el cinco de mayo

1. I'm a week or so late on this, but Mark Leibovich of the New York Times has a piece on the defection of Arlen Spector from the Republicans to the Democrats... actually, I link this article/column mostly for just one line I loved in there:

Republican leaders like Senator John Cornyn of Texas derided him for acting out of “political self-preservation.” (Imagine a politician acting out of self-preservation!)

2. Sharon and I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire last night. I was expecting not to like it (not sure why... actually I do know why... read on), but I did in fact enjoy it. Sharon did in fact make the observation, "Well geez, it's a good thing he DID get the girl in the end [oh yeah, belated spoiler alert?], or this would have been a huge waste of everyone's time." Other Oscar nominated films (namely Milk and Frost/Nixon) are also on our list to watch sometime soon. I'll reserve judgment on whether I think Slumdog was really the best or most deserving of them all. I mean, it's a neat story, and the movie was well-done and all... no arguing that. I think it was a little predictable, however enjoyable as far as movies go.

2b. "Movie critic" clearly is not an alternative career option that I'm considering, as you can probably tell from my rambling assessment.

3. Sharon and I are trying out Netflix. We'll have to be watching a lot of movies for it to be worth the deal... but luckily, I've just finished my spring semester of grad school work with no summer academics in sight... so the timing may just work out perfectly.

4. [cynical rant] Movies like Slumdog, while entertaining and memorable, tend to annoy me (hence the low expectations). They always have-- I guess they're good as an escape from reality, but geeks like Jamal just don't have things work out for him in real life... Not always, anyways. [/cynical rant]

5. Happy Cinco de Mayo! I don't know what this holiday is actually about, but that's what Wikipedia is for.