Friday, September 7, 2012

Calling All X-File Fans!!!!

While I wait for pumpkin bread to bake and chili to cook (our apartment smells delicious, by the way), I figured I'd use this time wisely and correct the monstrosity that was X-Files: I Want to Believe. For those who don't know, The X-Files was the best show ever made. Never mind that rewatching episodes makes me giggle a little bit at HOW obsessed I was, but seriously, it's still the best. And never mind that Scully was actually super annoying and overly-skeptical. As a scientist, don't you think she'd notice the statistics of how Mulder was right 100% of the time every time of every moment in time?

Now that I've emphasized the greatness of the show, let me also say how I don't include anything after Season 7 in the true story of The X-Files. For one, Mulder was barely in the show after Season 7 and the last movie, as I've stated, was as if they took the bold epic heroism of Mulder and Scully, skinned them, put them on some lame marionette puppets and then had them sit in a sterile hospital waiting room for two hours. Something like that. It was just laziness. For instance, Scully decides to basically invent a cancer surgery for some patient (I didn't bother to remember the details) and where does she begin her research? GOOGLE. Really, Scully? Or should I say, really Chris Carter? GOOGLE?! You don't have to be a comp. teacher to know that if she was back at med school she'd be thrown out before the second O was typed.

Ok ok ok. I could rant more, but on to my point: I decided to fix this dilemma since I believe the greatness of The X-Files former glory can still be resurrected with some gentle prodding and actually awesome plot. Granted, I won't act like I'm about to create the best story ever. I'm just going to prove that in an hour, I can make up a MUCH better movie than that last one. There will be plot holes and stereotyped storytelling all over the place, but again, this is just to prove that an amateur blogger can make a more thrilling story that actually extends the story of Mulder and Scully instead of having them hiding out in some cabin in the woods for six years (as if Mulder would stay in the shadows for that long. Come on, people).

So, first, we'd start from the end of Season 9 (for the sake of time, I'll just act like the last two seasons were part of the true X-Files story). So, Mulder and Scully are finally reunited and fleeing to Mexico because the government is actually going to kill Mulder. They know that this epic alien attack is going to take place in 2012 (so why wouldn't the next movie BE ABOUT THE ALIEN ATTACK????). They're laying in a hotel room, like in the first episode, speculating on this attack. So that's where the series left off and here's where my correction of the next movie begins:

So Mulder and Scully wake up the next morning, realizing they'd had this CRAZY dream where they were in a crappy cabin six years in the future, realizing they were super lame, and decided to go back in time. Therefore, the problem of the second movie is erased. They wake up and spend the next six years solving paranormal cases in Mexico, on the sly of course, and finding allies along the way (Spanish Lone Gunmen, anyone????). Their Hispanic friends help them out, telling them about various crazy events, children turning into pinatas and, I don't know, tacos having the exact shape of Mexican leaders? Whatever, it doesn't matter because all of this will just be a brief snippet at the beginning of the movie to show the audience how awesome Mulder and Scully continued to be after the last night in that hotel and DIDN'T turn lame, hiding out for 6 years while Scully somehow worked in a hospital where no one knew that (duh) Mulder would be living in the EXACT SAME PLACE as she did, and Scully DIDN'T turn into a boring anti-investigator, telling Mulder "No, don't solve crimes. Let's just live quietly and not do anything ever."

So back to my story: after this montage of them solving cases in Mexico for the next six years, they continue to wait for the epic alien attack of 2012. Now, they don't know the official day, of course, so are just preparing for anytime that year. With the help of their Hispanic friends, they form a counterattack that they won't reveal until the end of the movie (I haven't thought of it yet...). So, one lovely summer day in some village on the coast of Ecuador, local fishermen notice abnormally large waves rolling under their boats. Speaking in Spanish (X-Files was great with subtitles instead of pretending everyone around the world speaks English), the fishermen are like, "What's that? What's going on?" and then BAM, lights and noises and chaos erupt. The boats are engulfed in a massive water storm of chaos. The audience has no idea what's going on, but you hear broken Spanish of "What IS that?" and "Hold on!" I don't know. Just regular sci-fi reactions to crazy crap.

The screen pans back to Mulder and Scully, three days later, riding in the back of a pick-up truck with sunglasses. The truck stops at a gas station where they hear frantic women talk next to them at the pump. Mulder awesomely jumps over the rail of the truck bed, asking the women what the problem is. He's, of course, fluent in Spanish now. They tell him about the Ecuador fiasco, leading him to walk into the gas station, seeing a news clip (also subtitled) of a reporter, trying to look unafraid, telling about the odd events in the fishing village. Knowing what's going on, Mulder runs out of the shop, yelling at Scully to contact the others. She whips out a sweet cellphone and calls up their Spanish Lone Gunmen.

Blah Blah Blah, they spend the next half hour figuring out how to connect the dots between ever-increasing attacks across the globe (the Ecuador event was just the beginning...ooooooo). They figure out, after this half-hour of intense investigation, that the aliens are attacking small villages first to avoid immediate reaction from the humans. They've also seen Independence Day where the aliens made the mistake of attacking large cities first. So, not only are they attacking small villages, but they're attacking small coastal villages. And not only are they attacking small coastal villages, but they're attacking small coastal villages in an elaborate, but identifiable zigzag pattern that Mulder has elaborately marked with push pins on a map in he and Scully's straw hut.

So now they know the next location of the aliens attack: Playa Gaviota, Argentina (I used Scully's model of scholarship and Googled "Argentina", zooming in on small villages). "But we don't even know exactly who or what we're fighting with," Scully rightly protests.

"We never have before," Mulder responds with a devilish grin that makes the audience grin because now they're thinking about the TV series and how they're also in on the fairly lame connection to Mulder and Scully's FBI past.

Scully and Mulder then hitch a ride down to Argentina, along with their new Lone Gunmen, and whatever secret plan we don't know about yet (seriously, I don't know it). When they get there, they have no idea how long until the attack or what they'll be looking at. From what they learned from TV reports, these "phenomena" happen on the water, so they warn everyone to avoid the shore (no one listens, except a darling little girl of about six who convinces her family to move farther inland. Will she come into play later on? I really don't know...).

Around three the next morning, Mulder awakes to a light trembling (he and Scully and their Lone Gunmen are sleeping in a hotel about a mile from the shore). Mulder wakes the others up and they all run outside to a brilliantly lit sky of rainbow colors, flashing and roaring. Amazed, they listen to the screams of those who didn't flee from the water's edge and run towards the sounds. The first person they find on the streets is an elderly man, clawing at his face, but nothing is on him. Another woman runs from behind him, clawing at the ground, scratching and screaming. Whatever, it's weird. Looking up, Scully yells that there's some kind of fog creeping from the bright-colored sky. Actually, the colors themselves are a fog, spreading toward them.

This is bad, obviously. So they all start to run and the fog of colors is nipping at their heels. They're not going to make it!!!!!!

But they make it and try to figure out what they just saw. Scully somehow deduces that the fog is emitted from rays that blah blah, science, blah. So they have to destroy the fog maker. Fortunately, their secret plan just might work. What is their secret plan? Crap......

Ok, so during the six years that Mulder and Scully roamed South America, they found a chemical in a pit, like, two miles below the earth. One of their contacts told them about this pit and that there was a foreign...something...that was never supposed to be uncovered. When they asked why it wasn't supposed to be found, they were told, "Because they know (they obviously meaning aliens) it will destroy them". So, whatever, they have this thing that can destroy them. We'll call it Netrablium. This sucks, I admit, but again, this is still better than the last movie, so go with it. No one knows how it will destroy the aliens, but they figure it out.

After they escape the fog, they continue to hear a distant buzzing, like bumblebees (a nice tribute to the first movie, I dare say). They follow the buzzing (why wouldn't they?) and see tubes creeping back into the water. The fog's now lifted and they follow the tubes. Mulder grabs the vial of Netrablium and, against Scully's logical warnings, he dives into the water and grabs one of the tubes. The tube pulls him almost a mile out into the sea until it jerks him under (don't worry, he gets a crazy big gulp of air that will last him an absurdly long time). With eyes open and magically unstung by the salt, he sees he's being pulled into a type of submarine, but more alien-looking. He's pulled under the sub and the camera zooms out to show just HOW alien-looking this thing is. Back on Mulder, we see him letting go of the tub and feeling his way around the equipment. Soon he finds a hatch and squeezes in side, taking as silent a gasp for air as he can.

So he's inside the underwater spaceship and prowls around. Blah blah, he finds the central area, throws the Netrablium in it, and the whole thing starts spazzing out. Aliens are shrieking and don't seem to have a backup plan for this sort of thing, so Mulder's the only one who gets out before the whole thing explodes or melts or whatever. He swims back to shore, gasping on the sand (he barely escaped the sub, so he's rightfully exhausted).

Mulder and Scully hug. It's emotional. The camera pans out and upward, and we see the sub dissolving into the water, knowing once again, our planetary health is due to our beloved agents.

BUT we have to have some hint that there will be another movie, so after the credits, we see some mystery person reading a newspaper with a headline like "Coastal Catastrophes out to Sea" or some lame pun implying there are no more alien disasters. The newspaper comes down and we see....THE SMOKING MAN...and he turns to a shadowy figure looming in the corner. He says, "We're going to have some explaining to do." The shadowy figure slowly walks into the light and we see....SKINNER. He says, "Yes. Yes, sir, we sure are."

So, again, not the best story ever, but I would gladly pay $9.25 to see this sucker opening night. So please, from the bottom of my heart, someone make this happen.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Oh, the Places We'll Go! Part 2

I'll sum up the rest of our trip this July....the next two days in Ireland, we went to Glendalough, a sweet hiking area in the Wicklow Mountains, and to County Cork where we kissed the Blarney Stone. Turns out the stone isn't actually for luck, but for the gift of eloquence/persuasion. Who knew? After gaining our rightful gift, we flew to Edinburgh from Cork on Ryan Air (of course, we got a picture of Ryan in front of the plane...and if you look carefully, he might look a little bulgy...that's because he's got on four shirts and a fleece to keep his backpack under regulation size).

It was getting dark when we got off the bus from the Edinburgh airport. Dark, cold and rainy. But how much better did that make it when we found our hostel? Not just any hostel, but a CATHEDRAL. For serious. It was a small cathedral renovated into a hostel. Like, they turned the sanctuary into two makeshift hallways with separate rooms. We were only in the hostel to sleep the next two nights, but it was still glorious. Our room's "roof" had a window at the top so we could see the stained glass sanctuary windows. A window through a window.

The next day we left crazy early to take a bus up to Loch Ness...we got there around noon and walked by the water, mostly just touring Inverness, a city along the lake. And did we find ol' Nessie? You better believe it. Turns out she turns herself into a bunch of swans and we got a picture of her transformation. She's quite the trickster. We spent part of the afternoon sitting by the lake, talking about where we saw ourselves in five years...turns out we don't know the future. Lame.

Around 6 we took the bus back to Edinburgh. It was a lot of driving for one day, but like the trains in Ireland, the scenery was well worth it. The next morning we got up at 4 AM. What? And somehow I was totally ok with that. We took an early train to Sheffield, England, where we met up with MARIEEEEEEE. She was getting her Masters there and we crashed in her flat. That day we walked around Sheffield and took a bus to the Peak District where we ate at a pub (Marie and I got a roast that was...freaking...delicious).

The next day we went into London after ANOTHER early morning (5 if I remember). Our first stop was Kings Cross to pose by the trolley outside the Hogwarts Express. Actually, the trolley isn't even between platforms 9 and 10. Super lame. It's just thrown by some random wall in the station. Guess most tourists don't want to pay to actually get into the station.

The next stop, after dropping our bags off somewhere, was St. Paul's. I'd been there before, but had never climbed up the the Whispering Gallery...a mere thousand steps up to the top of the dome where you get a crazy view of London. Back at the bottom, my leg would twitch when I leaned forward in just the right way. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but Marie and Ryan didn't seemed impressed. Also at the bottom I paid to light a candle with a prayer for mom who just found out about her breast cancer, which I don't think I'd done before, but it really felt more sacred to pray that way.

We then went to see the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham where uniformed people yell at you to keep moving...keep moving...keep the sidewalk clear...come on, people, don't block the way.

And then it was Westminster Abbey. Another place I'd seen, but not fully. Before, I'd seen the outside, but the audio tour was well worth it. We struggled to find Marie after that, but eventually saw her flailing around Big Ben. After THAT we went to The British Museum to see The Rosetta Stone and surprising amounts of Egyptian stuff. There was also a Horse Exhibit with old arrow heads from 8,000 BC. Crazy. I don't know how to handle looking at stuff that old.

Before we left the museum, I messed with my camera to see if it was working again (I brilliantly washed it at Marie's, forgetting it was in one of my pockets). It was splotchy and blurry, but it worked! And throughout the trip, it eventually cleared up more.

Sadly, this was the time when we had to part with Marie. We said our farewells at the tube station. It was awful. I just didn't really think before then how SHORT it would be with her. She left for her train back to Sheffield and Ryan and I made it just in time to see The Mousetrap at St. Martin's Theatre.

We grabbed our bags after the show and took the tube to our hostel. It was around midnight by that point and it was so great to finally get to Hostel #8 and feel like we were coming to a home of sorts. We were cheap when we booked stuff, so stayed in a 21-person room...basically just rows of bunk beds and lockers. But for $10 a night, who cares?

London was still on our list the next day. We made it to The Globe and spent hours at The Tower of London and Tower Bridge. We saw the Crown Jewels and this is just amazing...to keep tourists from standing too long in front of the jewels and blocking everyone, you go on a moving walkway. That's just freaking genius. We took a river cruise back to the east side of London, which got interesting when the heavens themselves burst forth rain. It almost felt like a scene out of Titanic, people fleeing across the top of the boat to get into shelter.

The NEXT day we did a bus tour of Oxford, Windsor and Stonehenge. Super good thing we did a tour since buses/trains don't go very consistently between the three. And our tour guide was sweet...brown suit with a bowler hat and pipe. Interesting guy.

This was now Monday and our last night at #8 Hostel (no alcohol allowed...as they have their own bar). We left at 4:15 the next morning for a bus into London for another bus to Standsted Airport. For a cheap-o flight, they had the most intense screening ever. The lady emptied EVERYthing in my bag. Granted, I had liquids all over the place like a dummy. So this was our flight to Budapest. We had to end up on that side of Europe, so found this cheap-o flight to a country neither of us had been to before. We were only in Budapest about 6 hours, but walked around and ate this plate of potato/cheese/egg goodness with lemonade for just 3 euros. We took a bus that afternoon to Vienna, which we got off around 10 pm. When we got out onto the dark streets of Vienna....we realized we had no idea where to go from there. We had an address, but weren't seeing trains, so cheated at took a cab. But I'm glad we did because we met Mr. Cabdriver who had moved to Vienna from Africa several years ago and still didn't have good friends where he lived. Apparently Austria is beautiful, but not very friendly. So we gave him a good tip and I said I'd talk to everyone in Vienna, telling them to be nicer.

At our Vienna hostel, right away it was so different from the western European ones we'd been at. As in, it was QUIET. There was a girl sleeping across from me from Malaysia (or Mongolia?) who was really friendly, asking where we were going and seeming genuinely sad that we were only at the hostel until the morning.

So the next day we took a train to Salzburg, officially my favorite city ever. Vienna's great and all, but Salzburg is how I actually picture Austria...mountains and old buildings with copper-topped towers. And the apple streudels! Gah. And the hostel THERE was even better than Vienna's. It was a youth hostel, but NICE. Definitely the cleanest we'd seen. When I woke up the next morning, I just stared at the sun coming through the window, marveling at the epicness of our trip. But soon it was off to do more craziness. We rented bikes (apparently everywhere in Salzburg rents bikes) and rode to the Germany border so Ryan could say he'd been there. On the way back to the city, we stopped by different Sound of Music landmarks. The night before, we'd stopped by the fortress overlooking the city and Nonnberg Abbey (where I had an amazing wipe-out on the rain-covered cobblestones).

That night we took the train back to Vienna for one night back at the hostel with the nice Malaysian/Mongolian girl, except she wasn't there when we got back. We just crashed, charged up our camera and Ryan's beard trimmer, then woke up to meet our church group at the Vienna Airport. It was the strangest thing, seeing people we KNEW there. Sure, we'd seen Marie, but that already felt like ages ago. The next 11 days we were in Slovakia, teaching English at the KECY camp. For some reason, the second the camp started I lost pretty much all the gratuitous amounts of energy I'd had during our backpacking. Although, it didn't keep me from enjoying the Slovak campers and getting to know them.

I don't even know what all to write about camp. I spoke one of the nights, which was hard because I so wanted to express how I believe in a loving God even when everything seems chaotic and confusing. I think I communicated that, but it's hard to tell with the whole language barrier. What's more important, though, are the friendships. I really miss them and was sad when we left the city on a train for Prague.

We stayed in Prague for the next two nights with Dave and Angie, then flew home.

And that, my friends, is the summed up version of our trip!