The rising of the machines
I know you're all just waiting with baited breath for me to post my thoughts on this whole election business, but you'll have to wait a bit longer, because I'm in the mood to talk about the Terminator at the moment.
I am one of those people who sits in front of the TV and/or computer for the entirety of Election Night, flipping channels and refreshing my browser to keep apace with the latest meaningless exit polls and watching nervously as the electoral scores slowly rise towards the magical number 270. Realizing that spending my entire evening doing this would just serve to work me into an electoral frenzy, I convinced Michele to rent a movie for us to watch instead of leaving me stare vacantly at the unfolding election results. Michele unearthed a Coupon which could be exchanged at a local Blockbuster for one of their Moving Pictures, so we headed out.
We have gotten so accustomed to the convenience of Netflix that we could only stand, paralyzed and bewildered, inside the local Blockbuster. I experienced a moment of terror when I saw that the Blockbuster had a TV switched on to election coverage, and I feared that I would be sucked in, but we prevailed. After the usual 30 minutes of aimless wandering through aisles filled with movies that I can't believe anybody actually rents, I somehow succeeded in convincing Michele to let me rent Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Michele did a fairly convincing job of feigning enthusiasm, insisting that no, Terminator 3 sounds really really good, she really wants to watch it!, so we rented it, went back home, and broke out the popcorn.
As it turns out, I have no idea where I'm going with this post. As it further turns out, T3 was an excellent movie--pure, old-school action. There is a car chase scene which easily surpasses in Sheer Awesomeness the much-celebrated Matrix Reloaded highway chase. I mean, it's a car chase where they're driving gigantic cranes and fire trucks. How cool is that?
Pretty cool, I'd say. And that, my friend, is how I spent my Election Night. Of course, after the movie I immediately glued myself in front of the computer watching election results until the wee hours of the morning. But for two glorious hours, I managed to forget all about that whole election thing.
Although I did reflect once or twice during the movie that Arnold has just got to be the coolest state governor ever to walk the Earth.
"Awl be baack!"