HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! :D

Okay, it’s early, early December 31st as I write this, but I thought I would check in and let you know how my Yule is going…

So…

Friday, December 21, 2007: I take off for my week with Tisha. I head out around midnight and give her a call to let her know I’m on the road.

As I drive the dark Texas highways, I’m listening to Jim Butcher’s GRAVE PERIL, the 3rd book in the Dresden Files series.

Okay, that’s creepy enough…

As I drive, I come across a huge set of gray tracks that seem to be made by mud and seem to lead from the wooded area onto and up the road. Miles later, I come across a similar set of tracks (leading from the woods onto the highway).

Now, I realize I’m very likely being creep-ed out because I’m listening to a horror story written by a master and read by a genius (James Marsters). But still…

The moon is ASTOUNDINGLY full! So much so that it kind of blinds me to the road, once I’m out of city limits and ambient light.

It’s just this BIG FULL MOON.

And as I drive down the road, I keep seeing these corpses along the side! I mean, I see a few that are definitely animals (deer, raccoons, etc), but there are a few that are so large and shapeless that they might be HUMAN remains!

This is the way a horror movie might start out! (A good and scary one!)

The story and the moon and the gray tracks and the carcasses all combine to freak me out just enough that even when I stop in a small town for a refill, I’m pretty sure this is the scene when I first meet the creature pops out for the first time and I begin my long, terror-filled dash across Texas to escape this thing, lol.

Saturday, December 22, 2007: Around 8:00 am I’m in southern Lubbock and get off the loop a tad too soon, then spend some 20 minutes trying to find my way to the road that will take me to Levelland.

It’s a pleasantly moody morning, with dark, pregnant clouds, and I notice that the car’s thermometer is registering freezing temperatures outside. As I finally figure out where I am and get back on track, I notice that it’s actually snowing! (None of it’s sticking to the ground, but who knows…)

I call Tisha and she lets me in, and I lay down to take a nap, but I don’t really get to before she wakes up a few hours later.

I bought a sausage & egg burrito on my last gas stop, so I’m not really hungry when she gets up and makes herself some eggs and bacon. I chat with her as she has breakfast.

Now, there is a huge jar of brine (you know, that light green salt & vinegar water that pickles hang out in) sitting on the table, as well as an Applied Physics & Chemistry book and a few other odds and ends that must have found their way there over the course of a busy week.

So as Tisha eats her tasty-looking breakfast and we chat, she casually reaches over, unscrews the lid to the plastic vat-o-brine AND DRINKS IT! Just as normally as though it were a glass of orange juice!

I ask her, “Did you just drink that brine?” And she looks at me questioningly, apparently unable to comprehend why this might be considered odd behavior.

The conversation somehow veers back to where ever it was before my daughter took a huge swig of brine, and the subject doesn’t come up again until a day or two later, when I find out that indeed, yes, my daughter drinks brine. It is, apparently, a bit of delicacy to her…

I’m not judging, mind you… When I was 17 I had a ceiling full of dangling green 7-Up 2-liter bottles and pizza boxes tacked to my ceiling and walls. We do what we do when we’re young, and I delight in Tisha’s quirks! (I’m not particularly worried about Tisha becoming a victim of peer pressure, lol.)

After breakfast, Tisha teaches me some Chemistry, finally – after all these years since high school Chemistry – making me understand the practicality of the Periodic Table! (You have a chemical that behaves a certain way, and you want to create a chemical compound that behaves this certain other way, you quickly refer to the Periodic Table to find what chemicals will combine with the chemical you’ve got. Kind of cool, actually.)

Saturday night, I make plans to treat all 4 of us (Tisha, Connie, Dale and me) to a drive-in double feature of I AM LEGEND and AUGUST RUSH.

I fall asleep that night to THE ARISTOCATS. Very nice end to the day. :)

Sunday, December 23, 2007: I wake up before everyone else (except Connie, who is a nurse and had to be at work early). So as I lay on the air mattress laid out for me, the Christmas tree lights winking on and off, I watch MICKEY’S ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS on my iPod.

A very Yule-Tide-y experience! :)

No one else is awake yet, so I play some Texas Hold ‘Em, Bejeweled, Majong, Music Quiz and Solitaire on my iPod until it needs to be re-charged.

I called my Gnomey Goddess and got to talk to her for a while as she wrapped presents!!! :D xoxoxo

(I LOVE YOU, BABY!!!)

Then folks wake up and we spend the day… Um… Doing stuff. I really don’t remember exactly what, because what I’m really looking forward to is the night, and going to the Stars & Stripes Drive-In Theater!

DUDE!!!

Okay, first of all, I GOT TO WATCH A DRIVE-IN DOUBLE FEATURE!!! :D I haven’t done that since I was maybe 6 or 7 years old!!! The last movie I remember seeing at the drive-in was the 1977 remake of KING KONG! (You know, Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges and Odo from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.)

Secondly, I got to watch this double-feature with my daughter!

Thirdly, I AM LEGEND RULED!!! I read the script that was written in the ‘90s – when Arnold Schwartzenegger was planning to star in the flick – and this is pretty much that movie. But in that script, the vampires had a whole society, more like THE OMEGA MAN and this film keeps the vampires more monster-like, in keeping with the original novel. And the ending is almost a 180 from the novel, but it’s GOOD! It’s a really deep, emotionally satisfying movie! (As well as being all bad-ass and cool!) I think that if you enjoyed I, ROBOT you will probably enjoy this one.

Finally, AUGUST RUSH IS A PERFECT MOVIE!!! :D

I knew NOTHING about this flick! Tisha was excited when she discovered that it was the second feature, and described it to me: An orphaned boy who is into music believes that if he continues to play music his parents will be able to find him.

And my thought is, “Huh?”

But Tisha really wants to see it, and I’m thinking that I REALLY want to experience the whole double-feature thing, so what the heck, right?

THIS MOVIE WAS MUSIC!!!

I’m serious, the images and story serve this gorgeous collection of score and songs that almost never stop throughout the whole film! It’s not like the film is a musical or an extended music video, the movie IS MUSIC! It’s as though someone who is really, really into the magic of music said “Why don’t we make a movie that IS music?”

I was encouraged by the opening credits: The story was by someone named Paul Castro and by Nick Castle. Nick Castle was the original Michael Myers (known as The Shape in the screenplay) and then went on to write ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, HOOK (“screen story by”), and ESCAPE FROM L. A., and direct THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE BOY WHO COULD FLY, and DENNIS THE MENACE!!! The screenplay was by Nick Castle and James V. Hart. Hart wrote HOOK, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, MUPPET’S TREASURE ISLAND, CONTACT, TUCK EVERLASTING, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE and SAHARA!!!

These are storytellers I trust!  Between the two of them, they have given me hours of cinematic joy! Some of it really definitive for me, too!

Also in the opening credits, I note that Keri Russell is one of the stars (I’ve been crushing on her since FELICITY and can’t watch enough of her!) and there is an “and Robin Williams” credit, which means that he may not get as much screen time as one might hope, but his role will be important!

Oh, and William Saddler’s in it!!! (He’s the bad-ass evil guy from DIE HARDER and the bad-ass sheriff from ROSWELL and The Reaper from BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, just to name 3 of his almost infinite list of great roles!)

All very good signs if you’re going into a flick you know nothing about!!!

Plus, the flick begins with gorgeous music and a boy’s voice stating that music is everywhere if we just listen.

Very encouraging!

The titular star is played by Freddie Highmore, whom you may know as Peter from FINDING NEVERLAND or Charlie from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY! This is a TALENTED KID!!!

I spend the next 100 minutes, or so, drawn deeper and deeper into this emotionally stirring fable that I could never do justice to if I tried to explain it to you!

Afterward, I’m texting friends and telling them they have to see this movie, and I discover that women – somehow – already want to see this movie.

HOW?!!

I mean, after I see the flick I remember having seen one – ONE – 30-second spot on TV that just DID NOT grab my attention in the slightest!

So how is it that women know about the film and actually WANT to see it?

I mean, turns out they’re RIGHT. It’s a BRILLIANT movie! I was so moved I had Tisha (who drove us) stop at Walmart so I could buy the soundtrack. But how did they know?

When we get back, we finish the day with Stephen King’s THE STAND! :D

Oh, that’s right! Okay, earlier in the day (the part I couldn’t remember) Dale and I watched TV while Tisha crashed in one of the comfy chairs next to us, and THE STAND came on. He had never seen it, so we watched. But it’s, like, 5 hours long or something, so we had to stop watching it before it was time to go to the movie.

But they own it on VHS, so after the double-feature, we resumed the flick.

It’s worth mentioning that they have this HUGE TV with surround sound, so watching stuff on TV there is like watching it at a movie theater! That was the first time I watched THE STAND and it felt like I was watching a movie! (As opposed to a made-for-TV mini-series.)

I don’t remember what I fell asleep watching that night.

Monday, December 24, 2007: Christmas Eve was ridiculously relaxed, lol.

The 4 of us going shopping for the Christmas feast. We watched THE POLAR EXPRESS on their big-ass TV, and the movie was so much better that way! (I didn’t see it at the theaters, so that was my first big-screen viewing of it.)

Tisha kept popping in Christmas movies, and we watched, and they were fun.

Dale stayed up all night, cooking the turkey so that we could eat before 6:00 pm, and I stayed up chatting with him. They had been given a bottle of Crown Royale as a Christmas gift, and I think I had 2 (maybe 3) glasses. I finally crashed after the sun started coming up and so…

Tuesday December 25, 2007: I woke up to a very annoyed Connie and Tisha, yelling at me to wake up, lol!

Dale had an excuse: He was cooking the turkey.

I did not.

I became conscious as we all opened our presents, then we watched the last half of THE SANTA CLAUSE 2, which was really fun! AND, the movie was playing again immediately after (on one of the cable networks) so we watched it from the start.

I called Brian to see how he liked the LEGO STAR WARS: THE GAME I had left for him to open. He seemed excited about it. (Kelly had recommended it to me. He’s been playing it on his PSP and loves it.)

The meal was AMAZING, and I regret that I didn’t have enough room to have 2 or 3 huge helpings of everything!

Then we digested while watching more Christmas movies.

It was a really nice Christmas! It was intimate (I prefer small gathering to huge crowds; I’m just like that), and it was well relaxing! Spending Christmas with Tisha is usually a madhouse with tons and tons of family packed into a single house. But this year was just the 4 of us.

I believe we all went to sleep fairly early that night, lol.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007: Dale and I watched a marathon of THE UFO FILES while Tisha slept in one of the comfy chairs.

I kid you not, that’s how we spent the day after Christmas.

That night, Tisha and I went to see SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET and it was GREAT!!!

It was a great deal more bloody than I expected. I’ve seen the play live once, and a video recording of the Broadway version (the one starring “Mrs. Potts” as Mrs. Lovette) a couple of times, and I was shocked and surprised by all the blood.

I later figured out that it’s because the play doesn’t use blood. The killings are kind of mimed. It works in the play just fine, so you never notice it.

But on screen, when you actually put the blood in at the appropriate times, the movie becomes a true horror flick! ;P

One of my presents to Tisha was a Liar’s Dice set. Brian & Tommy & I have had so much fun playing this game that I wanted Tisha to own it!

A surprising amount of my relationship with Tisha involves us playing games – just the 2 of us or the 2 of us and her family or the 2 of us and her friends. When she was into Pokemon, I had a couple of starter decks, and we played every time we were together for several years. I keep a “travel version” of Clue with me at all times (it’s basically the game without the board) and Tisha and I have played that more times than I can remember.

So after we got back from the movie, I taught Tisha Liar’s Dice with her new set (it’s a replica of the cups and dice Davey Jones’s crew used in POTC: DEAD MAN’S CHEST) and we played for hours!

She won the first couple of games, but then I had a lucky run AND SHE CALLED ME A WHORE!!! lol

That was a shocking thing, being called a whore by Tisha, lol! (I believe my response was “Yes, but don’t tell Wendy” which made Tisha laugh.)

(Note To My Gnomey Goddess: I’m not really a whore, baby, I’m a nympho slut. More accurately, I‘m YOUR nympho slut. ;P )

After half an hour or so, some of Tisha’s friends came over and joined the game. I don’t remember who won the most games, but I’m tempted to say Tisha did. We all played for about 2 more hours, until it was entirely too late for them to be there, lol.

Thursday, December 27, 2007: After the game, Tisha and I stayed up talking until Connie got up for work. I said good-bye to everyone and hit the road before the sun was up. (Only about an hour earlier than I was originally planning to head back, really.)

I resumed listening to GRAVE PERIL on the trip back, stopping in Early, Texas for an hour-and-a-half nap.

The audiobook finished up just after I pulled into my parking lot. I had time to check the mail and unload the car as the book ended. (Very convenient timing!)

Back home, Brian’s at work, so I call him, then Tish and my Mom and let everyone know I arrived home safely.

Um…

Then the last few days have been a blur, lol.

There was drinking… I met my friend Lothar in SL for a while… Did a bit of writing…

Ooh! Brian & I watched Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN and all the behind-the-scenes stuff! That was cool!

Since today is New Year’s Eve, I didn’t drink yesterday. (Thought I might want to sober up a bit before I ring in the New Year, lol.)

Last night, Brian cooked-up these Uber-Burritos: Beef, fajita chicken, refried beans, tomatoes, black olives, guacamole, sharp cheddar cheese and sour cream!

HEAVEN!!!

We chowed on too much food while watching the first 8 episodes of LOST: Season 2.

VERY cool! :D

(Yes, I know, we’re so behind on LOST. But we don’t have cable or a TV antenna, so we watch our shows on dvd.)

Oh, yeah, and the night before last Brian and I caught halfway up on REAPER! The series (well… the 10 produced episodes, anyway) is available on iTunes, and I used some Christmas money to finally buy them all.

And that pretty much catches us up.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and I have no idea how that’s gonna play out, but I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be fun! :D Sci-Fi Channel is having this 48-hour TWILIGHT ZONE Marathon, and Brian thought that sounded cool, so we’ll probably be watching a lot of TWILIGHT ZONE as the new years rolls in.

Other than that, no idea.

Which is just fine by me! :D

HOPE YOU HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! (And tons of fun in the remaining few hours of 2007!)

Happy Kwahanimas!!! :D

I'm really kind of just checking in. Not much to report.

Got some love from my Gnomey Goddess recently!!! And been chatting with my daughter in preparation for my upcoming visit.

Brian & I have been watching a bunch of Chjristmas dvds, lol. This weekend we watched A Chipmonk Christmas and The Pink Panther Christmas. (The former is pretty week -- but we saw it on TV back when we were kids -- and the latter is WEIRD!!!)

And when THE SIMPSONS MOVIE was released on dvd, I snatched it right up! I've seen it 2 or 3 times now, not including all of one audio commentary and maybe half of the second audio commentary. Brian's seen it more times than that!

Um...

I've re-read STORM FRONT, the first book of the Dresden Files, and I'm re-reading FOOL MOON, and I spent the weekend burning the third and forth book on cds so I can listen to those on my way to Tisha's.

And...

I'm plotting my novel, but that's coming along a bit too slowly for my taste. :( When I get back from seeing Tisha I'll have a few days off still before I return to work. I'm hoping 3 or 4 days of serious concentration might help me out. The story is sort of tearing off in tiny chuncks every week. I'm hoping a really good tug might pull the bulk of it free, so to speak.

And, um...

I MISS MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! This is the second Christmas we haven't been able to spend together. I'm hoping this novel might make a huge stride toward being able to afford to see her face-to-face, but I don't realistically anticipate being done with the first draft until next summer.

I mean, I don't mean to whine here. My baby loves me so well that even a little goes a LONG way! (And my baby doesn't know how to love just a little, hee-hee. :D ) But still...

Like, she's been working really hard and never getting any rest, and I SO wish I could be there to make her feel all groovy and refreshed in between shifts! (I can be VERY refreshing when I'm trying, hehe.)

Blah.

Okay, maybe it's not a great idea for me to simply sit down and write when I don't have something specific to report, lol. I may say too much when I'm just rambling.

Okay, hope you're making the most of your Yule Tide!!!

PEACE!!!

:D

Kille The T-Rex!!! :D

After completing TR LEGEND, I am now obsessing over TR ANNIVERSARY.

I mean, obsessing!

This morning, before going to bed, I loaded the soundtracks to TRA and THE CRADLE OF LIFE (the second TR flick) onto my iPod so I can listen to the music.

I also have a couple of the trade paperback collections of the Top Cow comic series -- The Merlin Stone and Saga of the Medusa Mask -- and I stuffed those in my bag in case I feel the need to READ some TR.

No idea why I can't get Tomb Raider out of my head, but I can't.

It's really weird!

Well...

Not THAT weird for ME... but...

Anyway, so now I'm on a quest to conquer TRA.

Where I got stuck when I first tried to play through was the damned tyrannosaurus! I thought I had gotten past it, but it turns out I hadn't.

I've played the first 2 1/2 levels through several times now, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with the controls, so I decided to take on the T-Rex 3 days ago...

...and I finally killed it today before work!!!

YAY!!!

With the T-Rex down, it shouldn't be much longer before I'm through "Peru - The Lost Valley", the third level.

Then I only have 11 more levels to clear, lol.

GOT A CALL FROM MY BABY WEDNESDAY!!! :D

I almost missed it, too.

I had gone to bed a bit early (around 7:00 am) and she called around 8:00 am. I sorta, kinda woke up to the ringing but I wasn't up to answering the phone. But then a minute or two later the phone beeped to let me know that I had a voice message. So I checked to see who was calling me (and what time it was) AND IT WAS MY BABY!!! :D

So I quickly called her back and we had a nice conversation!

That pretty much made my week. :D

She's such a li'l hotty!!!

AND...

I still have the voice message she left, so I can listen to it whenever I want, hee-hee. :)

Okay, I should get back to work.

Hope you're having a FANTASTIC WEEKEND!!! (Only 26 hours until my weekend begins!)

I Finished TOMB RAIDER LEGEND!!!

This is the first non-PC-version of a Tomb Raider game that I've completed.

I had TOMB RAIDER REVELATIONS on our Sega Saturn, and I lost interest in that one fairly early on.

Never played TOMB RAIDER CHRONICLES.

I have TOMB RAIDER: ANGEL OF DARKNESS for PS2, but the gameplay on that one is really annoying. It's similar to RESIDENT EVIL gameplay, only with RE you're shooting mostly. Somehow it seems to work for RE.

But when I think of TR I think of leaping and swinging and jumping out of the way of boulders and bounding off crumbling bridges and things.

As well as shooting, hehe. :)

But the company that produced TR Legend and TR Anniversary abso-LUTE-ly got the gameplay right!!!

AND I JUST FINISHED THEIR FIST INSTALLMENT!

:D

Originally, I got stuck in Kazakhstan (with the Tesla gun, if you're familiar with the game) and then TR Anniversary came out, and I figured I would end up finishing that one first.

But then I got stuck in the Lost Valley (which surprised me since I've played the original TOMB RAIDER through COUNTLESS times. I mean, yeah, this is a new game, but the levels -- and even the many of the secrets -- pay homage to the original game) and put that down for a while.

Anyway, this last week and a half I've become obsessed with TR Legend, and I've been playing it for an hour or two at a time, until today.

I woke up, finished this week's chapter, then started playing around 4:30 pm. I started at the beginning of Kazakhstan, and I ended up playing through the level!

So I kept going...

And ended up playing through England!!!

By this time it was, like, 11:00 pm and I had had 2 large glasses of coffee and nothing to eat. So I paused the game and made myself some food, took about 5 minutes to digest, then I kept going.

I played through Nepal, dying SEVERAL times because it's a level of trap after trap after trap! You shimmy across an icy ledge and it crumbles just as you're leaping to another ledge, which itself crumbles; but you just barely leap to a path which crumbles beneath you as you run and you get to the end and leap to a pole that you can only swing on once before IT crumbles!

lol

It's really quite exciting. When you get to Nepal you really get a sense that you're at the very end of the game!

But I kept playing, and Brian crashed just before I played it through.

Often when Brian & I are both off, he'll sit and watch the game, chatting with me. It's nice to have conversation reminding me that this is just a game in parts, and it's REALLY COOL to have someone yelling with me when I die or when I JUST BARELY execute a difficult move! It makes it feel more like a sport, lol. Or any action movie.

Brian was in the chair and I was on the couch -- our normal positions when we're both hanging in the living room -- and he woke up while I was just starting Bolivia Redux, the last level. I actually played a bit of that level on my feet, moving from the couch (where Brian sleep) to the chair, lol. :D

Luckily for me, the last level is mostly cut-scenes, and the fighting is very instinctive. I don't know if I could have survived another long, drawn-out, trap-filled level, lol.

And then the game was over and I had WON!!!

:D

YAY ME!!!

I think it will be a while before I get back into TR Anniversary, though, lol.

I think I'll just savor my triumph for a while. ;)

Not that the medium really makes a difference, but it does kind of FEEL different. You know?

I Look Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer!!!

AND WILLOW!!!

:D

Don't believe me? See for yourself!



As a Joss Wheadon fan, I couldn't be more delighted!

I also, apparently, look like Sam Neil, so that's groovy! (I've always wanted to run screaming from dinosaurs! Weird little fetish of mine.)

And Ashton Kutcher, too!

I certainly don't mind being considered to be in his league!

And I've had a crush on Diane Lane since I was in my early teens.

Now I know why, lol!



Brendan Fraser doesn't surprise me, though. I've been told we look alike since ENCINO MAN.

Which is cool, 'cause he's SUCH a brilliant actor!

I am a little surprised to discover that I look like Britney Speares, however.

Didn't see that one coming. (Not that I thought I resemble Sarah Michelle Gellar or Alyson Hannigan, lol.)

AND ANYKIN SKYWALKER!!! I was obsessed with Darth Vader growing up! So it's cool that this face-recognition software says that if Vader had taken off his mask, he would have looked like ME! :D

(Wait a sec... He did take of the mask... And he was all gnarly looking. Hmm...)

I love technology and the Internet!!!

:D

Howdy Friends & Lovers

Actually... There's only one lover, hehe....

AND I GOT TO TALK TO HER FOR QUITE A WHILE AFTER WORK!!! :D

Talk about a GREAT start to my weekend!!!

I came home and I was just about to plop into bed without signing onto the Net, but I signed on (just to be safe) AND MY GNOMEY GODDESS WAS ONLINE!!!

This has been a groovy week...

I was scheduled to go in for some over-time Tuesday, but I ended up going into work Monday, as well. But the groovy part is that a single day off suited me just fine this week!

usually I'm very protective of my time away from work, but with my baby working so much lately, it didn't bother me going in 2 extra days.

So that's cool!

I'm 2 days away from the deadline of my next chapter, and I still don't know what I'm gonna write, lol.

But that's kind of the way it seems to be going... I think about it casually from Thursday up till Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday I get serious and the next leg of the novel presents itself.

So I'm not really worried.

My baby says that's just my process, and I suspect she's right. :)

When I'm not working I've been playing Tomb Raider Legends A LOT, watching PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLDS END, and listening to the 2005 Broadway revival soundtrack to SWEENEY TODD!!! Those tunes just keep flitting through my noggin. I never know when to expect one of them, or which one it will be, lol.

GOOD music, though! (I don't think anyone has ever questioned Stephen Sondheim's brilliance, lol.)

Like many, many people in the world, I am eagerly anticipating the Big Screen adaptation due out this month.

Unlike many of those people, I'm not merely excited about it because of Johnny Depp...

My friend Tommy was in a production of it at the Globe of the Great Southwest, a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre back where I grew up. If memory serves, the ONLY reason I went to see it was because Tommy was in it.

I didn't know Sondheim's work, and the it was promoted as Sweeney Todd -- not Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street -- so I figured I was going to be watching this girly musical.

MAN, was I surprised!!!

This would have been back in (or around) 1990 or 1991, and I wasn't as deep into Horror as I was as a young teen or as I am now. But there has always been a little Dark Side in me (as far as entertainment goes, that is; not interested in it in Real Life) and I simply couldn't believe what was going on up there on stage, lol!

It's STILL edgy, in 2007!!!

But beyond the gran guignol aspects of the story, there was (is) deep PASSION in that play! And Sondheim's music cuts to the core of that passion, filling you up and making you want to sing along with the characters emoting on stage!

Really brilliant!

Then , and I confirmed this with my ex-wife last night over the phone -- for whatever reason, she and I listened to the soundtrack (the original Broadway cast from 1979, with Angela Lansburry as Mrs. Lovett) over and over again!

So the play is tied up with a bit of my history, to me.

And I've been a fan of Tim Burton since EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, and he has let me down so often... But if he does what he does -- the moody, dark, gorgeous visuals -- and doesn't step on the story, the film version of SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET should be POWERFUL!

And if it's not... I can just go back to the soundtrack, lol.


Okay, I think it's about time for me to start thinking about bed, so PEACE!!! :D

"Heartburn Changes Everything"

A commercial made this (rather bold, I feel) statement.

Everything, apparently...

This is alarming information.

If heartburn changes everything, then apparently I don't even have to have it to be affected!

If heartburn only changed things for the person suffering from it, it wouldn't change everything. It would change "everything related to the person who suffers from it."

But this ad stated that heartburn "changes everything".

But then... I've noticed that there are some things in my life that haven't changed. My shoe size is the same. My bedroom appears to be the same. My love of pizza appears not to have altered in the slightest.

So maybe -- just maybe -- the writers of this commercial didn't mean everything. Perhaps they were merely over-stating for dramatic effect.

Even still, this is alarming news to me!

Even if heartburn merely changes almost everything, that's still a VERY POWERFUL disorder!!!

This means that a team of dedicated research scientists got together and made a list of all the things that heartburn changes, and all the things that heartburn doesn't change, and the list of things that heartburn changes IS LONGER!!!

I would seriously like to see this list!

I need to know exactly what heartburn changes! (It could be vital to my future!)

For instance, does heartburn change how much I make?!! Does it alter my middle name?!! Does heartburn change my Gnomey Goddess's feeling for me?!!

Good God, my ignorance of what all heartburn changes could alter my reality as I know it!!! :O

And this doesn't even address the issue of HOW heartburn changes the things it changes!!!

In fact, come to think of it, maybe heartburn doesn't change everything for the worse! This data was not revealed in the 30-second commercial spot... Maybe heartburn changes something for the better!

For instance, in what way does heartburn change my income? Does it give me MORE money?

If so, I may become a fan of heartburn!

And in what was does heartburn poverty in Third World countries? Maybe heartburn cuts down poverty there.

Again, if this turns out to be the case, I gotta give kudos to heartburn!

WELL DONE, HEARTBURN!!! :D

I'm also curious to know how heartburn changes contact with alien races...

For all we know, heartburn might smooth over any misconceptions aliens might have gathered about the human race from observation -- you know, like what our tendency to war with each other might accidentally lead them to believe about our temperament and state of mind as a species -- and convinced them that we're really quite groovy people after all.

In which case, I <3 HEARTBURN!!!

Heartburn REWLZ!!!

You know, I was starting to get tense about the direction of human society -- what, with the sinking of the US dollar, Global Warming and the proliferation of Reality TV shows -- but now, thanks to heartburn, I think we're all gonna be just fine!

THANK YOU, HEARTBURN!!!

AND GOD BLESS US, EVERYONE!!!

:D

7 Days Later...

Hey, sorry it's been a while. Now that I'm writing, the weeks seem to just zoom by! It's nuts.

But cool! :)

DUDE!!!

Remember me blogging about having RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on my iPod? Well now I have BATMAN BEGINS and SPIDER-MAN 2, as well!!! :D You should totally check out this guy Alpha Geek's article on how to do it.

I'm going through my KISS dvds now. I figure I need at least one KISS concert with me at all times.

OH!!!

Okay, here's the REAL news this month...

DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY IS ON THE AIR!!!

Well, that is to say... It's not... At the moment...

Here's the thing...

Okay, back in July I discovered that Dirk Maggs and Above the Title Productions was adapting the Dirk Gently novels (and completing the unfinished third novel) for 3 BBC Radio 4 series. And when I discovered that there were 2 sources: One said the first series would air in December 2007, the other said the series would air in January 2008. So as to not make myself crazy with anticipation for the next 5 or 6 months, I put Dirk Gently out of my mind.

(Well... Not entirely... I re-read both the books first. THEN I put it out of my mind.)

So Wednesday I wake up with this burning need: I must know the status of the Dirk Gently series!

I mean, it's December now (well, it almost was on Wednesday), so even if the series doesn't start until January, it would be good to know if it's, like, January 5th or January 30th. Right?

But I couldn't check it out until I found a slow period at work.

I do a quick Google, and find THIS...

I MISSED THE FIRST SERIES!!! :(

Man it sucks not being able to get BBC Radio here.

However... There was kind of a bright side...

I missed the first series by SO MUCH that the cds are already available! So that's cool.

And if the cds are available, maybe there are download-able mp3s available, as well!

So I search...

The BBC Shop has it for £9.99, which is roughly US$20.00 or $25.00. I can't afford that this paycheck (this is the rent paycheck), but maybe next one.

Amazon UK has it for £9.59. Save a buck or two there...

But both of those options mean I have to wait FOREVER to hear this series, about which I am now positively OBSESSED.

Then I remember my mp3 download sources!!!

I go to Audible.com, where I find it for $20.35! And with that there's no shipping charges! (And I don't recall, but I'm guessing shipping from England would probably tack on another $5. So Audible.com is not only more convenient, but also cheaper!)

Then I make a mental note to check iTunes when I get home! When I do, I find it on iTunes for $17.95 or something. EIGHTEEN BUCKS!!!

I listened to the entire series before I went to bed Thursday morning!!! :D

So in less than 20 hours I went from wondering when the Dirk Gently radio series was going to begin, to discovering I had missed the first series, to discovering I could now enjoy the whole series all at once, to having enjoyed the entire series!

Big day for Ray Jay, lol.

I did feel a bit disappointed, none the less.

With Dirk Maggs' HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE series, I got to wake up on Tuesdays, all excited to listen to this week's episode on BBC's website. It was so badass! There's just something novel about listening to it episodically, being forced to wait a week between episodes.

But then I remembered something: I totally missed the Tertiary Phase of HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE. IN FACT, I didn't even know the last 3 HHGG books were being adapted for radio until I walked into a Borders Books and saw the completed series on cd!

So, if anything, my DIRK GENTLY experience is kind of duplicating my HHGG experience.

Which is kind of interesting.

Well... Interesting to me, lol.

So anyway, starting June 26th, visit the BBC Radio site and you can listen to that week's episode for 6 days after the episode is broadcast! If you listen to the trailer (which is the only thing available to listen to at the moment, until the second series starts up) you'll get a good idea of what you're in for.

And, by all means, get your hands on the first series!!! Dirk Maggs is absolutely BRILLIANT!!! The man knows how to make movies in your ears, lol!!! I kid you not, everything I've heard him do (BATMAN: KNIGHTFALL, SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY & BEYOND, FLYWHEEL, SHYSTER & FLYWHEEL, HHGG Tertiary - Quintessential Phases) is EXCELLENT! And since he's doing audio, he's able to tell stories that no film studio would spend the money to do right! Even in animation! I mean, I love the direct-to-dvd movie SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY, but if you want to know what really happened (besides reading the comics, which you should do anyway, lol) then listen to Dirk Maggs' SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY & BEYOND!!!

Okay, I should probably get back to work now.

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! :D

And to all a good night!

We Have Heat!

The last 2 or 3 days have gotten cold in Austin, and Brian & I discovered that out heater doesn't work.

It's kind of quaint, us bundling up and sitting cross-legged under blankets and drinking hot drinks to stay warm, lol. It's like we lived in the Old West or something, before heaters were invented.

Of course, we were listening to disturbed on the main computer while Indiana Jones movies played on the dvd player... So it wasn't exactly like the Old West. ;P

But a repair guy came this morning and fixed the heater, so I woke up having kicked off my covers.

After three days of cold, that was nice. :)

So I wake up and wander out of my bedroom to find Brian in the kitchen frying up a huge pan of meat. He was jonesing for Taco Salad, so he bought the ingredients on his way home from work and made enough for both of us.

Not a bad way to start the day!

Brian, by the way, is a master of flavor! He loves flavorful food, so he makes flavorful food! He'll take a recipe that's really good, then add a couple of spices until it's beyond good! So if you like Taco Salad, you LOVE Brian's Taco Salad!

(I know, I know... we sound like a gay couple, lol. But I remind you, he's my BROTHER.)

As he's cooking I play some TOMB RAIDER LEGENDS -- which is always a great time!!! -- and then after I hop in the shower to get ready for my last day of work before my weekend.

A hot shower isn't as necessary today as it was yesterday (when the hot shower actually raised my core temperature out of lizard level and back up to a temperature more resembling a mamal), but I always prefer warm to room temperature or (egads!) cold.

I towel off, put some gel in my hair, then run my fingers through it until my hair is no longer stiff. Then out of reflex or habit or something I look in the mirror, which is, naturally, opaque with steam.

Only, there are four small sections of the mirror that aren't steamed-up tonight...

They form the numbers 1408.

I laugh, despite myself, and yell out that Brian is a bastard. And when I come out of the bathroom he's laughing pretty hard. He apparently set that up this morning, so the numbers were fresh when I took a shower this evening. In fact, and I told him this, my first thought was to imagine an invisible finger writing the numbers on the mirror as I'm taking a shower!

So... Fed, clean, then clothed, I'm ready for a laid-back evening/overnight/early morning of work.

I step outside, and it's still sprinkling. It had started not long before I left work yesterday, and it was still going! As a result, the night was shiny and sparkley, and the air smelled like a waterfall, and it didn't feel as cold as it had been (though this might just be because I was stepping out of a heated appartment tonight, lol) and I just thought to myself, "What a GREAT way to start my day!" :D

I walk into work and we're airing the last half of THE INCREDIBLES (PIXAR and Brad Bird REWL!!!) and then after the local news SNL is a collection of Thanksgiving sketches from the entire run of the show!

OH! And my friend/co-worker Pete offered me a huge slice of something called Monkey Bread!!!

MONKEY Bread!!! :D

If someone offers, how can you NOT try something called MONKEY BREAD?!! :D

Monkey Bread!!! :D

So life is groovy.

At the moment, actually, I'm a little bit bored. But that's not a bad thing at all! Boredom means that nothing's blowing up, and there's nothing I have to do right this minute!

Boredom means "no drama".

If you're watching a movie or reading a book, boredom is bad.

I'm at work. So boredom is actually GOOD. :)

In fact, if I could remain bored until 2:00 am or so, I might actually get some pages of my the next chapter of my novel written! That would be REALLY good! :)

We'll see...

I hope, as you read this, that you are enjoying a freedom from drama!

And central heating!!!

RAIDERS of the LOST ARK on iPod...

As I type this, I'm watching RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK on my iPod!!! :D

And if you scan Itunes' movies, you will not find it for sale, lol.

I want to share with you how I got it, but please suffice it to say that freeware REWLZ!!! ;D

I want to tell you what I'm workin' with, but I don't know how copyright laws and stuff works, and who monitors what sites, so I will play it safe by not sharing my good fortune with you...

...however...

...suffice it to say that I did not search for long to find the answer to my questions.

Also, as for the ethics of making a copy of the movie for myself...

I bought the movie on VHS 3 times, and on DVD once, so I don't believe I'm violating any moral codes in using freeware to put it on my iPod, lol.

Umm... What else...

I watched RATATOUILLE on iPod. Have I mentioned that yet? (I've posted a couple of times, but one or both of them may not have actually posted...)

Also, I found an above-average Indiana Jones pocast HERE. It's a 4th Indy Jones "movie" in 9 parts. decent acting, GREAT sound effects and great music. The writing is sort of fan-fic natures, and the acting is -- depending upon the actor -- anywhere from acceptable to actually good.

I'm all Indiana-Jones-obsessed becase (a) Indy reminds me of Thanksgiving for some reason and (b) the 4th movie's initial production wrapped October 12, 2007.

Okay, I need to get to bed now. My bebe has said she should be able to hang with me this weekend, so I want to get some sleep and be up before she goes to bed.

PEACE!!! :D

Remember Me?

Hey, there!

I've been busy. ;P

I mean it; for reals!

I've finished chapters 2 and 3, watched FANTASTIC FOUR: THE RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER, THE HOST, RATATOUILLE, Season 1 of THE WEST WING and re-read just over half of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

AND I've gotten some Gnomey Love in that time, too! :D

So... Busy boy, I've been.

Hey, has anyone noticed that the Disney Corporation has NO IDEA how to advertise PIXAR's movies?

Actually, it's something that My Genius Friend Dave brought it to my attention. He keeps up-to-date with all many of animation goings-on, and he mentioned that part of the deal between PIXAR and Disney is that they get to market PIXAR's flicks.

Only, they have NO IDEA HOW!

Okay, maybe I'm old or something, but since MONSTERS INC. I haven't been drawn to see a PIXAR flick.

I'm serious!

I mean, I know they're PIXAR and I TRUST PIXAR to tell me a good story, but I didn't see CARS or RATATOUILLE in the theaters.

Why?

Because with all the movies being trust at us every month of the last few years, there are other movies with better trailers that make me want to see them.

I mean seriously, when you saw the commercials for RATATOUILLE, did you say "That looks like a great story!" or did you go "Brady Bird! He rocks!" Or, more likely "A new PIXAR movie!"

If you know who Brad Bird is, you probably wanted to see it because of him: He worked on THE SIMPSONS for years, then made THE IRON GIANT and THE INCREDIBLES before RATATOUILLE.

If not, then you just thought "PIXAR movies are ALWAYS great" and that's what got you into the theater.

I seriously doubt you saw the commercials or trailers and thought "Aw! A cute rat making food in Paris! I SO wanna see THAT!"

Blah.

Just venting.

OH! And because of My Genius Friend Dave I've noticed that Robert Zemekis is actually doing quite a bit to change the American public perception of animation!

Check it out:

Filmmakers in the States think that "animation" and "family entertainment" are synonymous. Cute animals and family values and (too often) singing.

But anyone who has watched good Anime knows that that simply isn't true.

Creative folks in the East have used the medium (not "genre" but "medium"... there's a huge difference) have used Anime to tell stories that not only deal with highly sophisticated themes and ideas, but that kids wouldn't WANT to sit down and watch.

I'm not even talking about Hentai, here. I'm talking about SERIAL EXPERIMENT LAIN and PARANOIA AGENT. You can't tell me that kids know what's going on in those shows because MOST ADULTS are challenged by them! They're these extremely cerebral DRAMAS!

And yet, here in the States we still equate animation with children. Wtf?!

But Zemeckis is making a certified effort to change that.

Okay, THE POLAR EXPRESS could easily be placed in the Family Entertainment genre. ("Family Entertainment", by the way IS a genre. "Animation" is not. Just clearing that up.) And if you never saw MONSTER HOUSE, you could easily slip that in there, too.

HOWEVER...

Zemeckis's intention become a little clearer with MONSTER HOUSE... It actually has many elements of Horror, utilized (in my oppinion) very successfully.

And faithfully.

There are scenes and sequences with that house that are actually scary.

Still, one could argue that MONSTER HOUSE is simply edgier than most children's comedies. And one would have a valid point.

But BEOWULF...

Someone in Hollywood grew a pair of balls, because it's being marketed as a straight-up Action/Adventure!

I mean, seriously, what kids will want to go see BEOWULF?

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if we start reading about parents who took their kinds to see it and complain that it's too scary and too violent. But the movie isn't being marketed as a kids' movie. t's being marketed to appeal to the same folks who went to see 300.

AND IN 3-D, too!!!

Come to think of it, all three of Zemeckis's animated features have been 3-D. Bless him!

Actually, because of the logistic of what it takes to make a 3-D movie, it's really only practical to make them with computer animation, because you can produce and edit your film, THEN go back in and render the additional reels necessary for the Left-Eye/Right-Eye effect. You don't have to rent an extra camera or pay for re-shoots because one of the cameras wasn't working right on-the-day.

So anyway, though...

If BEOWULF does well, America could maybe break off a piece of the animation money that belonged soley to Anime in this country!

AND...

I may one day be able to see what I've been waiting since the '90s to see... 3-D animated HORROR flick! I mean come on! You can tell a story in CGI animation that you couldn't afford in live action! And you could get REALLY scary then! :D

Blah.

Anyway, these are some of the things I think about.

Okay, retreating back into my little cave now.

PEACE!!! :D

Chillin' In The City...

My weekend's been pretty damn cool so far! :D

I've re-written Chapter One, and I like it a lot better now, and this morning I finally broke Chapter Two, which I plan to pound very soon.

But I've been a little busy in SecondLife, as well, hehe.

Not NEARLY as busy as Brian has been, though...

Brian created us a city!



It's HUGE, too!

And I think you'd be surprised by the amount of detail he's gone to.

In the pic above, I'm the dude with the blue hair and the HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE shirt (naturally) and Brian is the evil Martian from MARS ATTACKS! to my right.

He made that avatar, by the way. :)

And, you know, what city would be complete without...



...an invading Martian army?






Ever since I was a kid and learned about Orson Welles's famous (or infamous) 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, I've been a bit obsessed with it.

My imagination was so struck with the idea that, had I been alive and listening to the radio on October 30, 1938, I might have believe, for 40 minutes anyway, that Mars was invading Earth! I mean what BETTER Halloween trick AND treat?!!

As a teen I owned a vinyl copy of the album, and on the back was a brief account of the hysteria that is said to have taken place that night. (Current historians tend to believe that the actual confusion and reactions were probably exaggerated by the media back then, so we can't know how freaked-out people ACTUALLY were.)

I've long lost the album, but I -- naturally -- have a cd version (I think I've bought 2 or three as an adult: I'd buy one, move, loose it, then buy another next Halloween when they were available again) and this Halloween I converted my most recent cd version into an mp3 and have that loaded on my iPod along with Lux Radio's adaptation of the film version and Lux Radio's adaptation of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, hehe. :)

I think what inspired Brian to create these GORGEOUS -- and HUGE -- Martian attack vessles, though, is that I happened upon complete sets of the faces of Topps's 1963 trading card series MARS ATTACKS!!! (The exclamation points there are mine, not part of the title, as in the Burton film version, lol.)

Every single card!

In 1994, Topps reissued the cards and released a comic based on them, so at one time I owned several of the cards and some of the comics. But I never had more than half the set.

So to find images of these cards online was AMAZING!!!

Plus, this came alongside my reading HOW I CONQUERED YOUR PLANET by John Swartzwelder. That novel plays on many of the "invading Martian" and "alien invasion" cliches and stereotypes (to hysterical effect) and that made me wanna play DESTROY ALL HUMANS for a few hours at a time...

And that might have lead to Brian's desire to recreate the MARS ATTACKS! Martians in SL...

Then finding those cards (which I now have as pics in my iPod, so I can stare at them whenever, where ever I go, hee-hee), I think, may have put it over the top.

And it's interesting... When I'm inspired by something I want to put it into words. When Brian is inspired by something he wants to MAKE it, reproduce it in 3 dimensions.

This started LONG before SecondLife. When he was a kid he was taken with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and recreated Freddy Krueger's glove! He's A KID! I mean, he was, like, 9 or 10 when the movie came out!

And then when he was married, I remember visiting him at his apartment and seeing the things he was making with plastic, action figures he altered or customized or whatever (there's a term for that, but I don't remember it right off hand), seeing space ships he had whittled, lol!!!

THEN he discovered FLASH ANIMATION! He was lost inside Flash for YEARS, just always pumping out a new animation whenever he got a new idea, lol. And always trying to do more with Flash than he knew how to do before!

Then we discovered SL a couple of years back, and so now he can create THIS...






You can see us down there in the pic just above... I'm the blue spec and Brian's the green one, lol.

At first, this was just a set of skyscrapers that we could take pictures on. A photo set, basically. In the picture below you can see two of the buildings I created. (But Brian expanded them when he turned the set into a full-on city. So they're his creation, now.) But Brian looked at the tops of skyscrapers and decided he wanted a city you could walk around or drive around. So he made it.

Then we both got obsessed with the ideas invading Martians, lol. (In a playful way, mind you... Not a realistic way.)

So I decided I needed to take a photo tour of the place and share Brian's devilish genius with you! :D



And walking around a city being leveled is hungry business.

So we stopped at a hot dog stand for some grub.






I actually made that hot dog stand! :D

Brian mentioned that he wanted one, and I've been lucky at creating or altering pictures to create textures that save prims (for instance, I might build a phone booth that was made up of 49 prims, take pics of it from all angles, turn those pics into photos, then I can recreate the phone booth with 6 prims), and I had finished rewriting Chapter One and needed a break before I could figure out Chapter Two, so viola!

And, more importantly, Brian liked it!!! :D So it's now part of the city!



After lunch we took a tour of a part of the city most visitors probably will never stumble onto...






That's shallow water, by the way, so you can drive a car or motorcycle around in there! :D

The grate in the ceiling leads up into one of the buildings above ground.

My brother is A friggin' GENIUS!!!

All the nooks and crannies you used to play in as a small child, Brian builds them into the worlds he creates in SL!!! Our lands in SL are his imagination unleashed!

And, being an overgrown kid myself, I get to play and play and play, lol!!!



Life can be SO SWEET!

:D

Talkin' To Strangers...

Okay, so here's an interesting wrap-up to the work week...

The night goes smoothly. Not only does nothing blow up on me, but I actually discover an online cache of SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN episodes, and I get to watch one.

Then I think about a new approach to Chapter One, and I actually get a bit of that written.

All very cool.

When I get home I stop by the mail boxes. (I have this secret belief that any day now I'm going to win a contest or something and fine a big-ass check waiting for me in there. And even if that happens, I might have some Netflix waiting for me.)

As I'm checking the mail, this dude wanders out of the darkness of 6:35 am and up to me and asks if I have a cell phone he can borrow to call a friend to pick him up.

I look over at the guy, and he's young-ish, not wearing shoes, shivering in a tank-top, and had dried blood smeared across his left cheek.

Now, if I know you, I'm a pretty outgoing guy. I'm very open and friendly to people I know.

But if you don't know me, and you approach me, I tend to be cautious.

And I'm told that I can come off as surly, even though that's not my intention. Like my blank expression, when I'm thinking about a story or just letting my mind wander, has caused more than one friend to ask me "Are you okay? Is anything wrong?"

So hopefully I don't come off as too much of an ass, but I have reason to believe that maybe sometimes I do.

But the guy only asked to borrow my phone, and he seems pretty vulnerable and helpless at the moment (although, that's something that always gets my guard up... I've had too many people try to sell me stuff, lol) and I can't figure out any way that loaning this guy my phone for a moment gets a knife in my ribs or anything.

So I hand him my phone.

He dials, like, 5 numbers -- very slowly, I notice -- pausing for a long time in between.

As he's dialing, I'm noticing several smaller cuts and nicks, and small blood stains that don't seem to have a wound beneath them, like they're from somewhere else. (Mind you, he's not covered in blood, Horror-movie style. But there's more than you're used to seeing on someone who walks up to you our of the early morning darkness.)

With all the slow dialing and pausing, Suspicious Guy gets the distinct feeling this guys wants more than just to use my phone. But Suspicious Guy can't figure out what just yet.

Trusting Guy inside me realizes that this guy might not remember any of his friends' phone numbers, because we live in the age of cell phones, where all our important numbers are stored in our phone.

In between dials, Bloody Dude is filling me in on parts of his back-story:

He was hanging with friends last night, and some of these friends jumped him. In the fight, his cell slipped out of his (stylishly baggy) pants. He even voices what I was thinking about not remembering his numbers because they're all on speed dial.

After (what feels like) a really long time of him sluggishly dialing, then sluggishly trying to remember, then sluggishly dialing, and so on, I ask if he remembers his own number.

I'm not being condescending here, I swear. I know a few people who are really smart, but don't know their own phone number. (Why should they? They never call themselves.)

He does, and I suggest we try to find the part of the parking lot where his phone might have slipped out and call it.

As we're walking back to a section of the apartment complex parking lot, I notice that this guy smells like alcohol. I guess that he got took (that's a Kelly Montgomery phrase, "got took", and for some reason I dig it) because he was too wasted to effectively fight back. In my head I concocted a scenario where the guy maybe passed out for a few hours, then woke up not too long before I came along to check my mail. I could totally imagine that happening to me.

It's my Writer's imagination, always trying to fill in the gaps and understand. (Not alawys a useful trait, mind you, lol.)

We get to a section of the parking lot, and he doesn't remember it. So we try another section, then I hand him the phone and he calls.

No luck. In fact, I think I hear that mechanical female voice that tells you if you have any voice messages, and then he pulls the phone away to press a button and listens some more.

Then he remembers that his phone might have slipped out in someone's car or in someone's apartment.

He closes the cell, and starts to apologize for wasting my time (but not yet handing the phone back to me), and Suspicious Guy is really getting the sense that this guy wants something he's not asking for. It's like he doesn't want to be alone again.

But Trusting Guy has the obvious answer...

I ask him if he lives far from here, he doesn't, so I tell him I can drive him home.

It's not freezing in Austin, but if you've spent a lot of time outside overnight in a tank-top and your socks, it can get cold. Every now and then throughout our interaction I notice Bloody Guy shivering. I'm wearing a Jolly Rogers T-shirt and one of my floral over-shirts, but not my jacket, so I can't offer him that.

So after he accepts my offer to drive him home, I'm kind of relieved to be able to turn on the heat for him in the car.

On the ride to his apartment, I listen as he sort of carefully rambles. I even add to the conversation where I can, opening up just a hair. I can use a smoke and I offer him one, and he accepts.

It's not a long drive, but I feel ever half-second of it. The guy seems like a nice enough guy, if almost tragically naive on one or two levels.

But... No more naive than I was in my early 20's or late teens. (I am, after all, the guy who -- at 20 or 21 -- left his wife and child in Texas thinking that I could get a job acting in Hollywood in 3 or 4 weeks.)

As we drive he fills in more of the gaps:

He went out with friends and friends of friends. He was pretty wasted. His ride left, but he decided to stay and get a ride with a friend. He seemed to be getting along quite well with a girl. This sort of impromptu party kept moving, stopping to get more liquor from time to time, and before he knew it his friend (the one he had planned to get a ride home from) was gone. Before the night was over, the girl is flirting with this other guy. Then this other guy starts wailing on Bloody Guy. The fight subsides -- or so Bloody Guy thinks -- but then This Other Guy starts back up again. And poor Bloody Guy is too drunk to be able to really react to the sudden introduction of violence into what had previously been a really cool Saturday night.

Just as I'm finishing my cigarette and before he's finished his, we're in front of his apartment.

He's very appreciative and I assure him he owes me nothing, I just suggest he get some sleep.

And then I'm here, blogging about the experience.

One thing that's really cool about being a writer is that I can tell 2 completely different stories from my single experience: The first would be where I'm in Bloody Guy's shoes, and the second is where I'm in my own shoes, only Bloody Guy turns out to be malevolent.

And all I did was let a stranger borrow my phone and then give him a ride home.

Poor guy, he got a (hopefully) valuable Life Lesson out of the night, and that's all.

Now, I'm not saying I'm gonna go capitalize on this guy's pain. But it's an interesting realization for me to discover that despite my extreme lack of financial wealth, I do have riches elsewhere. (Not even counting the value of knowing to be careful about whom I get drunk around, because that was a lesson I earned, lol.)

And another odd/interesting aspect about this encounter: Doing a nice thing for someone who's in a bad situation isn't hard. I mean, if he were looking for money out of me, he'd have been S.O.L.. But ultimately, all he needed was transportation home. And that was no problem for me -- I was off work and just about to begin my weekend; what may have seemed like a big-ish favor to him was really no trouble for me at all.

Blah.

I don't have anything profound for you here, just sharing the experience because it was rather out-of-the-ordinary, and usually all I have to share with you is what dvds I watched in the past few days, lol.

Btw: THE HOST rules!!! My friend Lothar loaned it to me and I watched it last night ("yesterday morning"... before I went to bed) and it WAS SO COOL!!! :D

Also, Lothar loaned me the latest Frank Burly novel, which I hope to start on this weekend. But I've got the first chapter of my own novel to rewrite, and hopefully a second chapter to write. So I don't know how much reading I'll get done this weekend.

Good Week So Far :)

This is going to be another boring one, sorry.

But life is groovy here!

I started thinking about Chapter Two (due Tuesday) last Wednesday. I came up with about 3 pages of notes about the characters and the world. Thursday and Friday are always busy, but I was actually able to write several more pages of notes tonight.

So that's cool.

I still don't have my "hook" for Chapter Two (that thing that excites me and makes me feel confident it will excite my reader), but I still have a couple of days to come up with that. The first chapter was super short, so I want this second one to be meatier, and therefore would prefer to start working on it as soon as Sunday.

But creativity comes in it's own time, so I'll just have to be patient.

Stephen King visualizes The Muse as a stubby, fat, cigar-chomping little bastard who comes and goes as he pleases (which is never when you feel you need him).


So King recommends we settle down to the blank page with technique and skill, and while we're in the midst of just doing the best we can, The Muse pops in and does his thing.

This, I feel, is probably excellent advice.

Only, until now, I really didn't have any idea what King meant about applying "technique"... As far as I'm concerned, I can't apply technique to my writing unless I have something to write.

But now I'm starting to think that "technique" is -- among other things -- whatever devices you use to make story appear. You don't know what happens next? Pick something and make it the best you can, and get going. As you work to write something compelling and interesting (if I understand the theory correctly) The Muse will eventually show up and give you what the story really needs.

I mean, I dunno... We'll see...

That's why I need to have someone willing to kick my ass if I don't turn something in every week: I have no idea what I'm doing, lol!

Okay, I need to do some more work. (Work work, not writing work, sadly.)

I'll try to check in soon, even if I don't have anything cool to report.

PEACE!!!

:D

So Chapter One Is DONE!!! :D

I was going to wrap it up today, but when I reread what I had written, I discovered that there was really nothing I could add to it!

Very cool! :D

Now I need to figure out Chapter Two.

I'm writing this the Stephen King way, meaning that I simply write chapter by chapter, rather than plotting the whole story out first. He feels that the story comes out more organically that way.

We'll see.

With screenwriting you really kind of need to know everything first. There are those that would argue that point, but I find that when I've written pages without a good solid outline, the finished product just isn't as good.

My baby's back from dinner, so I'm gonna chat with her for a bit! :D

PEACE!!!

10k Fists

Have you heard Disturbed latest album?!!

OMG!!!

I am SO obsessed with Ten Thousand Fists!!! I can't get several of the songs out of my head!!!

DUDE!!! Their cover of "Land of Confusion"...!!! PERFECT!!!

In the '80s when I heard the original Genesis version, it stir something DEEP within me that I can't describe. but then when I heard the Disturbed cover... I just almost came all over myself, lol!

It's BRILLIANT!!! :D

Got me some Gnomey-love! :D

I've caught her online a few times before work, and she's texted me, too! :D

OMG she is a PERFECT woman!!! I kid you not! This woman is AMAZING!!! Just a little bit of love can last me for WEEKS! And Gnomey never gives just a little bit of love!!! :D

Bless her!

Also, I just wrote the first part of the first chapter of what may well be my first novel!!! I've written, like, 75 pages of a novel before, in the early '90s, but I never finished it.

What I'm working on my be my first COMPLETED novel EVER! :D

It's a "space opera" type story, and my friend Sharla is helping mae sure I complete it! :)

(Well, as I write this, I don't have her final confirmation. But she seemed pretty enthusiastic when I proposed the idea.)

But I gotta tell ya, it felt REALLY NICE hangin' out in that un-Earthly jungle as I wrote the first part of the first chapter!

I swear, I must be a writer, because I SO ENJOY the feeling after I've written a thing! I mean, I fight against writing when I'm not doing it, but after I've written a bit, I feel like a GOD!!! lol :D It's really weird!

I mean, writing a bog entry is cool... But it's basically "Dear Diary, Kimmy said she maybe likes me too..." lol. But creating a piece of fiction that I think may entertain someone else... There's just something DIFFERENT about that!

Not to take away from the blog! Please don't misunderstand me! With the blog I am just 100% myself, and I appreciate the fact that ANYONE might read my ramblings, lol!

But there's a different FEELING about writing fiction...

I can't describe it.

The blog is my interpretation of events that actually happened. But when I write fiction, it's COMPLETELY of my invention! In the case of my current project, it's 3009 and I've created the entire future history of the planet Earth, as well as the history of 5 colonies of humans that have immigrated to the planet Virgo...

You can see how that might be more ego-stroking than just reporting the uneventful envents of my life, right?

Anyway...

Brian is off to work, and I've already gotten to chat with the Love Of My Life, so it may be time for me to go to sleep.

PEACE!!! :D

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

I hope you're having a wicked Halloween!!! :D

Mine is cool so far.

Not turning out anywhere near the way I imagined it, though.

I knew it wouldn't be crazy-fun. Last year Kelly was in town and Tommy & Kelly & Brian and I saw a sneak preview of BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON at the Drafthouse, then had drinks afterward and discussed it and filmmaking in general and all the cool stuff I wish I could do every weekend of my life.

So I knew this year would be a great deal more mellow.

But it's been odd...

First off, I woke up last night, maybe midnight or 12:30 am, and it's 8:01 pm as I write this. So I've been up for a while.

I played plenty of EVIL DEAD and DESTROY ALL HUMANS (the first one) during the wee hours.

Then I layed down to THE NIGHT STALKER and THE NIGHT STRANGLER, the 2 made-for-TV movies that kicked off the TV show KOLACK: THE NIGHT STALKER (which inspired THE X-FILES). Both of those are written by legend Richard Mathison, btw.

I was thinking I'd drift off watching those, then wake up tonight and do my Halloween-thang, whatever that turned out to be.

But instead, I remained awake. And Brian had to go in at 3:00 pm, and he has to go to sleep as soon as he gets home, because he closes the store tonight and opens another store tomorrow morning. So he doesn't get ANY Halloween. :(

So I got this idea that I thought might help him feel a bit more like he's getting a Halloween, and is something I thought I'd like to do sometime today anyway...

I have the first 10 seasons of THE SIMPSONS. That's 9 TREEHOUSE OF HORROR episodes! So I figured I'd put them all in, in order.

So Brian and I watched the first 8 together, laughing at episodes we've seen a million times, as well as ones we hadn't seen before. He had to take off for work about mid-way through TREEHOUSE OF HORROR IX, but I finished that one out.

Then, still not quite ready to drift off, I started watching them with audio commentary, in reverse order (starting with the last one I watched, the 9th one).

That was fun, but somehow watching them with the commentary takes away the Halloween-y mood. (Watching movies and TV shows with filmmaker commentary is something I do anytime, hehe.)

I've got CREEPSHOW playing -- figuring that would bring back the Halloween-y mood -- but I'm not really watching it.

I'm kind of too tired to really have much of an attention span, but not tired enough to take a nap just yet.

Which makes me a bit concerned about how getting up for work tomorrow is going to work.

I did come up with a story concept. That's cool! That's always special, WHENEVER it happens! :)

Oh, and my memory is shot at the moment, but sometime within the past 48 hours Brian and I watched the theatrical cut of 1408! We had seen the unrated "director's" cut (I place "director's cut" in quotes because the director and the writers are perfectly, perhaps equally, happy with both versions of the film) and that was the only cut I had watched.

It was really amazing to see both versions!!! THEY BOTH RULE!!! It's really amazing, because both cuts -- in particular, both endings -- seem perfectly valid to me! You don't see that a lot. Usually, when they include the "alternate ending" on the dvd, you realize that THERE'S A REASON they went with the ending they chose.

NOT the case with 1408!

Moreover, usually when I watch a director's cut of a movie, I prefer it to the theatrical release. If you disliked DAREDEVIL in the theaters, there is every possibility you might actually like the director's cut of it! And with movies like the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, or the unrated version of LAND OF THE DEAD or THE GRUDGE, or the director's extended version of GHOSTRIDER the extra footage just extends the story, makes the movie a richer experience
. (In the case of LOTR: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, the extra 2 hours actually makes the movie FEEL less long, somehow, lol.)

But with 1408, BOTH versions are perfect as they are!

And... I feel weird saying this, but... I think I actually prefer the theatrical ending to the "director's cut" version. I miss the extra story stuff that got cut out of the theatrical release, but I prefer the way it ended in theaters.

Strange.

Plus, if you've ever read a book about screenwriting -- or fiction writing in general -- it has been impressed upon you that there is only ONE correct ending for your story. If your story could end 2 different ways, you didn't do your job right.

And yet... Watching the 2 very different endings for 1408, I would argue that there's a flaw somewhere in that rule.

I watched both versions of BUTTERFLY EFFECT, and I could make an argument that the unrated version is THE RIGHT ending, and the theatrical version is a compromise for the studio. Likewise, the original filmed ending of the first FINAL DESTINATION movie is -- in my opinion -- clearly NOT the right ending, and the one they re-shot was the right ending for that film.

So to watch 2 versions of a great, GREAT movie and see 2 endings that are equally valid is a bit mind-blowing. It speaks to some aspect of storytelling that I need to figure out!

Btw, I reported watching (and LOVING) Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN online...

Well, after I blogged, I did some research (just to answer some behind-the-scenes stuff I was curious about) and discovered that there was a work-print ending that differed from the ending that appeared in theaters! In this case, the work print ending IS NOT, and never was, the real ending. Zombie made this ending to prevent the real ending from getting out before the movie was released.

And the work print ending, as described on Wikipedia.org, is the ending I saw.

So I still haven't REALLY seen the movie. I mean, you and I could have a conversation about it and understand each other, but I saw the fake ending instead of the real one.

But that's okay. I wanted me some HALLOWEEN and I was satisfied.

That just means I have even more to look forward to when the dvd comes out. (I was totally gonna buy that one anyway, no question. Just now I have even more reason to by it THE MOMENT it's available, lol.)

OH! More Halloween goodness: I got a Halloween card from my baby!!! :D I love her so much!!!

Okay... So do I take a nap and run the risk of waking up several hours after Halloween is officially over? Or do I try to stay awake?

And if I stay awake, what do I watch?

I'll play it by ear. (That's my style, anyway, hehe.)

If you haven't already, don't forget to check out this year's Homestar Runner Halloween Cartoon!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! :D

All Hallow's Eve Eve (part 2)

THE GREAT PUMPKIN HAS SMILED DOWN AT ME!!!

:D

And now, that's not a typo in the title. I'm blogging about 3 hours after the entry below.

But I'm blogging because I just got an early Halloween Present from the Great Pumpkin!!!

I was thinking about eating before playing EVIL DEAD: A FIST FULL OF BOOMSTICK, and I wanted something scary to watch while I dined. (Or supped... It's was 3 or 4 in the morning, what's the proper expression? "broke"? Not sure.)

So I go online to see what horror movies I can find...

...and I find Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN!!! :D

You don't understand, this is kind of the Holy grail of movies for me right now!!! I've been dying to see it, but haven't had the time when I had the money, and didn't have the money when I had the time!

Then it was gone from theaters!

The flick appeared briefly online, but I didn't get a chance to watch it before it vanished again.

BUT I JUST FINISHED WATCHING IT!!!

:D

And it was AWESOME!!!

Seriously, Rob Zombie did an AMAZING JOB with it!!!

He took a great (if often very SLOW) horror film and turned it into something profound and SERIOUSLY CREEPY! I mean, it's this sad, macabre tragic story now. Zombie made Michael Myers real, and in doing so made the whole story even more disturbing!!!

But in a good way, lo! In the way you want a horror movie to be disturbing!

I was surprised!

I mean, I've seen great remakes of some of my favorite horror flicks, and I got this feeling that Zombie was gonna pull this one off, but I just didn't expect THE WAY he did it!

VERY fuckin' COOL!!!

And the fact I got to watch this the day before Halloween makes it EVEN COOLER for me!!! I mean, I'm basically a grown kid. I mean, I'm an adult, sure. But I still take a sort of childlike glee in little stuff.

Like when I was 15 or so Mom took Brian and me to see FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER on Friday the 13th! That was THE COOLEST THING for me!

Now, some 22 years later, I got to see the new HALLOWEEN on the eve of Halloween. Just by accident. No forethought, no planning. I just stumbled onto it! :)

When my ex-wife and I were still in high school we went to see HALLOWEEN 5 on Halloween night, but that was intentional. (No less cool, mind you!) (Or was it HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS? I can't remember at the moment.) And Danielle Harris was in this one, as well. :)

Anyway...

VERY COOL!!! :D

So I had to bust in and share this with you. :)

Oh, and if you didn't read the entry before this one, be sure to scroll down. I have some cool links to web-toons to make your Halloween more fun! :D (You can skip my entry, if you want. It's the toons that you'll enjoy the most!)

Ready For Tha 'Ween! :)

The above phrase actually means nothing, lol. Just looking for a title that sounds cool. But I'm ready for Halloween from January 2nd on, lol.

With occasional breaks in the year, such as Towel Day and International Talk Like A Pirate Day. :)

I don't have huge plans this year.

I've taken Halloween off, but Brian works until 10:30 pm Wednesday. Plus I haven't heard of any cool parties that really spark my interest. And I don't have any money so spook houses, movies at the cinema and even drinking if out, lol. So I will very likely spend Halloween watching scary movies.

Which I've been doing for a few weeks now, lol.

But that's cool! I can never watch too many scary movies!!! :D

This is a nice weekend for me... Brian & I got toasted Sunday night and conversed for hours and hours. Then I woke up (oddly) a little after 9:00 am. Brian was in SecondLife, so I popped in Disc 1 of the Steven King mini-series NIGHTMARES & DREAMSCAPES, which is the first 3 episodes. That was really cool!

That was the first 3 episodes of the series, and when it was done I had the strong, STRONG need to DESTROY ALL HUMANS (2), hehe. So from about 2:00 pm to sometime after 8:00 pm I played that game.

My hands were gnarled claws when I finally turned the PS2 off, lol!

Then I popped in VACANCY -- GREAT flick!!! -- and watched the first 15 or so minutes with Brian until my body told me to go lay down.

Then I woke up about 1:00 am.

And now you're caught-up. :)

I think the need to destroy humans as an alien comes from the book I'm reading, HOW I CONQUERED YOUR PLANET by John Swartzwelder. It's hysterical!!! It's inspired non-sense! Whimsical lunacy that keeps picking at you until you laugh out loud -- whether you want to or not!

Part of Swartzwelder's approach to his novels is to just keep hitting you with comedy, paragraph after paragraph. And he doesn't seem to worry too much about the story. Or common sense. Part of what's so hysterical about his sense of humor is that he'll surprise you with the physically impossible. I can't give you an example (I believe quoting even a sentence violates the copyright) but Amazon.com has sample pages for his books, so you can see for yourself what I mean. :)

But in this book, Swartzwelder plays on all the fun cliches about Martians and alien invasion fiction in Pop Culture, going all the way back to H. G. Wells' 1898 novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS! And a lot of those cliches come from the 1940s-1960s Sci-Fi flicks, which is where DESTROY ALL HUMANS gets its inspiration.

It's kind of cool, because it's sort of Halloween-y to me. I can't say why, but for some reason I associate old b/w Sci-Fi flicks with Halloween. And the novel -- while wildly hilarious and not the slightest bit scary -- has that b/w Sci-Fi sort of feel to it.

You know what? I think the association is John Carpenters doing! In the movie Halloween he and Debra Hill throw in EVERYTHING they could think of that they associated with the holiday. One of those things is, apparently, old b/w Sci-Fi flicks! Remember the scene where Laurie Strode is watching THE THING FROM OUTER SPACE with the kids? (While her friends are off getting laid and getting offed by Michael?)

I'll bet that's it.

Because as a kid, I don't remember local TV stations playing '50s horror movies. In fact, as a kid I'd watch Carpenter flicks on HBO, lol! One very cool memory is video-taping HALLOWEEN at my then-girlfriend's house, lol! (That was Network television. HBO had THE FOG or HALLOWEEN II or HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH or a FRIDAY THE 13th installment. That sort of thing.)

And our local TV stations also didn't have a Late Night Horror Movie show. :( I never got to watch some local TV personality dress up in a cape and fangs and intro old horror flicks, making lame jokes just before the commercials aired.

An outrage, I tells ya!!!

I think I was born a decade too late for that. Or just born in too small a town.

Anyway...

Luckily, I've got a VAST library of horror flicks on dvd, so I don't need to rely on a TV station for my Halloween entertainment! :) In fact, I could watch almost all the HALLOWEEN flicks back to back, lol!

Or, instead of going to a spook house, I could spend a few hours playing some of my survival horror games! I haven't picked up any of them in a while. (Believe it or not, I've been a bit too scared to, lol.) RESIDENT EVIL 4 and SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM both have a tendancy to creep me out real good, lol. :D

OOH!

It was SO COOL waking up tonight! I woke up, checked the date to see if it was Monday still or Tuesday -- my usual habit when I wake up on Tuesday night -- and when I discovered that Sunday and Monday were both, indeed, behind me I realized that I'm off Wednesday too!!!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!!

After 2 days off, I still have 2 days off!!! :D

Not to rub it in to those of you who are just looking at another Hump Day.

ESPECIALLY my Gnomey Goddess, who is working a 60-hour week! (I'm so sorry, baby!!! xoxoxo)

Ooh! Another cool thing about this Halloween...? My baby's going to a party in a skimpy red vampire dress, and she promised me pics!!! :D

How GREAT is SHE?!! :D

OH, HEY! Here's a Halloween-ish treat I stumbled onto a few nights ago: 26 animated episodes of Roman Dirge's LENORE: THE CUTE LITTLE DEAD GIRL!!! These are short and cute. The animation isn't the greatest, but it's in keeping with Dirge's style, so they look pretty. I think sometimes the animator steps on the punchline, but you can get the overall flavor of Dirge's humor.

In case you don't know, LENORE is a Slave Labor Graphics comic book, usually made up of lots of 1-page to 6-page comics. But it's got that "Underground Comics" feel, very Goth. Along the lines of Jhonen Vasquez books like SQUEE or JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC. In fact, Dirge was one of the writers on Vasquez's TV show INVADER ZIM! So they have a (generally) similar humor.

The toons are shorts, so you can watch a bunch of them in a sitting.

Also, if you're in the 'Ween mood -- or want to get into it -- don't forget Homestar Runner!!! They've released this year's Halloween toon!!! :D And it's ALWAYS a blast to go back and watch the older ones!

In fact, I'll link to them individually, to make it easier on ya:

Homestarloween Party (2000)
The House That Gave Sucky Treats (2001)
Pumpkin Carve-nival (2002)
3 Times Halloween Funjob (2003)
Halloween Fairstival (2004)
Halloween Potion-ma-jig (2005)
Happy Hallow-day (2006)
Jibblies 2 (2007)

Also, if you go here you can see what's new on the site. Click on the "Holiday" button on the remote control and you can watch a Fluffy Puff Marshmallow Halloween commercial, or an old-timey short "That Darn Ghost" or see some Halloween costumes made by fans.

AND... Don't forget that the first 2 years, The Brothers Chaps included games to can play while you wait for the toons to download! I guess Net connection speeds significantly increaced by 2002 becaused they stopped doing it. (Or maybe they just got tired of it, lol.) But I have killed hours at a time playing those games before the cartoons, hehe. :)

You know what I could use right now? A few hours of zombie slaying in EVIL DEAD: A FIST FULL OF BOOMSTICK! :D That's a cool, moody game! Not as intense as a Resident Evil or a Silent Hill, but just fun and Halloween-y! :)

Better go limber up my game claws...

CAT BOWLING!!!

Have I shared this Halloween Flash game with you?

CAT BOWLING!!!

It's BRILLIANT! My mom forwarded it to me, and I can't play enough of it!

The first time I played I scored, like, an 86! That's probably my best bowling score ever!

Well, up to that point...

I recently score, like 150 or so.

Hold on... Let's see how I do tonight...

Game 1: 95

I mean, that's not bad... But...

First frame I took out two, then picked up 7 more on the second pass.

Second fram, I'm a bit demoralized by the way the game's starting out, but it's okay. Just not stellar, as I kinda hoped. Stiil, I take out 6, the pick up 2 more.

Third frame... STRIKE!!!

Forth frame... STRIKE!!! Wah-hoo!!! Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about! :)

Fifth frame: 2 on the first throw, then I pick up 6 more. Not pretty, like the last 2 frames, but still quite respectable.

Sixth frame: GUTTERBALL! BOTH times! :( I'm not making it into the triple digits this game.

Seventh frame, I knock down 3, then pick up 1. ONE!!! :( SO not pretty. (However, those 4 points raise my score from 65 to 69... So I take some consolation in that.)

Eigth frame: 7, pickup 2.

Ninth frame: 7, pick up 1. I'm back into vaguely respectable territory now, but there's no way I'm getting that 100+ score I really want.

Last frame I take out 4 on the first go, then pick up 5. 95 is a decent score... Much better than I could do in real life!

Still...

I want that 100+...

Game 2...

Frame 1: 6/1=7
Frame 2: 2/5=14
Frame 3: 6/1=21
Frame 4: 4/5=30
Frame 5: 6/2=38 I can't pick up a spare TO SAVE MY LIFE! :(
Frame 6: 5/4=47
Frame 7: 0/7=54 A spare would have been REALLY USEFUL here...
Frame 8: 4/5=63
Frame 9: STRIKE!!!=81
Frame 10: 6/2=89

This, sadly, better reflects my actual real-life bowling abilities. If you take out the strike, that is. And put in a few more goose-eggs.

Game 3: 115!!!

I was gonna do a play-by-play, like with the first game, but as I set up the frames (like above) the music -- WHICH NEVER STOPS -- got annoying, so I closed the game page... THEN I REMEMBERED THAT THAT'S WHERE ALL THE INFO WAS!!! lol

But it started weak with the first frame, then I got a strike on the second frame, then a whole lot more weak up until the eigth frame...

...then on the eigth frame I got another strike!

Then on Frame 9 I got ANOTHER strike!!!

But then my usual weak sauce on the last frame.

Still... 115!!! Triple digits!!! :D

Um...

If you haven't figured it out yet, work is going well tonight, hehe. :) SO well that I'm bored.

Which is how I can spent my shift giving you play-by-plays of my Cat Bowling, hee-hee. ;P


You've GOT TO click on the link (above) and play it yourself! It is SOOOO fun!

I should probably get off the computer for a while, though. Starting to feel guilty, so I think I'm going to go create work for myself, hehe.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

(I know it's not Halloween yet, but since this is the weekend before, I'm sure many of you are in costume, partying as though it were Halloween.)

:D

BLOODSHOTS 2007 "Blindspot"

IT'S ONLINE!!!

:D

If you're curious to see the short film Tommy & Brian & I made back in September, HERE IT IS!!!



Hope you get a kick out of it!

In Case You're Curious...

VACANCY rules!!! :D

VACANCY is what I watched today (Tuesday, still, for me), along with a handful of MEDIUM: Season 3 eps.

I think VACANCY's theatrical release was hurt by the other horror movies that came out around the same time. The way I remember it, it looked like a classy movie, and who can NOT love Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson?!! But when you offer me a movie with ghosts or other supernatural monsters or a movie with sick humans doing sick things to other humans, I'm going with the supernatural horror flick.

Plus, the threat of the movie is extremely brutal psychos, and I suspect a lot of the people who go to see movies about extremely (or, XTreme, bra') brutal psychos probably go for the gore.

But this flick isn't really an exploitation film, per se. It's a REAL movie.

AND IT'S REALLY SCARY!!! :D

Yesterday, Brian and I watched a made-for-TV adaptation of Stephen King's DESPERATION, and it was okay. It was directed by Mick Garris, who's filmography reads like an abreveated list of King's bibliography, lol: DESPERATION (2006), RIDING THE BULLET (2004), STEPHEN KING'S THE SHINING (1997), THE STAND (1994) and SLEEPWALKERS (1992).

Actually, that's a very abreveated list. For some reason I was thinking he had directed more than that. Still, I think he's directed more King adaptations than anyone else so far.

Blah.

Anyway, DESPERATION was okay. I wouldn't call it scary, but I would call it watchable.

After that I watched RIDING THE BULLET, and that was pretty good visually.

I like the novella a great deal better, though. The novella creates this mood, like a classy horror story kind of mood! The movie is SURPRISINGLY faithful to the original text (MUCH to Garris's credit!!!) but it has a sort of tongue-in-cheek mood.

Not my brand of horror.

Although, I have to give Garris credit for having directed PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING! For some reason, I really like the Psycho franchise, even though most would argue that there should never have been a 2nd, much less a 3rd or a 4rth. But I don't know... something about the character of Norman Bates and the location just keeps me coming back!

And the theme music!

I'm not talking about the famous REE-REE-REE-REE theme you think about when you think of PSYCHO. I'm talking about the VERY HAUNTING and beautiful themes created by jerry Goldsmith for PSYCHO II and Carter Burwell's haunting and beautiful themes for PSYCHO III.

In case you don't recognize the name second... I didn't either. I had to look him up. I've seen about 22 of the movies he's scored, but the only 2 scores that jump out at me are A GOOFY MOVIE and PSYCHO III. But if you follow the link to his IMDb entry, you'll find that he's done A LOT of composing for The Coen Brothers. Since the beginning, actually.

So that's got to give him some filmmaking "street cred".

But like I say, I prefer his themes from PSYCHO III.

I guess maybe the Psycho movies are a guilty pleasure of mine, hee-hee. :)

IN FACT... I'd almost forgotten this, but I've actually read all 3 of Robert Bloch's novels!

No kidding!

There's the first one, written as a pulp novel in 1959. The famous 1960 Hitchcock movie is really quite faithful to it. But the big difference that I can remember is that Norman Bates is middle-aged, pudgy and bespectacled in the novels.

Then in 1982, I'm guessing it's about the time that Universal Studios (and, presumably, Anthony Perkins -- since he spent a large chunk of his career haunted by the character) Bloch wrote his PSYCHO II, which the studio hated. It takes place on the set of a film made about Norman Bate's life and crimes (though NOT, if I remember correctly, the Hitchcock movie; like, some alternate-reality movie about Bates).

The book and the movie both did well, so Bloch wrote PSYCHO HOUSE in 1990. I remember liking that a little bit better. Probably because it went back to the original location. (A lonely motel off a forgotten highway in the middle of the desert.)

But the novel sequels veer way away from the movies, the way recall them, in that it's not about the continuing saga of Norman and his struggle with sanity. I don't mean to spoiler them for anyone, but I want to say Norman didn't do it in the last 2.

I was too young to appreciate them when I read them, but I'm guessing they were Bloch's social commentary on society, NOT a horror series.

I should do some research, come to think of it. I no longer own any of the books. But I'd like to have my memory jogged about just how things went down.

Blah.

Anyway...

Well, it's getting time for my baby to be headed to work, which means it's about time for me to head to bed and call this weekend "complete".

Not a bad weekend, really! :) I watched a bunch of flicks, a few REALLY GOOD! Got a text from my sweety! (My phone ran out of juice, and when I turned it back on after recharging it, so I lost it. :( But I remember getting one!)

Not bad! :D

Hope you have AN EXCELLENT day!!! :D

(And My genius Friend Dave, I hope you're getting LOT'S of PERSONAL work done, sir!)

(And My Gnomey Goddess, I LOVE YOU & MISS YOU!!! xoxoxo)