Driving lessons

We passed a student driver on the way back from dropping our friends off at their apartment this past Sunday. The first thing I noticed was the nice spacious vehicle they had. I learned to drive in a Dodge Neon. Do you know how to cram four high school kids and a driving instructor into a two door car? Very carefully.

As I passed the kid going the speed limit (lame) I glanced over and saw the typical ten and two hands on the wheel. The only time I really have two hands on the wheel is during the two snow storms that occur each year or when I am making a turn (and that isn't always the case). Hell, I once drove fifty miles on the highway just using my knees in my Cavalier.

The kid was also up on the steering wheel. As close as you can get without actually removing the steering wheel and holding onto the steering column. I remember being that kid. I can remember driving south on the highway back home for fifteen minutes and getting off the highway and turning around and going back. It was exhilarating. Now....not so much. And then I thought about it, I have been driving for thirteen years. People that are taking drivers ed. in high school right now either were not born or just born as I was getting my learner's permit.

College and movies

Listening to Best of the Left podcast.  Liberals so far left, they are almost right.

As A and I were watching an episode of Gilmore Girls (yeah, what of it?)  the daughter was going away to college.  It was all sentimental and emotional and blah blah blah.  As the episode played out, I tried to recall my going away to college.  I don't remember it be a huge deal.  I'm sure that my mom cried as they drove home.  Come on, her baby went away to college, how could she not?  I don't recall having a fear come over me.  I just started unpacking and meeting some people.  Not too exciting.  Anyway, the episode was almost cliched, but it was subtle, which is what I like about that show.  Looking back at moments in that show, you see things that happen because it is a show.  Plus the humor is extremely smart.  You really need to pay attention to the jokes.  

The other thing I want to tackle is movie endings.  Particularly the happy ones.  The good guys always win and the bad guys get theirs in the end.  Why is that?  I know that there are the movies where the bad guys get away and people get a bit disappointed.  Take, for example, the Blair Witch Project.  Hands down the best ending for a movie in the past fifteen years that I have seen.  To see that guy stand in the corner and the camera falls, classic.  I have two movies that would have been so much better had the ending been different.  And this is just for the sake of the bad guys out there.  For the pessimists who want to see the good guys fail.  You are welcome

First movie:  Star Wars:  A New Hope

Plain and simple, Luke misses his shot to blow up the Death Star, Vader shoots him down and the rebel cause is bitched slapped into oblivion.  The ultimate bad guys win, flying away laughing.  

People are probably screaming at me through cyber space, but think about it.  The hope was there to save galactic democracy and in one instant, gone.  Wow, it would leave a movie theatre silent.  

Second movie:  The Matrix

As opposed to Neo being brought back to life by Trinity (and it was at that point that the movies started their decline into crap) and him 'killing' Agent Smith, he stays dead, the Agents walk away, and the sentinels destroy Morphious and Trinity and the movie ends.  

End the movie that way and the other two (plus the Animatrix) don't get made and people don't get pissed about it.  But once again, it is the system beating down a group trying to stand up against them.  It would make for great cinema.  

With those two endings, ten movies get trimmed down to two.