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Whenever I think of my summer holidays, the song I seem to get in my head is Fresh Prince’s “Summertime“. I’m not sure why, when there are so many good songs, but it seems to resonate. Add your favourite song to my comments section below.

Right now I’m on my lunch break at work following a full week of vacation up at the cottage. I didn’t get as much windsurfing done as I hoped, but my niece and nephew were up there so there were lots of activities to keep us busy.

I also got some colour on my torso… the first time in about four years. Mind you, the colour is a distinctive “pink”, but it’s colour nonetheless.  Two years ago I spent two weeks at the cottage and came home as porcelin white as when I left. Not even burning caused concern that has been somehow averted with my new colour. A little twisted, but it somehow settled my mind.

Speaking of burning, while at David’s 40th birthday bash, I managed to lean up against a tealight candle and catch myself on fire.  It was right in the center of my back. Imagine an itch you can’t reach to scratch, and instead of an ‘itch’ you have ‘out-of-control fire’. The burn didn’t get past my undershirt, so my skin was fine, save for one blister on the hand that I used to pat it out. My pride was the only thing truly sore and as David said, “it’s big enough to handle a little brusing”.

While on vacation, I bought three DVD’s I’m quite proud of. The first is Once Upon A Time In The West - one of the greatest films ever made, and I found a two-disc DVD in the $6.99 bin.  It felt like a crime to leave it there beside “Hard To Kill”. I also finally picked up the 4-disc edition of LotR:The Two Towers for twenty bucks (rounding out the collection) and a mislabeled Jurassic Park Trilogy for only seventeen (regular $20).

Simone picked up Batman Begins and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I haven’t watched Priscilla since it was almost new, and Hugo Weaving wasn’t yet Agent Smith, Lord Elrond, V, nor Megatron. After watching him become probably the sternest man in film since James Woods, it’ll be a laugh to watch him again in drag.

That reminds me, I’ll put in my vote against Transformers. I finally saw it and was disappointed. I can safely say that I went in with a clean slate, as my expectations were heightened by the fact that it’s a high-budget remake of childhood icons, but balanced out by my low expectations of Michael Bay. In the end, Michael Bay won. The writing was almost an insult. Dialogue was plain and obvious, and the plot holes were gaping and rife with coincidence. The “it’s a summer blockbuster” doesn’t work as an argument for the movie. There are many such movies this year and even Spider-man 3 lived up to the high expectations I had for it.

I won’t go into more details because I don’t want to write spoilers (you’ll need all the entertainment value you can muster from this movie). However, I will say that on Flixster I rated the movie 1.5 stars out of 5. I figure it gets one star for the impressive (yet fleeting) special effects. Not much new, and the shots were short and close up, rather than letting us enjoy a nice long fistfight. The half-star is for Michael Bay’s use of long shots.  His action sequences have used quicker and quicker cuts until many scenes have over 100 cuts in a sixty second shot. His use of longer shots helped create the best car chase scene he’s made since The Rock. Mind you, when you’ve got a Hummer and a Ferrari racing through San Francisco it’s impossible not to make it a cool scene.

Don’t forget to add your favourite summer song to the Comments section of this post.