Vacation-At-Home Log, Days Six and Seven:

Day Six: Holy crap, the vacation continues! And I have a heckuva day of non-essential, Fang-centric activities ahead to waste my time on. Woohoo! Did I mention it’s New Comic Day on the island?

Errata and a mea culpa to boot: Originally, we were supposed to use this vacation time to hit the mainland for a Hobby Convention The Missus had lined up. But as I understand it (and I never really listen too closely when she talks about The Hobby), internecine squabbling in the hobby group either scuttled the whole event, or made her not want to go have to pick sides. Either way. Then we talked about possibly going somewhere else for the weekend and those plans never bore any fruit. Finally, when my time off was staring us in the face, we decided we’d just stay home and enjoy some time together as a family.

Being the lazy lowlife I am, though, I never changed my story for my employer as our vacation plans went through their various permutations, so if anyone asks, we had a great time at the Hobby Convention!

Day Seven: Last Day. Must be extra-specially worthless! To that end…

Back to the media report:

• Ultimate Avengers DVD: Well, this is a fair effort, but nothing more, and that’s a shame. Based on a really, really cool comic book, this animated feature lifts enough of the plot to remain faithful (and thus still kinda cool), but features Saturday-morning animation that renders the whole affair flat and generic. If Marvel had sprung for animation the quality of Disney’s big-screen hand-drawn work, they could have launched a seriously awesome franchise. As it is, it’s background entertainment. It’ll be that kind of bottom-line business perspective that Marvel can be expected to bring to their live action feature films, now that they’re opening up their own live-action film unit. Bummer.

• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The 60s TV show is out on DVD. I have fond memories of watching it with my Dad. This first set comes with the “Unaired!!” pilot, which is apparently nothing more than the “aired” version in bright, vivid, basic colors. It looks like it was filmed in color to be broadcast in black & white, which the rest of the episodes are. Like lots of pilot episodes, it’s pretty bad. And it’s worse in color. The color really emphasizes the local community theater-level production values in the B-set designs. They look so fake they could be recycled from “Thunderbirds.” It was probably a goood idea to run with it in black and white when they picked it up. Anything in b/w has an automatic “period” look to it, which will add to its perceived verisimilitude.

But the best part of the pilot is the plot. Both US coasts will be flooded (by earthquakes) unless our heroes detonate what at a certain, specific, hard-to-reach place? That’s right – an atom bomb. For more than 50 years, American cinema’s panacea for all impending disasters, whether natural or man-made: A carefully placed atomic bomb.

• Saw II: By-the-numbers terror/slasher flick. The first one had a kind of visceral, nervous energy that excused the squirm-inducing level of blood & guts. This second one has already devolved into a formula... they even set up the next sequel at the end. Yawwwn.

• Havoc: Some stupid rich-teens-gone-wrong flick with “The Princess Diaries” Anne Hathaway playing the bad girl. I'd never heard of it, either, but the cover art made it look dirty and as it was the last day of my vacation, I decided to take a chance. Cha-ching! The unrated version is generously replete with gratuitous Hathaway (and Bijou Philips!) nudity. Definitely recommended if it's that kind of a day for you, too.

• Veronica Mars season one DVD: Only had time to check out the pilot so far, but it looks good. The gal they have in the lead role is beautiful and looks really smart. I think I’ll follow this one till the end.

• Broke down and called The Office today, just to see how things were going. I was gratified (as well as appalled) at the report of how utterly disastrously terribly things went in my absence. I guess one paper had to reprinted? Twice?? Details sketchy, but job security prospects seem solid.

Well, it’s night seven, and I’m about to go back to infrequently blogging about just stuff that pisses me off. (It's so much easier to write from a place of outrage!) It’s been great fun having nothing better to do with my time, but that time is now officially past.

I feel like I just got to the end of an episode of the old Cosby Kids cartoon – had a little bit of music and a little bit of fun, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t learn something before it was done.