No Disassemble Wall-E Five!

Like those plucky and industrious Japanese, the Faustian animators at Pixar have assimilated another pop culture icon into their unstoppable juggernaut of cinematic domination, and no one seems to care. This time, friends, in spite of Wall-E's evident status as the CGI Messiah (seriously, you should read some of the effusive worship-schlock spilling out of the collective mouth of our nation's "critics"), I shan't be put off the scent so easily.

I adored . . . no, ADORED the original Short Circuit movies. I memorized them and recited them in their resplendant entirety to family and friends. Along with Tim Burton's Batman and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the Short Circuit films supplied almost all of my conversational raw materials between the years 1985 and 1990. And I guess I'm really rather tired of Pixar's undefeated record at the box office. Is it just me, or do any of you feel even the slightest twinge of suspicion about any studio that seems incapable of producing a bad film? I mean, no artist hits the creative bullseye every time. Not even the Omnipotent Beatles were exempt from the occasional flop (QED the lackluster "You Can't Do That" and the totally indulgent "Wild Honey Pie"). And to tell the honest truth, I like the Beatles (and others) all the more for stinking up the scene once or twice during the course of their illustrious career. Sure, some would offer up A Bug's Life as Pixar's less-than-stellar follow up to the Earth-shattering genius that was Toy Story, but even Pixar's cast-off garnered a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Part of me genuinely hopes that I will find Wall-E repugnant and lame when I inevitably venture forth to see it this weekend. But the other part of me, the part that Pixar owns, clamors for more computer-animated goodness like a heroin addict with the DTs. To paraphrase the most recent installment from our good friends over at Futurama, "Love the Pixar."

Oh, and less than two weeks on the countdown and all that rot, what what.

London Countdown: T-Minus 3 Weeks

Captain Bibb's Blog: Stardate 061808.3

In the interests of time, I must make my entry a bit shorter today. Preparations for landing have begun (such activities take a good deal longer when you're traveling by space balloon than they do when you use interplanetary vessels like Light Clippers and Solar Schooners), and there are a million things to do every minute. To be honest, I am grateful for the distraction of overseeing the landing because to focus on what happens afterwards is to neglect my official duties as captain. Nevertheless, we received our British transport passes this afternoon via satellite transfer, and seeing the destinations printed on them proved to be another source of the seemingly inexhaustable excitement generated by this journey. To think, I shall walk the streets of Oxford! An uninspiring prospect for some, but the pinnacle of existence for one such as I.

Well, my engineer just notified me that I am needed on the lower basket, where a portion of our hull seems to be unravelling due to the stresses of our descent through the atmosphere. We must also begin the ballast disintegration procedure over the next few hours or else run the risk of being swept off course by the powerful upper winds of the North Atlantic jet stream. Busy days! But the island grows very near, indeed, and my heart leaps within me.

London Countdown: T-Minus 4 Weeks

Captain Bibb's Blog: Stardate 061108.1

There she lies. This morning, just after breakfast, my first mate came to my cabin door and knocked gently three times. This action was per my earlier instructions, of course. The entire crew knows how much I desire to see the great land of my forefathers, the wellspring of modernity, the cradle of the industrialized world. At once, I was out of bed and on the bridge, peering through my squinted eyes at the bright hodgepodge of blues and greens that filled the ship's monitor.

Believe me when I tell you that I almost wept. Had I not been afraid that such a public display of emotion would incite laughter, or worse, contumely, I would have shouted "Huzzah!" and danced around like an impish moon-fox. O, how I long to touch the very soil of that great land, to revel in the simple breathing of its air, to move about in the same segments of time-space that once clung to the immortal forms of Marx, Darwin, Mill, Bentham, Newman, Arnold, Tennyson, Dickens, Barrie, Carroll, MacDonald, Yeats, Wilde, Conrad, Wells, Stevenson, Tolkien, Lewis, and, perhaps the most noble name of all, J. Rudyard Kipling. The honor seems beyond all comprehension, beyond any merit a humble traveler like myself could possess. I am compelled to ask, "Who am I? What right do I have to be here among the ghosts of intellectual giants? Surely my place is on a lowlier rung of humanity's ladder."

And yet, there she lies. Just a few weeks more, and our descent will be complete. In the name of St. Christopher, may those weeks pass swiftly!

London Countdown: T-Minus 5 Weeks

Captain Bibb's Blog: Stardate 60408.3

Things have been relatively smooth during our careful descent to the outer atmosphere, but today we ran into a tiny snag. The weather above the Isles turned rough and unpredictable early this morning, which prevented our navigator from making the necessary calculations for our intra-atmospheric trajectory. Apparently, this sort of thing is common with travelers to England, as the meteorological conditions there change rapidly and often. I have calmed the crew and assured them that this minor setback will do little to delay our arrival, but I cannot help but notice the flaring tempers and raw nerves all over the ship. Such is travel. Such is life.

On a more uplifting topic, however, the plans for our visit become more exciting with each new communiqué we receive from base command. Yesterday, we were informed that Her Inimitableness has requested our presence at a traditional theatrical performance of some sort on the Monday following our touchdown. According to our correspondent, such performances were common in the Middle and Late Renaissance periods in English history, and the "play" we will see comes from the distinguished pen of William Shurkspore...Slacksnear...or something along those lines. They tell us that a reproduction of his original theater still stands in New Southwark, though they had to relocate the structure several times during the Great Floods of 2666. At any rate, such an evening's entertainment should prove the perfect distraction for my exhausted crew, and I welcome the opportunity to view the art of ancient cultures.