Atlantis

Without my noticing it, my journal's front page received its 50,000th hit sometime last night. My hit log claims that it came around 5:35 pm Pacific Time and came from an ISP around Wilmington, Delaware. I think this is from a regular reader whose identity I don't know (but it might be my old roommate John Keating).

This isn't an exact count, since the counter for the first half of my journal's existence didn't register hits from people who weren't displaying images. But it's accurate enough. My journal's been around for nearly four years, and although I'm not one of the high-profile journallers around, 50k hits in 47 months is pretty good!

Plus, I'm still around and plugging away. Eleanor reports that high-profile journaller Pamie has decided to stop keeping her journal. I admit to feeling a tiny bit smug when I outlast someone else like this, even though there no reason I should. People change, the reason for keeping a journal goes away, or some reason comes up why they shouldn't. (In addition to Pamie, near-legendary journaller Diane Patterson abandoned her journal last fall. No doubt there are others I'm not aware of.) In a sense, I shouldn't feel smug, since it almost indicates that other people are changing and growing and I'm staying right where I am. Maybe.

But I'm plugging away, pretty regularly if not as frequently as I once did. No plans to stop, either... so don't touch that dial!

I spent the weekend with Debbi. Yesterday we sort-of haphazardly packed some stuff up and went to Moss Beach and sat on the beach reading for a while. I learned that Haagen Dasz chocolate-covered popsicles don't stay quite cold enough in a cooler, even with a couple of faux-ice packs. Soda keeps plenty cold, though. We also bought some cherries and pistachioes at my favorite little fruit stands in Half Moon Bay, watched the tide roll in, and went for a walk along the top of the bluffs.

At the beach at the other end of the path along the bluffs, I found a huge shell which must have been the shell of a large oyster, as it had the swirled colors on the inside. It also had several holes bored into it, including four equally spaced near one edge. We were trying to figure out what might have bored regular holes like that. Anyway, it was quite pretty, but it had a number of small barnacles on it, so I decided to throw it back into the surf rather than kill the barnacles by taking it with me (never mind that I understand that removing objects from those beaches is illegal). I'm such a sap.

Today we got together with Debbi's friends Lisa and Michel. We met at my apartment and I gave them the tour, and then we went and played miniature golf at a Golfland about five miles from my place. Lisa won again, although I would have beaten her if I hadn't completely muffed hole #17. Grr! I think Deb and Michel were amused at our competitiveness.

It was a hot day, and between the last two days I got a lot of sun and am again a bit red. Not as bad as a few months back, though.

Afterwards we headed off to see the new Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. A better title might have been Atlantis: The Lost Point, since this film largely lacked one. I decided it's not actually as bad as Titan A.E. was, but it's pretty bad.

Milo Thatch (voice of Michael J. Fox, an inspired choice if you think that casting Michael J. Fox to play Michael J. Fox is inspiration) is an aspiring explorer in 1914 who thinks he can find the lost continent of Atlantis, destroyed (we learn in the prologue) by a tidal wave 9000 years ago. He's given the opportunity by an old colleague of his grandfather's, and is part of an expedition headed by Commander Lyle Rourke (James Garner, strangely cast against type as a rather nasty mercenary type). Along with their cast of oddball characters (including voices of Claudia Christian and the late Jim Varney) they naturally make their way to the now rather-decayed city of Atlantis, where Milo meets the Princess Kida (Cree Summer) and her father the king (Leonard Nimoy, barely recognizable), and the motives behind the mission become clear to Milo's dismay.

It's hard to decide where to start criticizing this film, so I'll start with the animation: Bad animation. Not Hanna-Barbera bad, but uninspired designs, worse-than-usual violations of the laws of physics, amazingly broad physical mannerisms, and cliched characters. The sheer grandeur of Atlantis itself is good for a few seconds of awe, but that's about it. There's very little visual gosh-wow factor here.

The characters themselves are little more than cliches, too, and there are too darned many of them to have meaning beyond a few one-liners. Scenes are set up and resolved into a cheap joke in a matter of seconds. Few animated films go for as many cheap laughs as Atlantis does.

Finally, the story makes no sense on any level. Milo's benefactor has access to technology that doesn't exist today, much less 80 years ago. (Has any nation built a mile-long submarine with little assault mini-subs that handle like high-performance sports cars?) Atlantis is populated with people who have lived there since the submersion, but they've forgotten how their technology works or even how to read their own language! They have access to an all-powerful force which can do pretty much whatever it wants, whenever the plot requires it to. Their leader says that no outsider can view Atlantis and live, and then tells them all to come back where they came from. Kida's life is risked in exactly the same way that her mother's was lost 9000 years earlier, but why Kida is spared and her mother wasn't is not explained. And, of course, all the right characters have the right change of heart at the last minute. Sheez!

Perhaps the worst thing about the film is its condescending attitude. Good animated films today have a story that makes reasonable sense and not only entertains children, but contains a lot of more sophisticated bits which adults can enjoy. Anything by Pixar qualifies, for instance, as does Shrek. Atlantis has been dumbed so far down it can't see daylight anymore.

This is a bad film, folks. Stay away.

We wrapped up the evening at Pasta Pomodoro, the cheap pasta place we discovered a month or two back. Service was so-so, but the food was still good. We decided to call it a night after that. We're all pretty tired, I think, and Debbi and Lisa have to keep preparing for their vacation!

Oh, one more film thing: The Stanford Theatre is having a Jack Lemmon film festival this month. Lemmon passed away last week. They assembled ten of his films in remarkably short order. Hopefully they're now done with their endless string of musicals and can go back to some dramas and comedies.