Save some time for me

Busy, busy, busy. Between work, going to Chicago last weekend, and getting ready to host Thanksgiving, leisure time's been at a premium lately. I haven't even watched last night's extended Lost episode yet! However, I can't completely ignore pop culture. Here's what I've been occupied with lately:

Holiday movies. I feel like I've hardly seen any movies in the theater lately, mainly due to lack of interest in anything out there. I mean, I see more 50 Cent than I ever need to in the 20 minutes of MTV I watch each month. However, my moviegoing frequency is due for an upswing now that the holiday season has arrived. Harry Potter, Walk the Line, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are just a few of the earliest group of movies on my list. Luckily, with 5 days of Thanksgiving vacation rapidly approaching, hopefully I'll get to catch a few of what seems to be a promising crop of holiday films. And with event pictures like King Kong and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe looming on the horizon, I have a feeling there will be plenty of reviews in my near future.

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. OK, I admit it. I am way late to the party on this one. This is arguably the most influential comic of the last 25 years, andhere I am getting around to reading it 20 years after it was published. After hearing how great this book is for decades and reading Entertainment Weekly's recent article on the far-flung influence Watchmen has had on popular culture as a whole, I finally got around to checking the collected series out of the library. Well, I'm on board. Alan Moore is a god. It is worth every bit of hype it gets, and I haven't even finished it. Aside from setting the template for pretty much every superhero comic written since 1985, it's also a great story, and one of the first to really examine what drives a man or woman to put on a mask and risk having the crap kicked out of them every night. Much like Moore's equally excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, once I got around to reading Watchmen, I regretted having waited so long.

"Perfect Situation", Weezer. When I first picked up Weezer's latest, Make Believe, I was a little underwhelmed. It just seemed a little too bland and harmless. But lately, Weezer's made frequent appearances on my iPod, and it's led me to reconsider some of the hidden pleasures on the new disc. "Perfect Situation" happens to be one of them. There's something about this track that hits me the right way. And they made a great video featuring Elisha Cuthbert as the band's orginal lead singer. My only question is, what did No Doubt do to earn this not-so-subtle jab?

Star Wars Battlefront II for the XBox. And finally, the real reason my free time has been so scarce. This game managed to incorporate more strategy and depth while retaining all the "blast the stormtroopers, Ewoks, Jawas, and pretty much anything else that moves" of the original. Totally addictive.