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Most guys know the look.  You walk into a movie theater with your significant other, look around and see a crowd of 99 percent women.  You spot the one or two other dudes in the audience and then see, in their eyes:

?Thank God I?m not the only guy in here.?

I saw that look last Friday night, as Christina and I went to see Pride and Prejudice.  I really wasn?t giving off the look that much, but I was sympathetic to those who were.

I actually volunteered to go.  I figured that I deserved it- I had dragged Christina to enough Star Wars movies and it was time to pay up.  Besides, what Star Wars is to me, Pride and Prejudice is to her.  Except with a few changes:

-Instead of spaceships, people get around on horses.
-Instead of characters speaking in the language of the Wookies, Ewoks, Hutts, they speak old-timey English, complete with accents.
-Instead of Darth Vader, the main character fears her horny/pathetic cousin.

I?ve never read the book version of Pride and Prejudice, but Christina has.  About ten years ago, the BBC made a six-hour miniseries out of the book.  Christina owns the mini-series and I?ve seen that.  Though not as many times as she has.

The plot of Pride and Prejudice is pretty famous- the first Bridget Jones ripped it off pretty shamelessly.  Poor girl meets rich boy, they hate each other, but not really.  They try reaching out to each other as drama goes on around their lives.  Hijinks ensue.  There is a lot of story- and the BBC version takes six hours for a reason. 

This latest theatrical version actually does a great job of condensing the material down to two-something hours.  This version keeps the story coherent, but there?s not much room for fluff.  The resulting movie is pretty solid.

There?s some humor (particularly from Keifer?s father Donald Sutherland, who plays the main character?s father), which was for the most part, unexpected.  They also did a great job with the settings- they look real and better than the ones used in the BBC version.

There are a few small problems I have with the movie.  First of all the dialogue gets hard to follow with all the old-timey English, especially during the rapid back-and-forths. 

Also, there?s a heavy class element behind the story.  For some reason, the main character?s family could lose their house and all their money unless she gets married.  I just didn?t get that. 

Overall, though, it?s a solid movie- and they did a great job of condensing it.  Makes me wonder how the Star Wars saga would turn out if it were condensed.  Hmmm?that sounds like yet another Star Wars column idea.

Tom thinks Pride and Prejudice should have been about Mr. Bingley, not Mr. Darcy.  Visit Tom’s blog at kingtom.thejamootz.com.

Items added to the Word dictionary: Wookies, Ewoks, Hutts, timey, Hijinks

Songs WinAmp played during the transcribing of this article:

-Let?s Get Known, The Unicorns
-Vienna Calling, Falco
-No One Else, Weezer
-Harriet?s Got a Song, Ben Kweller
-Headline News, ?Weird? Al Yankovic
-Dead, The Pixies
-Sorry, Nerf Herder

When did it become ok to let the staff of a store keep an eye on your children? Working in a music store I have noticed children who come in unsupervised and cause havoc. Twenty minutes later mom comes in with a new hairdo or a bag from the beauty store two doors down. Why must I keep an eye on their child while they shop? And who in their right mind sends their child to wander about unsupervised?

Even worse are the parents who are in the store and ignore their children.  And to top it off, when their child knocks something over they don’t even make an attempt to put it back or to acknowledge that they child had even done something.  What is going on in these peoples minds? And don’t try and say something to the parent or correct the child. That will just bring the parent down on you. As if their child has not just knocked over a $300 item or almost dropped 50 lbs of equipment on their head. So what do you do?

One might think “oh, its a music store. Kids will run around and make noise”. This is of course true. However, at a previous job as a technician for a major mobile phone company I had to put up a banner that a child would pull down at least once or twice a week. A banner with a large metel bar at the top.  When parents where asked to keep their children away from the banners so that they would not pull them down and possibly harm themselves, 80% of the parents would inform the staff member that their child could do what ever they pleased. But, you can guarentee had their child pulled the bar unto their head there would be a lawsuit faster than Superman can reheat a can of beans. 

So what do you do?

I first caught Aeon Flux on MTV’s Liquid Television late night show. Liquid Television showed off beat cartoons late at night. Not ha-ha cartoons, but the import cartoons and arty independent cartoons. Aeon Flux was one of these. I was in seventh grade and thought Aeon Flux was the bad assest cartoons I’d ever seen. It had guns, running, jumping, sci-fi gizmos, aliens, slight sexual overtones, and a bunch of freaks with hands for feet. Thus, it helped start a brief anime kick I had during that time.

However, at that time the cartoon was void of dialog. It was simply music and sound effects. So I was just watching this oddly (and rather poorly) drawn character jump around shooting everything in her way while chasing this other ugly guy for some reason. I didn’t know why and frankly half of it didn’t make any sense, but I think that’s why I liked it. It let me make up the story and even helped me get through seventh grade writing class.

Then Liquid Television went away with the music videos on MTV and I thought it was gone. Then it gets two, 15-minute blocks as a regular show on late night MTV. This time with dialog. I watched and rekindled my joy of action cartoons, so much that a Aeon Flux VHS ended up in my collection next to Akira and Golgo 13.

Aeon Flux got, what I believe to be, a small but loyal following of viewers. You found the videos if you looked hard enough and its popularity didn’t last long. After all, it was rather off beat and very weird for most people to watch, let alone understand what’s going on.

Now here I am more than 10 years later. Aeon Flux hasn’t been in brain since middle school and I’ve well since passed my prime of off beat cartoons and anime. It was fun while it lasted and had its run. Oh but wait…a movie! Huh, a movie? Here is where I let out one of my patented audible sighs. Sigh.

Once again Tinsel Town has failed to capitalize on something when it’s actually worth exploiting. I admit the Aeon Flux story is interesting and lends itself well to special effects, but just because you can accomplish the special effects with today’s technology is not a reason to dig up and waste money and time on a fad that has lived its life.

Even with a top biller like Charlize Theron playing the lead role, is not enough to get in the masses that justify (and pay for) the actors and the effects. Sure, you’ll get your die hards and one time fans (although I will certainly pass), but they won’t turn a new film into a #1 box office smash.

I know I’ve talked about the age limit of trick-or-treating before, but I stand beside my rule that trick-or-treat knows no age. If you’re willing to dress up and beg for freebies, you deserve them. And despite the fact that I was handing out instead of walking out this year, I discovered that the whole age limit on begging doesn’t apply in the field.

There were several people that came pandering for candy that were certainly “too old” but we still gave them candy. So even though in discussion there’s an age limit, come the place and time when that person is face-to-face with you asking for an Almond Joy, you’ll pony up, then talk about them on their way to the next house.

All that aside, last night was a lot of fun and I was somewhat surprised at the range of costumes. Batman was popular as was the ubiquitous Scream mask. What really surprised me was the frequency of Freddy Kruger. I counted four of them, with claw, hat, and all. It made me very happy to see a classic character like Freddy still surviving, especially in kids that weren’t even born when the last Freddy movie came out.

I couldn’t help but notice the lack of Jason hockey masks amongst the crowds.  A simple and effective costume like that seems too easy to give up. There were a few Darth Vaders, though all without helmet/mask and a few Spider-mans and Ninja Turtles.

The best costume of the night goes to the fat kid that “got it.” He starts to walk up the driveway to get his booty and goes, “go ahead, start laughing. I know it’s funny.” Upon closer inspection we see this cheeky fellow is wearing a big puffy coat on top and a tutu on the bottom. Classic. I give him his reward for being so brave and on the way out I say to him, “good luck at school tomorrow,” to which he replies, “I haven’t seen anyone I know yet, so it’s OK.” Now that’s smart. A simple costume and commuting to a hood where you friends are not.

Also making good numbers this year was the amount of lazy ass kids. We counted several kids that were old enough to walk and make complete sentences being pulled by their parents as they sat it their kiddie wagon. These were total Veruca Salts and their all-giving parents. Of course, then you had the kids that asked if we could come to them and give them their candy. Punks.

Ah, Halloween. My favorite holiday of them all, albeit I may be a tad biased.

And now a woosh through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and on to 2006!

The last place I expected to find anything with the name “cornhole” was at work. It’s always the things with the most off kilter names that make it big and thus make you embarrassed to even say it.

With all the pains that come at work, my employer does very well at balancing good with bad with simple, fun game days dubbed “Quality of Life” – how’s that for corporate? Nonetheless, the QOL days are the ones you like to have. Sometimes a QOL day is nothing more than free popcorn and ice cream, but other times it is entirely organized events like a basketball tournament and now a Cornhole tournament.

Entirely new the cornhole scene, a topic was posted on the company message board asking what cornhole was. One response was, “it’s like horseshoes only it doesn’t hurt as much.” Well, that response didn’t fulfill my curiosity so I went on-line in search of a real definition. Low and behold I fine the American Cornhole Association, of which I now long to be a card-carrying member…ha!

After all, however, cornhole is similar to horseshoes, but I think far more complicated and thus even more fun.

Cornholing is played with two teams of two players. You have a slanted board with about a fist-sized hole at the high end. There are two of these boards that you place so far apart and then you toss bean bags at them trying to get them on the board, or better yet, in the hole ? hence the term cornhole; corn is what the bags are filled with, the goal is to get it in the hole.

One member from each teams stands at each board and you each toss alternating at the opposite board. If you get the bean bag on the board, you get a point. You make it in the hole you get three points. Simple enough so far…but, the point system gets worse. The points cancel out at the end of the round. For example, you toss a bag and it stays on the board, right then it’s worth one point. Your opponent then does the same, also getting a point, but at the end of the round the points cancel out, one for one, so neither team would get any points. It makes more sense when you play a round, trust me, but this way of scoring lends itself to some actual strategy. Since scoring isn’t done until the end of each round, you can watch your score up and down very quickly.

The game ends when one team reaches 21. There are actually some other fine point rules that the ACA web site outlines, but at work and for general knowledge purposes, that’s how you play. It’s very easy to get into and one anyone can play, like bocce ball.

Back to work…a tournament of 32 teams was made and the games began. First off, let me tell you cornhole is not a fall sport. Bad weather can ruin everything, and at work when you are trying to fit game time within work schedules, it gets even worse.

Nevertheless, intrigued by the name and the fact that it sounded mildly fun, I signed up to play. Plus, the top prize was a pair of hockey tickets and a paid day off…enough incentive for most people. I picked a teammate and we blew through the first two teams without much trouble. I was quite surprised that it was so easy, figuring that everyone but myself had played at one point. Apparently, cornhole is quite the drunkards game at bars, so naturally you’d think it would be a game that I would fail at. But after beating some noted drinkers in this tournament, I have thus theorized that the alcohol enhances your skills and playing sober just doesn’t work for some, so there I had an edge.

Then today we come to Round 3 of the five round tournament. This was a game. Back and fourth we went bleeding each other slowly one point at a time. That is until the other team holed two bags and sealed their victory and our demise. So there will be no hockey game for me, but next year it’s on…and hopefully next year they’ll move the tournament to Spring.

Now to vent about how work ran things. The good thing is this was obviously a work-sanctioned event. It wasn’t an extracurricular activity. You were encourage to play “when you can” during or after work as you all see fit. Well, no one wants to play before or after work, but trying to coordinate schedules between yourself and your teammate was bad enough, let alone trying to find a date and time when all four could play a full game.

At one point, my team was scheduled to play a team of sales people (problem lies inherit if you have any experience with sales people). We mailed them at the beginning of the week to see when they could play…our schedule was pretty open. Their reply was they could only play at eight in the morning or six at night, the “off limits” before and after work period. We replied with a “no thanks” and asked if they could play during work, to which they replied, “our sales manager says we’re not allowed to play during business hours.”

Say what? OK. So if you know you can’t play during hours when everyone else can, why did you sign up to play? Not to mention you’re sales people, which means you should be out all day selling and thus not on the premises to play in the first place. Urg!

This whole rigamaroll put is a week behind and were rushed into Round 3 and thus our offing. I won’t make excuses though as it was a good game that last a good half hour (opposed to the handy 10 minute whoppins we dished previously).

In the end, cornhole is fun and should (will) be part of next year’s Annual Autumn Gehrisch Get-Together. To heck with horseshoes.