Every weekend is more and more busy.

On Saturday at 11:10am, we saw Avatar in digital 3d. I have to say, I was not expecting much when we walked into the theater. I am not a fan of action movies, fantasy movies, or most any movie that cost over $50million to make. Having said that, I liked it more than I thought I would. There was definitely some poor acting by the main character and Michelle Rodriguez, but it wasn't horrible. And also, the mineral that they are mining is called "unobtainium." Really, James Cameron? Unobtainium? I understand that the term is sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it just sounds so awful when the actors try to say it with a straight face. The political and human rights side of it kind of bashed you over the head. I've heard James Cameron say that his pro-earth messages are subtle. Far from it. This is the non-cartoon version of FernGully.

Visually, it was definitely a step-up from anything I've ever seen. The first major motion picture to use CGI extensively was Jurassic Park, and to be honest, CGI characters haven't gotten that much better since Jurassic Park in my opinion. Every time Jurassic Park is on TV, I always marvel that the CGI in 1993 looked about 80% as good as most effects today. But Avatar was a step up. All the scenes where they were wandering around at night were phenomenal looking. This must be what it felt like when Star Wars came out.

Most people told me that it was not worth seeing unless you saw it in 3d. I guess 3d is the new trend to get people to go to the movies. This is marketed as some "new kind" of 3d, but this technology has been around about as long as I have. I saw 3d just as good as that (using the same technology of different polarization in each lens) in Disney World when I was six years old (Captain EO ftw). Fake 3d is more of a distraction for me than anything else. On one hand it's kind of cool, but on the other hand it's just not quite right and I'm always looking at the background instead of the foreground. Everything is just a little "off."

Then we ate at California Pizza Kitchen before picking up Stephen. Avocado egg rolls. Barbecue chicken pizza. Couple beers.

Yesterday was chores all day. I cut my hair, did four loads of laundry, and installed our new baby gate that can accommodate the weird angles and banisters at the top of our stairs. Installing that thing was no easy task. Seems like I still need to make a few adjustments, but it is going to work. We also went grocery shopping, cleaned up the house a little, and watched football.

Every NFL game this weekend turned out the way I wanted except for the Cowboys winning. That kind of pissed me off, actually. And of course, we were grocery shopping for the second half (and overtime) of the Cardinals/Packers game--the only good, exciting game all weekend. I think the Cardinals are my favorite team in the playoffs. Kurt Warner is an absolute machine in the post-season. When I was young, my family watched Joe Montana tear it up in the playoffs nearly every year, but I think Kurt Warner is just as good. He is every bit as calm as Joe Montana was, and more athletic. Warner's problem is that he will not run for yards... ever (and sometimes he likes to throw five interceptions in a game, but not in the post-season). Yesterday he completed 29 passes with a nearly 90% completion rate, and he threw more touchdowns than incompletions. Pretty staggering to throw five touchdowns and only four incomplete passes all day. The Cardinals were so efficient on offense that they only had five 3rd downs in the entire game.

We randomly started receiving Rolling Stone magazine addressed to my wife a while back. I'm not sure if someone bought us a subscription as a cruel joke or what. This month's edition features two massive articles about global warming. They do a big spread on the "earth's biggest enemies" and trash McCain and a lot of big oil executives and such. Just when I thought Rolling Stone couldn't get any worse. I know they have always focused on some things other than music, but how can you claim to be a voice of the counter-culture when you espouse the views of a major political party and Lady Gaga is on every other page?

My wife volunteered to walk the dogs for me this morning because we slept in and she didn't have time to do her normal morning routine. I said thanks and went back to sleep. Turns out it was nine degrees outside. Oops. Now she will never volunteer to do that again.

I was doing very well at making at least one post per day, but over the past 15 days I have fallen off. Things are back to normal now and hopefully I can continue.

When discussing the "most famous movie scene ever," several famous scenes come to mind: the opening scene of Alien, the last scene in Planet of the Apes, HAL disobeying Dave, the T-Rex chasing Jeff Goldblum and company, and Moses parting the Red Sea in 1956's The Ten Commandments. There is one scene, however, that has been remade hundreds of times on film: the brutal shower scene in Psycho. This scene is referenced in everything from mocking comedy films to children's cartoons. The music is instantly recognizable (and often imitated) and still makes me uncomfortable just hearing it. Here are some facts about the famous shower scene, lifted from the pages of my Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: 4Ply Edition (©1988, 1989, 1990, 1991).

• There are approximately 65 edits in this 45 second scene.
• Although there's practically no graphic violence in the scene, it has literally scared some people out of taking showers--including Janet Leigh (the actress portraying the protagonist who is stabbed to death in the scene), who says in her autobiography that she refuses to take them anymore.
• Alfred Hitchcock later claimed he made the film as a joke.
• It took seven days to shoot the 45 second scene.
• The blood washing down the drain was actually chocolate sauce.
• Only one shot in the entire shower scene montage shows a knife entering the body and no blood is seen in that shot.
• Some shots use as little as eight frames of film (at 24fps, that's only 1/3 of a second).
• Anthony Perkins (as Norman Bates) did not actually act in the scene. He was on Broadway at the time of the shooting, starring in a play; a stand-in filled in as "Mom."
• Mixed-up priorities: According to Hitchcock, studio executives were more concerned about having a toilet flushing onscreen than they were about the implicit violence.
• Janet Leigh refused to let her daughter (actress Jamie Lee Curtis) watch the movie as a child when it appeared on TV.
• Hitchcock got the movie past censors by first submitting a script with many more horrible scenes, knowing that by allowing them to be cut he would get more leverage on the others (a tactic often used today).

Janet Leigh on the Shower Scene:

"What I was to wear in the shower scene gave the wardrove supervisor migraines. I had to appear nude, without being nude. She and I pored over striptease magazines, hoping one of their costumes would be the answer.... There was an impressive display of pinwheels, feathers, sequins, etc., but nothing suitable for our needs. Finally, the supervisor came up with a simple solution: flesh-colored moleskin.... So each morning for seven shooting days and seventy-one setups, we covered my private parts, and we were in business.

"For sundry reasons, we had to do [the scene] over and over. At long last a take was near completion without a mishap. Abruptly I felt something strange happening around my breasts. The steam from the hot water had melted the adhesive on the moleskin, and I sensed the napped cotton fabric peeling away from my skin. What do to?...I opted for immodesty...and made the correct judgment. That was the printed take."

(By the way, I highly recommend the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series for articles and facts about anything and everything).