Okay, I had this dream last night, and it may make a VERY EFFECTIVE horror novel. I wasn't scared during the dream and didn't wake up all sweaty and anxious, but the subject matter was DEEPLY disturbing.
BUT... The dream gave me a MOST original monster that also is rich with thematic metaphor!
A gift from the Muses, one might say.
But to write a story one must do research.
The screenplay I wrote had me spending hours researching BDSM. So guess what I spent my night researching tonight.
Go one, guess...
CANNIBALISM!
Nice, huh?
Seriously, maybe horror isn't my genre. ;P
I mean, I like the spirituality of the tales I can tell without ruffling too many feathers, but the subject matter! Yick! (That's a melding of the phrases "yuck" and "ick", not a typo.)
Anyway...
I get the gift of a rich, and potentially very exciting story, and I complain about being forced to confront some uncomfortable aspects of humanity. How much of an ingrate am I, lol?
Ooh! Looks like my baby just signed into Messenger! :D
BYE!
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
The Theme From GOLDFINGER
Have you ever really considered the lyrics to it?
Shirley Bassey goes on for quite some time about how evil Mr. Goldfinger is, and you think "Wow, 'web of sin', that's pretty bad!"
But then the ending -- the very, very end -- always places a shadow of doubt in my mind.
She's all "He loves only gold/Only gold" and I'm all "Yeah, he sounds like a materialistic bastard all right." But then the last line, her big finale, is the lyric "He loves goooooooooooolllllllllddddd," belted out and held for like 3 minutes straight.
If you haven't heard the song you MUST. It's an impressive vocal feat!
But when she finishes off this character assasination with "He loves gold" I suddenly wonder if maybe THAT is his only real crime, and perhaps Bassey has just revealed her TRUE discontent with him... She hates gold!
Like maybe they dated for a while, and at first they're all lovey-dovey and they don't notice each other's differences, so she overlooks his fascination with gold even though she's repulsed to her very core with the notion of this not-yellow, not-orange metal that's all heavy and hard to carry in great quantities and is really quite maliable for a metal! Gold, to her, is an abhoration of nature -- too wimpy to be a TRUE metal, and yet all shiny and smug and Holier Than Thou.
Maybe she's even just as materialistic as he is, only she's obsessed with diamonds! Now THERE'S a ROCK! Harder than all the other rocks, it has REAL reason to be all shiny and proud!
But then they get to that point in the relationship where she tries to change him, and is constantly pointing out how superior diamonds are to gold, and he says "Look, Shirley Bassey, I love you, but I'm not giving up gold. I really believe we can find a way around our differences, but you have to understand that my obsession with gold isn't just a phase I'm going through. It's part of who I AM. It's in my name, for heaven's sake."
And then she just SNAPS. She packs up her stuff and moves out, and on her way out the door she's all "I'm gonna sing a song about you and tell people what a real wanker you are! And I hope James Bond KILLS you!"
That last line just suddenly sounds like the lady is protesting too much, and it makes me replay the whole song in my head, looking for other clues that maybe this is just a personal grudge, rather than the genuine warning it first seemed to be.
Don't get me wrong, I've seen the movie and he IS a bastard! He tries to bisect Bond's happy place! WITH A LASER!
Not cool!
I'm just saying...
Yes, these are the thing I think about at 1:41 in the morning, when I'm puttering around on the computer and Gnomey's still asleep.
Shirley Bassey goes on for quite some time about how evil Mr. Goldfinger is, and you think "Wow, 'web of sin', that's pretty bad!"
But then the ending -- the very, very end -- always places a shadow of doubt in my mind.
She's all "He loves only gold/Only gold" and I'm all "Yeah, he sounds like a materialistic bastard all right." But then the last line, her big finale, is the lyric "He loves goooooooooooolllllllllddddd," belted out and held for like 3 minutes straight.
If you haven't heard the song you MUST. It's an impressive vocal feat!
But when she finishes off this character assasination with "He loves gold" I suddenly wonder if maybe THAT is his only real crime, and perhaps Bassey has just revealed her TRUE discontent with him... She hates gold!
Like maybe they dated for a while, and at first they're all lovey-dovey and they don't notice each other's differences, so she overlooks his fascination with gold even though she's repulsed to her very core with the notion of this not-yellow, not-orange metal that's all heavy and hard to carry in great quantities and is really quite maliable for a metal! Gold, to her, is an abhoration of nature -- too wimpy to be a TRUE metal, and yet all shiny and smug and Holier Than Thou.
Maybe she's even just as materialistic as he is, only she's obsessed with diamonds! Now THERE'S a ROCK! Harder than all the other rocks, it has REAL reason to be all shiny and proud!
But then they get to that point in the relationship where she tries to change him, and is constantly pointing out how superior diamonds are to gold, and he says "Look, Shirley Bassey, I love you, but I'm not giving up gold. I really believe we can find a way around our differences, but you have to understand that my obsession with gold isn't just a phase I'm going through. It's part of who I AM. It's in my name, for heaven's sake."
And then she just SNAPS. She packs up her stuff and moves out, and on her way out the door she's all "I'm gonna sing a song about you and tell people what a real wanker you are! And I hope James Bond KILLS you!"
That last line just suddenly sounds like the lady is protesting too much, and it makes me replay the whole song in my head, looking for other clues that maybe this is just a personal grudge, rather than the genuine warning it first seemed to be.
Don't get me wrong, I've seen the movie and he IS a bastard! He tries to bisect Bond's happy place! WITH A LASER!
Not cool!
I'm just saying...
Yes, these are the thing I think about at 1:41 in the morning, when I'm puttering around on the computer and Gnomey's still asleep.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Groovy Thanksgiving
It's the last 3 hours of my FriSat shift and I have a couple of minutes to blog.
I had a cool Thanksgiving.
Woke up to some Gnomey love, which is ALWAYS a good thing! I was pretty groggy tho, so I don't really remember much about the conversation, lol. (And I KNOW I looked like garbage, lol!)
Then the family get-together; good meal & lots of laughing.
Then for about half an hour before work I got to play some DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2 and get us a little further along!
Work was surprisingly BUSY. I mean... Not hectic, but just not as dead as I had hoped.
For that matter, tonight's had me running around a little, too.
Maybe tomorrow will be cake.
Apparently Brian got us up a level or two in DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2 and now WE'RE BLOWIN' UP ENGLAND!!! :D I haven't played it yet, but it'll be fun to hear the random comments the characters in the world make, lol!
Oh! And I didn't get to watch my Thanksgiving movie, like I do EVERY year on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, but I did get to watch the latest episode of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP... which was really, REALLY good!!!
Ooh, and there was cake here at work tonight, lol! The GOOD kind with the REALLY SWEET icing!!!
That's a bonus.
This is kind of a random blog entry, but I'm really just touching base.
I should get back to work before it starts piling up.
PEACE, Y'ALL!!!
(And to my Gnomey Goddess, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BABY!!! :D I'm dancing for you as I type this!!!)
I had a cool Thanksgiving.
Woke up to some Gnomey love, which is ALWAYS a good thing! I was pretty groggy tho, so I don't really remember much about the conversation, lol. (And I KNOW I looked like garbage, lol!)
Then the family get-together; good meal & lots of laughing.
Then for about half an hour before work I got to play some DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2 and get us a little further along!
Work was surprisingly BUSY. I mean... Not hectic, but just not as dead as I had hoped.
For that matter, tonight's had me running around a little, too.
Maybe tomorrow will be cake.
Apparently Brian got us up a level or two in DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2 and now WE'RE BLOWIN' UP ENGLAND!!! :D I haven't played it yet, but it'll be fun to hear the random comments the characters in the world make, lol!
Oh! And I didn't get to watch my Thanksgiving movie, like I do EVERY year on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, but I did get to watch the latest episode of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP... which was really, REALLY good!!!
Ooh, and there was cake here at work tonight, lol! The GOOD kind with the REALLY SWEET icing!!!
That's a bonus.
This is kind of a random blog entry, but I'm really just touching base.
I should get back to work before it starts piling up.
PEACE, Y'ALL!!!
(And to my Gnomey Goddess, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BABY!!! :D I'm dancing for you as I type this!!!)
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Just Finished the Novel CASINO ROYALE
For $10 iTunes has an unabridged audiobook version of Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel CASINO ROYALE, and I just finished listening to it.
I listened to it in almost a single sitting (about 5 hours) and I have this to say...
If you saw the new movie and thought that this new take on Bond is surprisingly realistic and hard-hitting compared to the Bond you've grown up with... You may not want to read the original novel.
One scene from the movie that seems to brutal that surely it must have been invented by a contemporary screenwriter is lifted DIRECTLY from the 1953 book! Moreover, it's more brutal in the book!
Also, the film's devistating ending? Easier to take than the novel's ending!
The film stuck very closely to the spirit of the novel... A SUPERB adaptation, actually! Makes JURASSIC PARK's transition from page to screen look clumbsy! (I say this only by way of comparison as I deeply admire and respect screenwriter David Koepp and director Steven Spielberg. In fact, I believe Koepp is one of the GREAT unsung screenwriters today! If you doubt me, see THE SECRET WINDOW and STIR OF ECHOES... He adapted and directed both, and they are both GREAT films!)
My dad's attitude toward the Bond films always surprised me as a kid. He enjoyed them, but I got the vibe that he felt the Bond movies were sillier, more frivolous than the novels. As a teen when I started reading the Bond novels for myself, I found Fleming's take very dry and boring. I prefered John gardener's take, which carried the flavor of the movies, but added a hightened sense of realism and believeability, without loosing the action or the "cool". I figured that Dad's preference for the novels was simply a generation gap... He was older, and the Fleming novels spoke to him in a way that I couldn't understand because I wasn't alive at the time they originally came out. (CLEARLY -- to me -- Gardener's take was superior to the creator's take, lol.)
But I had never read CASINO ROYALE. It was the one novel that had not been translated to the screen (other than a TV movie that made Bond an American and was not available to me to watch) and it was also the book that introduced the character to the world. There were several Fleming novles that I started but could not finish -- I remember specifically DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER -- because they just bored me to tears. And I wasn't a Reader to begin with! I was and am a MOVIE guy! I LOVE movies! I love them so much I want to marry them, lol! (I mean that quite practically... I want to make them for the rest of my life. I want to wake up next to Gnomey, enjoy the company of her and our children in the morning, go make movies for 12 hours, come home to Gnomey and the kids, tuck the rugrats into bed and fall asleep with Wendy in my arms, and wake up the next day and do it all over again.) And my attitude toward reading hasn't changed that much... Some authors have engendered my slavish devotion because everything the write holds me in thrall the way no movie or TV show ever will be able to -- such as Crichton, Koontz and Adams (I am forever rereading Douglas Adams' work!) -- and some I trust enough to read IF the premise draws me -- such as King and Higgin Clark -- and most I will only sample grudgingly after someone I trust hounds me relentlessly for a very, very long time. (I FINALLY read THE DA VINCI CODE about a week before the movie came out simply because I wanted to experience the book first, and because I had a strong intuition I would enjoy both (and I did).) So as a teen, as now, I hate to not finish a novel, but if it allows me to put it down I am very unlikely to return to it. And because of my experiences with Fleming's novels I was reluctant to pick up CASINO ROYALE.
Now, I had gained a glimpse of the type of realism and depth Fleming's Bond stories offered from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, a book of short stories. They were slow, but they were short, so I could wade through them and get a sampling. And I enjoyed the continuity of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. (I wanted to find out what really happened to Bond after he lost his only wife, and the films just didn't even touch on it really.)
But at the age of 36, I just don't think I was ready for Fleming's Bond. The Bond movies are to us what Westerns were to our parents... Safe Good vs. Evil morality tales that don't delve too deeply into the nature of either evil OR good. Bond's enemies might as well have been Storm Troopers: a dime a dozen and created to be disposed of.
Had I read CASINO ROYALE as a teen I would have HATED Fleming! Fleming was writing a literate novel in that he could give his hero great rewards, but only at great expense. Bond isn't some melodramatic Greek god or demigod he's a human being, and Fleming would not give more than he was willing to take away.
It's a tough read.
Made even more tough by the romance, which I will not describe or spoil, but which hit me where I live. The language he used, in particular, made me think of Wendy and the way we talk to each other and feel about each other, and made the ending all the more tragic.
If you've seen the film, you have some preparation for the brutality of Fleming's novel... But maybe not as much as you think. If you feel like you have truly known love, this book will hurt you. Badly.
Which is it's genius. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to shine a negative light on the book. If anything I feel MY medium has, until now, diluted and failed Fleming's source material! Like Edgar Rice Burroughs before him, Fleming was trying to convey a thoughtful analysis of what it is to be human, and the movies took a dynamic character and stripped him of his "importance", replacing morality and philosopy with action and spectacle.
Reading CASINO ROYALE finally, after having seen how faithfully the movie has preserved the spirit of Fleming's original work, makes me excited to see the next Bond flick! If Hollywood can control itself and continue to stay faithful, we're in for some eye-opening -- and ridiculously exciting and provoking -- new Bond films! A franchise that was once a punchline that characterized superficially entertaining storytelling will become the model of how to tell a great story and still be entertaining! (Like the Spider-Man movies, if you think about it for a moment and are honest with yourself.)
Is it just me, or do you too see a very possitive trend in screenwriting lately?
I mean, yeah, you've got PLENTY of your Bret-Ratner type movies out there... There are an EMBARRASSING number of movies that cater to the idiot audiences Hollywood believes we are.
But in the New Mellinium there have arrisen a number of screenwriters and directors who seem to realize that quality counts! Consider the superhero movies of the 1980s & 1990s compared to the superhero movies we have now. The first 4 Batman films started out as pretty good, then good, then degenerated into NOTHING. Then Nolan picked up Batman and finally delivered an experience true to what we perceived when we read the best of the comics. Consider SUPERMANs II-IV:THE QUEST FOR PEACE as compared to SUPERMAN RETURNS.
And look at the original KING KONG, then the 1970s remake, then the current remake!
Actually, the Bond series itself offers a superb illustration! Timothy Dalton was a FANTASTIC Bond, but the filmmakers didn't do him justice! The first script was written for Moore, then sort of (weakly) re-taylored for Dalton, and the second movie was so incredibly poorly directed that the script and Dalton's performance were just straight-up LOST. Then Brosnan comes along and someone, somehow had the brilliance to hire Campbell (a filmmaker who cares as much about what he's shooting (the screenplay) as he does about how he shoots it) and all of a sudden Bond is BACK. But then the very next film -- TOMORROW NEVER DIES -- sees a bit of the old Bond Baggage seep in, and it's somehow not as fulfilling as GOLDENEYE. The THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH comes along and Brosnan might as well be Moore. (No offense to Roger Moore... He's a GREAT comedic actor, but Bond was simply never designed nor intended to be a comedic character.) Luckily for Brosnan and us DIE ANOTHER DAY seems to have been written and directed by people who had read Fleming's original novels and were interested in balancing the cinematic traditons of Bond with the literary traditions.
But NOW...! Daniel craig should experience the most successful run as Bond ever! The filmmakers seem to have finally committed to translating the original work for contemporary audiences!
And it may simply be a matter fo now we're ready for it. In this age of GRAND THEFT AUTO and FEAR FACTOR our toleance for violence must be at an all-tim high. So the only way to shock a contemporary audience with violence is to make it REAL again... show them the damage to our very Humanity that violence inflicts! Not only on the victims, but on the assailant! (Witness THE TEXTAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING.)
Blah.
Okay, I'm going off now, lol.
Let me guess, your eyes have glazed over by now and my words sound like so many clicks and buzzes, lol.
Anyway... CASINO ROYLAE, both the book and the movie, well worth your time and emotional investment... If you're ready for them. ;)
I listened to it in almost a single sitting (about 5 hours) and I have this to say...
If you saw the new movie and thought that this new take on Bond is surprisingly realistic and hard-hitting compared to the Bond you've grown up with... You may not want to read the original novel.
One scene from the movie that seems to brutal that surely it must have been invented by a contemporary screenwriter is lifted DIRECTLY from the 1953 book! Moreover, it's more brutal in the book!
Also, the film's devistating ending? Easier to take than the novel's ending!
The film stuck very closely to the spirit of the novel... A SUPERB adaptation, actually! Makes JURASSIC PARK's transition from page to screen look clumbsy! (I say this only by way of comparison as I deeply admire and respect screenwriter David Koepp and director Steven Spielberg. In fact, I believe Koepp is one of the GREAT unsung screenwriters today! If you doubt me, see THE SECRET WINDOW and STIR OF ECHOES... He adapted and directed both, and they are both GREAT films!)
My dad's attitude toward the Bond films always surprised me as a kid. He enjoyed them, but I got the vibe that he felt the Bond movies were sillier, more frivolous than the novels. As a teen when I started reading the Bond novels for myself, I found Fleming's take very dry and boring. I prefered John gardener's take, which carried the flavor of the movies, but added a hightened sense of realism and believeability, without loosing the action or the "cool". I figured that Dad's preference for the novels was simply a generation gap... He was older, and the Fleming novels spoke to him in a way that I couldn't understand because I wasn't alive at the time they originally came out. (CLEARLY -- to me -- Gardener's take was superior to the creator's take, lol.)
But I had never read CASINO ROYALE. It was the one novel that had not been translated to the screen (other than a TV movie that made Bond an American and was not available to me to watch) and it was also the book that introduced the character to the world. There were several Fleming novles that I started but could not finish -- I remember specifically DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER -- because they just bored me to tears. And I wasn't a Reader to begin with! I was and am a MOVIE guy! I LOVE movies! I love them so much I want to marry them, lol! (I mean that quite practically... I want to make them for the rest of my life. I want to wake up next to Gnomey, enjoy the company of her and our children in the morning, go make movies for 12 hours, come home to Gnomey and the kids, tuck the rugrats into bed and fall asleep with Wendy in my arms, and wake up the next day and do it all over again.) And my attitude toward reading hasn't changed that much... Some authors have engendered my slavish devotion because everything the write holds me in thrall the way no movie or TV show ever will be able to -- such as Crichton, Koontz and Adams (I am forever rereading Douglas Adams' work!) -- and some I trust enough to read IF the premise draws me -- such as King and Higgin Clark -- and most I will only sample grudgingly after someone I trust hounds me relentlessly for a very, very long time. (I FINALLY read THE DA VINCI CODE about a week before the movie came out simply because I wanted to experience the book first, and because I had a strong intuition I would enjoy both (and I did).) So as a teen, as now, I hate to not finish a novel, but if it allows me to put it down I am very unlikely to return to it. And because of my experiences with Fleming's novels I was reluctant to pick up CASINO ROYALE.
Now, I had gained a glimpse of the type of realism and depth Fleming's Bond stories offered from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, a book of short stories. They were slow, but they were short, so I could wade through them and get a sampling. And I enjoyed the continuity of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. (I wanted to find out what really happened to Bond after he lost his only wife, and the films just didn't even touch on it really.)
But at the age of 36, I just don't think I was ready for Fleming's Bond. The Bond movies are to us what Westerns were to our parents... Safe Good vs. Evil morality tales that don't delve too deeply into the nature of either evil OR good. Bond's enemies might as well have been Storm Troopers: a dime a dozen and created to be disposed of.
Had I read CASINO ROYALE as a teen I would have HATED Fleming! Fleming was writing a literate novel in that he could give his hero great rewards, but only at great expense. Bond isn't some melodramatic Greek god or demigod he's a human being, and Fleming would not give more than he was willing to take away.
It's a tough read.
Made even more tough by the romance, which I will not describe or spoil, but which hit me where I live. The language he used, in particular, made me think of Wendy and the way we talk to each other and feel about each other, and made the ending all the more tragic.
If you've seen the film, you have some preparation for the brutality of Fleming's novel... But maybe not as much as you think. If you feel like you have truly known love, this book will hurt you. Badly.
Which is it's genius. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to shine a negative light on the book. If anything I feel MY medium has, until now, diluted and failed Fleming's source material! Like Edgar Rice Burroughs before him, Fleming was trying to convey a thoughtful analysis of what it is to be human, and the movies took a dynamic character and stripped him of his "importance", replacing morality and philosopy with action and spectacle.
Reading CASINO ROYALE finally, after having seen how faithfully the movie has preserved the spirit of Fleming's original work, makes me excited to see the next Bond flick! If Hollywood can control itself and continue to stay faithful, we're in for some eye-opening -- and ridiculously exciting and provoking -- new Bond films! A franchise that was once a punchline that characterized superficially entertaining storytelling will become the model of how to tell a great story and still be entertaining! (Like the Spider-Man movies, if you think about it for a moment and are honest with yourself.)
Is it just me, or do you too see a very possitive trend in screenwriting lately?
I mean, yeah, you've got PLENTY of your Bret-Ratner type movies out there... There are an EMBARRASSING number of movies that cater to the idiot audiences Hollywood believes we are.
But in the New Mellinium there have arrisen a number of screenwriters and directors who seem to realize that quality counts! Consider the superhero movies of the 1980s & 1990s compared to the superhero movies we have now. The first 4 Batman films started out as pretty good, then good, then degenerated into NOTHING. Then Nolan picked up Batman and finally delivered an experience true to what we perceived when we read the best of the comics. Consider SUPERMANs II-IV:THE QUEST FOR PEACE as compared to SUPERMAN RETURNS.
And look at the original KING KONG, then the 1970s remake, then the current remake!
Actually, the Bond series itself offers a superb illustration! Timothy Dalton was a FANTASTIC Bond, but the filmmakers didn't do him justice! The first script was written for Moore, then sort of (weakly) re-taylored for Dalton, and the second movie was so incredibly poorly directed that the script and Dalton's performance were just straight-up LOST. Then Brosnan comes along and someone, somehow had the brilliance to hire Campbell (a filmmaker who cares as much about what he's shooting (the screenplay) as he does about how he shoots it) and all of a sudden Bond is BACK. But then the very next film -- TOMORROW NEVER DIES -- sees a bit of the old Bond Baggage seep in, and it's somehow not as fulfilling as GOLDENEYE. The THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH comes along and Brosnan might as well be Moore. (No offense to Roger Moore... He's a GREAT comedic actor, but Bond was simply never designed nor intended to be a comedic character.) Luckily for Brosnan and us DIE ANOTHER DAY seems to have been written and directed by people who had read Fleming's original novels and were interested in balancing the cinematic traditons of Bond with the literary traditions.
But NOW...! Daniel craig should experience the most successful run as Bond ever! The filmmakers seem to have finally committed to translating the original work for contemporary audiences!
And it may simply be a matter fo now we're ready for it. In this age of GRAND THEFT AUTO and FEAR FACTOR our toleance for violence must be at an all-tim high. So the only way to shock a contemporary audience with violence is to make it REAL again... show them the damage to our very Humanity that violence inflicts! Not only on the victims, but on the assailant! (Witness THE TEXTAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING.)
Blah.
Okay, I'm going off now, lol.
Let me guess, your eyes have glazed over by now and my words sound like so many clicks and buzzes, lol.
Anyway... CASINO ROYLAE, both the book and the movie, well worth your time and emotional investment... If you're ready for them. ;)
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Such A Beautiful Morning!!!
Techically, it's my night, as I'm about to go to sleep in an hour or so.
But since I've been with Gnomey I tend more to think of days in her terms, rather than mine, lol.
Anyway, I just spent the GREATEST couple of hour with her!!!
And it was so simple! We chatted -- she told me about a dream she had and I told her about my theory about possible Atral Aliens that abduct us when we astral project in our sleep, lol, and about what I got up to while she slept -- and we listend to mucis together ( she has the most SUPERB taste in music!!!) and she quizzed me on music... I think I might have surprised her once or twice with my knowlege of current music, and she definitely stumped me once or twice with a song I wasn't familiar with.
IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!
I LOVE WENDY SO VERY MUCH!!!
She doesn't like her name. It's quite odd because you talk to her for a couple for hours, get to know her as a person, then you see her picture then discover her name is Wendy and you find that the name possesses a MUSIC you never noticed before! I mean, before I knew Gnomey the name "Wendy" seemed sort of ordinary. Not the slightest bit boring, but un-exotic, if you will.
But after discovering that Gnomey's given name is "Wendy" I can only think of the heroine of Barrie's PETER PAN! And, curiously, that association doesn't do justice to my Gnomey Goddess because though she has the nurturing nature and creativity of Barrie's Wendy Darling, she is MUCH more like Pan! She's playful and mischievious quick for an adventure! She has both the beauty of Wendy Darling and the spirit of Peter Pan, lol!
And OMG she is SO MUCH FUN to hang with!!!
Seriosuly, I just spent an AMAZING morning with her!!!
And I can't help but imagine how amazing our time together will be ONCE WE'RE PHYSICALLY TOGETHER! I mean, what you really love about your spouce is her spirit and her mind! But there's this spiritual transference when you're actually physically next to some one... Think about the "vibe" you get when you're hangin' in a coffeehouse with your best friend, talking face-to-face. You FEEL them.
So when Wendy and I are actually sharing the same physical space... I think my heart may skip a couple of beats and my head may well explode, lol!
I can't -- CAN NOT -- believe another human being can give me this much unadulterated JOY! I mean, I've been finding joy all by myself for A DECADE now. When I wanted to feel better than I did, I figured out how to make myself feel better. (Please feel free to insert your own Rosey Palm joke here, but just know that that's not what I'm really talking about.) And then I meet this person who lives in ANOTHER COUNTRY and is able to give me so much joy that I IMMEDIATELY (she isn't even at work yet, she's on her way there, lol) HAVE TO blog about it!
This is one AMAZING human being!!!
And back the fuck off boys and girls! 'Cause she's mine, lol!
Not that I'm actually worried... For some ineffable reason she fell maddly in love with ME, hee-hee! :D And I honestly don't believe that I ahve ANY competition for her affections.
This, too, is a VERY STRANGE feeling! With the woman that I chased for 6 years of my life, I knew that I always hade at least one competitor for he affections (occasionally I felt like I had 2). And with the woman before Gnomey I knew that I was ALWAYS 2nd place to one other guy (and I felt like I was 2nd place to others, as well).
But with Wendy... I can't describe it...
It's as though the trepidation and/or insecurity I felt with other woman was accurate, and I feel this way because I finally met HER! You know? THE ONE. The person I was created to be with for the rest of my life.
Okay, I'm getting all mushy... But what-the-fuck-EVER. This is MY blog, and I CAN NOT describe the way this woman makes me feel! I spent 10 YEARS waiting for THE PERFECT woman for me. I did not settle, I did not give into lonliness or peer pressure or societal expectations. I WAITED. There was this long, long list of things I wanted in a mate, and I would not yield until that list was met!
And then I met Wendy, and she not only meets EVERY expectation and critea but EXCEEDS them all! I ask for "loving" and "funny" and Wendy is loving, funny and strong and playful and smart! I ask for "creative" and Gnomey is creative and talented and geeky and cool!
It's like God saw my list before I made it and created not only the female version of me, but the female version of who I WISH I could be!
And then -- with God's wicked sense of humor being what it is -- God made her 16 years younger than me, just to see if I was paying attention, lol.
Luckily for me, though, I AM paying attention, and I am enjoying Life as I never knew I could!
There are so many songs and movies and novels about how sad it is that we tend not to notice what we have until it's gone. I feel SO BLESSED that I can see EXACTLY HOW MUCH I HAVE while I still have it!!!
I am blessed!
And I hope that you are too! If you're reading this an you have a Significant Other, think about why you fell in love with them and do something wacky and uncharacteristic and surprising to show them that you love them! RIGHT NOW, while you still have the chance!
Make sure they have at least one memeory of how much you love them!
But since I've been with Gnomey I tend more to think of days in her terms, rather than mine, lol.
Anyway, I just spent the GREATEST couple of hour with her!!!
And it was so simple! We chatted -- she told me about a dream she had and I told her about my theory about possible Atral Aliens that abduct us when we astral project in our sleep, lol, and about what I got up to while she slept -- and we listend to mucis together ( she has the most SUPERB taste in music!!!) and she quizzed me on music... I think I might have surprised her once or twice with my knowlege of current music, and she definitely stumped me once or twice with a song I wasn't familiar with.
IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!
I LOVE WENDY SO VERY MUCH!!!
She doesn't like her name. It's quite odd because you talk to her for a couple for hours, get to know her as a person, then you see her picture then discover her name is Wendy and you find that the name possesses a MUSIC you never noticed before! I mean, before I knew Gnomey the name "Wendy" seemed sort of ordinary. Not the slightest bit boring, but un-exotic, if you will.
But after discovering that Gnomey's given name is "Wendy" I can only think of the heroine of Barrie's PETER PAN! And, curiously, that association doesn't do justice to my Gnomey Goddess because though she has the nurturing nature and creativity of Barrie's Wendy Darling, she is MUCH more like Pan! She's playful and mischievious quick for an adventure! She has both the beauty of Wendy Darling and the spirit of Peter Pan, lol!
And OMG she is SO MUCH FUN to hang with!!!
Seriosuly, I just spent an AMAZING morning with her!!!
And I can't help but imagine how amazing our time together will be ONCE WE'RE PHYSICALLY TOGETHER! I mean, what you really love about your spouce is her spirit and her mind! But there's this spiritual transference when you're actually physically next to some one... Think about the "vibe" you get when you're hangin' in a coffeehouse with your best friend, talking face-to-face. You FEEL them.
So when Wendy and I are actually sharing the same physical space... I think my heart may skip a couple of beats and my head may well explode, lol!
I can't -- CAN NOT -- believe another human being can give me this much unadulterated JOY! I mean, I've been finding joy all by myself for A DECADE now. When I wanted to feel better than I did, I figured out how to make myself feel better. (Please feel free to insert your own Rosey Palm joke here, but just know that that's not what I'm really talking about.) And then I meet this person who lives in ANOTHER COUNTRY and is able to give me so much joy that I IMMEDIATELY (she isn't even at work yet, she's on her way there, lol) HAVE TO blog about it!
This is one AMAZING human being!!!
And back the fuck off boys and girls! 'Cause she's mine, lol!
Not that I'm actually worried... For some ineffable reason she fell maddly in love with ME, hee-hee! :D And I honestly don't believe that I ahve ANY competition for her affections.
This, too, is a VERY STRANGE feeling! With the woman that I chased for 6 years of my life, I knew that I always hade at least one competitor for he affections (occasionally I felt like I had 2). And with the woman before Gnomey I knew that I was ALWAYS 2nd place to one other guy (and I felt like I was 2nd place to others, as well).
But with Wendy... I can't describe it...
It's as though the trepidation and/or insecurity I felt with other woman was accurate, and I feel this way because I finally met HER! You know? THE ONE. The person I was created to be with for the rest of my life.
Okay, I'm getting all mushy... But what-the-fuck-EVER. This is MY blog, and I CAN NOT describe the way this woman makes me feel! I spent 10 YEARS waiting for THE PERFECT woman for me. I did not settle, I did not give into lonliness or peer pressure or societal expectations. I WAITED. There was this long, long list of things I wanted in a mate, and I would not yield until that list was met!
And then I met Wendy, and she not only meets EVERY expectation and critea but EXCEEDS them all! I ask for "loving" and "funny" and Wendy is loving, funny and strong and playful and smart! I ask for "creative" and Gnomey is creative and talented and geeky and cool!
It's like God saw my list before I made it and created not only the female version of me, but the female version of who I WISH I could be!
And then -- with God's wicked sense of humor being what it is -- God made her 16 years younger than me, just to see if I was paying attention, lol.
Luckily for me, though, I AM paying attention, and I am enjoying Life as I never knew I could!
There are so many songs and movies and novels about how sad it is that we tend not to notice what we have until it's gone. I feel SO BLESSED that I can see EXACTLY HOW MUCH I HAVE while I still have it!!!
I am blessed!
And I hope that you are too! If you're reading this an you have a Significant Other, think about why you fell in love with them and do something wacky and uncharacteristic and surprising to show them that you love them! RIGHT NOW, while you still have the chance!
Make sure they have at least one memeory of how much you love them!
Monday, November 20, 2006
CASINO ROYALE RULEZ!!!
Brian & I saw CASINO ROYLAE last night and it was SOOOO GOOD!!!
A qulifier, though... I love the Bond novels! It is concievable that someone who only likes, say, the campiest, silliest Roger Moore era Bonds might not enjoy this movie as much. The character Jaws is not in this, and no vehicles turn into other vehicles.
But if you like the more realistic, darker Bond, then you should really enjoy this reboot of the series!
Martic Campbell directed CASINO ROYALE. He also directed GOLDENEYE, which not only introduced Pierce brosnan as Bond but also brought the franchise back from obscurity! hen he directed THE MASK OF ZORRO, which brought the character of Zorro to new audiences!
Campbell RULES!!! The man knows how to tell a story, and how to tell it WELL! And he brings humanity to these superhero types of characters! (Not just him, obviously... First and foremost the writers, then the actors... But the director can certainly muck it up! Did you see X-MEN 3: THE LAST SAND?)
When I kid Roger Moore was Bond. And I dug him because he was Bond. As a kid I had no interest in Sean Connery because... well... I was A KID, and he was the "old Bond" the Bond my father prefered, lol. And Roger Moore had a car that turned into a submarine!
But then I got a little older (and a bit more open-minded) and my dad pointed out that Sean Connery had a car with an ejection seat and guns and a bullet-proof shield in the back! So I watched GOLDFINGER... over and over and over and over.
Okay, so Dad knows a thing or two about Cool. I'm all ears.
Well then he tells me that Bond was originally books, but that the movies are different than the books. A Lot! He prefers the books because they're mysteries, though he enjoys the movies too.
Bond was ORIGINALLY a literary character?! Well then I goota check out the originals!
The ORIGINAL Bond was a badass!!! He smoked and drank whiskey and killed people! Not like shoot them once and they fall down dead Storm-Trooper style, but KILLED THEM! Sometimes he used his bare hands! And sometimes the bad guys caught him! And tortured him! But Bod never gave up the info!
So in my teens I was able to embrace a world with "Alternate Universe" Bonds. here's the literary james Bond, and there's the cinematic james Bond. Both are fun, just in different ways.
Then in the late 1980s Timothy Dalton was announced as the new Bond. And he said he was gonna go Old School!
And since I was familiar with the novel, I knew what that meant and I was EXCITED!!! Bond the assasin, rather than Bond the superhero!
And I like the Dalton Bond movies. They were poorly directed, so most people just walked away going "He's not as good as the other guys" but it WASN'T Dalton's fault! If you can separat his performance from all the rest of the movie, HE KICKED ASS!!!
Then they announced Pierce Brosnan as the successor to Dalton.
I was disappointed.
I LOVE Brosnan's work, all of it! But I felt like they were just doing it because he played a Bond-like character at the start of his career. But Remington Steele was only superficially Bond-like... He was stylish and suave, but he wasn't that bright and he CERTAINLY wasn't a cold-blooded assasin!
But then I saw GOLDENEYE!!! And alfears melted away! I like all of Brosnan's Bonds. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is weak -- like Moore's OCTOPUSSY or Conery's NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN -- but that's no fault of Brosnan's! Brosnan's Bond can seduce a random hotty in a casino, or kill a man with his bare hands and not shed a tear.
So when I heard about Daniel Craig taking over the Walther PPK, I DID NOT protest.
First of all, I knew that Campbell was returning to do this movie! A good director makes sure he has a good cast and a good script. Good directors KNOW they can't polish a turd, ya know?
Second of all, I protested Brosnan, and then he became my favorite Bond. (Though I will ALWAYS respect and admire Timothy Dalton's contribution to the character, and I just WISH he could have starred in a Martin Campbell Bond flick!!! He'd STILL be Bond if Campbell had directed LICENSE TO KILL!)
So this new Bond was blonde. SO WHAT? At least he's not American. THAT would be a poor choice. (Although I believe George Lazenby is Australian, and he was my favorite Bond for a long time!)
The REALLY important issue is that BOND IS BOND! Finally movie audiences can experience the Bond that literary audiences have been able to enjoy since the 1950s!
This Bond is a real flesh-and-blood man, but he's smart and skilled... AND FALLIBLE!!! This Bond makes mistakes! And learns from them!!!
Sorry if I'm going on a bit, but I LOVED this movie, and I hope it makes a killing at the box office and Daniel craig is Bond for a long, long time!!!
LONG LIVE BOND, JAMES BOND!!!
A qulifier, though... I love the Bond novels! It is concievable that someone who only likes, say, the campiest, silliest Roger Moore era Bonds might not enjoy this movie as much. The character Jaws is not in this, and no vehicles turn into other vehicles.
But if you like the more realistic, darker Bond, then you should really enjoy this reboot of the series!
Martic Campbell directed CASINO ROYALE. He also directed GOLDENEYE, which not only introduced Pierce brosnan as Bond but also brought the franchise back from obscurity! hen he directed THE MASK OF ZORRO, which brought the character of Zorro to new audiences!
Campbell RULES!!! The man knows how to tell a story, and how to tell it WELL! And he brings humanity to these superhero types of characters! (Not just him, obviously... First and foremost the writers, then the actors... But the director can certainly muck it up! Did you see X-MEN 3: THE LAST SAND?)
When I kid Roger Moore was Bond. And I dug him because he was Bond. As a kid I had no interest in Sean Connery because... well... I was A KID, and he was the "old Bond" the Bond my father prefered, lol. And Roger Moore had a car that turned into a submarine!
But then I got a little older (and a bit more open-minded) and my dad pointed out that Sean Connery had a car with an ejection seat and guns and a bullet-proof shield in the back! So I watched GOLDFINGER... over and over and over and over.
Okay, so Dad knows a thing or two about Cool. I'm all ears.
Well then he tells me that Bond was originally books, but that the movies are different than the books. A Lot! He prefers the books because they're mysteries, though he enjoys the movies too.
Bond was ORIGINALLY a literary character?! Well then I goota check out the originals!
The ORIGINAL Bond was a badass!!! He smoked and drank whiskey and killed people! Not like shoot them once and they fall down dead Storm-Trooper style, but KILLED THEM! Sometimes he used his bare hands! And sometimes the bad guys caught him! And tortured him! But Bod never gave up the info!
So in my teens I was able to embrace a world with "Alternate Universe" Bonds. here's the literary james Bond, and there's the cinematic james Bond. Both are fun, just in different ways.
Then in the late 1980s Timothy Dalton was announced as the new Bond. And he said he was gonna go Old School!
And since I was familiar with the novel, I knew what that meant and I was EXCITED!!! Bond the assasin, rather than Bond the superhero!
And I like the Dalton Bond movies. They were poorly directed, so most people just walked away going "He's not as good as the other guys" but it WASN'T Dalton's fault! If you can separat his performance from all the rest of the movie, HE KICKED ASS!!!
Then they announced Pierce Brosnan as the successor to Dalton.
I was disappointed.
I LOVE Brosnan's work, all of it! But I felt like they were just doing it because he played a Bond-like character at the start of his career. But Remington Steele was only superficially Bond-like... He was stylish and suave, but he wasn't that bright and he CERTAINLY wasn't a cold-blooded assasin!
But then I saw GOLDENEYE!!! And alfears melted away! I like all of Brosnan's Bonds. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is weak -- like Moore's OCTOPUSSY or Conery's NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN -- but that's no fault of Brosnan's! Brosnan's Bond can seduce a random hotty in a casino, or kill a man with his bare hands and not shed a tear.
So when I heard about Daniel Craig taking over the Walther PPK, I DID NOT protest.
First of all, I knew that Campbell was returning to do this movie! A good director makes sure he has a good cast and a good script. Good directors KNOW they can't polish a turd, ya know?
Second of all, I protested Brosnan, and then he became my favorite Bond. (Though I will ALWAYS respect and admire Timothy Dalton's contribution to the character, and I just WISH he could have starred in a Martin Campbell Bond flick!!! He'd STILL be Bond if Campbell had directed LICENSE TO KILL!)
So this new Bond was blonde. SO WHAT? At least he's not American. THAT would be a poor choice. (Although I believe George Lazenby is Australian, and he was my favorite Bond for a long time!)
The REALLY important issue is that BOND IS BOND! Finally movie audiences can experience the Bond that literary audiences have been able to enjoy since the 1950s!
This Bond is a real flesh-and-blood man, but he's smart and skilled... AND FALLIBLE!!! This Bond makes mistakes! And learns from them!!!
Sorry if I'm going on a bit, but I LOVED this movie, and I hope it makes a killing at the box office and Daniel craig is Bond for a long, long time!!!
LONG LIVE BOND, JAMES BOND!!!
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Just Checkin' In...
37 minutes until I go home.
This is my "Monday" and the day went pretty smoothely.
It started off with a great conversation with my baby! :) She's SUCH A SWEETY!!!
I also discovered some sweet comments she left on a couple of my blog entries. That's always nice... It's like finding Easter eggs in your bedroom, lol. (The plastic kind with cool toys or candy in them. ;P )
Did some writing last night and got a little development done tonight. So that's always groovy.
OOH!!! If you haven't seen Aaron Sorkin's new TV show STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP I HIGHLY recoomend it!!! I've been buying the episodes on iTunes and watching them on my iPod, and they're GREAT!!! Last week was the first part of a 2-parter, so last night I watched some reruns, trying to get my fix without watching the Part 1 until the Part 2 was available to purchase! It finally became available and I started watching Part 1, but then I got all drowsy and didn't get to see much of it.
But that's cool because I have something to look foreward to!
Sorkin's shows are really inspirational for a writer, because they're just so brilliantly written! And acted, and directed, and edited, lol. They're just great! Sorkin stories are always about smart people being smart and human. It's never a battle between one good, smart guy and an evil, stupid guy... All the characters are smart and doing what they believe to be right, and a lot of times the main conflicts are between to friends who care very much for each other, but they simply have opposing opinions about how a specific situation should be handled!
THAT's great storytelling!!! Since you care about BOTH characters, you're really interested to see how things are gonna turn out!
Also, yesterday was fun because I got THE DA VINCI CODE and watched it with Brian (his first time) along with ALL the dvd extras! I bought it at Walmart, and the two-disc dvd came with an exclusive third dvd of extras, and it was all fascinating!!! (I think Brian and I figured out that we had spent about 5 and a half hours going the movie and all the bonus material, lol!)
DUDE!
I fell asleep just after 5:00 am yesterday morning, and woke up just before 5:00 pm yesterday!
That's A LOT of sleep!
And it's wierd because before that I was waking up -- my body just stopped sleeping and didn't let me go back to bed -- after about 4 hours!
I have serious sleep issues, lol. And I have no idea why.
But I feel fine, so I'm not worried or anything... Just curious.
Blah.
Babbling now. I think I'll watch some iPod and ride out the 19 minutes I have left in my shift.
Hope your day is filled with beauty and joy!!!
This is my "Monday" and the day went pretty smoothely.
It started off with a great conversation with my baby! :) She's SUCH A SWEETY!!!
I also discovered some sweet comments she left on a couple of my blog entries. That's always nice... It's like finding Easter eggs in your bedroom, lol. (The plastic kind with cool toys or candy in them. ;P )
Did some writing last night and got a little development done tonight. So that's always groovy.
OOH!!! If you haven't seen Aaron Sorkin's new TV show STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP I HIGHLY recoomend it!!! I've been buying the episodes on iTunes and watching them on my iPod, and they're GREAT!!! Last week was the first part of a 2-parter, so last night I watched some reruns, trying to get my fix without watching the Part 1 until the Part 2 was available to purchase! It finally became available and I started watching Part 1, but then I got all drowsy and didn't get to see much of it.
But that's cool because I have something to look foreward to!
Sorkin's shows are really inspirational for a writer, because they're just so brilliantly written! And acted, and directed, and edited, lol. They're just great! Sorkin stories are always about smart people being smart and human. It's never a battle between one good, smart guy and an evil, stupid guy... All the characters are smart and doing what they believe to be right, and a lot of times the main conflicts are between to friends who care very much for each other, but they simply have opposing opinions about how a specific situation should be handled!
THAT's great storytelling!!! Since you care about BOTH characters, you're really interested to see how things are gonna turn out!
Also, yesterday was fun because I got THE DA VINCI CODE and watched it with Brian (his first time) along with ALL the dvd extras! I bought it at Walmart, and the two-disc dvd came with an exclusive third dvd of extras, and it was all fascinating!!! (I think Brian and I figured out that we had spent about 5 and a half hours going the movie and all the bonus material, lol!)
DUDE!
I fell asleep just after 5:00 am yesterday morning, and woke up just before 5:00 pm yesterday!
That's A LOT of sleep!
And it's wierd because before that I was waking up -- my body just stopped sleeping and didn't let me go back to bed -- after about 4 hours!
I have serious sleep issues, lol. And I have no idea why.
But I feel fine, so I'm not worried or anything... Just curious.
Blah.
Babbling now. I think I'll watch some iPod and ride out the 19 minutes I have left in my shift.
Hope your day is filled with beauty and joy!!!
Monday, November 13, 2006
Welcome to the Mangey Raiders Drive-In Theater!!!
THE DRIVE-IN IS FINISHED!!! :D
Well, actually... It's been finished for a while. But I couldn't blog about it because I figured there would be little point in describing it to you without pics, and Gnomey hadn't seen it yet, so I couldn't post pics as she tends to read my blog, hee-hee.
But last night we went there together!!!
So here are the pics!
This first one is me and Brian watching one of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes flicks while I take a break during and early stage of development. The drive-in is pretty much just a huge parking lot with a fence and a movie screen, heheh.
I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but in SecondLife you can build things in the air, and it's advantageous to do so. SL now has a million or more residents, from all around the world, so at any given time you're sharing the servers with a few hundred people. The result of this is "lag"... You can't move as smoothely as a videogame, and it takes longer for textures to render.
But if you put your home, or your dance club, or whatever, up in the air, it's less laggy. I don't pretend to understand it, but it has something to do with the number of people within a single cubic measurement of cyberspace. The more people close together, the laggier SL gets. The fewer, the less. And apparently the rule applies vertically, as well as horozontally. So if, say, you're at an in-world concert attended by 50 people, and you're lagging really badly, you can fly up a hundred meters and the lag will go away.
Your view of the concert will suck, tho'.
So anyway, in wide shots of the drive-in you'll see that it's hovering in mid-air. That's why.
Here's me taking a photo-tour of my creation after having finished it...
I'm really proud of the signage! Did all that myself! :)
Also, Brian made 2 of the 3 cars you see in the above pic! The General Lee and the Delorean. (The Delorean's license plate reads "outtatime", and the plate on the General Lee is accurate... But I don't remember if he went with the plate from the recent movie or from one of the episodes of the TV show.)
I'm proud of those speakers, as well. They're not nearly as detailed as they could be -- because I was keeping prim-space in mind when I built this place -- but the speaker part is an actually drive-in theater speaker! :)
Here's what the whole thing looks like. :D It's a really cool li'l place to hang out. Especially at night. And one of the cool things about SL is that you can make it night (or whatever time of day you prefer) whenever you want!
There's a drive-in theater in Destroy All Humans (the first one) and it's really cool to hang out in (and blow-up) and it REALLY give you the sense of the scale. Mine is pretty small.
Still, when you're there you don't feel like it's small. It feel real.
Very groovy! :D
ALSO...
Bottom left of the above picture you can see Gnomey's and my house! It's a 2-story box on the outside (1, you really don't spend your time outside your house in SL, you're either in ir doing something or somewhere else doing something, and so there's no real need to waste the prims, particularly on such a small parcel of land as we live on; 2, a blue box in the middle of the sky tends not to attract a great deal of attention from flyers-by), and you can see the white tree in Gnomey's garden! She LOVES gardens! Before we hooked-up she used to spend a lot of her SL sitting in gardens alone. When we made the house I wanted her to have her own garden. It's not that great, really. It's 3 walls that look like flower gardens in the not-to-far distance backed by trees, and then you can see the actual (SL) sky through the trees. But she says she likes it, so I'm happy. :D
The white things you can see best in that pic are the curtains that seperate our bedroom from the garden.
Is this TMI? Are you bored yet?
More pics.
The poster on the ticket stand is a calander of movies playing back in June of 1950. Apparently, my drive-in has been around for quite some time. ;)
This is me and Brian playing around one day. :D He created a sit-ball that allows one to sit inside the ticket booth. And for no reason that know of, he decided to be Freddy Krueger at that moment. So I had to get a pic.
I also had to...
Be Jason Vorhees! Growing up, I was a Jason fan and he was a Freddy fan. So him running around as Freddy just naturally made me wanna be my guy.
At some point, though, he switched to Leatherface. I think maybe just because he likes playing with the chainsaw.
It was A BLAST! We were chasing each other around the drive-in, attackign each other, and laughing our asses off! It was brilliant! It was just so funny to watch! The thought that what these two mass-murderers do during the day is chase each other around an old drive-in theater just killed us.
I know, it's a "You Had To Be There" thing, but take my word for it. ;P
Also, just a side note: Most of the cars you've seen in all these pics so far (like the one I'm standing on and the General Lee) are actually drive-able cars. They were mostly there for ambience. The cars that now are parked at the drive-in don't drive. They are, functionally, theater seats, lol. Brian made it so that they don't drive around, which is good because if they accidentally drove out of the drive in they would have a long, long fall.
This is earlier today! :D Me and my baby makin' out next to the projection booth!!! :)
It was a short date because I had to run an errand for my mom, and when I got back my sweety was tired and needed to get some sleep. (This was around 5:30 pm my time and 11:30 pm her time.) But it was NICE! She seemed very impressed with the work Brian and I had done and seemed to be enjoying herself. :)
I friggin' love SL! I can't even see my baby face-to-face yet, but because of SL I can build a drive-in theater and actually watch a movie there with her!!!
OOH! In the above pic you can see a newer addition to the grounds.
Driving back from my latest visit with Tisha, I stopped at the rest stop that I have stopped at many, many trips before. It's really cool and has this great vibe, so I wanted to recreate it in SL. I took a lot of pictures there at the rest stop and turned them into textures and uploaded them in-world.
I had created a rest stop box with textures to make the floor, walls and ceiling look like the ground, surrounding roadside and sky, but I tore that down when Gnomey and I were finally ready to build our home.
But then it occured to me that maybe a picnick table might not seem out-of-place just outside a drive-in theater! I don't know if I've ever seen it before, but I can imagine a family eating dinner outside the car, watching the movie over the fence, while rambunctious young ones run around and wear themselves out before the second feature starts.
It just seemed to fit.
And anyway, it's MY drive-in and I wanted it there, lol. So now my rest-stop table has a home. :)
Also, all the cars you see in these last 4 pics are non-drive-able. They're the ones Brian made specially for the theater.
e's working on a couple more. He wants to see some 1950s cars in the lot, so he's making a couple. (Which he will most likely make drive-able versions of as well.)
After Gnomey went to bed I hooked up with another hotty...
Just kidding. That's her, too. She sometimes, and without warning, cycles through hair and clothes. We might be out dancing and, in the course of one song, she might go through 4 outfits, lol. I think it's an SL girl thing. I've seen others do it. Me, I tend to wear the same outfit for months and months in-world, lol. But SL women can burn through entire ensembles in minutes, lol.
And here we are gettin' a li'l freaky beside the consession stand. :D I wish I had angled this pic back and to the right a bit so that you could see the edge of the phone booth. But I was focusing more on getting us and the movie in the shot.
That's a Superman cartoon, btw. :D The movie screen is actually a HUGE SL TV, and the projection tower has a door in the back and a compartment with 2 SL dvd players. One player is loaded with, like, 40 vintage toons, and the other is loaded with, like, 36 vintage movies.
Some GOOD ones, too!!! Just off the top of my head there's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and SHERLOCK HOLMES: DRESSED TO KILL!!! There's plenty of crap, too, natch. Like THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, lol. (Although I enjoy sci-fi/horror crap sometimes.) And then there are tons of movies I've never heard of, but I'm sure some of them are good.
Between Gnomey, writing, the PS2 and work, I haven't really had a lot of time to just sit back and watch a movie at the drive-in. Around Halloween Brian and I watched a Halloween-themed Popeye cartoon there. And I watched the first 3 minutes of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD there, too, lol. But that's about it so far.
I hope that my baby and I get to actually spend some time there. That's why I built it. But we'll see. The holidays are upon us and Life tends to happen, lol. So we'll see.
But if nothing else, the drive-in has given Brian and me a couple of hours of fun, and my baby and me a little time together!
Plus... It looks COOL, doesn't it!
Well, actually... It's been finished for a while. But I couldn't blog about it because I figured there would be little point in describing it to you without pics, and Gnomey hadn't seen it yet, so I couldn't post pics as she tends to read my blog, hee-hee.
But last night we went there together!!!
So here are the pics!
This first one is me and Brian watching one of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes flicks while I take a break during and early stage of development. The drive-in is pretty much just a huge parking lot with a fence and a movie screen, heheh.
I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but in SecondLife you can build things in the air, and it's advantageous to do so. SL now has a million or more residents, from all around the world, so at any given time you're sharing the servers with a few hundred people. The result of this is "lag"... You can't move as smoothely as a videogame, and it takes longer for textures to render.
But if you put your home, or your dance club, or whatever, up in the air, it's less laggy. I don't pretend to understand it, but it has something to do with the number of people within a single cubic measurement of cyberspace. The more people close together, the laggier SL gets. The fewer, the less. And apparently the rule applies vertically, as well as horozontally. So if, say, you're at an in-world concert attended by 50 people, and you're lagging really badly, you can fly up a hundred meters and the lag will go away.
Your view of the concert will suck, tho'.
So anyway, in wide shots of the drive-in you'll see that it's hovering in mid-air. That's why.
Here's me taking a photo-tour of my creation after having finished it...
I'm really proud of the signage! Did all that myself! :)
Also, Brian made 2 of the 3 cars you see in the above pic! The General Lee and the Delorean. (The Delorean's license plate reads "outtatime", and the plate on the General Lee is accurate... But I don't remember if he went with the plate from the recent movie or from one of the episodes of the TV show.)
I'm proud of those speakers, as well. They're not nearly as detailed as they could be -- because I was keeping prim-space in mind when I built this place -- but the speaker part is an actually drive-in theater speaker! :)
Here's what the whole thing looks like. :D It's a really cool li'l place to hang out. Especially at night. And one of the cool things about SL is that you can make it night (or whatever time of day you prefer) whenever you want!
There's a drive-in theater in Destroy All Humans (the first one) and it's really cool to hang out in (and blow-up) and it REALLY give you the sense of the scale. Mine is pretty small.
Still, when you're there you don't feel like it's small. It feel real.
Very groovy! :D
ALSO...
Bottom left of the above picture you can see Gnomey's and my house! It's a 2-story box on the outside (1, you really don't spend your time outside your house in SL, you're either in ir doing something or somewhere else doing something, and so there's no real need to waste the prims, particularly on such a small parcel of land as we live on; 2, a blue box in the middle of the sky tends not to attract a great deal of attention from flyers-by), and you can see the white tree in Gnomey's garden! She LOVES gardens! Before we hooked-up she used to spend a lot of her SL sitting in gardens alone. When we made the house I wanted her to have her own garden. It's not that great, really. It's 3 walls that look like flower gardens in the not-to-far distance backed by trees, and then you can see the actual (SL) sky through the trees. But she says she likes it, so I'm happy. :D
The white things you can see best in that pic are the curtains that seperate our bedroom from the garden.
Is this TMI? Are you bored yet?
More pics.
The poster on the ticket stand is a calander of movies playing back in June of 1950. Apparently, my drive-in has been around for quite some time. ;)
This is me and Brian playing around one day. :D He created a sit-ball that allows one to sit inside the ticket booth. And for no reason that know of, he decided to be Freddy Krueger at that moment. So I had to get a pic.
I also had to...
Be Jason Vorhees! Growing up, I was a Jason fan and he was a Freddy fan. So him running around as Freddy just naturally made me wanna be my guy.
At some point, though, he switched to Leatherface. I think maybe just because he likes playing with the chainsaw.
It was A BLAST! We were chasing each other around the drive-in, attackign each other, and laughing our asses off! It was brilliant! It was just so funny to watch! The thought that what these two mass-murderers do during the day is chase each other around an old drive-in theater just killed us.
I know, it's a "You Had To Be There" thing, but take my word for it. ;P
Also, just a side note: Most of the cars you've seen in all these pics so far (like the one I'm standing on and the General Lee) are actually drive-able cars. They were mostly there for ambience. The cars that now are parked at the drive-in don't drive. They are, functionally, theater seats, lol. Brian made it so that they don't drive around, which is good because if they accidentally drove out of the drive in they would have a long, long fall.
This is earlier today! :D Me and my baby makin' out next to the projection booth!!! :)
It was a short date because I had to run an errand for my mom, and when I got back my sweety was tired and needed to get some sleep. (This was around 5:30 pm my time and 11:30 pm her time.) But it was NICE! She seemed very impressed with the work Brian and I had done and seemed to be enjoying herself. :)
I friggin' love SL! I can't even see my baby face-to-face yet, but because of SL I can build a drive-in theater and actually watch a movie there with her!!!
OOH! In the above pic you can see a newer addition to the grounds.
Driving back from my latest visit with Tisha, I stopped at the rest stop that I have stopped at many, many trips before. It's really cool and has this great vibe, so I wanted to recreate it in SL. I took a lot of pictures there at the rest stop and turned them into textures and uploaded them in-world.
I had created a rest stop box with textures to make the floor, walls and ceiling look like the ground, surrounding roadside and sky, but I tore that down when Gnomey and I were finally ready to build our home.
But then it occured to me that maybe a picnick table might not seem out-of-place just outside a drive-in theater! I don't know if I've ever seen it before, but I can imagine a family eating dinner outside the car, watching the movie over the fence, while rambunctious young ones run around and wear themselves out before the second feature starts.
It just seemed to fit.
And anyway, it's MY drive-in and I wanted it there, lol. So now my rest-stop table has a home. :)
Also, all the cars you see in these last 4 pics are non-drive-able. They're the ones Brian made specially for the theater.
e's working on a couple more. He wants to see some 1950s cars in the lot, so he's making a couple. (Which he will most likely make drive-able versions of as well.)
After Gnomey went to bed I hooked up with another hotty...
Just kidding. That's her, too. She sometimes, and without warning, cycles through hair and clothes. We might be out dancing and, in the course of one song, she might go through 4 outfits, lol. I think it's an SL girl thing. I've seen others do it. Me, I tend to wear the same outfit for months and months in-world, lol. But SL women can burn through entire ensembles in minutes, lol.
And here we are gettin' a li'l freaky beside the consession stand. :D I wish I had angled this pic back and to the right a bit so that you could see the edge of the phone booth. But I was focusing more on getting us and the movie in the shot.
That's a Superman cartoon, btw. :D The movie screen is actually a HUGE SL TV, and the projection tower has a door in the back and a compartment with 2 SL dvd players. One player is loaded with, like, 40 vintage toons, and the other is loaded with, like, 36 vintage movies.
Some GOOD ones, too!!! Just off the top of my head there's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and SHERLOCK HOLMES: DRESSED TO KILL!!! There's plenty of crap, too, natch. Like THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, lol. (Although I enjoy sci-fi/horror crap sometimes.) And then there are tons of movies I've never heard of, but I'm sure some of them are good.
Between Gnomey, writing, the PS2 and work, I haven't really had a lot of time to just sit back and watch a movie at the drive-in. Around Halloween Brian and I watched a Halloween-themed Popeye cartoon there. And I watched the first 3 minutes of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD there, too, lol. But that's about it so far.
I hope that my baby and I get to actually spend some time there. That's why I built it. But we'll see. The holidays are upon us and Life tends to happen, lol. So we'll see.
But if nothing else, the drive-in has given Brian and me a couple of hours of fun, and my baby and me a little time together!
Plus... It looks COOL, doesn't it!
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Countdown To The Weekend
Just trying to kill time until my shift is over.
11 more minutes...
My day continued to flow just as smoothly as it started out. I got to watch a Halloween episode of KIM POSSIBLE on my iPod. And I followed it up with Part 1 of the pilot episode of SKY LAND (an anime sci-fi series), which was free on iTunes. The show was pretty cool, so that rules! I don't know if I'll be purchasing more episodes, but it was a cool way to pass 30 minutes.
Then I emailed my baby.
And text-ed her.
Looked at pics of her on my ZVUE, lol. (I played this iPod game called Bejewelled before I did my TV-show viewing, so the battery is low. So that's why I used the ZVUE.)
7 minutes to go.
Ooh! I also got a couple of speculative pages written, too! That's not too bad. It's hard writing the screenplay that Brian and I are collaborating on without him. So when I get a piece of a scene that I just HAVE TO capture before I loose it, I'll go ahead and write those, knowing that they'll be refined when we're actually rolling on the script.
5 minutes left before my weekend begins!
I'm hoping that Brian and I will get some time this weekend (my weekend; he doesn't have any days off until next week) to get a little further than we are.
3 minutes to go. I should sign off now.
Thanks for helping me pass the time! That last half hour is the loooooongest!
:D
11 more minutes...
My day continued to flow just as smoothly as it started out. I got to watch a Halloween episode of KIM POSSIBLE on my iPod. And I followed it up with Part 1 of the pilot episode of SKY LAND (an anime sci-fi series), which was free on iTunes. The show was pretty cool, so that rules! I don't know if I'll be purchasing more episodes, but it was a cool way to pass 30 minutes.
Then I emailed my baby.
And text-ed her.
Looked at pics of her on my ZVUE, lol. (I played this iPod game called Bejewelled before I did my TV-show viewing, so the battery is low. So that's why I used the ZVUE.)
7 minutes to go.
Ooh! I also got a couple of speculative pages written, too! That's not too bad. It's hard writing the screenplay that Brian and I are collaborating on without him. So when I get a piece of a scene that I just HAVE TO capture before I loose it, I'll go ahead and write those, knowing that they'll be refined when we're actually rolling on the script.
5 minutes left before my weekend begins!
I'm hoping that Brian and I will get some time this weekend (my weekend; he doesn't have any days off until next week) to get a little further than we are.
3 minutes to go. I should sign off now.
Thanks for helping me pass the time! That last half hour is the loooooongest!
:D
Saturday, November 11, 2006
[sung to the tune of the Chili's "Babyback Ribs" jingle]
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
That's just the background part, of course. I haven't worked out a verse and chorus, lol.
I'm at work, airing a live Spurs game, so I probably shouldn't be goofin' around at all... But...
;D
I'm SO not a sports guy. Basketball, football, all of it just bores me.
I kinda dig listening to baseball on the radio, if I don't have anything else to do. Don't know why. I don't know any of the teams, so I wouldn't know who to root for or anything. But for some reason hearing baseball on the radio is sorta groovy for me.
Yeah, I'm wierd. I get that. :P
Okay, so here's another cool thing about Video iPods: They got clocks on 'em. There's a default California Time clock, then you can add your own time zone, AND I have a London clock, as well!!!
I mean, I've gotten pretty good at adding 6 hours to my time. (It's 2:38 am Sunday morning where my baby is right now. ;P ) But it's just kinda cool to have it on my iPod, too.
MY PIZZA'S HERE!
I didn't get to eat before work, and I got a couple of bucks on me, so I decided to treat myself for brunch.
So I'm gonna close this out and dig on me some Papa John's.
PEACE! :D
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
I love my baby my baby love my baby Munts
That's just the background part, of course. I haven't worked out a verse and chorus, lol.
I'm at work, airing a live Spurs game, so I probably shouldn't be goofin' around at all... But...
;D
I'm SO not a sports guy. Basketball, football, all of it just bores me.
I kinda dig listening to baseball on the radio, if I don't have anything else to do. Don't know why. I don't know any of the teams, so I wouldn't know who to root for or anything. But for some reason hearing baseball on the radio is sorta groovy for me.
Yeah, I'm wierd. I get that. :P
Okay, so here's another cool thing about Video iPods: They got clocks on 'em. There's a default California Time clock, then you can add your own time zone, AND I have a London clock, as well!!!
I mean, I've gotten pretty good at adding 6 hours to my time. (It's 2:38 am Sunday morning where my baby is right now. ;P ) But it's just kinda cool to have it on my iPod, too.
MY PIZZA'S HERE!
I didn't get to eat before work, and I got a couple of bucks on me, so I decided to treat myself for brunch.
So I'm gonna close this out and dig on me some Papa John's.
PEACE! :D
Friday, November 10, 2006
YAY Video iPods!!!
Just finished killing 25 minutes or so with the first episode of KIM POSSIBLE at work, lol!
Yay!
This day isn't so bad!
It started off with a 2-hour phone convo with my baby!!! (It was a gooooooood conversation! :D There was wanking! ;P ) (Apologies to my baby, and to anyone who knows what that means, hee-hee.) I've missed just hanging with Gnomey for SOOOOO long! And I didn't even realize just how much until I noticed that warm, fuzzy feeling that was engulfing me just sitting on the phone with her, giggling!
Then somehow the rest of the day just kind of fell into place, all smooth and pretty like!
And now I've got 18 minutes until I can scoot home!!!
Yay!
Tomorrow night should be "challenging" (read: ridiculously busy; Fridays are) but I'll most likely get to start the day off with some Gnomey Munts Munts!!!
The screenplay is slow going because Brian still hasn't found his groove as a screenwriter, and therefore I haven't been able to slip into it. But our conversations about his script have been really productive! When we do get this thing written, it'll be GOOD!
Um...
That's it for now, I suppose. I love my Wendy Lady and I can't wait for the screenplay to be done... Yeah, that's the gist of my life. :D
Yay Life! :)
Yay!
This day isn't so bad!
It started off with a 2-hour phone convo with my baby!!! (It was a gooooooood conversation! :D There was wanking! ;P ) (Apologies to my baby, and to anyone who knows what that means, hee-hee.) I've missed just hanging with Gnomey for SOOOOO long! And I didn't even realize just how much until I noticed that warm, fuzzy feeling that was engulfing me just sitting on the phone with her, giggling!
Then somehow the rest of the day just kind of fell into place, all smooth and pretty like!
And now I've got 18 minutes until I can scoot home!!!
Yay!
Tomorrow night should be "challenging" (read: ridiculously busy; Fridays are) but I'll most likely get to start the day off with some Gnomey Munts Munts!!!
The screenplay is slow going because Brian still hasn't found his groove as a screenwriter, and therefore I haven't been able to slip into it. But our conversations about his script have been really productive! When we do get this thing written, it'll be GOOD!
Um...
That's it for now, I suppose. I love my Wendy Lady and I can't wait for the screenplay to be done... Yeah, that's the gist of my life. :D
Yay Life! :)
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Good Weekend!
Sunday, of course, the weekend started off with Brian and me watching BORAT, which was cool.
Monday I got to see my baby TWICE -- which is unusual because of her schedule lately -- and Brian and I destroyed some humans in between.
Then yesterday I bought CARS and got OVER THE HEGE in the mail from Netflix, and we watched them both! Fun movies both! (Though CARS ROCKS THE HOUSE!!!)
MUCH FUN!!!
And today (the Thursday part of my "today") is great because IT'S MY BABY'S LAST DAY OF SUPERLONG SHIFTS!!! Which means she'll be at work when I get home (nothing unusual there) and she may very well be awake when I wake up because she doesn't have to go in as early Friday!!!
YAY!
Ooh! Ooh! ANNNNNDDD I got a Video iPod today!!! It's loaded with TONS of my favorite audio shows -- the entire HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE radio series, all 7 books of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and many, many episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE RADIO DRAMAS -- as well as some movies and some audiobooks! Ooh, and all of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP and the first season of JOHNNY BRAVO!
I just discovered they have KIM POSSIBLE episodes, too! Have to get those as soon as I can.
And, naturally, I loaded the iPod up with Gnomey pics and a couple of sound clips she sent me! :D (She's so wonderful!)
Oh! And it's almost 7:00 am there, so I'm gonna try to call her again and see if she's awake!
She's so dreamy! :D <3
Monday I got to see my baby TWICE -- which is unusual because of her schedule lately -- and Brian and I destroyed some humans in between.
Then yesterday I bought CARS and got OVER THE HEGE in the mail from Netflix, and we watched them both! Fun movies both! (Though CARS ROCKS THE HOUSE!!!)
MUCH FUN!!!
And today (the Thursday part of my "today") is great because IT'S MY BABY'S LAST DAY OF SUPERLONG SHIFTS!!! Which means she'll be at work when I get home (nothing unusual there) and she may very well be awake when I wake up because she doesn't have to go in as early Friday!!!
YAY!
Ooh! Ooh! ANNNNNDDD I got a Video iPod today!!! It's loaded with TONS of my favorite audio shows -- the entire HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE radio series, all 7 books of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and many, many episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE RADIO DRAMAS -- as well as some movies and some audiobooks! Ooh, and all of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP and the first season of JOHNNY BRAVO!
I just discovered they have KIM POSSIBLE episodes, too! Have to get those as soon as I can.
And, naturally, I loaded the iPod up with Gnomey pics and a couple of sound clips she sent me! :D (She's so wonderful!)
Oh! And it's almost 7:00 am there, so I'm gonna try to call her again and see if she's awake!
She's so dreamy! :D <3
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Jak Się Masz? (pronounced "Yagshemash")
Okay, so guess where Brian and I just got back from...
That's right: BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENIFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN!!!
Okay, this being the Number 1 top grossing movie of the weekend, you're either going to hear that Sacha Baron Cohen is the antichrist, or that BORAT is the comedy equivallent of the pilot episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Here's my take...
I'm not a fan of comedy that is derived from regular people being made to feel uncomfortable -- or flat-out offended -- by manipulative comedians... But this movie made me laugh SO HARD!
Some of that was laughter with one eye covered -- because I was made SO UNCOMFORTABLE by the "victim"'s offense/discomfort -- but most of that was because Baron Cohen exposes ingnorance for what it is. For instance, when frat boys' opinion of women allign with Borat's misogynistic view, then you KNOW our country has a problem. However, when the most accepting group of Americans is what he might refer to as "chocolate faces" and we might refer to as "gangstas" and they (apparently) hook him up with loads of vernacular phrases, you tend to be surprised by the juxtaposition.
I'm not even going into the "shock humor" moments that you're bound to hear about via MANY sources.
My point is that this flick deserves a viewing just to see what it has to say about being an American.
And it DEFINITELY has SOMETHING to say.
WHAT, exactly, is up to YOUR interpretation. :)
If the commercials drag you to the theater, then see it in the theater. If you feel like you can wait for dvd, then wait for dvd.
I HAD TO see it Opening Weekend because I was curious about a specific comedic mind at work: Baron Cohen's. And I got more than I asked for, lol. But in a good way.
AND...
I also got to see my baby TWICE today!!! (Because of our work schedukes, we haven't seen each other AT ALL this past week.) Julie Andrews spun frivolously around hills of flowers as I gazed upon the wondeous countenance of my sweet, sweet Gnomey!!!
I've ALWAYS heard that long-distance relationships didn't work out -- and my past would seem to corroborate that -- but I swear it doesn't apply to Soul Mates! I only love her more and more!!!
I LOVE YOU, WENDY-LADY!!! :D
That's right: BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENIFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN!!!
Okay, this being the Number 1 top grossing movie of the weekend, you're either going to hear that Sacha Baron Cohen is the antichrist, or that BORAT is the comedy equivallent of the pilot episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Here's my take...
I'm not a fan of comedy that is derived from regular people being made to feel uncomfortable -- or flat-out offended -- by manipulative comedians... But this movie made me laugh SO HARD!
Some of that was laughter with one eye covered -- because I was made SO UNCOMFORTABLE by the "victim"'s offense/discomfort -- but most of that was because Baron Cohen exposes ingnorance for what it is. For instance, when frat boys' opinion of women allign with Borat's misogynistic view, then you KNOW our country has a problem. However, when the most accepting group of Americans is what he might refer to as "chocolate faces" and we might refer to as "gangstas" and they (apparently) hook him up with loads of vernacular phrases, you tend to be surprised by the juxtaposition.
I'm not even going into the "shock humor" moments that you're bound to hear about via MANY sources.
My point is that this flick deserves a viewing just to see what it has to say about being an American.
And it DEFINITELY has SOMETHING to say.
WHAT, exactly, is up to YOUR interpretation. :)
If the commercials drag you to the theater, then see it in the theater. If you feel like you can wait for dvd, then wait for dvd.
I HAD TO see it Opening Weekend because I was curious about a specific comedic mind at work: Baron Cohen's. And I got more than I asked for, lol. But in a good way.
AND...
I also got to see my baby TWICE today!!! (Because of our work schedukes, we haven't seen each other AT ALL this past week.) Julie Andrews spun frivolously around hills of flowers as I gazed upon the wondeous countenance of my sweet, sweet Gnomey!!!
I've ALWAYS heard that long-distance relationships didn't work out -- and my past would seem to corroborate that -- but I swear it doesn't apply to Soul Mates! I only love her more and more!!!
I LOVE YOU, WENDY-LADY!!! :D
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Wicked-Fun Halloween Weekend!!!
...AND was actually a weekend for me!!! YAY!
So it starts off with Family Dinner: Chicken-Fried Steak w/scrambled eggs and biscuits & gravy and hash browns!!!
FANTASTIC start to both the day and the weekend!
Brian had spent Friday and Saturday at Tommy's because KELLY WAS IN TOWN!!! And he was gonna spend the rest of his vacation at our house!
After Family Dinner I finally got used to the controls for DESTROY ALL HUMANS! WHICH RULES!!! That was one of the first games I bought earlier this year for our PS2, and it was only just now that I was able to figure out the controls and really enjoy it! A lot of times the way Brian enjoys our PS2 is watching me play single-player games and helping me out when I hit a snag or a boss that's particularly vexing. That's what we were doing when Kelly arrived, and after our Hellos and hugs and stuff, we three continued doing that.
Only Brian and Kelly got in on the playing, too!
Brian is EXTREMELY creative when it comes to destroying a 1950s' suburb full of humans!!! I was horror-struck and amused -- and slightly glee-filled!
I also showed Kelly some of our other games, and he showed me his badass PSP! (I'm so very jealous.)
There was also wine and lots & LOTS of laughter.
Then Monday started off with more humanity destruction while Brian worked (poor dude)! Then when Brian had had a chance to destroy some humans we three went on a mission to scout locations for a movie Kelly hopes to direct here in Austin next year. We drove a lot, but got some GREAT pics and video for him to take back to L.A. with him. I also got to talk to my Baby Munts Munts on the phone while we were in transit!!! (Our schedules have been off lately, so any conversation with her is even more blessed than usual -- and that's PRETTY DARN BLESSED!!!)
While running around we got to talking about horror movies, and got onto the subject of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (the 1974 original) and then THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (the excellent 2003 remake/reinvention) and so we decided to wrap up the evening watching both. (Kelly hadn't seen the remake before, so it was all new to him!)
Then Tuesday -- ALL HALLOW'S EVE -- started with Brian working again (BOOOOO!!!) and me taking Kel to Texadelphia for a Texi Cheese Steak (I don't think that's what they call them, but I think the nomre is cute so I'm usin' it), which we took home while we watched a cool little 1981 made-for-TV movie called DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW -- just to make note ofwhat the filmmakers did on a small budget and how their storytelling could be improved upon and so forth. (Whenever we watch a movie we're enjoying it for what it is, to be sure, but we're always also evaluating what the writer/director/actors/etc. are trying to do and how it's coming off and how we might do it differently, if at all. Just kind of the way we roll.)
Brian arrived about halfway through the flick and joined us.
Then we killed some more humans.
Then around 5:00 pm we headed to Tommy's.
We got there around 7:00 pm.
I'm not kidding.
Okay, Tommy and his wife ALWAYS have to live OUTSIDE town. I don't know why this is -- it means that EVERYWHERE THEY GO is a commute. But for some reason, they simply CAN NOT live within city limits. So when Brian and/or I go to visit, it's a journey. It's a road trip. That's just the way Tommy prefers it.
HOWEVER... Starting around 5:00 pm on any given weekday is RUSH HOUR. ("Rush HOUR" being, of course, a deceptive misnomre.)
BUT... I happend to have 2 hours of spooky OTR shows on disc in the car, so we whiled away hour Halloween early evening in the car listening to these! (Great fun for me! And I don't think the guys hated it too much, either.)
When we finally got to Tommy's he and his wife were taking the li'l one Trick-or-Treat-ing, so we manned their door, doling out candy to the Darth Vaders and Supermans and witches and whatnot. Then when Mom & Dad & Cute Li'l Squirt got bak we got to enjoy the family aspect of Halloween! It was all so cute & sweet!!!
This trip was particularly cool for me, because this was the first time I had seen Tommy's new house!!! BIG!!! Pretty, too!!! (I want one! Like his!)
Then after the Family Fun, when Tommy put his daughter to bed, The Guys headed to the Alamo Drafthouse for some adult Halloween fun!!! A sneak preview of Scott Glosserman's BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON!!! And Glosserman was there to introduce the film and Q&A after it!
It's a quasi-mockumentary that takes place in a world where Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and all of your favorite supernatural serial killers are real, and Leslie Vernon is allowing a film crew to follow him as he prepares for his first big slaughter.
I was scared. I HATE when hacks who can't make a REAL horror movie make a "horror comedy"! usually the "horror comedy" means that the filmmakers aren't capable of pulling off either a good horror movie OR a good comedy. Not always the case, but USUALLY is. They just can't make a good flick, period.
NOT THE CASE WITH BEHIND THE MASK!!!
THIS MOVIE IS BRILLIANT!!! It was advertised on the Drafthouse's site as both hysterical and genuinely scary. I had my doubts, natch. SERIOUS ones. But the other guys liked the idea, and as a double-feature with the HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS it's a WELL FUN way to spend Halloween!!! THEN I SAW THE FLICK!!!
BEHIND THE MASK RULES!!!
If you're a fan of horror (particularly Slasher Flicks) and a fan of laughing DO SEE BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON later this year or next year, when it's released!!! You won't be disappointed and you will have SUCH a great time!
We didn't stay for HALLOWEEN 4, tho'. Everyone but me had to be up early in the morning, so we decided to give the second feature a miss.
BUT... As very pleasant little surprise, just before the theater let out for the intermission Kitty Kitty Bang Bang -- a burlesque act -- came out and dances to "Thriller"... concluding the show number by ripping off their shirts!!! So YAY! (They had electric-tape tassles, but still... Boobies! :D )
And before the show, there was a fun costume contest with some very cool (and some very bad, and one truly tasteless and unkind) costumes! That was fun. Three children entered -- inexplicably, as both the films were R-rated -- and all three just happened to win the Under Four Feet Tall catagory!
After Kitty Kitty Bang Bang the Drafthouse let out for intermission and we hit a bar down the street for a final drink before we all returned home, and to Real Life the next morning. "A quick drink" turned into a couple hours of stimulating conversation, and was a nice Good-Bye to this extraordinary vacation-without-going-anywhere (for all except Kelly).
My sleep schedule inverted itself while Kel was here, but then last night I went to bed a few hours earlier than I normal would do and ended up getting some 10 hours of sleep or something -- which I needed. Without incident or fuss my sleep schedule flipped itself, then flipped itself back! (In itself an amazing and magical incident.)
Oh, and when Kelly started playing DESTROY ALL HUMANS he saved his game seperately from the one Brian and I had saved, and he got FURTHER THAN BOTH OF US on the game! So next time we go wreaking havock on the 1950s we can choose to pick up from where we left off, or where Kel left off for us, lol.
But Real Life returned with a vengence when I woke up this afternoon. I got to see Gnomey, and for a bit is was wonderful and cool... But then she got news about both her grandparents not being well and other family drama, and she was worried and unable to get to sleep, despite the fact that she's working LOOOOOOONG days from now until next Thursday.
The Silver Lining -- and I'm a cat that can usually find it -- is that I got to be with her for longer than I have been able to for a month or so. And even spending time with her when she's hurting is better than not spending time with her. I hope I don't come off like a selfish bastard when I say that... It's not like I'm partying-down while she's sad or worried or whatever. I just mean that I'd rather hurt WITH her than not hurt without her. You know?
Anyway.
I've got half an hour before my shift is over (my "Monday") and then I'm off to see if she has any word for me about how things have progressed. She may not, though, because she goes to work early now, so she's likely already at work by the time I get there.
Actually, it's 11:29 am in England right now. So she's been at work for 3 1/2 hours. But she may have left me an offline message.
Still...
I had a GREAT Halloween this year! One for the books! And my baby told me she had one of the best times with her best friend that she's had in a long time! Whatever is going on now, whatever is up ahead, we both still have Halloween!
And then one day (maybe next year? dare I hope?) we will have Halloween TOGETHER!!!
:D
So it starts off with Family Dinner: Chicken-Fried Steak w/scrambled eggs and biscuits & gravy and hash browns!!!
FANTASTIC start to both the day and the weekend!
Brian had spent Friday and Saturday at Tommy's because KELLY WAS IN TOWN!!! And he was gonna spend the rest of his vacation at our house!
After Family Dinner I finally got used to the controls for DESTROY ALL HUMANS! WHICH RULES!!! That was one of the first games I bought earlier this year for our PS2, and it was only just now that I was able to figure out the controls and really enjoy it! A lot of times the way Brian enjoys our PS2 is watching me play single-player games and helping me out when I hit a snag or a boss that's particularly vexing. That's what we were doing when Kelly arrived, and after our Hellos and hugs and stuff, we three continued doing that.
Only Brian and Kelly got in on the playing, too!
Brian is EXTREMELY creative when it comes to destroying a 1950s' suburb full of humans!!! I was horror-struck and amused -- and slightly glee-filled!
I also showed Kelly some of our other games, and he showed me his badass PSP! (I'm so very jealous.)
There was also wine and lots & LOTS of laughter.
Then Monday started off with more humanity destruction while Brian worked (poor dude)! Then when Brian had had a chance to destroy some humans we three went on a mission to scout locations for a movie Kelly hopes to direct here in Austin next year. We drove a lot, but got some GREAT pics and video for him to take back to L.A. with him. I also got to talk to my Baby Munts Munts on the phone while we were in transit!!! (Our schedules have been off lately, so any conversation with her is even more blessed than usual -- and that's PRETTY DARN BLESSED!!!)
While running around we got to talking about horror movies, and got onto the subject of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (the 1974 original) and then THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (the excellent 2003 remake/reinvention) and so we decided to wrap up the evening watching both. (Kelly hadn't seen the remake before, so it was all new to him!)
Then Tuesday -- ALL HALLOW'S EVE -- started with Brian working again (BOOOOO!!!) and me taking Kel to Texadelphia for a Texi Cheese Steak (I don't think that's what they call them, but I think the nomre is cute so I'm usin' it), which we took home while we watched a cool little 1981 made-for-TV movie called DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW -- just to make note ofwhat the filmmakers did on a small budget and how their storytelling could be improved upon and so forth. (Whenever we watch a movie we're enjoying it for what it is, to be sure, but we're always also evaluating what the writer/director/actors/etc. are trying to do and how it's coming off and how we might do it differently, if at all. Just kind of the way we roll.)
Brian arrived about halfway through the flick and joined us.
Then we killed some more humans.
Then around 5:00 pm we headed to Tommy's.
We got there around 7:00 pm.
I'm not kidding.
Okay, Tommy and his wife ALWAYS have to live OUTSIDE town. I don't know why this is -- it means that EVERYWHERE THEY GO is a commute. But for some reason, they simply CAN NOT live within city limits. So when Brian and/or I go to visit, it's a journey. It's a road trip. That's just the way Tommy prefers it.
HOWEVER... Starting around 5:00 pm on any given weekday is RUSH HOUR. ("Rush HOUR" being, of course, a deceptive misnomre.)
BUT... I happend to have 2 hours of spooky OTR shows on disc in the car, so we whiled away hour Halloween early evening in the car listening to these! (Great fun for me! And I don't think the guys hated it too much, either.)
When we finally got to Tommy's he and his wife were taking the li'l one Trick-or-Treat-ing, so we manned their door, doling out candy to the Darth Vaders and Supermans and witches and whatnot. Then when Mom & Dad & Cute Li'l Squirt got bak we got to enjoy the family aspect of Halloween! It was all so cute & sweet!!!
This trip was particularly cool for me, because this was the first time I had seen Tommy's new house!!! BIG!!! Pretty, too!!! (I want one! Like his!)
Then after the Family Fun, when Tommy put his daughter to bed, The Guys headed to the Alamo Drafthouse for some adult Halloween fun!!! A sneak preview of Scott Glosserman's BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON!!! And Glosserman was there to introduce the film and Q&A after it!
It's a quasi-mockumentary that takes place in a world where Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and all of your favorite supernatural serial killers are real, and Leslie Vernon is allowing a film crew to follow him as he prepares for his first big slaughter.
I was scared. I HATE when hacks who can't make a REAL horror movie make a "horror comedy"! usually the "horror comedy" means that the filmmakers aren't capable of pulling off either a good horror movie OR a good comedy. Not always the case, but USUALLY is. They just can't make a good flick, period.
NOT THE CASE WITH BEHIND THE MASK!!!
THIS MOVIE IS BRILLIANT!!! It was advertised on the Drafthouse's site as both hysterical and genuinely scary. I had my doubts, natch. SERIOUS ones. But the other guys liked the idea, and as a double-feature with the HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS it's a WELL FUN way to spend Halloween!!! THEN I SAW THE FLICK!!!
BEHIND THE MASK RULES!!!
If you're a fan of horror (particularly Slasher Flicks) and a fan of laughing DO SEE BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON later this year or next year, when it's released!!! You won't be disappointed and you will have SUCH a great time!
We didn't stay for HALLOWEEN 4, tho'. Everyone but me had to be up early in the morning, so we decided to give the second feature a miss.
BUT... As very pleasant little surprise, just before the theater let out for the intermission Kitty Kitty Bang Bang -- a burlesque act -- came out and dances to "Thriller"... concluding the show number by ripping off their shirts!!! So YAY! (They had electric-tape tassles, but still... Boobies! :D )
And before the show, there was a fun costume contest with some very cool (and some very bad, and one truly tasteless and unkind) costumes! That was fun. Three children entered -- inexplicably, as both the films were R-rated -- and all three just happened to win the Under Four Feet Tall catagory!
After Kitty Kitty Bang Bang the Drafthouse let out for intermission and we hit a bar down the street for a final drink before we all returned home, and to Real Life the next morning. "A quick drink" turned into a couple hours of stimulating conversation, and was a nice Good-Bye to this extraordinary vacation-without-going-anywhere (for all except Kelly).
My sleep schedule inverted itself while Kel was here, but then last night I went to bed a few hours earlier than I normal would do and ended up getting some 10 hours of sleep or something -- which I needed. Without incident or fuss my sleep schedule flipped itself, then flipped itself back! (In itself an amazing and magical incident.)
Oh, and when Kelly started playing DESTROY ALL HUMANS he saved his game seperately from the one Brian and I had saved, and he got FURTHER THAN BOTH OF US on the game! So next time we go wreaking havock on the 1950s we can choose to pick up from where we left off, or where Kel left off for us, lol.
But Real Life returned with a vengence when I woke up this afternoon. I got to see Gnomey, and for a bit is was wonderful and cool... But then she got news about both her grandparents not being well and other family drama, and she was worried and unable to get to sleep, despite the fact that she's working LOOOOOOONG days from now until next Thursday.
The Silver Lining -- and I'm a cat that can usually find it -- is that I got to be with her for longer than I have been able to for a month or so. And even spending time with her when she's hurting is better than not spending time with her. I hope I don't come off like a selfish bastard when I say that... It's not like I'm partying-down while she's sad or worried or whatever. I just mean that I'd rather hurt WITH her than not hurt without her. You know?
Anyway.
I've got half an hour before my shift is over (my "Monday") and then I'm off to see if she has any word for me about how things have progressed. She may not, though, because she goes to work early now, so she's likely already at work by the time I get there.
Actually, it's 11:29 am in England right now. So she's been at work for 3 1/2 hours. But she may have left me an offline message.
Still...
I had a GREAT Halloween this year! One for the books! And my baby told me she had one of the best times with her best friend that she's had in a long time! Whatever is going on now, whatever is up ahead, we both still have Halloween!
And then one day (maybe next year? dare I hope?) we will have Halloween TOGETHER!!!
:D
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