PASS, RELEASE AND VIEWING

I passed my clerical test for employment, and when the store manager calls me with my final interview with the district manager, my employment will be finalized. The test was a lot harder than I anticipated, and being that it was timed, I found myself well out of practice taking tests. I barely made it, it required a 70% in order to pass, and I had exactly 70% by the grace of God. I had a lot of questions that I didn't get to because of the time constraint, but I excelled at the spelling, grammar and problem solving, so it balanced out my lack of speed on my math questions. Praise God Almighty for the light at the end of the unemployment tunnel.

IRON MAN 2 is released today. Despite my normal aversion to sequels, I am eager to see this release simply because the way they did the first one with the suit and the flight/fight scenes, leads me to believe that this release will definetly be worth seeing.

I viewed DONNIE DARKO this weekend. Now let me preface this entry with a few points. First, the statements on the back of this movie do NOT do it justice, as it makes it sound like just another twisted movie. Secondly, as noted in my previous post, I have not been a Jake Gyllenhaal fan, so I would not have seen this just based on his casting in it. Third, the title alone make it sound like a dark movie, and with the cover art that it has, you are led to believe exactly this. Now that I've made those points, I would like to say I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this movie. When you first watch this movie, you are so confused and struggle just to make sense of what you are watching, that you find yourself getting frustrated with it. I viewed the Directors Cut which has an extra 20 minutes of footage and is apparently much easier to understand than it's counterpart, the theatrical release. I can't even imagine watching the theatrical version, as when the directors cut was through, I sat there in a state of WTF?!?! and something that resembled pain. My mind was literally hurting from trying to figure out this film and it's characters, plot, and over all meaning. I WAS ENTHRALLED! It was like a puzzle that I had managed to get the edge pieces set up for and my mind was racing with all the data that I observed in the movie that I was not consciously processing while viewing it. I have not been so mentally stimulated by a movie in all my days. I was fascinated with the concept of the film, as each element had been carefully placed and played out as to not give away the ending, and much like a suspense/mystery movie, each character had a purpose, each scene played a vital part to the plot. While I sat there in a stupefied silence trying to ascertain what I had just spent 2 hours and 20 minutes watching, I was excitedly realizing that I had every intention of watching it again...IMMEDIATELY. Watching it a second time cleared up a lot of the confusion, but I am excited to say that I still do not have a full understanding of the film, and that THRILLS me! Most of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood is for the most part just mental candy that you view, and then move on from. FOR 2 DAYS my mind has been chewing on this movie and every person that I talk to about it I find that I become more intrigued by it. I will warn you, you will be frustrated, confused and even ready to shut it off, but do yourself a favor...DON'T! Watch it through to the end, and give yourself a moment to process what you just watched, and see if your mind isn't reeling from it. Seeing Donnie Darko reminded me of how I felt when I walked out of the theater after seeing Matrix. It was like the world had been turned upside down. I stood outside the theater with a good friend of mine who suggested seeing it, and for an hour we just imagined what the implications of the film were.

INTERVIEW SET, MATCH....POINT

I now have an interview appointment with the manager at Family Video here in town, on Friday 24th at 1pm. I remain hopeful that this will bring an end to this desert of unemployment. I feel that this employment would offer a good match for me because of my customer service abilities, as well as my love for movies. Once my employment there is settled, God willing, I will begin exploration of continuing my education here at the local college. This is exciting for me because I've wanted to continue my education for some time now, and having a full time job to support my career goal of being a professional illustrator seems like a good match.

On the Lil'Man front...his new thing is pointing. He points to various (and often every) object in a room until you tell him what it is. Sometimes this pointing relates to something he wishes to handle, or something he wants (like his blankie or bottle). This continues to be a great source of entertainment for us because he becomes excited with pointing at things, like it's his own personal game of finding something to point to. He has entered his entertaining stage of his development, and often does things simply to observe our reactions to his behavior. He is also testing his boundaries with his mom & dad. He will get excited and begin hitting your face, at which point we have to tell him 'no'. It's heartbreaking watching his reaction to this, because I'm sure he doesn't fully comprehend what it is that we are so stern about, and with a look of confusion or hurt he will often resume hitting you in the face. 

CRAZY WEEKEND

I haven't posted for the past two days because of our birthday party and a couple other reasons that I will go into later on in this post.

Birthday: Had a wonderful time. Thom, Kathy, Lil'Man and Matthew came out to our house. Mom made home made pizza that was extraordinary, and we watched "Prince of Persia: Sands of Time". Now I'm not a big Jake Gyllenhaal fan, I thought he was pretty good in the movie "Day After Tomorrow" and I've never seen Brokeback Mountain. I was seriously disappointed in one major part of this movie, and that is that they have a Caucasian playing the role of a Persian. His acting was fine, I just couldn't get past the fact that they made this, what is to me, MAJOR whooopsie... Thom says that it was because he looked like the character in the game, but I have to disagree. Now I've not played the game, but from the pictures I Googled, I find someone with exotic features who is obviously not Caucasian. So I dunno, I might be over reacting, but I guess I'm just fed up with Hollywood doing whatever they want with whatever they want without regard. The movie has some incredible special effects, which are at times confusing when they are happening, but are explained later on. Then, following the movie, we had strawberry birthday cake, which was awesome. Unfortunately we did give Nathan some, and he had no interest in going to sleep despite the lateness of the hour. He was very cute eating the icing though.  Matthew went home late Saturday evening, Thom and Kathy stayed the night.

Sunday we watched "Where the Wild Things Are" with Nathan. I really enjoyed the movie, though I don't remember the story from my childhood. The movie was very strange, but I found that I enjoyed it when everyone else thought it was bad. I don't know why I liked it so much, as I've always liked the monsters in the book, I thought they were really well done in the movie. Carol, the most popular of the monsters, and Max were great. I don't remember much of the other monsters, and they too were good, but there was something about the friendship between Max and Carol that I really identified with. After the movie, Thom and Kathy and Lil'Man went home. I dozed off in the recliner watching TV, and woke like one or two in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I did some WOW'ing and Facebook updates through the morning till about three in the afternoon when I laid down for a nap. I had no idea where the time went.

I was awoken at 7pm with a call from Thom. Kathy had been in a car accident (She's fine, Praise God Almighty) however their van radiator was smashed into the frame of the van, and has to be repaired. Thom was calling to see if I could come out and get them and they would spend the night at our house again and I would take them to work this morning. So, it's been an eventful few days... and while I deeply felt the loss of my time spent in the Word, I was happy to do them this morning with Mom and Nathan. 

I do have news on the employment front. I put in an application to Family Video here in Lindenhurst on Grand Avenue. I have to return Diana's call from yesterday. She is the manager of the Family Video, and she called while I was napping and had already left for the day when I woke. I'm excited about the prospect of finally getting back to work. I wish I had spent my time off more productively, but I'm putting the cart before the horse.

I need to re-arrange my room before I go back to work, or at least make some strides in that direction. The East wall needs a baseboard to cover the half inch gap between the wall and the floor. The dampness from the crawlspace is mildewing my legal cabinet, and my comic trunks are on that wall as well. I haven't decided on a layout yet, which I guess is my first step. I would like to put our desks back in the frontroom, but with the current furniture that we have, I don't see that as a possibility. I don't know at this point. I guess we'll see.

I will write more later, hopefully I'll be meeting with Diana today, and I'll have that update as well as my devotional posting.