Museum of Science in Boston an early May morning as seen from the tracks to North Station.

28 Weeks Later is a good deal better than the disappointing 28 Days Later. It has a good mix of action sequences, big explosions, hails of gunfire, and up-tempo running as ragers repopulate the city that 28 weeks earlier had been depopulated by the first wave of ragers.

The virus-induced repocalypse is caused by an English family that was separated during the first outbreak and then reunited during the reconstruction of England by a US-led NATO-force (all the troops are of course American). Daddy thought mommy was torn apart by ragers during the first outbreak, while the kids were way on a school trip, so when mommy turns up alive, thanks to her super-special blood, the kids are pissed off at dad who tries to rectify the situation by making out with mommy, who unwittingly infects daddy who then kills her, rager style. And then the fun is on.

After much shooting, biting, bombing, clawing, running, tearing, gassing, gnashing, and burning the daughter kills daddy ragest and flies off to France with her brother where they promptly infect the Gauls.

All in all it’s a decent though occasionally silly movie. Nothing special one way or the other.

The missus and I saw The Waitress this morning at AMC Boston Common 19. It is a fairly miserable film. I knew nothing about it in advance but I had expected it to be a high-brow chick flick, maybe even borderline enjoyable. In reality, The Waitress is a rather dark drama with streaks of very oestrogen-centric humor that doesn’t particularly appeal to me. It’s not a bad movie, but I didn’t find it remarkably entertaining, either, and parts of it are outright boring (inside joke for those who have seen it: Reclaiming My Manliness After Seeing The Waitress Pie: Rare steak tips and chopped bratwursts smothered with a mustard, ketchup and mayo mix, with a cup of JD for flavor).

I don’t consider The Waitress to be a good date movie, but if you’re a guy and you want to impress that hot, feminist-leaning co-ed who thinks she ought to be a lesbian on general principle but can’t get over the fact that she’s attracted to boys, not girls, you could probably get some mileage out of praising it. Maybe even third-base mileage or better (but don’t use this post’s headline as an ice breaker because then you’ll strike out faster than Coco Crisp).

Keri Russell, who plays the lead, is pretty cute. You may remember her from such shows or movies as 7th Heaven, Felicity and The Upside of Anger, but the only thing she’s been in that I had seen previous to The Waitress is the excellent Mel Gibson vehicle We Were Soldiers, where I guess she played one of the Army wives.

[Update: The missus tells me to stress that Ms. Russell was Felicity, the once enormously popular television show (enormously popular with its target audience), otherwise it'll look like I don't know what I'm talking about, which I clearly don't in this case. I vaguely remember a big to-do about Felicity cutting her hair.]

Update: I was a bit interested in finding what the professional opionators hd to say about The Waitress. Here are some examples:

Ty Burr of The Boston Globe does a little step dance to avoid sying that the movie blows, apparently because a lot of people like some other movies that the director of The Waitress has done.

Claudia Puig of USA Today thinks it’s “delicious fun.”

The director of “The Waitress,” Adrienne Shelley, was murdered in New York last year, allegedly by an illegal alien construction worker from Ecuador.

About a decade ago I went into a store to buy a black suit. The proprietor told me he had no black suit, but he did offer me a dunkelblau one. Ever since I’ve been making dunkelblau jokes, along the lines of “that guy in Reservoir Dogs who didn’t want to be Mr. Pink should have called himself Mr. Dunkelblau instead.” Yeah, all of my dunkelblau jokes are that flat, but I’ve stuck by them so I was rather pleased to hear former Massachusetts Governor make a joke in tonight’s Republican debate about the state being so dark blue it’s almost black - dunkelblau, in other words.

Sadly, my experience with dunkelblau jokes is that the audience for them is surprisingly small.

On a more serious note, I’m highly pleased with Governor Romney’s strong defense of Guantanamo and also with his willingness to expand it.

A young woman was hit by a car as she crossed the westbound lanes on the way from the BU Central T-stop to the courtyard outside Marsh Chapel next to the GSU at about 7.08 PM this evening. The thud created by a car hitting a person is an unpleasant one. The young woman tumbled to the ground and the car that hit her came to an immediate stop. Probably a half dozen people instantly whipped out their cell phones to call 9-1-1, and about an equal number rushed to assist the young woman as best they could.

There was no panic, no screaming, and no theatrics. Some odd-looking bicyclist showed up after a couple of minutes and started waving at the traffic like some cop, which wasn’t such a good idea since he merely distracted the drivers from changing lanes and making their way around the accident.

The first responding unit to make it to the scene was a BU police officer who arrived after about five minutes, just seconds before the first ambulance. Then in rapid succession there was another BU cop, a D-4 Boston cop, a statie, another ambulance and even a fire truck (I think there was a fire truck, but now I’m not sure). All of the responders went about their work in an efficient manner.

A two-person crew from WBZ made it to the scene a few minutes after the emergency personnel. I didn’t stay around to see whether they shot any video.

As far as the accident goes, I’m not sure who was at fault. I sort of dimly perceived that the car had a green light, but I can’t swear on it. Considering how quickly the car came to a full stop it could not have been driving very fast. One factor that may have contributed was the setting sun that stared the westbound traffic right in the face.

I hope the young woman is as OK as she reasonably can be after that spill.

Below is a picture from the scene before the arrival of the emergency personnel.

Always be a defensive driver, always try to pay attention to traffic lights and never cross a street before making sure you can do so safely.

I read the teaser for an article in The Boston Globe on how young voters are going to be really, truly, sersiously off-the-hookizzle important in next year’s elections, and my reaction was the same as John Daley’s: Weren’t we told the same thing in 2004? Aren’t we told the same thing every election?

I for one think it is a very good thing that young people don’t vote as much as their elders. In fact, I think it would be quite beneficial for society if the voting age was raised to 25, which, to rather lazily use a much over-used construct, is the new 18, going on 16.

The quote below is from a report by the University of Masschusetts Donovan Institute, so it should be trusted only when verified, but if it is correct it may just explain a substantial part of budget shortfalls in towns and cities cross the state:

From 1999 to 2004, school enrollments statewide were essentially flat, with 0.2 percent total growth, while the employment of full time equivalent (FTE) teaching staff increased by eight percent. Despite very limited growth in enrollment, total school expenditures grew by 28.6 percent statewide from 1999 to 2004.

A pretty substantial response by Boston Fire department to some kind of incident at the Braemore on Commonwealth Avenue in Kenmore Square tonight. I don’t know yet whether anybody was hurt.

Below are some pictures from fairly early in the response, before the police rerouted traffic.

This is a photo of fire fighters scaling a ladder to reach an apartment. There was quite a bit of sound of glass breaking and there was also a bit of smoke, but nothing too bad.

After a while the East bound traffic on Commwealth Avenue was rerouted:

Here’s a picture that shows the ladder in position. Charlesgate West is the overpass in the background.

I shot a lot of video, mostly to see how it would come out, but not much of it is particularly captivating. Well, I guess one could splice together 30 seconds or so of decent video, but that ain’t happening tonight, folks (actually, it turns out that my wife shot a pretty decent overview clip using the video function on our regular digital camera). Note of interest: Never ever use the zoom on the Pure Digital video camera. It absolutely blows.

Here’s a bunch of much better photos from a fire on the other side of the block, on Newbury Street, a few years ago.

Truly Jörg’s in Kenmore Square was held up today, according to Fox 25 News. Two weeks ago some scum held up the Cold Stone Creamery a couple of blocks south of here. And about two weekends ago D-4 ignored an hour-long disturbance incident outside a residence. Can somebody please put some police in the community policing around here?

I had no idea but allegedly there is an arbitrage market for shelter dogs on the East Coast. Apparently animal rescue shelters in the Northeast are so picky about who can adopt dogs from them that there is an interstate market for rescued dogs. Down South a shelter dog can be had for twenty-some dollars and then resold up here for $50. I’m not familiar with any details regarding scope, volume or qualifications (such as it being true only for specific breeds etc). It could also be that there’s just a bigger glut of abandoned or confiscated dogs in the South. Needless to say I’m strongly opposed to Dixie dogs displacing yankee hounds. People who are rejected by shelters need to shape up, not in-source alien pooches.