shower music: KMFDM "Split/Piggybank" single. So good.

i stopped by Sitwell's for a mocha, and by the Esquire to say hello to Baby Kitty. she said she'd call after she got off work.

i went home, but i felt a bit like crap, so i took some aleve and crashed for an hour. when i woke up, i called my friend Elizabeth and had a long conversation: nearly three hours, i think. i've got some shit going on, and so does she, so it worked out for both of us. she's a great friend, and i've known her for years -- since college, so upwards of ten years (yikes! i hadnt thought about that before). she lives outside of chicago, and i miss her. i need to get up there some time.

feeling much better, i realized that i hadn't received a call from Baby Kitty, so i gave her a call, but to no avail. she must have just gone home & crashed herself. i don't blame her, as she got up at 7am this morning.

what to do now, though, as i'd been stood up? the answer: finish watching The Big Lebowski, which i'd begun the night before. it's an amazing film, quite well written, and well acted, too. plus, i have big hearts for julianne moore, so it's even all the better.

after that, i figured i'd put up some of the Toast's many vacation pics. for background, i put on High Fidelity, a film that's great, but that I knew inside and out, so it wouldn't distract me too much. there was a time when i watched that film every night; on top of being a great film, it really helped me through some tough things that were going on back then. (some of those things were topics of the three hour conversation with elizabeth from earlier.)

High Fidelity ended, but i was in the groove uploading the pics, so i glanced through my discs trying to find another film thati enjoy, but that wouldn't distract too much. i found one that i hadn't seen in a while: Hackers.

ok, here's the deal: i know this isn't a great film or anything; i just enjoy it. there are, however, some things about it that just suck ASS.

• First, and in my mind the hardest thing to overlook: Lorraine Bracco. I knew her originally as Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, though this came a few years earlier. She is, and i'll stand by this, a horrible actress. she was my least favorite character on The Sopranos for a long time, and not because of the character, but because she just sucks. Yes, in Hackers she's saddled with some crap dialog, but seriously: watch the scene where the hackers are doing their thing in grand central station, and watch her in action. actually, just wacth any scene with her in it. whoof. does being married to harvey keitel just get you gigs or something?
• Next, the script. Again, whoof. A quick glance at Rafael Moreu's filmography will probably give you some insight as to his skill level. This film is written by someone who knows nothing about computers for people who know nothing by computers. Seriously. "Set your laptop to receive a file." What is that? Come on. They couldn't hire someone to fact check? That's probably good, though, as that would have spawned a rework of the ENTIRE script, since nearly everything is factually incorrect or at least dissimilar to reality.
  
• Plus, in addition to the factual errors, there's the AWESOME dialog... that is NOT present in the film. "You're floating... and I'm going to FLUSH you!" Awesomely bad, and unfortunately representative of the film.
• Let's not forget the CG representations of the hacking -- the little symbols that fly around while the hacking is going on are really fucking lame. seriously.

I think those are my major beefs (beeves?) with the film.

Johnny Lee Miller is ok, but is way better in Trainspotting. Angelina Jolie is, of course, way hot, and i think hotter here than anywhere else i've seen her. And Matt Lillard is real goddam good, too. It's fine, i got it for $5 -- leave me alone. :)

--montana--