My ankle was giving me fits until yesterday. Nothing major. Just the occasional shot of pain. You know, a “Hey they’re buddy, how ‘bout treatin’ me better” type of thing. But it has been fine today. Haven’t gone running yet, but I did do a ton of yardwork with no problem.

Speaking of yardwork. We bought a new weed wacker today. It’s been quite a debate. I’d previously always used electric. But to edge certain parts of the yard will require dragging a cord across at least two flowerbeds and constantly maneuvering back around trees. And that’s just the close-in parts. I didn’t really want to test how many extension cords I could string together. So I looked a battery powered. Which apparently get about twenty minutes of use. What is that? I can only dream of having a yard where twenty minutes makes a dent in the edging. So I went with gas. I hate myself for it. But I also kind of love it. We spent a lot on it. Because, I have a lot to edge. And it’s a pretty cool little engine, and it has two strings, and.. and… And maybe some of those trees in the backyard will eat up all the carbon it’s spewing… right?

It’s kind of crazy though. I really like it. I really get satisfaction out of having nice tools. Even though most of the time I don’t splurge for them.

So last night we watched “Across the Universe”, and it proved my hypothesis - Ringo and Harrison were the geniuses behind the Beatles. Well possibly not. But the orchestrations were so bland and they slowed down every, single, song. And they all ended up sounding exactly the same. It started ok, but it went downhill quickly. And it had a great moment were you realized that a masturbatory baby boomers history movie, would actually be pretty moving if it was done completely from the perspective of black Americans. Could you imagine a movie about kids going to college and vietnam and protesting the war where they weren’t just pissing away their middle class parent’ money and doing drugs? I think it would be pretty cool. I might get really arrogant one day and write it.

The worst part was where they mixed together Across the Universe and Helter Skelter. Almost brilliant. Except there have been a million movies that have had amazing scenes done to that music. Powerful. Violent images. And in this one a guy gets handcuffed. And another guy gets clubbed over the head. But off screen. And that’s it. Oh, and then a bunch of guys get blown up later, but that’s reported in a newspaper story. So it’s offscreen. Pathetic music video.

I guess Julie Taymor’s puppets were ok. But overall bpppppppppllllttt! I know I don’t like the Beatles, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect them enough to want them to have a movie made up of watered down musical theatre karaoke versions of their work with no soul. To sum up. Bono’s acting is really good. Really good. I’m not just saying that. But you will not remember his musical performance