There is Justice

There is justice: The Yankees lost the World Series.

No, I didn't watch any of the game. I just didn't care for either team. Give me a Houston/Oakland World Series and I'd have watched almost every minute. (How appropriate that Game Seven was a duel between Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling: Battle of the jerks.)

As far as I can tell from what I've read, though, neither team deserved to win. The Diamondbacks should have wrapped things up on Thursday. The Yankees played poorly for most of the series.

Oh, well. This weak end to an otherwise exciting season is over. Time to look forward to next year. Less than four months 'till Spring Training!

Monsters, Inc., the new animated film from Pixar, is quite good. I wouldn't quite say it's a "must see", but it lived up to my expectations. As the reviews have said, it effectively crafts a brand new world, the city of Monstropolis, where odd-looking creatures live a workaday life, except that some of them work for the company of the movie's name, where they're shunted nightly into our world to scare the bejeezus out of children to collect the raw energy of "scream", which powers their city. Our heroes are scarer-extraordinaire Sulley (a big blue furball voiced by John Goodman) and his aide Mike Wazowski (a round, green one-eyed creature voiced by Billy Crystal), who accidentally discover that a young girl, 'Boo', has been let into their world, which is problematic since children are considered toxic by monsters: Their touch can kill you. Sulley and Mike try to return her to her home, but get wrapped up in a conspiracy along the way resulting in many wonderful developments.

(That's Mike and Sully in the photo on the right. We have full-sized statues of them in the main atrium at Apple, since our CEO, Steve Jobs, is also the CEO of Pixar. If you look closely, you'll see that Sully is holding an iPod.)

As with all Pixar films, the magic starts with the concept and script (and boy, don't I wish more films took this approach). Monsters falls somewhere between Toy Story and A Bug's Life on that scale, the latter being pretty clearly Pixar's weakest offering, but still a very good film. It doesn't have quite the same fall-down-funny laughs that the two Toy Story films do, and although Crystal injects every bit of manic energy he can into Mike, the characters aren't quite as endearing. (To be fair, though, few leading characters in any recent 'buddy films' equal Woody and Buzz Lightyear for sheer entertainment.)

The animation is splendid, as we expect from Pixar, and without some of the excessive "look what we can do" shots of the second Toy Story film. The most technically impressive scenes involve juggling large numbers of objects to portray vast caverns of stuff, but which follow logically from the essential premise of the film. Of course, the true magic is the realistic movements of the characters, and their distinct body language: Sully's easy-going loping, Mike's shifting moods, Boo's toddler-based clumsiness, and of course the many non-bipedal creatures in the film.

It is, though, basically a fun romp, with a satisfying conclusion. There are one or two story holes (the background behind the "kids are toxic" plot element was never really explained, and left me scratching my head afterwards), but overall it's well worth seeing.

Shrek was better, though.

Debbi and I also spent time this weekend shopping for some things I'll want for my new home. For instance, a washer and a dryer. Didn't buy anything, as it's not quite time yet, but it's good to have an idea of what's out there, and how much it'll cost. As usual, Consumer Reports is my guide to buying appliances and other consumer goods. I can't offhand remember it ever steering me wrong.

We also booked plane ticket and hotel reservations for our trip to my sister's wedding. Expensive, but after an hour or so of searching around, we decided on what seemed like our best option, and hopefully it'll all work out without a hitch. Here's hoping!

A productive weekend, eh?