My predilection for art films has betrayed me.

I was sitting alone in my place with my dog, whom I will refer to as Baby BarFight until he stops being a toddler. Katie and her friends had gone off into the rainy night, so I sat there, craving cable and wanting munchies. I dashed to the local convenience store, which I love having. Nothing establishes the fact that you are in a neighborhood better than a locally owned mart. And the quality of the mart can only be indicative of your neighborhood; to sum it up, they both kick ass.

Armed with Sweet Maui Onion Kettle Chips (omg), Paul Newman popcorn, Coca Cola, and a giant mom-and-pop cookie, I drove home only to realize that I don't own many good "mindless" movies. The few that I do own I've seen so many times that I hate them. I have over 200 DVDs, and I couldn't figure out what to watch. I settled on The Matrix, which would be embarassing if I actually liked it. And really, it's not that bad. It buys completely into the whole sexy-techno-tech-geek-future-sleek-gothic-punk-cyber-leather-orgy genre. It's really well made, well written, but luckily it's not deep at all. For a high-schooler, perhaps. But really, Alice in Wonderland? Dreams vs. reality? It's perfectly mindless in that its ideas are like rocks skipped across the surface of your brain.

Anyway, I made it about an hour into it, switched it over to Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia. I always thought it was a good effort, and some things stood out to me.

Quick tangent: I forgot to mention that things also stuck out for me during The Matrix, such as Neo talking to himself as he's about to climb out the window at the beginning. He's just talking to himself about the possibility of being arrested, thinking about what he could've done. It was interesting, I liked it.

Back to Insomnia, the whole plot about Internal Affairs was a lot more pronounced this time, maybe because I've already seen it. Also, the fact that Pacino is really a cop who has completely lost his moral footing has never been so clear. Knowing that he planted evidence, that he would withhold information from the other detectives to just kind of gung-ho his way to the murderer, he just comes off like such a stubborn, bad cop more than a truly good cop.

Anyway, while wtching these movies, I realized that I wish I invested more money into even more mindless movies, like Ocean's 11, Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. These movies are great, and if they were on TV I would have watched them. But alas I have chosen the higher brow.

A few life things:

I got a job at CNN with the department I interned at. Yay! Yesterday, Ryan, Tera, Katie, and I went bowling, which was awesome, but it seemed really short, even though we were there for three hours. I think free time seems shorter because I have very little of it.

My family and I and Katie are going to Florida in mid-July, which I'm very much looking forward to. I haven't been to the beach in like 7 years, so it should be fun. Plus, I'm looking forward to getting a tan...on my chest. It's very white.