The Rest of the story

[howeird]

After the manicure I went to Kaiser, got my insulin, then home for just a few minutes to drop it off, and on to John Carter in IMAX 3D. Pretty big crowd for a 4:35 showing.

It was okay. They spent entirely too much time on Carter's pre-Mars adventures. Almost every scene in the first 10 minutes was in a downpour. The rest was in Arizona and those parts of Arizona which look like Mars. The credits say it was mostly filmed in Utah, with one location in New Mexico. Anyhow, no rain for the rest of the film.

There was some acting from time to time. The film is almost wall to wall violence, and the mostly utterly predictable plot takes some major zig zags. I like the trick ending. I wonder if it's that way in the book, which I read so long ago I can't remember.

The Princess is basically Xena in Wonder Woman's body with Einstein's brain, the latter part of the role totally out of the grasp of Lynn Collins. I loved how it was played by Traci Lords in the direct-to-video Princess of Mars from 2009. Which, by the way was incredibly beautifully shot, and worth seeing for the opening credits alone.

The CG in John Carter  is beautiful, and I enjoyed the "dog". A bit unnerving was the Martians looked a lot like 4-armed JarJars, with skin like puke green Na'vi.

The kid who plays a young Edgar Rice Burroughs is completely miscast. Toby McGuire with shoulders and curly hair.   

I see the book can be read for free online here. Looking at the first and last pages, the movie effs up the plot quite a bit. But not nearly as much as the Traci Lords version, which updated it to modern times.

Worth seeing matinee. Not worth IMAX. Maybe worth 3D. Maybe.

Home at about 7, planning on making pickles before the cukes I bought rotted. Looked everywhere, could not find the packet of mix. I guess I used the last one last time without knowing it. OSH is where I bought it last, so I drove out there, but they no longer carry it. Headed for Walmart, after checking Lucky and another OSH. They had a bunch of packets so I bought five. And waited forever in the 20 items or less line. They needed twice as many cashiers.

That was  a wasted 90 minutes. Made the pickles - only 6 jars this time, instead of 7 because I kept running out of mix at about 6 1/2. 

All the jars seem to be sealing well. I added lots of grape leaves, two pieces of garlic, a lot of dill seeds and about 1/4" of chili pepper to each jar. I think that will give me the extra bite the mix alone is lacking. If it passes the taste test I may bring a jar to auction at BASFA.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in
Practice my audition piece.
Audition at Foothill College for How To Succeed.