Like any good patriotic American I started off my Saturday with the first showing of Transformers.  I left three hours later with one hell of a headache, and I don’t normally get headaches.  I wasn’t expecting it to be a thrilling story – but Michael Bay (and Spielberg??) have hit a new low.  Transformer testicles?  (and that wasn’t the only testicles joke in the movie)  I have to be curious how the crew was going to get to the Egyptian desert before Bay’s genius invented the Space Bridge to excuse his star’s crushed-from-a-drunken-driving-accident-hand.  Funny, you roll your F-150 in a drunken stupor and you get rewarded by… getting to drive a brand new camaro every day.

As I was watching the movie I realized what Bay’s goal was.  Michael Bay is actually making a retro movie.  We’ve seen stupidity and explosions on screen before.  For at least two decades directors tried to make “intelligent” summer blockbusters.  Minority Report, Jurassic Park, Dark Knight, The Day After tomorrow, etc.  They didn’t always work (yeah, you didn’t think I loved The Day After Tomorrow, did you?), but they missed the point that too many Commandos, Rambos and so on proved decades ago.  There is a foolproof formula for raking in cash in the summer.  The formula is simple and Michael Bay reproduced it perfectly.

Explosions, special effects, fighting, military (Bay is the master of gratuitous US military equipment “official” shots), maybe an alien or two, a hot chick with enough cleavage to appeal to boys young and old (which, by the way, was actually much less of an issue than early reviews had proclamed) and a hero saving the earth at the end.  I realized this when things kept exploding in the desert – cut to predator drones in the air – cut to Megan Fox leaping forward – cut to another military plane – cut to F-16s – cut to … well you get the idea.  And then of course at the end the hero comes back from the dead to kill the evil alien and save the earth from destruction.   The hero (in this case Optimus) walks in slow motion with hands on hips to stand next to the Sphinx.  The (other) hero kisses the girl.

The only problem with the formula was Shia, who is called a hero at the end by the robot “primes” (think the ghost kings from the Lord of the Rings).  Confusing because for two hours we just watched Sam run and hide and get caught and run and hide and get caught over and over.  Hardly heroic.

And as for the racist hood robots… I’m not sure they’re racist, just stupid.  Neither of them is actually the color black or uses the “n word.”  Anyone who sees a racist depiction of black teenagers is simply projecting.  Coming from an area of faux-“crips” with wife-beaters and trailer parks the “twins” reminded me more of the posers (albeit without the cash) from movies like Malibu’s Most Wanted.

Speaking of Malibu…  After the movie we ate some Japanese food and then headed to Point Dume, an ancient volcano on the coast of Malibu just a few miles north of Pepperdine University.  The beach under the cliffs is nice, but the real treasure comes from hiking up the hill and up to the point and then to the cove on the other side.

From the North side (the beach and parking lot) about to hike up the path…

On the other side you walk all the way down to the cove…

We didn’t actually walk all the way down to the Cove as it was already getting cold and we knew the fireworks were going to start in about an hour.  On the way back the moon was starting to shine.

Not before the Sun made it’s last desperate (but effective) ploy for our attention.  The sunset from Point Dume is something everyone should see at least once.

or twice if you’re lucky…

We turned back for a minute and considered hiking down to the beach and walking around the point on the black volcanic rocks below.  I tried to go down the “path” for a few feet and realized it was way to slippery.  One slip and you’d have a long tumble before cracking up against black rocks below and crashing waves.  I turned around.

We walked back to the car and went back to the Pacific Coast Highway.  We’d decided to try to see the fireworks from the Pepperdine Campus (we figured as students we could park there).  However, when we spotted an open spot next to the beach we took the opportunity.  About 1.5 miles north of Pepperdine University there is a stretch of beach easily accessible to anyone parking on the margin, yet the sounds and the lights of the vehicles are shielded from those on the beach by the soft cliffside.  From our vantage point on the beach we could see fireworks to our left and to our right and all the way down the coast.  We could see at least two more shows going off south of Santa Monica.

Fireworks kept being shot off till nearly 10:30 from an unofficial fireworks display immediately to our right.  My theory is that it was from one of the local restaurants that makes money from the view and not from the food.  When the fireworks died down we were left staring straight up into the sky at the almost full moon shining back down.