Went to bed late . . . got up early.

I'm detecting a pattern.

Saw "Nochnoi Dozor: Nightwatch" last night with my friend Brian. As he pointed out, they did an excellent job constructing an entire believable mythology within the span of about five introductory minutes. Some of the shots in the film were overly indulgent.

Imagine the following scenerio. "A man pushed on the accelerator with his foot."

You could say that he "stomped on the gas pedal" or you could say "With gritted teeth and grim eyebrows, our hero mashed his foot onto the accelerator pedal, sending a flood of vaporised gasoline into the pistons which whined in protest turning the crank which resides in the crank case in order to set the wheels and ultimately the vehicle in motion. Blue flame bursts from the exhaust pipes with an aggressive glow."

Nightwatch defaults more often to the latter version. Still fun to watch, just a little unnecessary. Definitely worth seeing if you like sci-fi and fantasy; it's not the horror movie they keep touting it to be. Sure there are vampires, but they're not really scary - just misunderstood . . . like great white sharks.

That night, I had a dream in which I was commissioned to write five skits for the Academy Awards.
"But it's one in the morning!" I protested as my boss was leaving for home.
"Get it done," he replied. "You have a team of three other people under you. Use them."
I looked at my team - three surly, petulant skater kids slouching by the door.
"You've gotta be kidding me!" I yelled, gesturing toward the skaters.
"Get it done," was all he said and then he left.
As soon as the door shut, the kids grabbed their boards and started to head outside.
"Where do you think you guys are going," I demanded.
"We'll be outside - call us if you need us."
"If?! I need you - now. We have five skits to finish!"
"Ah man, don't be so on edge. It's totally impossible. Let's just split." [editor's note: Do kids still use that phrase? "let's split"? I'm not so sure]
"How can you say that!" I screamed. "This is our job!"
. . . and on and on it went. I followed them around, yelling at them, while they did their best to either ignore me or persuade me to slack off. Ultimately, because I was spending all of my time hollering at them, I didn't get any skits written.

I awoke before I got fired - three minutes before my alarm went off.