dan brown, pimpin the world

I finished it! And now I must say - I don't really get it. Why the hell was this book so worthy to stay in hardcover for 3 or 4 years? Why did people buy this up in big ole massive dung heaps that it's been on the best seller list forever?? This was not the greatest book ever written. It was good, but jeez, not that good.

What I was most mad about came in the long climactic last clue to figure out in London. I swear I knew the answer to the little cryptex the first time Newton was mentioned. 50 pages later I was asking can we please be done with the mystery already?!? My second gripe: the whole balance of the book. As I described it to someone who asked me about it, I said it was 30% plot and 70% setting up background information so you'll get the plot. The book was very teachy, it had a teachy tone sometimes that I didn't like. It struck me as soon as I started reading, but then the plot kinda just takes off and you can almost forgive his teachy asides. But sometimes I felt like Brown thought he was being clever by making it seem like his characters were the ones explaining all this information. But that is so easy to see through and there is so much of it it seems like he wanted all that in there to impress his readers with his mental acumen, and if not that, at least make his long hours of research seem meaningful - if he had to suffer through it, he'd make all the world suffer with him. Yeah didn't like the know-it-all-ness of the book.

So I reached my goal of finishing before the movie, when I was reading the book I was wondering how they'd fit all that background info in there. It'd be bad if Tom Hanks had a lot of pretentious-Harvard-prof-explains-all-the-symbols-to-the-audience lines. The only other thing that worries me about this movie is Tom Hanks' hair. I saw him on some awards show I guess while he was still making it and I was like what did he do to his hair? Thats gonna be very distracting. Was that Tom's or Ron's decision I wonder. Who cares if Langdon is immediately described with a long shock of straight black hair, EVERYONE knows Tom Hanks' hair is curly!!!! They couldn't take one creative license and keep it curly??? Thats one of the things that makes Hanks so cool and cute and cuddly. Man thats gonna be distracting. I hope by the time he starts doing promos (like next week) he'll have his natural hair back, please!

bink bink bink bink

I watched another great episode of 24 last nite and had a thought. Now that everyone's finding out how the snarky President whats-his-name is so evil and destroying the world, all the upper people are trying to go about exposing him in a "safe" manner. Like how Secretary Heller was like - we can't out him publicly cos it'd destroy the American people's faith in the presidency; then someone else was like we can't make it public cos it'd destroy peoples faith and trust in the whole government. After hearing this a couple of times I thought, well its not so much that it'll shatter everyones faith in the government, most likely if something like that happened we'd chalk it up to the idea of on some level we expect our government leaders to be corrupt, morally deficient individuals, its somewhat inherent in the job.

Nixon had people spying on his political enemies, FDR was fine with the Holocaust before Hawaii got bombed, how many presidents owned slaves??? And countless other episodes in the highest level of office where the guy sitting in the white house did something shady. So if the American people of 24 found out about sneaky shady president I think they'd do what we'd do: most of us would quietly sit back and let our Congressman impeach him, after that everyone would go to protests (probably violent after awhile) where we'd call for a criminal trail - cos that would be the simplest and hardest thing to do and get done. No one from Iran-Contra is in jail are they?? (I really dont know - I'm barely old enough to know who Ollie North is)can't expect a criminal trail for a president that easily.

signs of spring

Now that I've ben working next door to the White House for almost a year - I wonder if the things I'm seeing now happen every year, kindof like the indisputable signs that spring has officially arrived in DC.

During the week on my half day I walked down to the Mall nad went to American History. And I lost count of how many lower to upper middle aged men I saw running topless for their midday jog. It popped in my head how what if Europeans visiting DC viewed these guys how we look at all the fat, not-so-attractive men that sport their speedos in the ocean. ugh

And that was also the day when a lot of Asain-Americans convened around the white house to greet the prime minister of China. When I got off at Faragut West and saw all the people and the banners I got kinda excited and thought there was some type of internatinal food fest settin up - but no, it was the first big spring protest.