see Daisy, we of course know something is wrong (different actress), but it feels as if we’re seeing the Daisy from Season 1, not the Season 2 Daisy who had grown up a bit. The immaturity, the vanity, the self-centered air is set at the top end of the Daisy-meter when we know she’s dialed it down—this actress decided to push it back up again. There was less interaction between the reapers, which was disappointing; it was their Der Waffle Haus chats and tag-alongs during reaps that helped flesh out their relationships in the series. One bit that held true was thanks entirely to the acting of Callum Blue, who waits outside of a theater to congratulate Daisy on her opening night as Lady Macbeth (even though she utterly bombs, he’s still a sweetheart about it). Who was playing Daisy was superfluous to the scene thanks to Blue’s continued awesome portrayal of Mason. Mason. Ah, Mason, Mason, Mason.
George spends most of her time apart from her fellow reapers, trying to figure out why her assigned reap went wrong. The storyline also involves Reggie, George’s little sister, who is now 16, learning to drive, and in a secret relationship with George’s reap. This may be a spoiler, but Ellen Muth (George) and Britt McKillip (Reggie) do an excellent job interacting as sisters who actually care for one another. Too often we’re shown sisters as huge antagonists; as someone who has a great relationship with her own sister, I find this frustrating, unrealistic, and a bit sexist (women always fight because, hey, they’re women, right?). When I see it done well, I get all happy and sappy inside.
And the guy who replaced Rube? Poorly done overall. I can’t even tell you what his intentions were. He ostensibly exists to encourage the reapers to act on impulse and ignore the reaping rules, but why he wants the dire consequences to happen is less detailed. Getting rid of him brought three of the four reapers back together, but the unit’s still not cohesive in the end.
Overall, the movie is worth your time if you want to see the characters again, but it does very little to advance the storyline of the series. Should the movie somehow propel MGM to produce the series again, I would hope that perhaps more of the cast could be brought back and that the writers could re-center on the storylines that were unfinished in Season 2. The ending would, you’d think, preclude the return of Rube, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. There are ways around it if you’re creative.
Today we’ll hit the gym again (or so we hope), do our grocery shopping, and perhaps I’ll finally finish reading Flannery O’Conner’s short stories (bad idea to read them all at once without something else on the side to balance out the collection).
