It’s true. I watched the Herbie: Fully Loaded trailer yesterday, and cried a tear of joy.

See, the last Herbie movie I saw was Herbie Goes Bananas. I was twelve years old, and I had loved the other Herbie movies. Then, suddenly, the magic was gone. That movie sucked harder than anything with “bananas” in the title can suck and retain any modicum of modesty.

I’m not saying that Herbie: Fully Loaded will float my boat. I’m 37 years old, and know a kids’ movie when I see the trailer for one. And that’s just it — this movie will THRILL my kids. Link giggled throughout the trailer. Patches wants to see the silly car. They’ll all enjoy it, and that… THAT is what brought tears to my eyes. There’s a very, very good chance that one of the magical things from my own childhood will get new life in time for my kids.

Granted, it’ll probably be followed up with “Herbie: Fully Loaded With Bananas.” Or “Herbie: Attack of the Clones.”

–Howard

I’ve been listening to Sting’s Sacred Love album for a couple of days now. I downloaded it using about 1/3 of the iTunes Music Store credit that I got for my birthday, loaded it up on my iPod, and had my first straight-through listen while shooting a round of Disc Golf.

It’s great stuff. Admittedly, my favorite track is a remix, where somebody with a real sense for pop instrumentation and dance beats took one of the more dancable tracks and jacked it up, but the whole album is a good listen.

There aren’t many artists whose work is like that, at least not for me.

–Howard

So… George Lucas says that Episode III may have a PG-13 rating.

This is a phenomenally bad idea. He can’t redeem his cheesy space-opera at this point by chasing the children out of the theater, and someone needs to tell him so. Making a PG-13 Star Wars movie would be like putting dog-eared bedroom-pages in the next Harry Potter book.

See, Star Wars is for kids. That’s why we all like it — we watched it as kids, and loved it. And that’s why we hate the new movies — they’re for kids, and we grew up. Oh well.

Once the Star Wars cycle is complete, I think we’ll find that in a perfect world it would have been done as follows:

1) Star Wars
2) Empire Strikes Back
3) Episode I… Some backstory involving Anakin
4) Episode II… And he turns into Darth Vader. The revelation in Movie 2 was true!
5) The Return of The Jedi

See, told THAT way the “revelation” about Vader is more powerful. The whole “Fall and Redemption of Anakin Skywalker” story could have been told MUCH more effectively if Lucas had been trying to tell that particular story from the beginning. And, admittedly, if he’d gotten some help from people who know how to write BIG. Lucas can write SMALL just fine.

Okay, enough of that. We don’t live in a perfect world, and we’ll all go see Episode III regardless of the rating, and our reactions will range from “furiously disappointed” to “pleasantly surprised.”

–Howard

Does anybody know where I can get decent wild rice on the cheap? I bought a bag of mixed wild rice and brown rice for $2.50, and it was delicious. I haven’t enjoyed rice-by-itself since, like, EVER. This actually had FLAVOR. And, butter and salt aside, I suspect it was good for me.

The problem is that there’s only about 8 servings’ worth in that bag. I want a 25lb bag of brown rice, and a 10lb bag of wild rice (I can blend ’em myself, thanks) for food storage and stapling. I can’t afford to be spending 25 cents per bowl of rice these days. I need to get the cost per serving down around, well, a nickel if possible.

I’m thinking about going upstairs and cooking the rest of the bag RIGHT NOW. It was THAT GOOD.

–Howard