like steve mcqueen, all i need's a fast machine...

so the past two nights have been interesting for passive entertainment. last night i was able to finish a two and a half month quest to figure out what netball is (no comments from you, mocky mockersdottir) when i saw the new zealand national team take on australia. netball is a big thing here in NZ, played primarily by women. it most closely resembles basketball, with a number of significant differences: there's no backboard, there's no dribbling or moving with the ball, players have certain zones they can move into and others they can't, depending on their position and there is no contact. the last one is the strangest, because if a player catches the ball underneath the opponents' basket, all the defending team can do is hop around on one foot about 2-3 feet away and wave their arms. it all looks very....unbasketball-like. but now i've experienced this bit of NZ culture, and i'm sure i'm better for it.

this evening i joined a group of self-professed geeks from work for movie night. the evening's festivities started off with an episode of red dwarf. i have to say that i feel about red dwarf the same as i feel about fish and chips: it's something british that i just can't get into. afterwards, mercifully, we moved on to the main feature. now, when you hear the name 'steve mcqueen', you think of some great action movies: bullitt, the great escape, the towering inferno, etc. what you likely do NOT think of is...the blob. mcqueen's first major role. campy and awesome in its badness. for anyone who's never seen it, it's worth watching if for no other reason than it's a classic of the genre. it has all the necessary elements: the meteor from outer space at the beginning (which is how the blob reaches earth; amazing that the meteorite was cool enough to touch about 15 minutes after landing and that the blast crater for a 2-foot wide meteor was about 6' in diameter, but hey, physics in the 1950's let the russians beat us into space), police that don't believe the teenagers as they try to warn the populace and a huge gelatinous monster that can envelope an entire diner but can be pushed back with CO2 fire extinguishers. best line: after mcqueen's character drags a bunch of his friends from the movie theater in the middle of their movie, one of them says "alright, now that you've made us waste our 80 cents, what gives?" the acting is beautifully wooden and the effects are...something. the entire affair invites the use of...ellipses. apparently the group does this every other week. the criteria are that the movies have to be from before the release of star wars and they have to be something that if you're a geek you need to have seen. likely follow ups from tonight include 'plan 9 from outer space' and 'the day the earth stood still'.

awww yeah.