On City Parking

Speaking as a spoiled suburbanite, if you want me to go downtown and spend my money there, there had better be parking around where you want me to be because there's very little I will sit on a bus for 45min each way for.

Review: Guardians Of The Galaxy

This movie lives up to its reputation, but not its hype. Now that's more because the hype was OMG BEST THING EVER and frankly nothing can live up to that.

(I also classify hype like Star Wars for a new generation as ridiculous hype that nothing can live up to. Star Wars was Star Wars because you were seven when you first saw it, and nothing can live up to the experience of a seven-year-old unsuspecting brain getting wowed by something they've never seen before, especially when you are trying to do it to a brain that's seen everything that's come since Star Wars. So stop trying to convince me that whatever you are hyping will do that, because I can guarantee you that it won't.)

But its reputation, it meets Marvel's standards for fun and entertainment. It sits in the comic book pantheon comfortably above such offerings as The Fantastic Four (either one) and possibly both of the Thor movies.

Review: Iron Man

OMG this movie is still awesome.

Review: Lucy

Part of the problem with marketing a movie as once genre and then delivering a different one is that when the clientele who arrive expecting the first don't like the second, they tend to go away disappointed and negative. As far as this particular movie goes, there's a joke somewhere in this about how this is 2001 without the monkeys, only with one monkey, and (a slightly) less incomprehensible ending. The USB thumbdrive at the end is kind of neat too. A little bloodier and more violent than I might like. So overall it was OK, but I don't think I'll be screaming off to see it again.

Review: Amazing Spider-Man

I'm pretty sure this movie wasn't good, being frustrated with a main character who doesn't understand the "secret" part of a "secret identity". However I'm not sure if my reluctance to classify it as a "bad" movie is more to do with the movie, or if the exposure to Transformers movies the month previous has lowered the bar for a "bad" movie.

Sea Change In America

It looks like the US religious right has given up on trying to use the government to force their religious views on other people, and instead is trying the argument that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot prevent them from forcing their religious views on other people.  And the Hobby Lobby decision sort of validates that.

(I don't have anything more for that thought right now, I thought it interesting and it is just too long to coherently fit in a tweet.)

Update: ok maybe I do have more.  I'm not sure I totally disagree with the gist of this decision.  The Supreme Court isn't saying that you can't have contraceptive, all they are saying is that employers are not obligated to pay for it.  Which is fair.  Frankly if contraceptive is something worth making employers pay for, it should be something worth making the government pay for so that it is more generally available.

Update the 2nd: OK, I see now -- my first principles were wrong. Obamacare did mandate that contraception was a mandatory part of health care. So in that case, I disagree with the court ruling. Doesn't invalidate my observation off the top, though. See what happens when people debate policy from headlines and twitter postings?

Review: Spider-Man

Happy Canada Day, eh! What better way to kill time before the fireworks than to watch Spider-Man? Still an excellent movie. Sony will probably never give this franchise up, and since they are not screwing it up, I don't see why they'd want to.