Hey, you, get out of my mind!

Is it a dream or just a movie---or both?

This will be quick and dirty.  Maybe I'll return to it, and maybe I won't.  Perhaps you will have comments that will spur me to a more in depth post later.

It's been a week now, and Inception, Chris Nolan's latest brain bender, is still rattling around inside my casaba.  While I thought it was a good movie, I certainly did not love it, and I was definitely looking at my watch and wondering when the sedative was going to wear off as it wound down to its conclusion.  By the end, I was more than ready for the credits to roll.  Some of that may have been due to the actual movie going experience I had, but that wasn't all of it.  Inception was good, but I didn't find it to be actually all that entertaining.  There were long stretches where I just wasn't interested; much of the exposition was clumsy and took me out of the movie (dream?); and pretty much everything from the The Spy Who Loved Me sequence in the third (or 33rd?) dream level was butt numbingly boring.

Yet a week later I cannot stop thinking about it.

The Death of Cinema

 We paid $99.95 for this?

Lately I've been listening to a podcast called The Business, which I highly recommend.   It's not new, but it is new to me.  Hosted by Kim Masters on KCRW, which is a fine public radio station in Santa Monica, The Business is essential listening for anyone interested in the business aspect of Hollywood (hence the title).  Ms. Masters, along with a fine stable of partners and guests, talks dollars and sense, dissecting why both are in such short supply in Hollywood these days.  One of the more interesting and (to my mind) misunderstood topics that has come up frequently in recent years has been the slow death of the movie theater business.

Evil Sycophantic Pinhead Nation

Lebron James prepares for his closeup on ESPN

I've seen a lot of sick shit in my life.  I've seen men and women act in an evil manner both from malice and obliviousness.  Doubtless I have seen many things much more sickening that what happened last Thursday on ESPN between 9 and 10 pm, but right now I'm having all sorts of trouble recalling what those things are, because Lebron James and his Decision have temporarily inflated the balloon in my brain that holds all memories involving cruelty and hatred, temporarily blocking me from accessing and processing anything other than the evil clown face Lebron has long worn in my head.

Not that this is about my hatred, mind you, although I don't expect too many people outside of NE Ohio to believe that (and probably not even all people inside NE Ohio, either).  No, this is about Lebron's hatred for his own home and hearth (and possibly for himself, as well).  But it's not about my hating anything, as hatred is something I reserve primarily for people I know personally.  Extreme emotions are not something I waste time bestowing on people I do not know, or who I know only through the twisted and distorted lens of the media.

Disgust, sure.  There is an emotion I can get behind.  But not hatred.