And here we have the first of the "new" look journal entries. We're going with a sparser look, and the white background so in vogue right now with the kids. Aren't they precious? Let's give the kids a hand, folks. That's it. Let them know you love them.

The change is a work in progress (which shouldn't surprise anyone). Over the next few days I'm going to refine it and make changes and do Heaven knows what. Let me know if you have any particular requests or comments to make.

The graphics font used above is Caslon Open Face. It somehow feels right for the look and feel of the pages. It was also used for the graphics-box links in the sidebar, but seems perhaps too ephemeral for those. So, it may change sometime soon. I'm leaving the textual links at the bottom of the page as well. And, everything's alt tagged as needed, as part of my never ending quest to make these pages Lynx friendly. If I fail... well, it's not my fault I failed! I blame the French!

Also, by taking my meaty face off the top of the masthead, I'm taking my first step in metamorphosing the site into an integrated site, with reviews of books and movies and all sorts of fun stuff. I generated a good number of the support graphics at the same time I worked on the rest of this stuff. So, we'll see what happens.

Hm. Looking at this, my color scheme isn't unlike John Bankert's new Irrelevant Front color scheme. Well, if he wants to sue, let him! Let him I say! I'll see him in court by God!

Hm. Maybe the "annotations" graphic needs to be smaller. Maybe a lot smaller. I need to keep thinking about this, regardless....

---

Movie news of the day: over the weekend, Action Mason and I saw both Mystery Men and The Iron Giant. And, as I've noted before, we liked both of them.

The Iron Giant is clearly the better movie of the two. Clearly. It's a simply very good movie, and I don't just say that because it's set in Maine. It would work just as well if it were a live action film, and have the same central point (it's far more E.T. than Robot Invasion), but it would have cost eight hundred times as much, roughly. Hey, anything that enhances American Animation and breaks Disney's stranglehold on it (though Tarzan is still a better movie) is a good thing. I enjoyed The Iron Giant a lot.

Of particular note was both the kid (why are kids so much easier to animate than they are to actually cast) and Harry Connick, Junior as a beatnik (this takes place when Sputnik was first in the air, to focus things a bit). It had a good message, and it included the most important element of truly wonderful science fantasy; it had no need to explain where the giant came from or how he happened to fall to Earth.

Mystery Men, on the other hand, was unevenly written and tried too hard to promote its ensemble cast without really clearly giving us a lead character to empathize with. (The closest it came was Mister Furious, but that simply wasn't close enough.) It had some extremely funny moments, and some extremely awkward moments.

Needless to say, I had a lot more fun at Mystery Men. Oh, The Iron Giant was the better movie I say again, but Mystery Men was just a blast. You could kick back and enjoy. William H. Macy was the best thing in it (despite Janine Garafalo and Ben Stiller being in it, when they're two of my favorite actors). His inspirational, Henry Vesque speech was nothing short of hilarious (especially since it ends with the line "are we going to save the city, or should I just eat this sandwich?) Tom Waits was brilliant as the non-lethal mad scientist Doctor Heller. Hank Azaria as the Blue Raja was perhaps the most sympathetic character (it was hilarious to see a super hero fail miserably, go out and have dinner, then go home and fantasize that he's a super hero). All in all, it was fun.

Would I see it again? No, probably not. But I enjoyed it immensely.

---

The Saga of Kris's Last Day in Maine, continued....

When last we left our intrepid voyager, he was two hours later than expected on the Maine Turnpike, following a bunch of moron rubberneckers. He had his sister's replacement sweater in his car, and now at last he was getting somewhere.

When it began to rain.

Let me revise that. It began to pour. Traffic again slowed to a crawl, this time on 114, heading into Standish where my folks lived.

I like rain, in general. And we've needed more of it than we've gotten. But when I'm already late and I'm seriously hungry, rain becomes a pain in the neck.

The last stretch was the worst. It was pouring on the road just before the turn onto Harmon Hill drive (which you take to get to the road in the woods my folks live on -- it's Maine, and therefore the roads are a bit byzantine). Visibility was about two feet.

Finally I got there. It was still pouring, but I was so late I wanted to get inside so as not to hold people up. So I got out of the car and was instantly soaked to the bone, and ran....

There was a note on the door. They couldn't wait any longer, so they decided to drive to a restaurant and meet me there. Which meant I had to get back in the car, but now I was soaking wet. This did not make my mood any better.

They were eating at a new place in Windham called Salty Jack's. It's a fish and clam place. In Southern Maine, the ratio of Fish and Clam places to normal buildings is about 1:3, at least in the summertime. It was nice on the interior, which was good for them, since if it hadn't been nice I would have been chafing and more miserable than I was.

Dad was waiting outside, under cover, and waved me in, grinning. "Get a little wet," he asked.

"Mrphl," I said.

"That's what I figured."

We went inside. I got clams. He'd already ordered but they'd apparently just gotten there, as none of the food was ready. Which meant we passed each other on 114 when it was pouring too much for us to see each other at all. This didn't make me any happier.

So, I groused all dinner long. Kris and George (her husband, freshly in from Pueblo for the trip back) were nice to me, listening to my sob story. Hilary just hugged me. Hilary's very good at that, actually. She's sweet right when you need sweet. There should be more Hilarys in the world.

Back to the homestead, and I sat and talked to Mom for a long time. Dad was busy helping George pack the car, while Kris packed stuff to go in the car. The girls watched Noggin, which frankly is the safest thing you can turn on on your television. It's essentially entirely non-offensive, the happiest parts of Nickelodeon and the Children's Television Workshop. (There are nights I get sucked into The Electric Company myself, since they put it on after midnight).

Then the Gibsons went to bed, and so did Mom, and Dad and I talked for a long time. Dad and I don't do that enough -- Mom's usually the one I talk to. I talked about the boy we had to fire, and got his perspective. Dad was an English Professor who found himself, rather by accident, as a top administrator at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. Now that I'm an administrative type myself, I sort of needed his advice. Not on how to fire people, but on how to let it roll off you.

He was good to me. We drank tea. And then we walked out to my car (I was too tired to stay over) and looked at the stars for a long while together. A huge meteor streaked across the sky at one point -- large enough that we could see the front bit burn, and then the back bit -- and we watched it together.

And I felt good. Really good. Good about my sister and her family, and my family, and even about me.

I hitched up and drove home, and managed not to hit any of the thousand animals that were out on the prowl.