37 Sleepless Minutes

It's 4:24 am and I'm nowhere near being sleepy.

This isn't unusual, really. But I've got it in my head -- for some reason -- that I should be winding down and ready for bed at 4a.

Don't know why.

But it would be cooler to wake up at 12:45 pm tomorrow, beating my alarm clock by a good 15 minutes, and play some Tomb Raider for an hour, or maybe watch a disc of The Simpsons before jumping in the shower and arriving at work 5 minutes early. (This is truly a Dream Land I sometimes live in in my head.)

Oh, I haven't seen LAND OF THE DEAD yet. Bummer.

I mean, I've grown spoiled, really. It was through sheer luck (or a guardian angel or something) that I was able to see HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE (twice), STARWARS III (twice) and BATMAN BEGINS on their opening days!!! And I truly am grateful for that!!!

But still, not seeing LAND OF THE DEAD SOMETIME opening weekend is just not doing service to Mr. Romero! I mean, the studio doesn't pay attention to box office after the opening weekend. So in order to communicate to them that George A. Romero is truly a genius who should have HUGE WADS OF CASH thrown at him, allowing him to bestow upon the world his singular vision, he needs us to pack the theaters the first 3 days of his film's release!

And I've failed him!!!

Blah.

It's not like I really had the time or money to. I mean, I wasn't, like, sitting around with a twenty in my wallet and nothing to do for 2 hours straight. (I mean, I found the time to watch GANGS OF NEW YORK last night on dvd, but that was at 4:00 am, and there were no showings of LOTD at that time -- even though that would have been COOL!!! AND I didn't have a twenty in my wallet.)

So I guess the man who made zombies cool would forgive me.

What do you think?

Okay, it's 4:36 am, and I'm still not sleepy.

I've got THE AVIATOR and TUCKER: A MAN AND HIS DREAMS from Netflix, but that would keep me up until the Even-More-Wee Hours. Plus, I'd really like to watch them as a double-feature. (All 5 hours of them!)

I could pop in some SIMPSONS: SEASON 5, but I fear that if I watch one, I'll watch the whole disc. And then maybe pop in the next disc.

There's Internet porn... But I'm not really in the mood.

OH! After Mom treated Brian and me to Red Lobster -- and I stuffed myself magnificently! -- Brian and I stopped by Vulcan Video and discovered THEY HAVE YELLOWBEARD ON DVD!!! We watched it and WE LAUGHED!!! There's NO WAY we got that humor back in the summer of '84 or '85 (maybe '86) when we watched it over and over on HBO!!! THAT MOVIE IS A RIOT!!! It's Comic GENIUS!!! And talk about an all-star cast!!! 3 of the Pythons are in it, as well as Cheech & Chong, and like half the cast of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN!!! With David Bowie, James Mason, Nigel Planer and Peter Cooke thrown in for good measure!

I CAN NOT BELIEVE that this movie isn't more hailed than it is!!! It's like ZORRO, THE GAY BLADE in that it's just a CLASSIC packed with some of the most memorable lines ("I don't know what happened! I hit him with a bucket, then I blacked out, and when I came to he was dead." "Yeah, it's like that. Killin'.") delivered by some of the most talented comedic actors around at the time, and a really fun and watchable story to boot!!!

And then VULCAN VIDEO!!! It's SO AUSTIN!!! There are at leats 2 locations that I know of, but at both locations you walk in there and you KNOW you're in Film Flunky Heaven! There are movie posters everywhere -- and not just whatever swag the studios are sending out with their releases that month; we're talking COOL movies from Past and Present -- and actions figures lining the counter tops. And you get the impression the place could probably be a little cleaner than it is, but that doesn't really matter; it lends an air of College-Co-op feel. (You know: There's too much fun being had to really worry about passing some sort of inspection.) And when Brian and I went in there today, the single clerk was behind the counter ACTUALLY WATCHING A MOIVE!!! He had to pause it to help us!!!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!!

But the best part is that they actually KNOW what the cool movies are!!! They know what movies might never make your Top 100 list, even though you sometimes find yourself reciting scenes to your friends. They know what movies you watched over and over growing up, and just sometimes they pop into your mind out of the blue and you think "I'd like to see that again." They know what movies your friends keep telling you "You gotta see it, dude!" even though you've never heard of it in your life. They know what the studios CAN'T know, won't allow themselves to know.

And more than that, VULCAN VIDEO HAS THEM TO RENT!!! And for CHEAP, too!!!

Netflix rules the world, but Vulcan Video rules the Universe!!!

Okay, it's now 5:01 am and I'm still not in bed. I should probably start trying a little harder, though, to get there.

So Good Night and Sweet Dreams!