I told Ethel, I says "I'm not too sure about this movie".  I said "It sounds to me to be sorta suspicious - like it's not going to make much sense." I told her, I said "It sounds like 'young photogenic guys pretend to do magic in high school'".

Then, later, I told Ethel "I told you so."


                                             

The best way that I know to describe this movie would be to say "Warlocks in Speedos" - see, the young studly teen warlocks are in prep school, and they are all on the swim team, so that they get to hang out in Speedos and do magic and take themselves very, very seriously.

I can't begin to describe all of the plot holes and inconsistencies in this movie. It was just plain awful. However, once I started it, I had to finish it - sort of like penance, or character building. (I suspect that I was hoping that somebody would do something that would make the whole movie make sense by pointing out all of the stupidity that was going on - but instead they just kept taking themselves more and more seriously).

This movie might have been funny but for the fact that it used up an hour and a half of my life, and I'm really, really running out of life at a prodigious rate. That was actually why I was watching this movie late on a Sunday afternoon, instead of doing something - because I'm old.

I got up at 4:35 on Saturday morning and, after my morning rituals, headed off to run trails outside of Anthem with the Daisy Mountain Running Club. Ran about 10.4 miles with them, then completed 17 on my own on the dreadmill at the gym before doing some lifting - not a full workout, you understand.

Then I got home around 10 AM and rounded up Silas to go climbing - we made it to the parking spot around 11, and hiked up Snuffy Smith Ridge to where I had been setting out bolts. It was getting hot about this time, and it kept warming up to the point that we quit climbing in mid-afternoon because the rocks got too hot to touch.

When we got home, Ethel suggested that I get a nap, so I took a short one, and then after doing this and that around the house headed up to fulfill a service obligation over in Anthem. We got home around 7:30 or so, and I was WHUPPED.

We got up early the next morning and went climbing again, and got home around 1:00 PM, and I was - once again - whupped. Beat like a tied-up goat. Rode hard and put away wet. Slap-dab give out. Tired.

I remember being able to DO stuff, and then being able to do MORE stuff. My limits were time and money. I could do anything that I had time to do, and that I could afford.

But now it seems like there's always a trade off - if I do one thing, then I'm not going to be able to do something else.  And the biggest limit that I have is energy - I just don't have enough energy to do the things that I want to do; the things that I can afford to do and have time to do. There's just not enough ME to do them.

In this movie - "Teenage Speedo-Wearing Warlocks from Hell" - it seems that using one's powers causes one to age quicker; there's only so much life in a warlock, and that life-force gets consumed at a much faster rate if they are using their powers to the fullest.

Well, I've been trying to live life to its fullest for about twenty-three years now, and I'm sad to say that I just don't think that I can do it any more. The old beer ad back in the day used to say "You only go around once in life - you've got to live it with all the gusto you can!" - well, I've lived with all of the gusto that I can. And my gusto is GONE.

Which is why I was sitting there watching such a bad movie on a Sunday afternoon; because I didn't have enough energy to do anything else.

After this movie, and after a break, we watched Open Range - do you want to know what can make you feel older than a bunch of Teenage Speedo-Wearing Warlocks from Hell? Watching Robert Duvall cowboy around at age 72 - ridin', fightin', shootin', and generally kickin' butt. That's how old he was when he made this movie in 2003 - and he's made EIGHT MORE MOVIES SINCE THEN.

That just wears me out, thinking about it.

Makes me wanna run around in a Speedo and cast spells on folks.

But I'm too old for that.