Baggage Claims

“I hate that they have so many Italian restaurants in The Venetian.”

My sister-in-law, Vanessa, Saturday morning at breakfast discussing Las Vegas.

Packing. Women are often criticized, mocked and humiliated by men for their penchant to over-pack. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t made jokes and laughed about a women’s 1) size of a suitcase 2) weight of a suitcase 3) number of suitcases. But sadly, I think my days of making fun of women for over-packing are over. Let me tell you why.

It was 106° in Vegas yesterday. So obviously I am going to be wearing shorts in fear that my legs might actually start on fire if I wear anything else. However at night, especially if we go out (which we will), I am going to need to wear jeans. And I need to bring more than one pair because I hate clothes that smell like smoke and in the event that a drink gets spilled on me. But what if we go to a nice club or restaurant? Well, that means I need to bring pants, too. I am not the type of guy to wear sandals with jeans or pants, so that means I need to bring shoes. I wish I could say that standard black shoes would match with everything I wear, but they don’t, so add on brown shoes to join my black shoes and sandals. I can’t wear black socks with brown shoes, so throw those into the pile, as well. Oh, and don’t forget brown and black belts. (Am I starting to sound gay yet? Just asking) Like I said earlier, it’s going be surface-of-the-sun hot in Vegas, so I certainly can’t wear the same shirt that I was sweating in all day long to the bars, clubs and restaurants – which means at least two shirts per day (I might layer, you never know … okay, now I sound gay). Did I mention swimming trunks, boxers, sunglasses and a visor/hat? Good God that’s a lot of crap for a three day/four night excursion!

Men’s clothing is easily double the size of womens. Our shorts, shirts, underwear and pants are all bigger than most women’s. And lets not forget our shoes, which dwarf most women’s feet. Why do I bring all this up? Because my suitcase for the trip to Vegas is going to be the same size and weight as a Mini-Cooper.

I fully anticipate to be made fun of by my friends and family at the airport for the size of my baggage (and I am not talking about my relationships). Today I know that I can no longer mock those women who pack heavy and excessively, for in a few short days, I will be as sad as them. Tragic.

“C is for Crunk”

The clever message on the t-shirt of the guy my friend Jasmine was dancing with on Friday night.

Movie Review Time!

I caught a Saturday night viewing of War of the Worlds. Much to my pleasant surprise, I didn’t hate the movie and found it pretty entertaining. And one awkward scene aside, when Tom Cruise argues with a reporter about the history of air travel at the scene of a plane crash, the first two acts of the movie are really well done. Though it would have been nice if somewhere in the movie Spielberg could have paid homage to Orson Wells’ radio broadcast.

What prevented this movie from being excellent, and in some instances very haunting, were the problems scattered throughout the entire third act. After composing a handful of chilling and solid scenes (minus the above mentioned scene at the site of a plane crash where somehow the only surviving object was Tom Cruise’s stolen car) they did a great job depicting how the world might realistically react to an alien invasion. From a sad picture of everyday people fighting for the only working vehicle; to the point of a man pulling out a shattered windshield with only his bare hands, and then later another man shooting someone for possession of a car, to Tom Cruise’s son pulling people onto a ferry to save their lives (or so they thought), to more subtle images of a passenger train speeding by, totally on fire, or bodies floating down a river, Spielberg did a great job of removing some of the silly scenes that other such films, i.e. – Independence Day, routinely pepper throughout in a movie like this. The scope of the film is also effective. Instead of telling us the stories of the President of the United States, a group of everyday Americans and soldiers in the Air Force, they keep the focus just on Tom Cruise and his family. This works well because you sympathize with his confusion, his lack of information, the loneliness and any confident sense of what to do next.

And then the third act starts.

(By the way, the aliens look they are the love child from the ones in Independence Day and Alien)
Remember those times when you wrote a paper in high school or college that was required to be a certain length, and all of a sudden you realized you only had ¼ of a page left to write a conclusion, so you just abruptly ended your paper with a neat and clean three sentence concluding paragraph? Well, that’s what they did in War of the Worlds. The Deus ex Machina-like ending comes at you so fast and easy that you sit in the theatre staring at “Directed by Steven Spielberg” a few seconds longer than normal because you still can’t believe the movie just ended. Or maybe it was the shock from seeing Tom Cruise’s ex-wife and family, standing in front of their brownstone in pristine condition in Boston, fully decked out in clothing from Banana Republic, waiting to have an afternoon BBQ. Did somehow they miss or avoid all the death and destruction? Or maybe I was just so moved by the fact that Tom Cruise’s rebellious son somehow escaped a fireball the size of Rhode Island and managed to make to Boston all by himself, with time to spare. It also would have been nice if the aliens showed any symptoms of a pending problem, rather than their whole plan/attack becoming un-glued faster than you can say Katie Holmes.

This summer has been filled with movies that I enjoyed but wouldn’t say I loved, i.e. - Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Despite tons of faults, I enjoyed Star Wars - Episode 3, and Cinderella Man was solid; War of the Worlds falls somewhere in-between. The first two acts were good enough and some of the other scenes, especially those in Tim Robbins’ house (you could have heard a piece of popcorn hit the floor in theatre during those parts where the aliens are looking around the house, it was so quiet) were effective enough, that the movie is definitely worth seeing despite all the third act blunders. Am I going to buy the DVD? No. But it does warrant a B- grade and a "go see" recommendation.