The state of things

Just when things seemed to be on the upswing in the land of Nictate, I got side-swiped. Quite literally. By an apparently drunk driver who fled the scene. Fortunately, I didn't sustain any injuries. My poor car is another story. Here's hoping my insurance company does the right thing versus the cheap thing.

I was trying to figure out why the accident rattled me so, besides the obvious reasons. I think it's because it made me realize what a small part of one's life one can actually control. Being a control enthusiast, I am never pleased when I get a peek at the seamy underside of life's underlying chaos.

Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the reassuring cops, careful tow truck driver and good friends who rescued me. Not to mention the denizens of downtown L.A. who ran up to my car asking if I was OK. So it's one drunk jerk vs. about 20 decent people. I think I can live with that ratio.

In entertainment news, I decided to postpone seeing Brokeback Mountain until the crowds die down a little. My mom asked if I was planning to see "the queer cowboy" movie. That's right, little lady. My friend P-girl is pumped to see it, too. (She calls it the "Marlboro man-on-man movie.")

Instead, I saw Syriana after waiting for 10 minutes while the simulataneously largest and most inept concession crew I've ever seen struggled not to burn the popcorn and coughed (accidentally) on my cherry Icee.

I enjoyed Syriana for its ripped-from-the-headlines bravado, but it felt more like a politically charged checklist than an intense thriller to me. Corrupt oil businessmen bribing foreign leaders? Check. Suicide bomber recruitment? Yep. Creepy government cover-ups? Check. Torture sequence? Sure, why not. Sympathetic family moments thrown in to humanize characters in ten minutes or less? Check.

It was just too much. Too many characters, too many storylines, too many targets, too many loose threads. The only character I cared about was the handsome emir-in-waiting and that was just because I thought he was hot.

While I applaud the filmmakers and financiers for having the guts to put out a film that isn't shy about taking on volatile subject matter (especially when it couldn't be more important to do so), I'd put this film in the "ambitious to a fault" column.