I went to see Clash of the Titans because I was in the mood for some rampaging CGI monsters. And I got about thirty minutes of that, but I also got about an hour of expository padding that slowed the film’s narrative pacing to a crawl, particularly in the first half. Things start with momentum; we learn that the Greek gods are irked with humans for thumbing their noses at Mount Olympus after putting up with the gods’ immortal shenanigans for millennia. We’re also introduced to Perseus (Sam Worthington), the product of one such shenanigan that Zeus perpetrated on a mortal queen. Perseus is left for dead as an infant and rescued by a kindly fisherman. Perseus comes of age in unremarkable fashion until his family is killed in the crossfire of a skirmish between the god Hades (Ralph Fiennes with a creepy beard) and the uppity citizens of Argos. Perseus then decides that Hades needs a good ass-kicking.

But the ass-kicking takes its own sweet time in getting set up. We have to sit through a lot of male bonding and listen to some skinny prophet of doom blather on before the giant scorpions start hitting the fan. And then it’s more exposition until Medusa shows up to do some ass-kicking of her own. I don’t have a problem with the film’s by the numbers approach or its cardboard characters, but it would have been nice if the movie had streamlined the distance between the numbers. Still, it’s got giant scorpions.

As you might expect from the title, Hot Tub Time Machine is a goofy but entertaining move that doesn’t aspire to be much more than a foul-mouthed ode to youth and the Eighties. Three friends and a geeky nephew go on a weekend trip to a winter resort where they hope to briefly recapture the invincibility of their high school years. The resort is now a dilapidated mess, but a bromantic romp in the hot tub adjoining their room somehow hurls the foursome back in time to 1986 to relive the sundry youthful indiscretions they committed during another weekend at the same resort. And from then on, it’s pretty much all leg warmers, feathered hair, time travel clichés, tits, drugs, and nostalgia set to the beat of Eighties cock rock and New Wave.

The script doesn’t do much that’s fresh or outrageous, but the leads (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson) play well enough off of each other and bring a certain amount of charm to a plot that is patently ridiculous. Things get a little creepy when we watch these thirtysomething (in the eyes of the audience) guys moon over girls who are supposed to be in high school, but that could be part of the movie’s whole gross-out strategy. And speaking of gross-outs, I’m still cringing at the memory of a certain scene involving a catheter. So very, very wrong.

I really need to get a webcam so I can get in on the whole chatroulette thing before it gets all boring and corporate. I want to find out how many people will believe me when I tell them I’m Stephen Hawking’s estranged kid brother. Or perhaps I can acquire a minor degree of fame as “that guy” on chatroulette–the one with the tube in his neck who just sits there reciting dirty limericks. Or maybe I’ll just start screaming for help and beg them to call the police. The possibilities are endless.

You might think that the nomination of a college student with Asperger’s Syndrome to the National Council on Disability wouldn’t be a controversial story. You would be wrong. Ari Ne’eman currently has a Senate hold on his nomination and it might because he advocates for more resources be devoted to helping people with disabilities live independently in their communities instead of focusing solely on research for a cure. Like a lot of disability advocates before him, Ne’eman argues for a view of disability that is based on a social rather than a medical perspective. The fact that his beliefs provoke opposition and condemnation demonstrates that the disability community still has work to do in helping the general public understand that getting “fixed” isn’t necessarily our top priority.

Examined more closely, the whole kerfuffle is kind of silly. Placing Ne’eman on the Council isn’t going to divert one dollar away from ongoing research efforts towards finding a cure. But we also need to recognize that most of the people living with various congenital disabilities are not going to benefit from the cures that are almost certain to arrive in the future. The smartest policy would be to adequately fund both research and community supports rather than framing the discussion as a zero-sum game. But professional “advocates” aren’t accustomed to think in such terms. For them, any attempt to portray disability as identity is seen as a threat to their messaging; messaging that all too often employs pity as a strategy for winning financial support.

I do hope that Ne’eman eventually gets confirmed. We need more contrarian voices like his on the national stage.

My van is going to be out of commission for at least a few more days, so after one day of paying overpriced taxi fares, I decided to try the city bus. Lucky for me, there’s an express line that connects the the Twin Cities downtowns. I was worried that my not-so-svelte chair wouldn’t fit in the bus’ assigned disability seating, but it worked well enough to keep me out of everyone’s way. The trip itself didn’t take any longer than usual, so hooray for efficient and accessible public transportation. I’m probably too spoiled to use the bus every day (especially in the winter), but it’s good to know that I have other options to get to work. And at least I won’t bankrupt myself on cab fares while simultaneously shelling out a ridiculously obscene amount to fix my van.