Wow, Life Is Good Again...

About the only blemish on my existence these days is work (though in my field this should hardly be a surprise anymore). There is no use kidding ourselves: we are looking at a flat 2007 at best if the next, say, six to ten weeks can at least stop the bleeding we've been experiencing over the last four-and-a-half months. We're not quite far enough off of last year's pace to guarantee our first down year since 2001 just yet, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that we're in danger of reaching a Point Of No Return if things don't start to stabilize soon.

On the brighter side of this, while our figures are off a noticeable percentage from last year's pace, we are still far above the truly dismal state of industry sales as a whole. I can't compare the current climate to the post-disco crash that leveled the industry in 1979 since I wasn't around to see it firsthand, but sales of physical product are disappearing faster than Itunes and their ilk is growing, and costs are being cut (and people let go) at a disturbing pace that makes me wonder sometimes if we're about to see a repeat of the artificially-accelerated demise of the vinyl LP. Yes, this sounds paranoid and I tell myself that this idea is suicidal nonsense, but then again I've been witnessing seventeen consecutive years of Really Bad Ideas from a ringside seat and nothing is out of the question anymore.

Perhaps what affects me the most in this situation is the fact that salespeople we have known for years and were in this business because they truly loved it as we do are being dropped like hot potatoes while the lawyers and bean counters who helped turn this industry into the soulless, litigious, facile factory of mediocrity that it is are still sitting pretty behind the wheel. Most of our old intermediaries are now gone, two of our more important contacts in the last two months alone: our Universal sales rep was let go in April, and nearly the entire Midwestern sales staff of WEA (including our longtime rep, with no replacement for us to deal with save for a 1-800 number) got the axe just last week. These are the times that try men's souls ...

Getting away from that funk, pretty much everything else is coming up roses these days. Health wise, all is copacetic (read: the kidneys are well-behaved and comfy), and I'm still being a good boy: as I write this, it has now been almost five months since I quit the cigs. Huzzah! This pretty much beats my old record to a pulp, and while abstaining hasn't always been a breeze (the warmer weather in the evenings lately seems to give me The Jones from time to time for whatever reason), and I've had my "short and terse" days, we're still steady-as-she goes.

With the on-again, off-again spring weather that seems to show up every week or so around here lately, I've been dragging the bike out of the garage nightly in an attempt to burn off some of the spare tire I grew over the wintertime (much of it due to kicking the cigs, I'd imagine). It's been interesting getting my wind back slowly but surely and trying to increase my endurance by alternating 4 minute "cruises" with 30 second "sprints" on the streets around our complex. As of right now, I'm still in a regimen of four sprints per night: the first two are a breeze, the third one is pretty draining, the fourth is damn near torture. By the time I return to the condo after a few minutes of coasting and cooling down, I am misted over in sweat and burning from the waist down, but it's not an unpleasant feeling at all ... at least until I climb the stairs, heh heh.

While we're on this health kick, I was also hit by a Great News Bombshell this past week that I'd never dared to hope for: Hillcrest settled on my bill. I nearly fell out of my chair when I called the Billing department to follow up on my application for financial assistance and was told that everything had been taken care of and my account balance was zero. After thanking the operator for the news, I hung up and nearly danced down the street with joy. At the very best, I'd been preparing for a resolution similar to LakeWest's offer from last summer (I paid half the bill amount in one shot and we called it even), and instead I now have a nice little safety cushion in the bank for dealing with future car repairs, or putting towards a desperately-needed new vacuum cleaner, or any host of future possibilities. Kick ass.

To help with new biking regimen (and as a celebration for the great news from the hospital), I finally made the Great Leap Backwards in audio entertainment quality and picked up a cute little mp3 player while out and about with Sarah. Since I would only be using it for exercise (be it biking or walking), I didn't feel the need to buy a 60-gig iPod and instead opted for a 2 gig Creative Audio Zen V Plus. The sound quality is about what I expected: even with the little EQ interface set up to my liking and "bass boost" pumping up the signal into the little ear buds, the music still sounds only marginally better than a transistor radio broadcast. Then again, high fidelity wasn't really the point of getting this thing as much as having a way to listen to music while timing my bike exercises. For that alone, I'm pretty happy with my new little toy, and here's hoping it pays back by helping me take a few strategic inches off my waist.

I have to admit, these little players are nifty little gadgets that almost make me consider getting a similarly-outfitted cell phone, much as I despise the things on all other counts. Really, this Zen V is a sexier looking USB drive with a headphone jack and a video screen when you get down to the heart of the matter. I loaded a couple dozen four-minute songs onto it and a few video clips for the hell of it (you never know when I might have to kill 25 minutes waiting for something or someone, so why not spend the time watching Pink Floyd's Live8 set), and then ordered an elastic arm band and a little protective case in order to stabilize the thing and thus keep myself from constantly worrying that it's going to fall out of my pocket while I'm cycling.

And now a bit of "Modern Movie Time," if you will: Sarah and I checked out Spider-Man 3 last Sunday. The critics were right: there was far too much going on here to be resolved in a satisfactory fashion, and you wonder why Sam Raimi didn't just settle with a story about Venom while leaving Sandman (and the always-irritating "Goblin Jr." for that matter) for another time and movie. Instead of having a memorable villain who makes a lasting impression on us like Dr. Octopus, the three baddies here have to make the most of their limited screen time, and we barely get to know them at all, thus there is no sense of victory when the inevitable Big Rumble is all said and done (this is especially true of Venom, who is not only never referred to by name but us is effectively given little more than a cameo appearance before being handed his ass on plate by our troubled hero). This is not to say that I was ever bored with Spider-Man 3: I was certainly entertained by it all as it was happening, but it was also nowhere near as good as 2, which I consider the best of the series (and one of the best superhero films I've seen, period).

Lastly, Brian came up the other night and the three of us took in another summer sequel: 28 Weeks Later. Thinking back on it now, I guess this movie offered about as much entertainment as Spider-Man 3, though "entertaining" seems the wrong word to use here: perhaps "being punched repeatedly in the face at odd times" is a better way to describe the experience.

As the title indicates, 28 Weeks Later takes place a beyond the events of the first film and really has nothing at all to do with it outside of the country it's set in and the disease ravaging it. There is a "Green Zone" (subtle!) maintained and patrolled by U.S.-led N.A.T.O. forces on the Isle Of Dogs where the residents of ol' Blighty are being flown back in as the first step to the reclamation and reconstruction of the country. Happily, there aren't any more infected people racing about: the last of them died of starvation months before), but there is an absolutely massive and horrendous cleanup job to be done, and it is in the middle of this commotion that that a typically twitchy Robert Carlyle (who survived an attack of infected folks by deserting his wife) is reunited at last with his two children Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots (I am not making these names up), who were out of the country and thus missed all the mayhem.

I'll leave the rest of the plot for y'all to find out on your own: though I greatly doubt that you'll be surprised to hear that the proverbial shit soon hits the fan, and the second half of 28 Weeks Later becomes as strongly reminiscent of Aliens as the first one was of Day Of The Dead. A couple of military characters (most notably a bored sniper played by Jeremy Renner) figure prominently once all Hell breaks loose and try to lead a band of survivors to safety before the brass decides to wipe the board clean and start over again.

Now comes the rub: while the way the Rage virus rears its ugly head once again is a pretty basic and believable idea, exactly how we reach this point demands a satisfactory explanation that we are never given. Worse, the sequence of events that follows strains even "zombie movie" credulity to the snapping point (and I won't even get into a certain character's inexplicable habit of crashing enough scenes afterward that you start to wonder if the survivors are being menaced by a Rage-infected zombie or Evil Otto from Berzerk).

Even for those who can perform the mental calisthenics to keep them from hurling their popcorn box at the screen in exasperation once the Rage virus gets out in the wild again may still have issues with discerning what happens afterward as near-stroboscopic editing work takes over from that point onwards. If parts of 28 Days Later made you feel prone to seizures, be warned that 28 Weeks Later is sheer visual chaos at several points, and your ability to suss out exactly what in the flying Hell is going on (and to whom it's happening) is severely compromised to progressively irritating effect. In fact, during two key points in the second half of this movie where a main character is in mortal danger of infection or death, it is absolutely impossible to tell if they lived or died until you move on to the next scene.

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that unlike its predecessor, there is a much different, almost viciously nihilist tone to 28 Weeks Later that occasionally makes for some supremely unpleasant viewing: scenes of mass immolation, mass murder, and a whole bunch of infected folks being instantly converted to cold cuts are par for the course here. All of that, however, pales next to a pivotal scene where an infected character spends a couple of minutes pounding a screaming, helpless medical patient into raw hamburger before deciding to engage in some festive eye-gouging for a lark. Plenty of agonized and screams and bodily fluids flying about willy-nilly for all. Yeee-ha.

Spider-Man 3 rating: 3/5

28 Weeks Later rating: 3/5