You've Got Mail (And a slightly, yet not completely outdated movie)

Again I find myself over a decade behind the cinematic times, but I'm ok with that. Last night I spied with my little eye the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan flick You've Got Mail. Within the first 15 minutes of the romantic comedy the most apt among us can easily predict the major plot points. However, there are a few (unintentional) bumps along the way. I can easily see how people no more than a year or two younger than myself having never heard some of the dial-up noises of ye internet of olde in addition to the classic voice for AOL letting you know when you have mail and giving an audible good-bye. I know our Blu-Ray player displays "Good-bye" when I turn it off, but that voice of AOL, what a friendly and reassuring voice. Regardless, the precursor of facebook chat is without a doubt a foreign and comical experience to the younger people. I can still remember using and preferring a rotary phone in the household. Wave of the past.

Anyways, the main point that disturbed me about this surprisingly entertaining movie was this: in the start to middle of the film the main problem is that a Barnes and Noble-like book beast (Fox Books in the movie) is about to put a small corner, family owned bookstore out of business. There are protests made and newspaper columns printed to no avail. Eventually the store just gives up, sells all the merchandise at low, low prices and Meg Ryan continues chatting away on the interweb with nothing but a minor cold. This conflict which actually grabbed my attention was quickly accepted by everyone in the movie as nothing but "business." Now, of course everyone thinks of Wal-Mart as the big bad company swallowing the competition, but that's not even my major beef. The mere fact that it is completely acceptable and slightly encouraged for big chains to buy out ma and pa stores is sickening. It's as if the writers were upset by this too when they started the screenplay, but suddenly stopped caring (not unlike my phase where I thought TRUTH.com was the coolest thing since Weezer...How ironic that I would smoke my fair share of cigarettes throughout college and that Weezer went from hero to absolute horse shit.) Just an eerie part of the movie that is a little too deep for a romantic comedy.

In other news, Ronnie James Dio died a week ago and I meant to post earlier. My compatriot

Raging Boll beat me to the eulogy, but I too would like to express my grief. The man was in 5 major metal rock bands over the years and was an icon to live through the ages. Not bad for a man under 5'5''. The man denied a scholarship to play trumpet for metal, by the way. BADASS. I hate seeing rock legends like Dio die long before their time, this one due to stomach cancer. He was only 67, plenty of rock left in that little man. A good egg if there ever was one.