Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

What blogger couldn't weigh in on the movie of the book of the blog, Julie & Julia, about the woman who was already an awesome cook and writer but was stuck working at the Freedom Hole hotline because no one can just do what they love and be happy without money, until one day Julia Child appears in her cupboard and possesses her, making her chop up all the haters, sparing the too-good-to-be-true husbands and amazingly well-trained cat?

ME! I saw the movie a while back, with Nan and Mum--who loved it, because they love food, and I can't critique the movie, because for a movie about women bonding over food it wasn't bad and I don't like picking apart other people's work because that's fucking lame, so I thought I'd fire off a list of things I learned about myself from the movie.

One, I am apparently a man. A man who hates food. An anorexic man, even, because after two hours of watching people have orgasms over food--and yeah, Julia Child made out with her husband, I just...you need to know that, not that I had a problem with that, or Adam Lambert's AMA performance for that matter--I was just feeling a bit like I'd had a really bad migraine.

Maybe that's because I had a migraine. See, I had just gotten into playing Café World on Facebook, not because I like food or anything, but...it's Facebook, you understand, and I use Facebook ironically, and I have migraines, and doing anything online for more than the minute it takes to play Bejeweled Blitz makes me start acting like all those people in The Happening just before they step in front of a combine harvester. I smell in algebra!

Anyway, I'd been doing fine serving bacon cheeseburgers--and I'm a vegetarian, remember (not many people do, because I don't shove it down everyone's throat)--but I'd staggered off to take Excedrin and my caramel apples went bad before I could serve them and my rating tanked and all the computer people weren't giving me coins anymore and after that maybe I didn't want to see two hours of a Nora Ephron film about food. Although the occasional up yours to Sen. McCarthy was beautiful. The killing of the lobster might have negated that, had I been in the room, but I walked out. I came back, I always do. I didn't walk out on Orphan, mind you. Orphan kicks ass. See it. You'll know when to look away.

Afterwards, The Trade-Ins episode of The Twilight Zone was on, and I couldn't stop staring at the old dude's powdered eyelashes, so maybe I was just being '80s-level picky that night.

This is not a reflection at all on the movie or the blog or the books or food in general, really. There was a meme on Facebook, again I don't know why I did it, and it told me I was a spork because I chose Julia Child as the person I'd most want to sit and listen to. Sinatra was on the list, loads of people were on the list, but I figured Julia Child would have good stories and not be all that dangerous and/or likely to make me want to hang myself afterward. I've since read Julie Powell's blog too and it's fabulous. So I guess I just get diabetes from Nora Ephron films, that's all. Sure. It's me. Me, me, me.

OH YEAH, speaking of me, blogs didn't have pop-up windows like, "YOU HAVE A COMMENT!" in 2002 and they still don't (thank god). Call me picky, but War Games prevented me from getting a modem until I was 16. I had a modem, in the house, when I was 12, and it had to go back to Games 'n' Gadgets, unopened, because of its untapped lethalness. So yes, I have an issue about movies misrepresenting the common everyday computer.

But you know what? That whole Julie/Julia story is an up yours to fear and that I can get behind 100%.

Even if I can't look directly at cream sauce without puking. Or aspic. Or raw poultry. Or fish. Or--okay, I'm physically incapable of puking in real life due to my hernia, so don't worry that I'm off puking somewhere. Anorexia's nothing to make fun of. But puke jokes always amused me, because as I've pointed out earlier in this post, I seem to be a very weird boy.

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Nevermind that, Hey Pais has a much better take on Julie & Julia.

Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

Must I chime in with my opinions on who should win an Oscar? No, but here goes anyway!

Of the supporting actress nominees, I've only seen Taraji P. Henson in Benjamin Button so I'm hoping she does well because I loved her and thought her character was one of the best in the whole movie.

If Heath Ledger does not win best supporting actor I will eat a selection of my hats.

Kate Winslet needs her Oscar. It's not fair they haven't given her one yet, and The Reader is frikkin' fantastic. Of course I love Angelina Jolie too, and Changeling was amazing, so that is the only substitute I will accept, but Angie's already got an Oscar, so I'm sticking with Winslet. I will blubber when she wins, because I've loved her since Sense And Sensibility and I think I've made my point.

I'm leaving best actor up to the fates because I get the feeling Mickey Rourke is going to win but I haven't seen The Wrestler so I don't know.

I haven't seen all the best picture nominees, but of the ones I've seen Slumdog Millionaire wins everything. Just because.

I'm torn on cinematography and editing because I thought all the nominees did well, and I'm not even touching best song this year because I ♥ Peter Gabriel but I also ♥ the songs from Slumdog Millionaire so...I guess I'm not picking too many of these, eh? Why wasn't the song from Australia nominated? Why wasn't the song from Bolt nominated, for that matter?

Bolt was the only animated film I saw of the nominees so therefore it must win and why wasn't Wanted up for visual effects or editing? It's up for sound, what was the sound doing all by itself? Whooshing through the air in an arc?

Oh no, I'm getting the Oscar headache already....

Tags: February 2009, movies

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

And That Was The Week That Was

It snowed last weekend. A lot. It wasn't fluffy nice snow you can scoop up and eat, either, it was the sharp killer ice that likes to make you stick to it if you go outside nekkid. Not that I know anything about that as I have special snow pants which I totally got on sale for like $10 in Modell's back in 2001 and that was the greatest deal ever in all my life because those pants deter the coldest of cold. Shame I don't have a similar article of clothing for my face. Not that it matters, because the pain of frostbitten nostrils is insignificant next to the horror that is SHOVELER'S HERNIA. Not that I'm complaining, I actually did really good for a long time before my innards all gave up and went wherever they wanted.

It was the holiday season, and Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of not only my first obscene phone call, but the 20th anniversary of the horrendous death of the daughter of the nurse of the surgeon who happened to be removing a tumor from my boobie that very day. Lockerbie, kids, never forget it. I'm not kidding. I didn't know any of this as I was alternately unconcious and sharing my Jell-O with my Uncle Gene, but he knew, and he told my mum. It was, in my lifetime, one of those days I'll never be able to fully comprehend, possibly because of the Valium, but most likely because it goes beyond storytelling.

Nan found a movie called Subterano about a bunch of Australians trapped in a car park with a crazy killer toy, and then she found The Curse Of El Charro, which is about a bunch of girls trapped in Mexico with a crazy ghost. Lemmy from Motorhead is in the movie, so you Lemmy completeists get on this, but skip it if endings where the hero gets a crappy hand dealt to them pisses you off. One the one hand, we saw a movie with video game characters skipping out of a carpark into a sun-shiny day with mountains and oceans and happiness, and on the other hand we have one of those HERE'S YOUR REALITY endings that pisses me off. Dammit, if I ever defeat the bogeyman don't be locking me up in the nuthouse--at least don't forget my headphones.

We ate scrambled eggs, oatmeal and soup to prepare for the insanely large meal we were about to eat on Boxing Day, and this resulted in lower blood pressure for the two-thirds of us with high blood pressure and helped get rid of my totalbodyheadcramp. Not satisfied, I spent Christmas day running amok with a vacuum, traumatizing the Puppy and gathering every wayward dustbunny and also a little pink felt ear from one of the toy mice. It was like an offering to appease the vacuum god Euroreckhoover. Must have worked, because writing this last bit of this last week in review for 2008, I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out. I started this month terrified of the future, spent the first weeks trying to change what I could, and now I got to introduce my cats and dog to my aunt, uncle and cousin, and my mum and Nan cooked a meal like the olden days of army dinners and the oven didn't cut off and gas us, and of course my hernia tried to complain but eff it. This week was good.

I can't believe the year's down to four days. Countdown time begins in 48-ish hours!

Next week I'm going to be doing something different on Saturdays, something I think is going to be more amusing. To me, anyway.

And That Was The Week That Was

The Penultimate Week In Review.

Monday the weather was gorgeous. It seemed every dolt in town noticed this also and was out racing to get to the beach, but then it rained and got colder. Still, it was nice to head into winter with one last reminder that the world will keep spinning and give us a good memory once in a while if we're lucky.

I took Rite-Aid's generic knock-off of Sudafed. This, I think I've mentioned, makes me love the world for a limited amount of time, and then it makes the world very annoying and wobbly, but it also makes me not fall asleep behind the wheel and scream when air touches my skin, so that's good. Had I really done these reviews of exactly how my weeks are laid out, there would have been a lot more of this kind of boring honesty, and that gets old fast. Three or four weeks, to be exact.

As the days whizzed by getting shorter and shorter, I did a lot of snow shovelling and staggering around clutching my chest, and Last.fm and Quick Fire Pool amused me while I was doing all the stuff I do indoors, and I took a lot of pictures of the snow and my cats and dog--which I'm constantly aware of how lucky I am to have--and was grateful this week was a lot quieter for my family.

Nan found a lot of movies but I'm not sure of the titles. Two were actually the same movie (Holiday Affair), remade after 50 years. Movie film holds up way better than VHS, you know. I hope DVD holds up longer than VHS because the copies of some family videos I've been putting on DVD the past few months better not frikkin' deteriorate any further or I will really give up on the idea of chronicling anything and just go live in a cave.

I thought Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor was really good. It's a Mummy movie, you know, if you like them--as I do--you'll love it. I was terrified of this one in theory, too, because half the cast had changed, but it's a completely different story and I guess it either got me on a good day or it was just that good. I also avoid IMDB message boards like one of Imhotep's plagues, so I've found I enjoy movies a lot better that way.

The Penultimate Week In Review.

Ho Ho Holy Is It The Weekend Already?

I taped Stephen King's Desperation off the Sci-Fi channel for us to watch, and man am I sorry. No, it was okay in a not-as-good-as-The-Mist-but-better-than-Rose-Red way, but I had forgotten King's got it in for animals and holy hell there is some imagery right off the bat that even horrified one of the characters. Then it gets worse (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether I mean the scare factor or the story, because even I'm not sure). But you know, it's King so even a not-great King TV movie is better than some other movies I can't think of right now.

One incredible bit of lost continuity that made Desperation worth watching for me had to be the first person to get shot onscreen is shot near another dead body, and throughout the rest of the movie there's only one body in that area and the character who gets shot onscreen is never seen again. O_O At first I thought it meant impending heroics, then I thought something grosser happened, but then...he was just never seen again. Things like that in movies fascinate me.

It was really windy the next day, which is why I got to write two whole paragraphs about a movie we saw. I also used the indoor time to decorate the tree, and I call it a tree because I observe more than one holiday, so it's got birds and angels and Santas and Snoopy and pictures of my cats and dogs and unicorns and I sometimes like to piss off sticklers who think it's important that one holiday wins (being nice to people wins). It's a tree. I decorated it. I had PMS at the time but the 12-minute Salsoul orchestra Christmas medley was playing on the radio as the cats chased each other around so it all balanced out and it looks quite lovely.

Then we watched School of Rock, and THAT...THAT was a fantastic movie. OMG, how did we go so long not seeing that? Fun frikkin' movie and even the kids were great, and I can be bad when confronted with a movie full of kids, but these were like, actual kids. Amazing!

The Last Mimzy also had kids, and a cute bunny, and Roger Waters singing an amazing frikkin' song. I always suspected cute little bunnies would have a hand in saving the world, and this movie ends happier than Watership Down.

I could leave much of the rest out, but I wrote it when I was really tired and that's when I get honest, so here goes. My current reason for being rather bitchy (as you may have picked up) is not merely the holidays, as it's never just the holidays, but family stuff. Health stuff. From all angles. This week The Fluffy One gave us no choice but to take him to the vet who saved The Puppy's walking parts in the hopes of saving his eating parts. My head has pretty much been on backwards for a few weeks about this and my uncle's kidney stones and Thursday will come to be known as Tauruian poking day, during which hunk men born in April have to deal with undeserved crap. I hope the day does not catch on and become any kind of tradition.

This week I also learned that butter is not the correct response to cat seizures. No, really! Who knew? I mean, I kinda knew, but it's like that line from Mr. Mom about whatever it takes. This week that ended up for me being covered in pancake-smelling hairball medicine and for The Fluffy One being full of barium to light up the sexy intestines. It was worth it, of course, because my cats are worth being a crazy cat lady for. There was a happy ending to the freakout this week. Of course everyone who ever wanted to see me get my come uppance for picking on how many treats the cats get had a good laugh, but then the diagnosis was possible food allergies SO THERE.

I honestly got little else done because I went into the same sort of fight-or-flight freakout mindset that my last blog back couldn't overcome when my little flannel-loving man widowed my left arm five years ago and I wouldn't be talking about it at all except that it's the truest part of my life and it wouldn't be fair to not be honest about it, even if it seems like I'm talking in code (I'm not). Hi, my name is Lynda and I'm a crazy cat lady.

You know what else is a pretty good movie? The Dark Knight. That was one of the movies we most wanted to see when this year began, and not to get all serious but after all this year has brought and taken away, getting to see the movie with my favorite people around me in our house was sort of fantastic. Now I get to say I talk like Batman when my hernia acts up. HAHA

Ho Ho Holy Is It The Weekend Already?

It's Begining To Sound A Lot Like I Want To Stick My Head In A Bag.

Oh, hello.

For every odd beastiality movie Nan finds, Mum can find crazy '60s, '70s and porno movies. Like In The Year 2889, Suspiria, and Spider-Babe. So last weekend when she found God's Gun, a western about a priest who comes to avenge his brother. Both characters are played by Lee Van Cleef. When he shows up, voices go, "BAAAAAA!" and if that doesn't sell you, here's the trailer courtesy of YouTube:

More and more Christmassy things started popping up, like the marathon of Peter Falk as an angel movies, A Town Without Christmas, Finding John Christmas, and When Angels Come to Town.

My fifth weekly post went up at Type Your Culture, and if you think I haven't mentioned that blog before it's because I was waiting until I was able to update my blogroll to include it. However I haven't been able to update my blogroll because Blogrolling.com is still doing some sort of secret tweaking that includes not allowing access to blogrolls.

I've been posting to a blog called Type Your Culture, and I realize I'm the last person to define a culture, but there I am on Wednesdays, the girly white New Yorker who can read Spanish but obviously still can't write it (aspiro, for instance, either means I aspire to do that someday or I suck for not keeping those synapses alive). The blog is just starting out and its goal is to get views from all cultures, so spread the word.

Then I guess I got sick. Or something. I don't know. It wasn't enjoyable. Two symptoms are rambling incoherently.

It's Begining To Sound A Lot Like I Want To Stick My Head In A Bag.

The Long Trail Of Gravy

Hancock is actually as good as it looks in the ads! I know this from my viewings. Yes. Not that I sit around watching movies all the time, mind you, no. It's just the movies are the things I enjoy that I figure everyone can relate to. I inhale my cat's armpits a lot. See? Movies!

I'm missing Dancing With The Stars already, that show's just fun. I...guess I'm old now or something. I don't care, I love it. Totally got to see Cloris Leachman tango again, yay!

The night before Thanksgiving I not only burnt out, crashed and dissembled, my hands cracked off. It's very irritating, and I'm using present tense because I don't know if I'll live through the next three days and so this may be it...I never saw the pumpkin pie coming.

This next line is to let everyone know that of course I lived. That's the part that never fails to amaze me. But I am in no place to whine about my maladies when it could be much*...much...much worse. *I was going to link to something about the first much, but it's a family thing and not my story to tell. Suffice to say I am impressed by some people's ability to handle crap and not be whiny.

I, however, am whiny and dammit I missed seeing the wayward toolbag in space! I think. Unless the NASA Flyby website is accurate and it'll still be in orbit next week. I do realize I could just toss my own toolbag into the air and create the general effect, but the most expensive things in my toolbag are my chisels and they weren't even $30 all together. Plus I have chisel karma coming to me so the least amount of chisel misuse I partake in the better.

Nan found a movie called Zoo and it's like a David Lynch story...about a man who died after an encounter with a horse.

Sunshine, the Danny Boyle movie about an amazing cast trying to re-ignite the sun, was also really good, but then I'm a sucker for the skiffy. Even if it does involve extreme sunburn.

I spent the rest of the time adding to my NaNoWriMo wordcount.

The Long Trail Of Gravy

Long Dark Tea Time Of The Coffee Drinker

I've missed a lot of older movies, you know. I mean, somehow I've gone all these years never having see Long Day's Journey Into Night. Being Thanksgiving is right around the corner I think it was a good time for me to see this movie so I can say without a doubt thank god I'm not in that family. I felt nasty writing that, but damn. The funny part is when it started and Katherine Hepburn was going on about being fat Nan--who also wasn't familiar with the story--joked that she sounded like me...when I was like, 19 and thirty pounds overweight, I guess. Because I think that's the last time I pointed out I was fat, then I took a load of Sudafed and--no, no, that's even funny, the subjects in the story were not in any way funny and sometimes I think I need to be pretty grateful that I live in my nice warm cave.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is out on video and Nan *hearts* Abe Sapien. I've enjoyed everything I've seen from Guillermo del Toro so I was in happy land for about two hours. And OMG The Hobbit is going to be fantastic.

One night Nan found an old Christopher Lambert movie called Resurrection, and eh...if you like Se7en this is sort of like that. Except it's a bit more graphic. By a bit I mean dismemberment is part of the plot. It was really good, though.

Our dryer split its belt a full week before Thanksgiving but the Internet saved our collective sanity. See, in the old days we'd be all ZOMGDOOM! but I calmly typed "dyrer dum not tuerng" and got forty billion hits that boiled down to check the belt, which I did. Solved! It was funny when Steve the dryer repairman went to wash his hands and noticed our crappy faucet that only works when someone uses the sprayer. It's on the list. Not next on the list, because it still works, even if it works very oddly.

I'm still doing NaNoWriMo, because I'm stubborn. Heh. I'm on par for the day (note that as I'm writing this I don't have my exact wordcount but it's close) and I think I can make it to the end despite discoverng the Monty Python YouTube channel.

Long Dark Tea Time Of The Coffee Drinker

Quick! Fire! Pool!

It's nearly pointless to review the week when I've been posting all week. It's like me coming here saying I'm happy The Puppy didn't run off with the little flag I put near my grandfather's tree for holidays, then I flipped out because gay Californians can't marry anymore, then things got really weird.

I found a game that managed to throw me off my NaNoWriMo word goals called Quick Fire Pool, which is not about The Osterman Weekend as the title might suggest. No, it's about shooting pool...really really fast. Sort of like how I play it in real life, and judging by my 1077th place score, exactly like how I play it in real life.

When not potting virtual balls I'm supposed to be writing that story for NaNoWriMo, and apparently in my overacheiving frenzy I'm also unofficially doing NaBloPoMo, and they may cancel each other out but one of my LJ friends pointed me towards Write or Die or WOD, just to throw some more acronyms out there, and holy wow is that fascinating. It's like a game...and you know how I like games. This game has a setting that eats words, and I'm not hardcore enough to go there yet, but I got my wordcount over the daily goal for the first time by using Write or Die. Of course a lot of my characters are now running around yelling, "OMG we're gonna die!"

All my RSS feeds did this crazy thing where posts from over a year ago showed up as new. Overnight I grew 1000 unread items, and at first I was all excited because I thought there were people posting who hadn't in ages. Then I was all excited because I actually remembered reading the posts once.

A few nights last week the Chiller station played Evil Of Frankenstein starring Peter Cushing. In Frankenstein's defense, it's the hypnotist's fault the monster turns to crime. I love these, though, and the Burgomeister's screaming wife needs a fanbase if she doesn't have one already.

There was a movie on Lifetime the next night that featured such incredible acting I think I may send some bits of lumber and cotton balls to acting school and see if I can become their agent if they get starring roles in movies like this. I had no idea what the hell the name of this masterpiece was so I looked up the only actor I recognized in it, Jeff Fahey, and then I guessed it was California Firestorm aka Inferno. Surprise, I guessed right! It's right up there with City On Fire for loads of people in flaming lands freaking out and in the case of Inferno, being completely unable to cry. There was lots of cringing and wincing, but no tears...onscreen at least.

And then a huge fire broke out in California and made this entire week in review very very awkward.

Quick! Fire! Pool!

Like Something Out Of A Movie

This week, I seemed to be preoccupied with politics, and yeah, yeah, everyone was already, blaaaargh, so sick of who's going to be in charge of loads of weapons and the free world and all that, OMG hush up already. Except that the guy I'd been pulling for totally won this time around so that caused me to go a little off the deep end. As the week progressed the sky did not crack open and spill tiny little Karl Marx imps of hell down all over the world, but then Circuit City closed and my mayor decided to be stingy and not refund us some property tax so I am still as conflicted as usual about the world. With any luck in a year I can not pick on piddly crap like lack of funds and focus solely on the adorableness of the first family of the country.

Speaking of which, I got a note and a photo from the current first team manager. I was confused at first when Mr. Bush thanked me for all my corresponance over the years and expected the photo to explode, but it still hasn't. I don't know how to feel about this. That, coupled with the tear shed around the world caused me to think I might have been too harsh on the man, but then my dog reminded me about the hurricane season of '05. Hmm. I can only wish him well in whatever he chooses to do in the future. And hope my neighbor gets home from his tour.

We watched some movies, of course, and one I'd been hopping to see since it was release was Get Smart, the remake of the series I watched every single day as a kid. To me the movie was great, I actually laughed, like, out loud, for real at it a few times.

Over Her Dead Body, however...okay, there was a slapstick bit of arm-on-fire-doused-in-boiling-water silliness that really made me laugh, but then I started playing spot the bits of other movies and maybe that was unfair because it was a good movie, it just...there's a fat dog gag in it. Some people flip out over how Indiana Jones can survive an atomic blast in a lead-lined refrigerator, I get picky when two vetrinary assistants together can't lift a dog that couldn't be more than 80 pounds. I have lifted overweight dogs, and I can't lift things. Plus they played the fat dog gag twice in the same movie, and it didn't seem to be like, "ONE YEAR LATER."

You may think I'm picking on the fat dog joke in the movie because of some deep-seated regret about fat dogs I have known, but no, she lost those twenty pounds and I'm just wasting time I could be adding to my NaNoWriMo story because it's easier to blather on about how adorable the Obamas are and pick on the innacuracies of pudgy dogs being owned by skinny women in movies--because that's not how it works, the saying goes if your dog is overweight you're not getting enough excercise and it's true. Then again it could also be due to lack of sheep.

Sometimes mashing lots of horror movies together is really bad for the mind, like the Alien/Leviathan/The Rock/Terminator 2/X-Files/Creature From The Black Lagoon remake called, Deep Evil, which was totally jarring. I mean...for a TV movie. I don't even mean Lorenzo Lamas being in the cast, I just mean there was some horror even I thought was gross in it and don't you know it has one of those OH NO WE'RE DOOMED AND MY EYES ARE WEIRD endings that would've freaked me out for days as a kid.

Then Nan found a Lifetime mystery called Obituary which I was giggling at because it involves serial killer spyware that makes CLICK HERE CLICK HERE sound like doom, but then it started to remind me of the thing I wrote during NaNoWriMo last year, almost, expect that it had no similarities other than a serial killer and spyware, but I had a migraine so I just giggled at the CLICK HERE CLICK HERE.

Queen Lulu hit 10060 words, despite my PMS'ing about movies and politics. I fell behind almost every single day, but then I'd catch up...I'm behind again.

Like Something Out Of A Movie

No? What Kind Of Negative Month Are You, Punk?

Did we watch movies this week? I can't remember. I was busy and I've got all sorts of bruises and stiff joints, so I'm sure I did something, but it's sort of a blur. Which is why I usually make notes all week, but I didn't even have time for that so I guess I was seriously into something. Hmm.

I finally saw the original Sabrina, which I got a kick out of because the remake with Harrison Ford is one of my all-time favorites (YES I ADMITTED IT SO THERE) and I love Audrey Hepburn so that was all good. Not exactly a new movie, however.

Another one that we'd somehow missed for years was Sleep Easy, Hutch Rimes with Swoozie Kurtz and Steven Weber. It's twisty.

Nan found Scary Movie 4 one night and we love that nonsense so I'd jump around and eat couch cushions to get you to watch it, but you know...it's silly fun.

Like Amazon Women On The Moon. I never saw that whole movie before, I only saw the bit with Arsenio Hall vs. the VCR and and Carrie Fisher being a reckless youth. And now I have seen everything that comes between those two sketches! That's my kinda crazy.

It got sort of freezing and these wild winds came through at one point this week, and while that was going on I worked on work-related things. The cabin fever took exactly four hours to kick in. Before that, however, I nearly removed my hand with the butt (eheheheheheh) of a rather largeish bit of gardening equipment, but I took our tree branches out of the neighbors' airspace, dammit. I feel so manly. *burp*

I added more crap to the sidebars of my blog! I figured out how the Last.fm radio player works and I actually heard some songs I'd forgotten I loved. I'm also doing NaNoWriMo again. As far as I know this story will be completely different from last year's, but then I never did talk about Coffeeman much so you wouldn't know, would you...but no, Queen Lulu has probably never had coffee in her life. I'm not ashamed of the people who live in my head anymore, or at least I've gotten over the idea that I'll be sent off to an asylum if I mention them. If only I'd known all these years that not having medical coverage has its perks.

No? What Kind Of Negative Month Are You, Punk?

The Scary Type of Boo

Last Saturday Nan found The Abandoned, which proves Spain is steadily creeping up on Japan for makers of the scariest frikkin' films imaginable. Disturbing scary, I mean. Really disturbing.

Then we watched Gone Baby Gone, which Nan and I had caught the end of a few days before, but then I taped for Mum to see because she totally loves Ben Affleck. Hee! I mean, we thought she'd like to see it because it's a really good movie. Rough story, and I don't entirely think I know what the hell I'd have done in that position, not that I'd ever be in that position because even when I was nine and went through my whole "I'm going to be a detective!" phase, I never left my house. The Internet was made for me. But that's beside the point. Gone Baby Gone is really really good.

Nan found Guyver 2: Dark Hero which is a sequel to the somewhat clever Mark Hamill movie The Guyver. Mark Hamill is not in the sequel, but the extras from every Power Rangers cut scene ever try to make up for it...not really. I'm sure there's a very good comic book geek reason for what goes on in this movie but the rubber suit smackdown at the end with the girl yelling, "Dad!" at one of the strange creatures cracked me up. How does she know. I wasn't paying much attention to the movie until the end so I don't know, maybe she was aware beforehand she was related to a huge mutant bear/roach. There were a load of seemingly random action scenes and I was in the middle of a story outline, so...I just don't know.

Just like I don't know what was up with the anime Nazi vampire musical that was on the next night after the werewolf movie (The Company Of Wolves)...I totally got some sort of street germ up my nose and spent the early part of the week reliving my entire childhood, sneezing, looking clueless, leaving a trail of tissues to find my way home...ah, autumn.

Something great happened this week, though. To look at it now, no one would think the stained gutter over the porch is such a great thing, but this gutter is now, for the first time in seven years, not sagging, not pouring water up into the porch roof, and no longer rotting the wood behind it. The wood had to be replaced too, but now it's done. All better. It involved the exchange of money for services, but to know that the porch is on its way to no longer resembling the entry to a crackhouse thanks to my stingy ways was my Christmas present this year. The guys who did it also cleaned the gutters, so that's taken care of for a while.

Other movies Nan found were Isle of the Dead and The Body Snatcher, which were both full of Boris Karloff goodness; and Secret of The Cave, which sort of fit into that theme of weird stuff going on and...it was one of those kid gets sent off to family and has such a good time that it will never ever wear off ever movies. I don't know if I believe that really happens, although I do tend to flash back to New Fairfield circa 1980 every time I hear anything from Glass Houses. I don't get these kids in movies, in my day we were content with using spoons to dig holes and didn't feel the need to go running off to well-lit Irish caves somewhere in torrential downpours on a whim. I don't think I did, anyway. Unless you substitute "Irish cave" for "doll my Mum didn't pack," and swap "me" with "Mum," possibly converting "running off" to "borrowing a car," and thoroughly confounding the whole thing with the lack of mysterious Irish townsfolk. I'm still coming off the cold medicine.

The Scary Type of Boo

The Smell of Autumn!

Last weekend we were down to movies we weren't hopping to see. What Happens In Vegas, for instance, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, mainly because the side characters were good and the wedding bit in the credits was freakin' hilarious, but as you already know I have a thing for movie inebriation.

The movie was really short, though, so we caught the end of The Dead Girl, which as you might imagine by the title is not at all the type of movie that leaves you happy. There's a character in it that sent me totally frikkin' nuts, though, and dammit I'm telling you all know if you all ever thought I was serial killin', don't burn the evidence for me and let me go on doing it because...okay, I'd probably just be a serial killer of crappy people like how that Dexter guy kills killers and stuff, but still. Damn. Bad enough Mary Beth Hurt's character covers up a crime but then she goes and uncovers her boobies, right there, like, BOOM. Hello.

And then we finally watched Atonement. Oh my god. It's a good movie and all, but...oh my god. It's like the other extreme, don't be being a little bitch to nice men, kids. Not cool.

During the week, I got it into my head to use the gutter rake to take care of the leaves I saw poking out of the top of my house. Two hours later I was covered in the most un-leafy smell and there was wet stuff running down my back. Usually I don't see the point in washing up because it's not like I'm ever washing anything off, but this particular day I was never so glad I bought new $2 Head & Shoulders knock off ever, and that counts every time I get the weird blistering flare-ups.

The very next day, the guy we've been trying to get to come take the gutter off the porch roof because it rotted the portion of wood it was screwed into wrong six years ago (ah, my legacy) showed up, looked at the gutter, determined that indeed it needs help...and the gutters need cleaning, so they'll do that when they come to do the gutter. I regret nothing, there were so many leaves in the gutter the day before that the squirrels could walk along the surface and be totally visible, no fluffy tails bouncing along, no, entire squirrel visibility. So instead of finishing my gutter-cleaning, I cut down 33 gallons' worth of thorny noxious toxic weed vine because no one else is going to come along and offer to do it.

I thought I'd found a place to procure more skill and experience points but the entire website seemed to get hacked and go under within four days of me being picked up. Recall, if you will, how I've killed my favorite TV shows and have a tendency to bring layoffs and sometimes format changes to radio stations, JUST BY LIKING THEM. <Elton John>You're not lucky knowing me.</Elton John>

It was a busy week. I spelled a lot of words wrong and alienated more people than usual, but I slept at least three hours one of the days and can now see more potential raccoon entryways to the yard than ever before.

The Smell of Autumn!

A Short Week

Last weekend we watched Blade Runner again, and I don't even need to say why because it's Blade Runner, man. Oh, okay, it was on TV and we couldn't all get it together to watch then so we waited for Saturday and added pretzels. Of course then I had an allergic reaction to something and spent the end of the movie wheezing into my Benadryl. Blade Runner just wouldn't be the same if one of us wasn't sick while watching it, so I gladly accept that role. Now, because I didn't, like, asphyxiate.

Then we played Grand Theft Auto III a lot. One great thing about driving in GTA is that the flickering of late-afternoon sun is very nearly nonexistant, unlike realy life, and holy crap if I ever accidentally drive into a bus you'll know I went out crying some slurred thing about not being able to see.

I have five projects going on that I can't talk about right now if only because they've all blurred into one and I'd only say something like I think I'm listening to paint.

One night Rosemary's Baby was coming on, and I hadn't seen that since the '90s, so I'd forgotten they don't all get their comeuppance. Wow. Heavy. I happened to see on IMDB that a remake is in the works. Why? WHY? WHAT WILL YOU DO TO ITS EYES?! I'm betting CGI. Gotta be better than the lizard baby puppet in V, though...right?

Nan can find winners of movies, though, and this week's late night winner was The Obsession a tale of a guy so sad he begins stalking a 14-year-old ballerina of questionable quality and somehow knows that merely leaving a condom wrapper in the car of his crush's father will set events in motion for him to take over the dancing school and change the ribbon in the now 16-year-old dancer's hair. It's made-for-TV, they can't do anything more pervy than that and scrapbooking. The young dancer, see, she reminds teacher dearest of his dead wife, except that his wife, in flashbacks, does not drop her arms like she's really tired as she's dancing and her expression changes sometimes, so actually I couldn't see the comparison at all, but hey, I'm not a creepy pervert who stabs ballerina boyfriends.

I hacked up a lot of things in my backyard and it made me sad afterwards. I don't like cutting the cherry tree, but as a result it's sort of dying, so I pruned a lot of the lower branches to encourage it to maybe not die. I may have cracked why cutters cut. Then I pruned the Rose of Sharon for the winter. Already. While wearing shorts. Unreal. I love you, but I ain't getting hypothermia for you.

A Short Week

The Movies Are Getting Seasonal!

Looks like telly's pulling out all the horror a record five weeks before Halloween! It probably gives away what hour I was up writing if I say I saw a Tales From The Darkside with a very young Christian Slater in it. I think we've seen just about every episode of that show, but I'd forgotten this one, so it was fun to see.

Last weekend Sci-Fi played one called Tale of the Mummy, which was obviously an early movie for Gerard Butler and an in-between other films job for Christopher Lee, because although the hype said they're the stars, they are not. The star is apparently a swirling bunch of evil bandages, that pulls entire people into toilets and does really rude things to guide dogs.

Then we watched 30 Days of Night, which is about vampires in Alaska. Not hot vampires you'd like to follow to a jazz club, mind you, as you would not make it out of the driveway. As a pick-the-cast-off horror movie it's okay, but if you happen to like Alaskan Huskies in an unstabbed state, be warned that the beginning is not cool. No one warned me.

From Lifetime came the cautionary tale The Ticket, which proves you shouldn't ask anyone for their airplanes if you've won $23 million dollars, because for some reason money makes people utter gits to each other everyone only ends up being shot at, frozen, and set on fire. And I thought the news was mad.

The best movie we saw this week, though, was a rather popular flick over the summer called Iron Man. HOLY CRAP IRON MAN IS FANTASTIC!

Notice I'm totally focusing on the movies again because my personal life is a twisted wreckage of mismanagement. The rain loosened up the decorative front wall outside of my house and not for anything, there is no style called, "Crack house chic," so as in most Octobers in years ending in 8, I'll be bringing amusing tales of concrete next week.

The Movies Are Getting Seasonal!

Hanging Out With My Special Friends

Some new movies we'd been waiting for finally came along, like Deception, the Ewan McGregor movie we waited years and years for...and...I don't know why they make him talk like that. *sigh* We were guessing what was going to happen next, and there was something that happened in the end that we guessed better than what actually happened. Not that I advocate running off with millions of dollars with no questions asked, but movies, they're meant to be fantasy. I thought.

My faith in movies was restored the next night when, as we were poking around the Pay-Per-View listings, a little movie called Speed Racer turned up. You may recall me obsessing over the movie in the months leading up to its release. I loved every insane second of that movie, and my love affair with the Racer family remains alive and well.

Over the weekend the weather cooled off so I caught up on painting things I couldn't get near during the hotter summer days. Then summer ended. Ah well. I like autumn better anyway. Until baby raccoons try to set up house in our tree. I yelled at a lot of raccoons this week. Eventually I think it thought I wanted it to come over, and that is when I learned raccoons get used to humans after a few days. Not mutual, my freaky furry friend, not mutual.

Dancing With The Stars came back and I sat there and watched every minute of it like the strange characature of myself I've become. So far my favorites are Cloris Leachman, Warren Sapp, and the guy dancing with Julianne Hough.

One of Nan's finds on Sci-Fi was a little-known superhero flick called Lightspeed, featuring Jason Connery as a dude who runs really really fast while wearing what appears to be a speedskating bodysuit. Bottles of blue chemicals that may or may not be window cleaner also figure into the special powers. I love movies like this.

I got it into my head to create a record six strips in one week, because now that I'm a month ahead on my comic I want to be two months ahead. NaNoWriMo and the holidays are coming, you know. Of course I'll probably be all, "THREE MONTHS AHEAD!" next week. This will only be funny if I happen to die and my comic strip outlives me.

Hanging Out With My Special Friends

Reasons For Keeping My Conversations With Myself To Myself

Last weekend's movies were on two ends of the ratings spectrum, but had the similar theme of alter egos who walk around and get the person imagining them to do things.

Say what you want about Kevin Costner, but I seem to end up liking his movies. Even Waterworld. Throw in William Hurt as the wacky "imaginary friend" who likes killin' and Mr. Brooks was actually a good movie. I don't why but I remember it as not going over with critics. I guess because humanity isn't supposed to go around...well, I don't want to give it away.

I'm not sure how we ended up seeing Nim's Island, because it's obviously a kid's movie, but Gerard Butler probably had something to do with it. When it was over, I liked it. Even though it was like Willie Scott goes looking for Castaways for Six Days and Seven Nights. I watch too many movies. Also, as in Monk, dickering over touching a doorknob is how you convey that you apparently need help. Never mind that it's everyone else who touches the doorknobs after not washing their hands that makes the doorknob a germ-ridden filthpool in the first place.

*ahem*

No, seriously, Nim's Island gives kids the wrong idea. I'm guessing that not everyone who receives an e-mail from a stranger saying, "Help, there's pus coming out of my leg," is going to end up with their dream life of isolation with a ready-made family featuring Gerard Butler. That's one rare success story. My luck I'd end up with something out of The Net. And I don't mean Jeremy Northam, either, because you know I'd probably just spend the last few minutes of my stolen life giggling maniacally at who was about to kill me if he was involved.

I'm pissed that hurricanes are still allowed to toss around entire cities, and even more pissed that what is meant to be the greatest freakin' country is having nineteen types of breakdowns. Maybe because that makes me feel lame when I note that my sink drain has been leaking for a while and the floor still feels strange and guilty that for us the weather merely turned grey and cool. That weather brings out a sort of non-zombie version of me who is able to do things, so I caulked my porch steps for the winter. There aren't that many steps, but it took two tubes of caulk. I expect the bugs living under the stairs were surprised that globs of some gooey crap were dripping from the sky. There's an image that will mess with my mind for a few minutes. I'll focus on the funny part, when I was testing one strip of old caulk and at first said it was fine, then pulled on a loose bit and the entire three-foot section came off in my hand. Hey, if I don't laugh at it I'd puke. And it's nearly impossible for me to puke the way my insides are positioned. I also scraped down the porch paint in the hopes that I'd be refreshing that soon, and fixed the lamp post timer after some dude wandered into the side yard and chatted on his phone for like, fifteen minutes, left a bottle of pee in front of the neighbor's house, and then slammed the gate and terrified my cats. Thanks, guy. I wish I could have scared the living hell out of you, too. Only I don't actually have any nifty imaginary friends who are capable of coming up with better idea than shining a light at you and poking you with a pointed stick. I mean, I could bash your head in with a kettle, but denting the kettle would make coffee time difficult, and I do not like my coffee time difficult.

Then I got a cold and all the nice weather to do outdoor things sort of passed me by. I was not so ill that I couldn't smack a mosquito, however, and the one I just killed has left legs all over my hand. Um. Excuse me, I need to have various horrified reactions.

Reasons For Keeping My Conversations With Myself To Myself

What The World Needs Now.

Think about it...

They've served in World War II, fought the legal system, rained down sulphur in Sodom and Gomorrah, and worked for the CIA.

They'll reform childcare, and make sure everyone gets a hundred-and-fifty grand education for a dollar-fifty in late charges at the public library.

They're for the working people, but if you don't live up to your potential, they'll f'ing kill you.

If that's not enough to convince you, even the first lady would have a load of foreign policy.



Need I say more?

Okay, I will. Kevin Smith for Secretary of Defense.



Eh? Eh? You know it could work.

Hi, my name is Lynda, I'm a silly person and I approve this message.

What The World Needs Now.

Almost the Definition of Irony

Did you know it was National Invisible Chronic Illness week? Neither did I! I didn't even know there was such a thing.



It's too late in the week to get into my history of burning innards and disco brains, or how I eventually became grateful for the nosebleeds because it was like big messy proof that something weren't right in this girl. Wasn't always pleased to wake up with one, though.

So instead I'll make fun of the latest NY Deptartment of Health and Mental Hygiene bulletin about sleep, called Sleep: Are You Getting Enough?. This is on the same page as the 9/11 memorial. Um. Sleep well! Hope you wake up.

According to the bulletin, many people don't get enough sleep, but some people don't need so much, and newborns need to sleep away their youth. Tsk. So if you happen to be a newborn and you are not getting 18 hours of sleep, ask your parents for Benadryl. They'll be giving it to you soon enough. (I should note nobody ever drugged me to sleep as a kid--no, Nan was happy to have the company watching Britcoms and the Late Night Double Feature and I learned a lot from late-night HBO. You can search YouTube for Dressed To Kill on your own.)

Some reasons for not sleeping include having a fast-paced lifestyle or children in the bed. No explanation for what a newborn is to do if he happens to be in bed with himself. One offered solution is to go to bed only when sleepy. I predict all of New York is going to be really quiet tomorrow afternoon.

Then they go into how you may not be sleeping because you might not be breathing, or have a disease keeping you awake. Well...I hadn't thought of that...gosh....

The last page goes into the usual accusations of being a lazy sod, or a drug addict, or using the bed for unbedly activities, and promotes use of the medical industry. It took four people to create that brochure and waste an hour of my night. Well, the whole hour wasn't a waste as I found the original CBS Late Late Show intro and the WPIX Film Festival. I used to wait for those things, man. Never used to be able to explain how great they were, either, because all the other kids I knew went to bed way before Hart To Hart even came on. I used to feel like a freak because I couldn't sleep on command, and it's cost me jobs and friendships, but those late hours of the night were made for something, and someday, maybe, I'll figure it out.

Until then, turn off the TV and go to bed.

Almost the Definition of Irony

The Week I Got Verbose Late At Night

Much of this week was taken up with repairing technology. I think it all went rather well, now I just need to find the cure for the kind of injuries incurred crawling around behind furniture with a FANTASTIC-SMELLING coaxial cable (I like the smell of new cables, lumber, eggcrate mattress pads and cat armpits) and playing with IDE ribbon cables (yes, I inhaled).

We saw The Forbidden Kingdom, the new Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie. I mean, come on, it's got Jackie Chan! And Jet Li! And...a white boy as the main character. He turns out okay, though. It was sort of like The Wizard of Oz meets The Katate Kid with some Lord of the Rings thrown in for good measure. And the ending was nearly better than Xanadu, but if I say more than that I'll spoil it.

Somehow I managed to not know anything about the Large Hadron Collider until the logo changed on Google on the day the potential black hole maker was turned on. Of course, once I knew about it I started to wonder if I should attribute the way my dog walks around looking spooked to some special canine knowledge that the planet is being sucked in on itself. Then she saw the neighbors and all was right with her world again. Hussy.

I had decided not to write anything about 9/11 this year, because I've told my story of that day so many times and all I wish now for everyone who died as a result of that day needs is peace. So I was out in the yard, taking pictures of the wildlife and cloud formations, and this bird, perfect little flying bird-shaped bird, got into one of the pictures. The angle reminded me of one of the last pictures I'd taken before that Tuesday in 2001, one that everyone went crazy over because wow, the colors! And a plane, not blurry at all, just PBBBT in the middle of the shot. It was the last time I deliberately took a picture of an airplane. I don't like airplanes, never did, much like I wouldn't like living in the path of oncoming trains or buses, so the picture caught "Ew," and I rarely thought about it over the years. It's sleep deprivation that makes me think a bird reclaiming the sky in my photographs is worthy of an entire post and 189 words the next day, but there it is.

If there's anything that stays consistent about 9/11, it's that we watch a lot of movies that day. No, really, that may seem harsh but there comes an hour when I need to stop experiencing things I can't fix. Generally this is about ten minutes after I wake up, but the women I live with are hardcore. TCM was playing a bunch of Kay Francis movies so I got to see Gloria Stuart (I make no apology for how many times I've seen Titanic) play pool and crash a car in Street Of Women and then we all started cracking up during Give Me Your Heart because Robert Osbourne had to tell the story about Kay Francis' problem with the letter R. I realize I've just made people who can't form Rs very angry, but remember, I can't walk around in sunlight without looking like a drunken maniac, so feel free to giggle at that and we'll be even.

I had the unfortunate experience of not only finding aphids checking out my forsythia, but a chunk of rot in one of the side supports of my swing--now entering its twentieth year of standing outside in sun, rain, snow...hell, I wouldn't have made it past that first summer. I busted out the horticultural oil for the aphids, but found that the tub of wood filler downstairs shares my tendency to crack and dry out over time. So I used Phenoseal. I caulked wood. The end is nigh but I'm holding on. I'll be damned if I don't go out swinging. As high as possible. By moonlight. Listening to '80s new wave. Surrounded by cats. You know, that swing has tried to kill me three other times, but I keep coming back for more. Sometimes I wonder if my love of swingsets is connected with my loathing of things like tags in clothing and being touched or my ability to blather on at length about the songs that were playing when I had a thought twenty-four years ago. Most of the time I don't wonder about it at all.

This week Mum made pancakes, and when Mum makes pancakes, I eat pancakes for days. Those pancakes frikkin' rule. Refrigeration and microwaves are also pretty neat.

Hurricanes aren't neat, though. Way to make me feel like a whiner about my rot, Ike. Stay safe, kids.

The Week I Got Verbose Late At Night