Sea Monsters, Robert Ford, Seeing Eye Dogs

Took the kids to the local IMAX theater and saw this National Geographic CGI production, Sea Monsters, which was about prehistoric undersea creatures and had a sort of storyline following one creature as it lost its family, narrowly escaped death with a scar, and grew up to have babies. Sort of a Disney plot, interspersed with live action recreations of people finding fossils. It would be silly on TV, but pretty fun on the IMAX screen. This theater is in San Diego's Balboa Park, which has about a dozen other museums, so I want to keep bringing the kids down here periodically to check out more.

Watched about 2/3rds of Samuel Fuller's first film, I Shot Jesse James, and it's quite a bit better than I expected. This was in a three movie Criterion Collection, part of the Eclipse series but more reasonably priced than the ones from foreign directors like Bergman, Malle and Ozu. I guess the presence of Vincent Price in the second film drove the price down--he's always doing that.

Started GQ restaurant critic Alan Richman's Fork It Over, which collects his best essays. Great writer. Am mostly through the Comics Journal Darwyn Cooke interview but get distracted. The new Believer magazine has plenty of stuff I'm into: The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Panda Bear, Adrian Tomine.

After Trevor's soccer game we were walking to the car--me, the kids, their mom and her husband--and we saw a woman training a seeing eye dog. Trevor's mom asked him if he knew what they used those dogs for, and he said, "If someone falls down a hole and they need help getting out," which the adults all laughed at. Good, clean, blind comedy.