I am the master of procrastination and tonight I get to pay the price. I'm spending Sunday evening finishing up an appellate brief. It's a bit of a rush job anyway, but I've known about it since Wednesday, and after doing my research and a tiny bit of writing on Friday, I have to do my rough draft tonight, review and edit tomorrow morning and then make sure it gets hand delivered to the right office by noon tomorrow. I think I have a pretty clear winner on my hands though, so it'll be fun.

I've posted a few times in the past couple days, but I've kept the posts private because most of it has been incomplete thoughts that I don't want to spend the time fleshing out right now. The weather has been absolutely perfect and I've been trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Spent a lot of yesterday at the reservoir down the road. My arms are getting that pale tawny color that constitutes about the extent of my tanning.

I've also watched a few films over the last few days. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean on Thursday, rented Frida on Saturday, and ended up viewing How to Deal on Sunday.

I agree with other journalers that 'Pirates' is a lot of fun. Although it is not a straightforward comedy, it has no pretentions of being anything other than a ride through the fun house in Disney Land. There are a lot of outlandish characters, plenty of rum, buried treasure, good guys forced to walk the plank, mutinies, fights, parrots, monkeys, and people saying 'Arrrgh!'. Orlando Bloom doesn't have the build I would expect on a blacksmith, but he's young hunk o' the moment so we have to make allowances. I was extremely dissappointed though that not a single character had a peg leg. I have to take one star off my rating because of that.

'Frida' was a fairly interesting film about a Mexican painter living in the early part of the 20th century. The movie does an excellent job of blending her paintings into the film so that we can see how those paintings were influenced by her life's experiences. In fact, I don't know how the paintings could be understood without knowing her life. Selma Hayek and Alfred Molina do an excellent job as Frida and her even more famous husband Diego Rivera. Although Frida suffered through a number of tragedies, the film does not take the easy road and portray as a victim. Instead she is a very complicated, passionate woman, a woman of strength and significant vice. Not Oscar material, but a good movie.

'How to Deal' is a teenage drama that I strangely enough ended up watching with my daughter. We had intended to see 'Terminator 3' but I got the start times wrong and this was what she wanted to see. It was a fairly sophisticated little movie. Halley Martin, the main character, has her little love interest that slowly develops through the film, but her life is also complicated by her sister's impending marriage, her mother's bitterness over her divorce, and the pregnancy of her best friend. Teen singer Mandy Moore does an excellent job as the main character, and Peter Gallagher as her sleazy father wins the award for goatee most likely to be mistaken for a dead mouse.

Oh well, back to work.


A few hours later..........

Well. That wasn't too bad. It's only 11:20 and I'm headed out. This brief is awesome. Have to get someone to proof read it tomorrow. God (and anyone besides myself who reads this journal) knows I suck at proofing my own stuff.