So, a while back I let the popular tide swallow me and drag me into the sea that is Twitter. I don’t know why. Do I really need to be part of another social networking site? I already have a MySpace, FaceBook and LiveJournal, plus the real Web site (and its satellites). I signed up for Bebo once, but never went back. I have a Blogger account somewhere, too. Did I need this Twitter account? Probably not. But there it is. Follow me if you want. If I know you, or you seem interesting, I’ll follow you, too. Don’t look for updates about me brushing my teeth and such, though. I try to make it at least mildly intersting (and if you’re interested in my hygiene, you’re just too weird.)

Okay, last night I took the wife, three youngest kids and a friend of the teen daughter to the Winchester Drive-in. You people my age and older probably remember when most of the drive-ins died in the 1980s. Don’t tell that to the Winchester, where it was literally packed for a pretty lame triple feature. I’ll get to the films in a minute. First, you have to picture this pure Oklahoma scene: Drive-in theater with a working oil pump jack to the right, and about midnight a dazzling lightning show playing out behind the screeen. Of course, it was pretty damn hot and sticky … but no bugs!

The triple feature was Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, and The Hangover. We’ll get The Hangover out of the way first. We didn’t stay for that one. The youngest kid was not asleep by 1:30 a.m. and everyone else had pretty much had enough. As silly as the previews for that one looks, however, it still had a strong shot at being the best of that trio.

I haven’t liked any of the Ice Age movies, and I have to say this third installment is the worst so far. Yes, it’s a kids’ movie. So was Shrek. So was Beauty and the Beast, Chicken Run and Toy Story. Those were good. The Ice Age movies are just drivel. And I’m sorry, but Ray Ramono is just Ray Ramono. His voice does not work in animation. I keep waiting for his parents to drive a car through the wall. Anyway, the movie is about the sloth who finds three dinousaur eggs in an underground world none of the mammals knew was there. Of course they are tyrannasaurus rex eggs, mama comes for the babies, and takes the sloth, too. So all the other unconventional family members — I mean, the rest of the herd — has to go looking for him, and that includes the pregnant Queen Latifah as Ray’s wife. Simon Pegg was the only interesting character, as a Crocodile Dundee rip-off weasel. The blatant “homages” to good films were numerous, Ray whined, Queen Latifah was wise and wise-cracking and Dennis Leary learned family life can be an adventure. Then the credits rolled. And things got worse.

Transformers was a stupid cartoon back in the 1980s. Remember those similar cartoons where the characters had super-lame names like Casta Spella, He-Man, Smurfette, Cobra, Skeletor, Autobots, etc.? Now imagine taking the worst of that lot, throwing millions of dollars at it and hiring one of the worst directors ever to helm it and you have the first Transformers movie. But kids have no taste, spent millions to see the piece of crap, so now we get a sequel. (My youngest son loves Transformers … but he’s seven years old.) This movie had one redeeming scene and it came early on when Megan Fox, wearing short-shorts and cowboy boots is laying on a big motorcycle to paint the gas tank. Wow. Otherwise, the whole film was a combination of Bay’s usual slo-mo “here’s where you’re supposed to feel some sort of pathos” scenes, bad acting, predictable action scenes, asinine comic relief and, oh yeah, a big giant Chevrolet commercial. And let’s not forget the stereotypical “evil” voice for the bad guys and the old-and-wise voice of the elder good robots, plus the attitude of the Washington, D.C. bureacrat. Seriously, lame doesn’t begin to describe this movie. Scene by scene you could predict what would happen next, what the next line would be, what emotion you were supposed to engage next, etc. Alien robots. We’re suppose to care about alien robots, most of which transform into the 2009 Chevy lineup? Puh-leeze!

I’m glad to suspend disbelief and accept a 200-pound man turning into a 125-pound wolf, but seeing a new Camaro turn into a weeping robot? No freaking way!

But if I could get a poster of Ms. Fox on that bike, I’d sure put that on my wall (until the wife tore it down).

Oh, one more. The wife and I watched The Haunting in Connecticut on DVD the other night. Dumb and predictable in a typically modern teen horror movie kind of way.

A lot of negativity toward Hollywood, huh? Maybe I’ll have something nice to say when Frank Darabont releases his version of Fahrenheit 451.