Avatar and the Parties

So, this week was pretty much exhausting. It started off with Monday night shenanigans. Armando and Scott were in town and, for reasons which are hard to explain, we ended up planting a Christmas Tree in the beach. Tuesday was a work day followed by the arrival of a mess of Lindens from around the world. This, of course, resulted in many, various and sundry excuses to celebrate and, rather unfortunately, ended up with a stop at 21st Amendment. Now, make no mistake, I like 21st Amendment. Unfortunately, their beers are quite strong, quite hoppy, and result in one hell of a hangover.

Which brings me to Wednesday. Wednesday was day 1 of our 2 day work meeting. I finally rolled in around 1. It started at 9. Fortunately, I was not the only one who was suffering from the prior evening's over-exuberance. That didn't make it any easier to have to sit through a number of long meetings and a grueling round of meeting new people and attempting to be friendly and sociable, however. Anyway, after that we were treated to a private screening of Avatar (On the IMAX) (in 3D). More on that in a bit.

Wednesday night was spectacular. Not only did I get a good night's sleep but they have finally taken down all the scaffolding that was up around my apartment while they were painting the building. So, hooray.

Thursday was better. The meetings were more compelling, lunch was tasty, and we had a gigantic kick ass party that night. Fortunately, despite my greatly animated presence that evening, I did manage to control myself. The party was terrific, there was tasty food, there was some sort of acrobatic routine thing going on, a bunch of Lindens dancing (I partook, briefly, under duress) and then it was back to the W and then to the Rickhouse for a super tasty sloe gin fizz and then back to the W for some socializing. At some point I caught a cab home. Most of work was hungover today, though I managed to escape relatively unscathed in the hangover department. Still, I didn't get much done today... well I did some things. I reckon tonight will be an early night regardless.

Avatar. I feel the need to say a few things on this matter. First off, work was nice enough to reserve the entire IMAX theater at the Metreon for a private screening of the movie... in 3D. Anyway, I can safely say that the story is crap. It is basically Dances with Wolves meets The Last Samurai... in space. Except, in my opinion, both Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai are vastly superior movies. At least in the story department.

Now, visually Avatar is an amazing movie. The interplay between digital and real effects was completely seamless. In fact, I can honestly say that Avatar is probably one of the absolute most visually stunning movies ever made. In my opinion, though, the use of 3D didn't really add anything to it. Initially I found it jarring and then I found it distracting and then I just stopped caring. It didn't help the movie or the story in any real way.

Yes, I reckon I'm just being curmudgeonly.

Oh well.

So, why did the story suck so bad? Namely they created this really awesome and in depth alien race which, honestly, I felt was actually alien. In some broad strokes the Na'vi resembled the native american cultures, I guess. Or, more precisely, what the movies have told us native american cultures were like. But they basically were these beings who lived in harmony with their world and didn't have any of the rather nastier bits of human nature; namely greed, jealousy and violence.

And then what happens?

Alien dude gets jealous and there's a fight and then they have a war. Whatever. Granted, the humans started it, but still. The response by the aliens just seemed so very very banal and, well, deplorably human.

Anyway, the only other thing I want to say is all the brouhaha about Christian's reactions to the whole Gaia thing. I think it's a misreading of the movie. So, basically, it's like this: the humans in the movie refer to the planet-consciousness as the Na'vi's god. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't really get the sense that the Na'vi had a god, really. At least not as we would describe it. And this point is proved later in the movie when the planet-consciousness is shown to actually exist. Like, the entire goddamned fucking planet is alive and connected with everything on it.

So, Christian folks, if it'll get that bee out of your bonnet just think this: God made a world that is completely interconnected. Jesus.

Anyway that is my rant.

And, finally, I found this and is it kind of neat. Evidently they've developed a special flexible sensor for measuring minute quantities of blood glucose in the tears in your eyes which could be incorporated into contact lenses.