Gnomey Goddess just went to bed & I COULD NOT love her MORE!!!
She's just such a SWEETY!!!
Our schedules have kept us apart for the last week or so, and I missed SO MUCH! It's really amazing to me how just chatting with her, just catching up and stuff, fills me with such joy!
I don't know how she does it! It boggles the mind.
Oops! I forgot to ask her if her time has changed!
Our time changed earlier than usual, so for the past few weeks I've had difficulty calculating the time difference. But when she popped online I completely forgot to ask her if her time change had happened yet, lol.
Oh well.
DUDE!!! If you get a chance, see ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING done by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg!!! I saw HOT FUZZ finally and LOVED IT!!! I wish they had more material for me to watch, lol! I've got 11 of the 14 (total) episodes of SPACED on my iPod and have watched them all several times now! And I just re-watched SHAUN OF THE DEAD again and listened to the audio commentary! And these guys -- as well as Nick Frost and Jessica Stevnson -- are all just BRILLIANT!!!
Also, if you liked the film version of THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, you can see Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy (Artur Dent and Slarty Bartfast, respectively) in both films, as well!!! (Also, you absolutely WILL NOT recognize Bill Nighy as POTC: DEAD MAN'S CHEST's Davey Jones, as he's beneath a ton of makeup and is such a fabulous actor you won't recognize his voice even, lol.)
But watching SHAUN again and HOT FUZZ is really cool because, being a Yank what I know about contemporary British comedy is THE OFFICE, LITTLE BRITAIN (thanks entirely to Gnomey) and SPACED... And there's this one great scene in SHAUN where Shaun and his band of survivors passes and old friend and her band of survivors (which mirror's Shauns, lol). The old friend is Jessica Stevenson (which is hysterical because if you're watching SHAUN after having seen SPACED you really do get a feeling of 2 old, dear friends reuniting) and her band is peopled with Martin Freeman from THE OFFICE (and HHGG; AND in Shaun's band is Lucy DAVIS from THE OFFICE), Julia Deacon from SPACED and Matt Lucas from LITTLE BRITAIN!!! It's brilliant!!! Watching SHAUN this time, that one short scene almost made my head explode, lmao!!!
Blah.
I'm just geeking out now, aren't I?
So yeah, I so recommend catching up on anything and everything Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have made so far! It's just really smart, really funny stuff! (Unfortunately if you're in the States you can only watch SPACED online, or if you buy an imported dvd series and have a region-free dvd player. But you can enjoy SHAUN now -- if you haven't already -- and HOT FUZZ when it comes out here on dvd, which it SURELY will do!)
Okay, well I have a pizza in the over, so bye for now. :)
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Never Experienced THAT Before...
Okay, so I'm outside at work, having a smoke, and the new Morning News director gets out, lights up and joins me.
We're having a casual, cool conversation about how he's doing (I've heard gret things from one of the directors that has been at the station the longest) when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.
Now, since January I've heard firecrackers going off now and then. As recently as a month or so ago.
This was louder than what I'm used to hearing, and there are only 4 blasts... but seriously, what are the odds it's the other thing: gunfire?
I posit that it's probably fireworks and am about to explain what I just told you when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP.
I count... 7 blasts. If it were a gun, it wouldn't be revolver (or would it? I really don't know guns). It's only the big guns that fire more than 6 rounds, isn't it?
The new director -- or maybe it was me -- start to say something else when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP, ZING.
That's a gun!
We're right next to the door we usually use to get in and out of our section of the building, but to enter that way would directly expose us to the direction the blasts are coming from. (And, as I mentioned before, this is loud, so this is CLOSE.) So we bolt around to the oposite side of the building, where the News department resides.
As we run -- impressively quietly in addition to swiftly -- we hear a final...
POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.
Or it might have been 5 blasts.
We try our card keys on the News door, knowing they won't work, but the 2 producers manning the News department and preparing the morning newscast buzz us in.
We tell them what happened and I call 911 from my cell. The conversation is short and after the cop gets the info he tells me there are already units on the way and asks if I need anything else.
After getting back inside the building I'm flooded with the adrenaline of the full realization of what has just happened.
I mean, it's not like whomever was shooting was shooting at me, but STILL! That was a first for me!
Later, the director said it sounded like a 22 (is that a b-b gun? What are b-b guns called?) which makes me think that maybe someone who lives next door to the station saw a possum -- there are plenty around here, particularly in nice weather like we're currently experiencing -- and that makes more sense than a sniper randomly firing in the wee hours of the morning.
But the station is just right down the street from UT and the infamous "Whitman tower".
Blah.
Anyway, half an hour or more later I haven't heard or seen anything else, and have no more information about what happened. I just went back out for a smoke (I really needed one... I didn't get to finish my last one) and came back inside without incident.
Still... Creepy! I've just about always lived in the suburbs. I'm not used to hearing gunshot so close to me.
And I'm sharing this with you in hopes of getting it out of my system so I can better focus on my job. Which I need to get back to, hehe.
PEACE!!!
And may you NEVER hear gunshots in real life, whoever/where ever you are!!!
:D
We're having a casual, cool conversation about how he's doing (I've heard gret things from one of the directors that has been at the station the longest) when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.
Now, since January I've heard firecrackers going off now and then. As recently as a month or so ago.
This was louder than what I'm used to hearing, and there are only 4 blasts... but seriously, what are the odds it's the other thing: gunfire?
I posit that it's probably fireworks and am about to explain what I just told you when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP.
I count... 7 blasts. If it were a gun, it wouldn't be revolver (or would it? I really don't know guns). It's only the big guns that fire more than 6 rounds, isn't it?
The new director -- or maybe it was me -- start to say something else when we hear...
POP,
POP,
POP, ZING.
That's a gun!
We're right next to the door we usually use to get in and out of our section of the building, but to enter that way would directly expose us to the direction the blasts are coming from. (And, as I mentioned before, this is loud, so this is CLOSE.) So we bolt around to the oposite side of the building, where the News department resides.
As we run -- impressively quietly in addition to swiftly -- we hear a final...
POP,
POP,
POP,
POP.
Or it might have been 5 blasts.
We try our card keys on the News door, knowing they won't work, but the 2 producers manning the News department and preparing the morning newscast buzz us in.
We tell them what happened and I call 911 from my cell. The conversation is short and after the cop gets the info he tells me there are already units on the way and asks if I need anything else.
After getting back inside the building I'm flooded with the adrenaline of the full realization of what has just happened.
I mean, it's not like whomever was shooting was shooting at me, but STILL! That was a first for me!
Later, the director said it sounded like a 22 (is that a b-b gun? What are b-b guns called?) which makes me think that maybe someone who lives next door to the station saw a possum -- there are plenty around here, particularly in nice weather like we're currently experiencing -- and that makes more sense than a sniper randomly firing in the wee hours of the morning.
But the station is just right down the street from UT and the infamous "Whitman tower".
Blah.
Anyway, half an hour or more later I haven't heard or seen anything else, and have no more information about what happened. I just went back out for a smoke (I really needed one... I didn't get to finish my last one) and came back inside without incident.
Still... Creepy! I've just about always lived in the suburbs. I'm not used to hearing gunshot so close to me.
And I'm sharing this with you in hopes of getting it out of my system so I can better focus on my job. Which I need to get back to, hehe.
PEACE!!!
And may you NEVER hear gunshots in real life, whoever/where ever you are!!!
:D
Friday, March 16, 2007
Have You Seen ALF TALES?
DUDE!!!
The 1960s through the 1980s is know to animators as a blight on the nobel tradition of their artform, particularly because the bulk of the animation created in those 3 decades fell into what is popularly known as the Saturday Morning Ghetto. Most animation was "limited animation" created for Saturday morning cartoons.
And most of it was bad.
Very bad.
Incompetent doesn't come close to describing it. (Particularly in the '60s & '70s.)
However, every once in a while you got a production company that really, honestly wanted to produce a quality product. And since they couldn't animate Disney style (the only game in town at that time, in the States anyway) they tried to compensate with their writing.
And sometimes, THEY SUCCEEDED.
And thus, I give you ALF TALES!!!
I have fond memories of ALF TALES and ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES from when I was 16 and 17. I WANTED to like the ALF live-action series, but I really just couldn't. It didn't make me laugh. It was a bad sitcom, and there was just no way around it. But in 1987 ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES premiered on Saturday mornings, and I was shocked how genuinely funny it was!
So when I read something last year that said that some of the episodes from ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES and ALF TALES were going to be released on dvd, I had to buy them...
Eventually...
After all, my memory was probably making the show better than I remembered, right? I mean, when I was a kid I liked the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY. I didn't even have to reach adulthood to be embarrassed by these 2 choices... Watching them as a teen showed me the err of my ways, lol.
But today in the mail, I received the ALF TALES dvd and sat down and watched a few episodes, and I have to say it's STILL funny!!!
Not always laugh-out-loud funny, but ALWAYS amusing and fun. And I can now appreciate how smart the writers and animators were.
Even though the animation is limited animation, the layout artists tried to make sure that even if you're looking at an almost-static frame you're at least looking at an interesting angle or composition.
And the writers!
It's as though they watched the live-action show, figured out why it wasn't funny, then fixed it so it would be! The writers are really smart. For instance, their version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place in a big city named Sleepy Hollow and is done like a 1940s newspaper movie, lol! (Ichibod Crane is going to the Big City to be a newspaper photographer for the Daily Hemisphere.)
I well can't wait for the ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES dvd to arrive because even though ALF TALES got some critical attention back then and the original series didn't, I recall enjoying the original series more!
So that should be fun!
If you get a chance to check out either dvd DO SO! If you're into retro toons or just wacky stuff, you'll get a kick out of it. The humor feels pretty restrained compared to what's on Adult Swim nowadays, because this was a Network program and (ostensibly) intended for children -- but I suspect the producers were really just aiming for ANYONE who was into animation.
PEACE!!! :D
The 1960s through the 1980s is know to animators as a blight on the nobel tradition of their artform, particularly because the bulk of the animation created in those 3 decades fell into what is popularly known as the Saturday Morning Ghetto. Most animation was "limited animation" created for Saturday morning cartoons.
And most of it was bad.
Very bad.
Incompetent doesn't come close to describing it. (Particularly in the '60s & '70s.)
However, every once in a while you got a production company that really, honestly wanted to produce a quality product. And since they couldn't animate Disney style (the only game in town at that time, in the States anyway) they tried to compensate with their writing.
And sometimes, THEY SUCCEEDED.
And thus, I give you ALF TALES!!!
I have fond memories of ALF TALES and ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES from when I was 16 and 17. I WANTED to like the ALF live-action series, but I really just couldn't. It didn't make me laugh. It was a bad sitcom, and there was just no way around it. But in 1987 ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES premiered on Saturday mornings, and I was shocked how genuinely funny it was!
So when I read something last year that said that some of the episodes from ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES and ALF TALES were going to be released on dvd, I had to buy them...
Eventually...
After all, my memory was probably making the show better than I remembered, right? I mean, when I was a kid I liked the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY. I didn't even have to reach adulthood to be embarrassed by these 2 choices... Watching them as a teen showed me the err of my ways, lol.
But today in the mail, I received the ALF TALES dvd and sat down and watched a few episodes, and I have to say it's STILL funny!!!
Not always laugh-out-loud funny, but ALWAYS amusing and fun. And I can now appreciate how smart the writers and animators were.
Even though the animation is limited animation, the layout artists tried to make sure that even if you're looking at an almost-static frame you're at least looking at an interesting angle or composition.
And the writers!
It's as though they watched the live-action show, figured out why it wasn't funny, then fixed it so it would be! The writers are really smart. For instance, their version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place in a big city named Sleepy Hollow and is done like a 1940s newspaper movie, lol! (Ichibod Crane is going to the Big City to be a newspaper photographer for the Daily Hemisphere.)
I well can't wait for the ALF: THE ANIMATED SERIES dvd to arrive because even though ALF TALES got some critical attention back then and the original series didn't, I recall enjoying the original series more!
So that should be fun!
If you get a chance to check out either dvd DO SO! If you're into retro toons or just wacky stuff, you'll get a kick out of it. The humor feels pretty restrained compared to what's on Adult Swim nowadays, because this was a Network program and (ostensibly) intended for children -- but I suspect the producers were really just aiming for ANYONE who was into animation.
PEACE!!! :D
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Space Shuttle Update
Space Shuttle Atlantis suffered hail damage not long ago, and the left side of the shuttle is currently being touched-up.
Which is kind of a bummer for me, because now the Atlantis isn't expected to launch until late April.
If you follow this blog -- or follow what NASA is up to -- you know that this is an ambitious year for shuttle missions, as the shuttle program attempts to complete 5 crucial missions in order to ensure the International Space Station is completed by the time the shuttle program retires in 2010.
Now I don't know the logistics, but I'm guessing that this Atlantis mission getting postponed for a month and a half sort makes the 5-mission plan a little tight. I know they started getting ready for the mid-March launch back in late January, so even if they do launch in late April I'm guessing the scheduled late-June launch will be pushed back.
The possibility of which sucks!
I wanna see the ISS completed on time!!!
I mean, if NASA doesn't do it there's still always the possibilty that some corporation will step in and foot the bill... But that will come with strings attatched. :( I'd like to have at least one space station in orbit that is free of corporate influence.
Do I come off as jaded and cynical? lol
I mean, I LOOK FOREWARD TO the commericalization of space flight, because then we'll get a lot more space travel going on! AND (eventually) for competitive prices! Companies will be refining their techniques and machinery to bring their costs down so that they can bring their prices down so that they can crner the market. That's GOOD! That's healthy! Space travel will then FLOURISH!
But the ISS is supposed to be about SCIENCE, and I think the insanity going on with patenting genes and patenting diseases, and their diagnosis and their treatment, demonstrates that commerse and science have NO BUSINESS being together! They should be separated like rival siblings and SMACKED (HARD) whenever they get too close to each other!
But blah.
The point is, I don't know if indeed this rescheduling of the Atlantis launch will have any adverse effects on this years roster of ISS completion missions at all. (Hopefully NOT!!!) I just know that my sphincter is clenced in anticipation and I wait to see if the mission gets pushed back any more.
I mean, I don't want them to rush it, naturally. Our austronauts know the risks when they sign on, but I still don't want anything bad to happen to them! So NASA should -- as they do -- err on the side of safety. But at the same time I REALLY want all 5 of this year's scheduled missions to be successful.
So if you're the praying sort, please offer up a word for everyone working on this Atlantis mission.
PEACE!!! :D
Which is kind of a bummer for me, because now the Atlantis isn't expected to launch until late April.
If you follow this blog -- or follow what NASA is up to -- you know that this is an ambitious year for shuttle missions, as the shuttle program attempts to complete 5 crucial missions in order to ensure the International Space Station is completed by the time the shuttle program retires in 2010.
Now I don't know the logistics, but I'm guessing that this Atlantis mission getting postponed for a month and a half sort makes the 5-mission plan a little tight. I know they started getting ready for the mid-March launch back in late January, so even if they do launch in late April I'm guessing the scheduled late-June launch will be pushed back.
The possibility of which sucks!
I wanna see the ISS completed on time!!!
I mean, if NASA doesn't do it there's still always the possibilty that some corporation will step in and foot the bill... But that will come with strings attatched. :( I'd like to have at least one space station in orbit that is free of corporate influence.
Do I come off as jaded and cynical? lol
I mean, I LOOK FOREWARD TO the commericalization of space flight, because then we'll get a lot more space travel going on! AND (eventually) for competitive prices! Companies will be refining their techniques and machinery to bring their costs down so that they can bring their prices down so that they can crner the market. That's GOOD! That's healthy! Space travel will then FLOURISH!
But the ISS is supposed to be about SCIENCE, and I think the insanity going on with patenting genes and patenting diseases, and their diagnosis and their treatment, demonstrates that commerse and science have NO BUSINESS being together! They should be separated like rival siblings and SMACKED (HARD) whenever they get too close to each other!
But blah.
The point is, I don't know if indeed this rescheduling of the Atlantis launch will have any adverse effects on this years roster of ISS completion missions at all. (Hopefully NOT!!!) I just know that my sphincter is clenced in anticipation and I wait to see if the mission gets pushed back any more.
I mean, I don't want them to rush it, naturally. Our austronauts know the risks when they sign on, but I still don't want anything bad to happen to them! So NASA should -- as they do -- err on the side of safety. But at the same time I REALLY want all 5 of this year's scheduled missions to be successful.
So if you're the praying sort, please offer up a word for everyone working on this Atlantis mission.
PEACE!!! :D
It's Been Almost A Week, Huh?
Sorry I've been away for a bit. I've had me quite a busy 6 days! :D
Um... Where to begin? One of the reasons I used to keep a journal (which has more or less been completely replaced by this blog) is because I have a notoriously bad memory for events in my life. I can tell you arbitrary facts about thinks that happened on the set of a Kevin Smith movie if you mention something related to it, but my friend Kelly often tells me great, funny stories of the distant past staring me, and I laugh as though he were talking about someone else... Which, with my memory, he might as well be doing, lol.
Anyway...
My poor Wendy Lady is suffering a loss in her family, and she was kind enough to send me a text message saying she wouldn't be online this weekend because of it. Poor thing; she's pretty devastated. (It's times like this that drive me most nuts about that whole Atlantic-Ocean thing! I SO wish I could be with her physically, even if I were as useless as I am now, it would just mean a lot to me to just BE THERE for her.) This was Friday.
And would you believe I have seen her -- at least briefly -- every since, hehe. I even got to go dancing with her in SL!
She's so sweet! I mentioned to her that I was fully prepared not to see her for a while, under these understandable circumstances (which I won't elaborate on because it's not my story to tell; it's her life, not mine) and you know what she said? "I thought you might get lonely."
Omg, could I love her more?!! (That's retorical, of course... the answer would be "no", hehe.)
She was already asleep when I got up tonight, but I got to spend some time with her in SL this morning before she went to work. I was just finishing up some clothes I've been making!!!
In fact, that's what I've been doing with a lot of my weekend! I'm making SL clothes!!!
IN FACT...
After I made the Superman avatar last year, I started on a classic comic-book Batman av. Everyone is fond of the black-and-yellow Batman, but I grew up with the blue-and-gray-and-yellow Batman and I REALLY wanted to see him in-world. So I made the tights, the speedoes, the boots and the gloves, as well as a Batman body and a Bruce Wayne head (because I knew the mask would be the hardest part, and was therefore saving it for last) and I got Brian to make the shirt and the cape for me. He also made the utility belt, but I think he did that just 'cause he wanted to make it, lol. I don't remember if I actually asked him to... I think it was just already done one day, hehe.
But since I couldn't finish the costume off at the time, something else caught my attention and I abandoned the idea of a classic Batman avatar.
CUT TO: PRESENT DAY
I don't remember if it was yesterday or today, actually, lol. But recently Brian and I opened a clothing store, because SL sells A LOT of clothing, but usually not the types of stuff we were in-world. (I suspect that the majority of men's clothing in-world is designed by women, lol. So men usually wear dress like well-built dorks or like gay porn stars. But there is no SL Hot Topic or anything.) And we have a friend contributing. I offered to model her men's T-shirts, and I pulled out my unfinished Batman avatar, because he's got a better physique than I do (even in SL, hehe).
When I pulled him out, I discovered that the ONLY bit of the costume I was missing was the mask!!! And I have a template for masks, and I think I might be able to do the mask now!!!
So I spent most of this morning working out the texture for the mask (which, in SL speak, is really the bulk of the work... It's the shape and color of the mask, what the mask actually looks like) and then spent a few hours today working out the kinks (adding the bat-ears and whatnot) AND NOW I'VE GOT A BATMAN AVATAR I CAN SELL!!!
Superman's not alone anymore, hehe.
More than that, now that I have a decent handle on creating "face tatoos" (SL terminology) I can revisit my attempt at an Alice Cooper avatar!!!
Being able to make clothing in SecondLife has just opened up a whole new world of creation for me! I had gotten good at making buildings and making textures (in SL terms; I'm sure I have a lot to learn about "texturing" in CG animation terms), but now clothing, animations and scripting eluded me. Now I can do clothing, too.
I stopped just short of actually putting the Batman av out for sale because the mail arrived and I had 3 Godzilla movies waiting to be watched!!!
Okay, here's my take on the Godzilla franchise:
I LOVE the original GOJIRA and the American version GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. They're monster movies! And for their time, they're AMAZING!
When I was a kid, I remember seeing bits of GODZILLA VS. KING KONG and GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA on TV and I enjoyed what I saw... which, I believe, was probably the last 20 minutes of each, lol.
As a teen, VHS and video rental stores allowed me to revisit Godzilla, and I was APPALLED. I don't remember what I rented, but it was OBVIOUSLY a guy in a suit trampling what were OBVIOUSLY model buildings and wrestilng with some other guy in a suit.
BAD SUITS, TOO!!!
And I remember jokey, cartoony music and supposedly-adorable little kids whose heads I wanted to pop like grapes and teeny, tiny twin babes who existed in these movies for reasons I couldn't begin to fathom...
It was garbage! Nonsensical, campy garbage!
What the hell had happened to the gigantic monster who destroyed Tokyo a lot?!!
Now, I've heard the argument that "that's the fun of Godzilla movies" and my response is "not for me, it's not". Look, I enjoy bad cinema, too... I just prefer that my bad cinema not be intentional! I like to see artists TRY. If you can't be bothered to try to make a good movie then I can't be bothered to watch your movie. And "Camp" is not an excuse... it's just plain LAZY. "I don't know what I'm doing, so rather than try and fail I'll make it Camp."
Whatever.
Sorry... Anyway... In the mid-90s I stumbled onto a remake of GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH on VHS and I had some money, so I bought it and watched it. I figured that maybe now they might be taking the character seriously again, and with 90s SFX Godzilla should look AMAZING.
And the movie was okay. They did take the character seriously, and the special effects were better than they were in the 60s and 70s. It wasn't an exciting movie, and nowhere NEAR scary, but it wasn't an insult to my intelligence, at least. I also watched GODZILLA VS. BIOLANTE, and it was okay, too.
Still, with our SFX here in the States being what they were at the time -- and considering that a lot of the technology we used to get them there was developed in Japan -- I really thought Japanese filmmakers could do a better job.
Then teasers for OUR Godzilla started popping up and I got EXCITED!!! "Finally," I thought, "now I'm gonna see a REAL Godzilla movie!"
Who could have guessed?
I mean, SERIOSULY! They guys who gave us ID4 couldn't give us a real Godzilla movie?!! WTF?!!
To be honest, I really enjoyed the Zilla movie (that's what Toho Studios has dubbed our Godzilla) in the theaters... 3 times.
All 3 times I saw it with my brother, and in packed theaters. But when it came out on VHS and I watched it at home for the first time, I realized that what I really had been enjoying was the spectacle. The movie was like a rock concert with an audience. By yourself it was... every odd-numbered film by Devlin/Emrick, lol. (Or is it even-numbered? I'm not sure.)
So then sometime after I got a dvd player I noticed GODZILLA 2000 and I thought "THIS is IT!!! I'm finally gonna see a Godzilla movie that thrills me and scares me and is a great time!!!"
I was wrong.
I don't remember the story, but the SFX were AMAZINGLY poor! You could always tell when they switched from the man-in-the-costume to the puppet-head, and NEITHER looked like an actual creature! At least with Emrick's movie the monster looked as gigantic as it was supposed to be! This Godzilla looked -- as usual, except for the original film -- like a dude surrounded by miniatures.
So I got my Godzilla fix for years by reading the Dark Horse comics and re-reading the one novel I had from the novel series they released.
Then today... :D
I watched GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL OUT ATTACK!!!
THIS is a GODZILLA film!!!
First of all, the filmmakers knew that Godzilla is supposed to be a horror movie! Secondly, they realized that you need to believe that Godzilla is really, really big in order to really enjoy the film!
I think maybe the director (I don't know his name, but I'll be looking up everything I can find on him soon, hehe) saw our version of Godzilla, then saw GODZILLA 2000 and -- like I did -- wondered why Japanese filmmakers couldn't employ the same storytelling techniques we do to make a GREAT Godzilla flick! These guys made Godzilla POWERFUL!!! And most of the time you're watching the movie you're thinking "If Godzilla were real, THAT is what he'd look like!!!"
Doing some research I learned that ALL OUT ATTACK is the second in what is known as the Millenium series of Godzilla movies. The movies I hate and loath and dispise are known as the Showa series and the "okay" series is known as the "X" series. GODZILLA 2000 kicked off the Milleneum series, but was then followed up in 2001 by ALL OUT ATTACK.
I had rented 3 of the last 4 of the Millenium series, and after ALL OUT ATTACK I was stoked to watch the next one, GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA!!!
Brian had been sleeping, and had woken up about the time that I was ready to watch MECHAGODZILLA so I popped it in the living room (I watched ALL OUT ATTACK in here on this computer) and we watched it...
...and it was okay.
I think filmmakers think of Godzilla films as (1) horror films or (2) adventure films.
The adventure films are wrong and suck.
They often have "cute little kids" in them.
MECHAGODZILLA has pretty good SFX, but you never forget you're looking at a guy in a costume surrounded by miniatures. NEVER. Not for one moment do you get so lost in the action that you forget you're watching a costume movie. EVER.
I'm not excited about watching GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. now. I'm pretty sure it picks up where MECHAGODZILLA left off, and so I'm guessing it's Adventure Godzilla.
And I'm sure the last one of the Millenium series is Adventure Godzilla, too. But I won't take it out of my Netflix queue. (Even if it is merely okay, I'm pretty sure it has Godzilla fighting Zilla, so that should be fun to watch, hehe.)
I'd be curious to go back and watch all the Godzilla movies, just to see if there are more than just the 2 that I like. I mean, seriously: In 53 years were there REALLY only TWO directors (one of whom created the character in the first place) that realized that Godzilla is a horror character? I mean he's a 50-story MONSTER for cryin' out loud!
Blah.
For all my bitching, I really had a great time this weekend. After MECHAGODZILLA I popped in ALL OUT ATTACK and got to enjoy that with my brother, then we watched CASINO ROYALE (EXCELLENT movie!!!) for our second time, and watched all the dvd extras. And that's today! A couple of nights ago I saw GHOST RIDER, which was really cool! And yesterday Brian and I wacthed FLUSHED AWAY which was a lot of fun, and I finally got Season 3 (which is really seasons 3 and 4 combined) of DUE SOUTH! And I'm 10 chapters into LIVE AND LET DIE which is SOOOOOOO much better than the Roger Moore movie!
So life is good! Life is fun!
Okay, my baby should be waking up any minute now, so I'm gonna go wait for her!
:D
Um... Where to begin? One of the reasons I used to keep a journal (which has more or less been completely replaced by this blog) is because I have a notoriously bad memory for events in my life. I can tell you arbitrary facts about thinks that happened on the set of a Kevin Smith movie if you mention something related to it, but my friend Kelly often tells me great, funny stories of the distant past staring me, and I laugh as though he were talking about someone else... Which, with my memory, he might as well be doing, lol.
Anyway...
My poor Wendy Lady is suffering a loss in her family, and she was kind enough to send me a text message saying she wouldn't be online this weekend because of it. Poor thing; she's pretty devastated. (It's times like this that drive me most nuts about that whole Atlantic-Ocean thing! I SO wish I could be with her physically, even if I were as useless as I am now, it would just mean a lot to me to just BE THERE for her.) This was Friday.
And would you believe I have seen her -- at least briefly -- every since, hehe. I even got to go dancing with her in SL!
She's so sweet! I mentioned to her that I was fully prepared not to see her for a while, under these understandable circumstances (which I won't elaborate on because it's not my story to tell; it's her life, not mine) and you know what she said? "I thought you might get lonely."
Omg, could I love her more?!! (That's retorical, of course... the answer would be "no", hehe.)
She was already asleep when I got up tonight, but I got to spend some time with her in SL this morning before she went to work. I was just finishing up some clothes I've been making!!!
In fact, that's what I've been doing with a lot of my weekend! I'm making SL clothes!!!
IN FACT...
After I made the Superman avatar last year, I started on a classic comic-book Batman av. Everyone is fond of the black-and-yellow Batman, but I grew up with the blue-and-gray-and-yellow Batman and I REALLY wanted to see him in-world. So I made the tights, the speedoes, the boots and the gloves, as well as a Batman body and a Bruce Wayne head (because I knew the mask would be the hardest part, and was therefore saving it for last) and I got Brian to make the shirt and the cape for me. He also made the utility belt, but I think he did that just 'cause he wanted to make it, lol. I don't remember if I actually asked him to... I think it was just already done one day, hehe.
But since I couldn't finish the costume off at the time, something else caught my attention and I abandoned the idea of a classic Batman avatar.
CUT TO: PRESENT DAY
I don't remember if it was yesterday or today, actually, lol. But recently Brian and I opened a clothing store, because SL sells A LOT of clothing, but usually not the types of stuff we were in-world. (I suspect that the majority of men's clothing in-world is designed by women, lol. So men usually wear dress like well-built dorks or like gay porn stars. But there is no SL Hot Topic or anything.) And we have a friend contributing. I offered to model her men's T-shirts, and I pulled out my unfinished Batman avatar, because he's got a better physique than I do (even in SL, hehe).
When I pulled him out, I discovered that the ONLY bit of the costume I was missing was the mask!!! And I have a template for masks, and I think I might be able to do the mask now!!!
So I spent most of this morning working out the texture for the mask (which, in SL speak, is really the bulk of the work... It's the shape and color of the mask, what the mask actually looks like) and then spent a few hours today working out the kinks (adding the bat-ears and whatnot) AND NOW I'VE GOT A BATMAN AVATAR I CAN SELL!!!
Superman's not alone anymore, hehe.
More than that, now that I have a decent handle on creating "face tatoos" (SL terminology) I can revisit my attempt at an Alice Cooper avatar!!!
Being able to make clothing in SecondLife has just opened up a whole new world of creation for me! I had gotten good at making buildings and making textures (in SL terms; I'm sure I have a lot to learn about "texturing" in CG animation terms), but now clothing, animations and scripting eluded me. Now I can do clothing, too.
I stopped just short of actually putting the Batman av out for sale because the mail arrived and I had 3 Godzilla movies waiting to be watched!!!
Okay, here's my take on the Godzilla franchise:
I LOVE the original GOJIRA and the American version GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. They're monster movies! And for their time, they're AMAZING!
When I was a kid, I remember seeing bits of GODZILLA VS. KING KONG and GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA on TV and I enjoyed what I saw... which, I believe, was probably the last 20 minutes of each, lol.
As a teen, VHS and video rental stores allowed me to revisit Godzilla, and I was APPALLED. I don't remember what I rented, but it was OBVIOUSLY a guy in a suit trampling what were OBVIOUSLY model buildings and wrestilng with some other guy in a suit.
BAD SUITS, TOO!!!
And I remember jokey, cartoony music and supposedly-adorable little kids whose heads I wanted to pop like grapes and teeny, tiny twin babes who existed in these movies for reasons I couldn't begin to fathom...
It was garbage! Nonsensical, campy garbage!
What the hell had happened to the gigantic monster who destroyed Tokyo a lot?!!
Now, I've heard the argument that "that's the fun of Godzilla movies" and my response is "not for me, it's not". Look, I enjoy bad cinema, too... I just prefer that my bad cinema not be intentional! I like to see artists TRY. If you can't be bothered to try to make a good movie then I can't be bothered to watch your movie. And "Camp" is not an excuse... it's just plain LAZY. "I don't know what I'm doing, so rather than try and fail I'll make it Camp."
Whatever.
Sorry... Anyway... In the mid-90s I stumbled onto a remake of GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH on VHS and I had some money, so I bought it and watched it. I figured that maybe now they might be taking the character seriously again, and with 90s SFX Godzilla should look AMAZING.
And the movie was okay. They did take the character seriously, and the special effects were better than they were in the 60s and 70s. It wasn't an exciting movie, and nowhere NEAR scary, but it wasn't an insult to my intelligence, at least. I also watched GODZILLA VS. BIOLANTE, and it was okay, too.
Still, with our SFX here in the States being what they were at the time -- and considering that a lot of the technology we used to get them there was developed in Japan -- I really thought Japanese filmmakers could do a better job.
Then teasers for OUR Godzilla started popping up and I got EXCITED!!! "Finally," I thought, "now I'm gonna see a REAL Godzilla movie!"
Who could have guessed?
I mean, SERIOSULY! They guys who gave us ID4 couldn't give us a real Godzilla movie?!! WTF?!!
To be honest, I really enjoyed the Zilla movie (that's what Toho Studios has dubbed our Godzilla) in the theaters... 3 times.
All 3 times I saw it with my brother, and in packed theaters. But when it came out on VHS and I watched it at home for the first time, I realized that what I really had been enjoying was the spectacle. The movie was like a rock concert with an audience. By yourself it was... every odd-numbered film by Devlin/Emrick, lol. (Or is it even-numbered? I'm not sure.)
So then sometime after I got a dvd player I noticed GODZILLA 2000 and I thought "THIS is IT!!! I'm finally gonna see a Godzilla movie that thrills me and scares me and is a great time!!!"
I was wrong.
I don't remember the story, but the SFX were AMAZINGLY poor! You could always tell when they switched from the man-in-the-costume to the puppet-head, and NEITHER looked like an actual creature! At least with Emrick's movie the monster looked as gigantic as it was supposed to be! This Godzilla looked -- as usual, except for the original film -- like a dude surrounded by miniatures.
So I got my Godzilla fix for years by reading the Dark Horse comics and re-reading the one novel I had from the novel series they released.
Then today... :D
I watched GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL OUT ATTACK!!!
THIS is a GODZILLA film!!!
First of all, the filmmakers knew that Godzilla is supposed to be a horror movie! Secondly, they realized that you need to believe that Godzilla is really, really big in order to really enjoy the film!
I think maybe the director (I don't know his name, but I'll be looking up everything I can find on him soon, hehe) saw our version of Godzilla, then saw GODZILLA 2000 and -- like I did -- wondered why Japanese filmmakers couldn't employ the same storytelling techniques we do to make a GREAT Godzilla flick! These guys made Godzilla POWERFUL!!! And most of the time you're watching the movie you're thinking "If Godzilla were real, THAT is what he'd look like!!!"
Doing some research I learned that ALL OUT ATTACK is the second in what is known as the Millenium series of Godzilla movies. The movies I hate and loath and dispise are known as the Showa series and the "okay" series is known as the "X" series. GODZILLA 2000 kicked off the Milleneum series, but was then followed up in 2001 by ALL OUT ATTACK.
I had rented 3 of the last 4 of the Millenium series, and after ALL OUT ATTACK I was stoked to watch the next one, GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA!!!
Brian had been sleeping, and had woken up about the time that I was ready to watch MECHAGODZILLA so I popped it in the living room (I watched ALL OUT ATTACK in here on this computer) and we watched it...
...and it was okay.
I think filmmakers think of Godzilla films as (1) horror films or (2) adventure films.
The adventure films are wrong and suck.
They often have "cute little kids" in them.
MECHAGODZILLA has pretty good SFX, but you never forget you're looking at a guy in a costume surrounded by miniatures. NEVER. Not for one moment do you get so lost in the action that you forget you're watching a costume movie. EVER.
I'm not excited about watching GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S. now. I'm pretty sure it picks up where MECHAGODZILLA left off, and so I'm guessing it's Adventure Godzilla.
And I'm sure the last one of the Millenium series is Adventure Godzilla, too. But I won't take it out of my Netflix queue. (Even if it is merely okay, I'm pretty sure it has Godzilla fighting Zilla, so that should be fun to watch, hehe.)
I'd be curious to go back and watch all the Godzilla movies, just to see if there are more than just the 2 that I like. I mean, seriously: In 53 years were there REALLY only TWO directors (one of whom created the character in the first place) that realized that Godzilla is a horror character? I mean he's a 50-story MONSTER for cryin' out loud!
Blah.
For all my bitching, I really had a great time this weekend. After MECHAGODZILLA I popped in ALL OUT ATTACK and got to enjoy that with my brother, then we watched CASINO ROYALE (EXCELLENT movie!!!) for our second time, and watched all the dvd extras. And that's today! A couple of nights ago I saw GHOST RIDER, which was really cool! And yesterday Brian and I wacthed FLUSHED AWAY which was a lot of fun, and I finally got Season 3 (which is really seasons 3 and 4 combined) of DUE SOUTH! And I'm 10 chapters into LIVE AND LET DIE which is SOOOOOOO much better than the Roger Moore movie!
So life is good! Life is fun!
Okay, my baby should be waking up any minute now, so I'm gonna go wait for her!
:D
Thursday, March 08, 2007
My First Horror Flicks...
I was listening to the audio commentary on GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (with Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski talking about historical and cultural and pop-cultural significances) and they shared the first time they saw the movie and how and why it scared them.
And that got me thinking.
I saw GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS just a few years ago, so it didn't scare me at all. (Though I did appreciate it a great deal, because as a teen I had seen some of the 1960s/70s Godzilla flicks -- where he's sumo wrestling other giant monsters for the amusement of children and the mildly retarded -- and was stright-up DISGUSTED that this clown was dubbed the greatest MONSTER of all time! This was no monster that I saw in those flicks, it was frickin' Bozo the Clown! So when I saw that the first Godzilla movie REALLY WAS a horror film, I was very pleasantly shocked and impressed!!!)
And how we feel about movies and genres of movies seems to have A LOT to do with when we experience them! I know of grown men who saw the original KING KONG and were terrified. But I didn't see it in the 1930s or 40s or 50s so I couldn't possibly imagine being frightened by it.
But I DO remember being terrified of Jason Voorhees!
It's true!
In 1981 or 1982 I was spending the night with a friend from school and we watched FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Very traumatic and wonderful! But NOTHING compaired to being 13 years old and seeing FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER opening weekend... ON a Friday the 13th!!! THAT was BLISS!!! I somehow actually talked Mom into taking me to see it! And I jumped! And I screamed!
And... I'll bet my 16-year-old daughter could watch it and go "You thought THIS was scary?"
But see, I was 13! And I had been hearing and reading about FRIDAY THE 13TH since I was 9! I actually got a sweet, sweet taste when I was 10 or 11, but that was in the safety of my friend's home and not nearly the same thing as the raw experience of seeing it in the theater!!!
I HAD experienced all of 3 or 5 minutes of FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D in the theater... Brian and I had gone to see YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 3-D (or one of those bad 1980s 3-D Sci-Fi stinkers) and we sneaked from our theater to the Ft13 theater. I only saw a few minutes because I was terrified of being caught; Brian had the balls (little bastard alwasy had balls as big as church bells!) to actually watch most of the movie!
But here, on Friday the 13th, 1984 I was ACTUALLY ABLE to experience the mighty Jason in all his crimson glory!!! I was a happy 13-year-old!!!
But that wasn't my first Horror flick in the theaters.
The year before, my mom took me to see PSYCHO II!!! She had been a fan of the original, and so she took me to see the sequel!
That was great, too! I didn't jump as much as I would do in Ft13TFC, but it was creepy and mildly disturbing!
But thinking about these formative experiences with the horror genre is curious, because I was developed in an odd way. The first 7 years of my life almost don't count becuase we were living with our abusive biological parents. It was a very oppressive atmosphere and we didn't get to explore and learn the way other kids did. I didn't really get to start discovering who I was until I was 9. I wasn't allowed an opinion before that.
So I started casting back in my memory, trying to remember the first horror movies I had ever seen. Would people younger than I have considered them scary?
I remember seeing DUEL on TV at some point when I was really young. It must have been a rerun, though, because it originally aired before I was a year old.
One blessed Halloween in 1981-- I would probably have just turned 11 -- my parents dragged Brian and me to some friends' of theirs and let me and Brian plop down in front of a TV where we were treated to a Disney Halloween special that ended with an abridged version of THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (which was wonderful for me, because I remember seeing the ads for it on TV but never got to go to the movie theaters to see it; undoubtedly a re-release as ir originally hit theaters in 1949). But then, after the Disney special I got to see a made-for-TV Movie of the Week called DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW!!! This was GREAT! I've obtained a VHS copy of the very rare flick and re-watched it the past 2 Halloweens and it still holds up as a classic ghost story, if not particularly scary, per se.
I can also remember watching VAMPIRE CIRCUS on TV when I was 8 or 9. It was cool.
But what was the FIRST horror movie I saw?
Then I remembered that I had actually seen the remake of KING KONG on the Big Screen when I was still with my biological parents! It was at a drive-in movie theater, no less!!! How cool is THAT?!! I'm guessing I was 5 years old. And I don't specifically remember being scared, but I DISTINCTLY remember Kong wrasslin' with a gigantic boa constrictor (and Kong tearing it in half!!) and SURELY that scared a 5-year-old version of me, lol!
I also seem to remember watching at least part of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA on my bio-family's tiny black-and-white TV, but I doubt that scared me. I was probably merely thrilled to see the giant monster battling the giant robot version of himself. So I wouldn't really call that a horror flick. (For me, anyway.)
Then it came to me... The FIRST horror movie I must have ever seen.
Also, the first movie I had ever seen in a movie theater, because all the rest of the flicks I saw with by bio-parents were at the drive-in.
And THIS movie explains A LOT about me, hehe.
I don't remember if this was the original release or a re-release, but I remember seeing it in the theater.
My biological father took my sister and me to see THE EXORCIST.
I didn't make it past the shaking bed part. When the mom goes into Regan's room and the bed starts bucking back and forth I LOST IT and spent the rest of the movie in the lobby!
And I don't feel any shame about that because I was maybe 5 years old, and adults TODAY are still pissing themselves the first time they see that flick. (Besides, I've seen is many, many times since then, lol.)
I wanna say that this must have been a 1976 re-release of the movie because I remember that my bio-logical mom took Brian to see THE SHOOTIST with John Wayne, and that came out ib '76.
The reason I believe this memory explains so much about me is because the two sub-genres of horror that I'm obsessed with writing are demonic possession and zombies. I think the reason for both is because of the terror that I knew watching THE EXORCIST as a 5-year-old. The demon-thing is obvious -- the movie was about a girl who became possessed -- and the zombie-thing I believe may have come from the frightening way regan looked after the demon had had control of her for a while -- green-ish/grey-ish skin with open tears in the flesh and those white/yellow eyes. I think my zombie obsession may have come from seeing DAWN OF THE DEAD as a young teen (maybe 15 or 16) and subconsciously flashing back to Possessed-Regan and how scary she was.
But remembering now that THE EXORCIST was my seminal, most traumatic Horror movie experience explains to me -- finally -- why only supernatural horror does it for me. For some reason a really visious guy killing folks just isn't completely fulfilling... unless he himself has been killed several times already and keeps coming back from the dead, or he was murdered and kills kids in their dreams! There has to be some supernatural component for me to thoroughly enjoy a Horror story, and now I think I understand why.
Ironically, my initial horror over seeing that film at such a young age didn't put me off horror movies forever... In fact, if I've got my timing right I saw KONG that year or the next. (But KONG isn't strictly a horror movie, really. It's more of a Fantasy Adventure.)
I think the movie that hooked me on Horror, though, was JAWS 2. I hadn't been able to see the original JAWS by the summer of 1979 (I think) when HBO re-ran JAWS 2 again and again. It scared me so much that I hesitated going into the swimming pool of the apartment complex we lived in. (This is significant, because I am an aquatic mamal -- I LOVE being in the water! Still do!) I think the repeated excitement of watching those kids terrorized by that shark and watching Roy Scheider lure that shark to that electric cable again and again and again and STILL feeling the excitement every time started me jonesin', for the first time, for those darker reaches of story-telling. (And that's a little curious, really, because if you watch JAWS you'll see it's not a Horror movie at all... It's an Adventure movie, very clearly and undisputeably. But watch JAWS 2 and it is DEFINITELY a Horror movie. I think the fact that the sequel jumped genres may have created a bit of confusion that lead to the second and third sequels being as bad as they are. If they had been developed in the Adventure genre JAWS 3-D and JAWS: THE REVENGE might have been better movies. Just a thought.)
Ooh! Another great horror flick I saw as a kid on TV was Tobe Hooper's forray into Stephen King's universe with SALEM'S LOT!!! Mr. Barlow's blue skin and white eyes, the kid who was obsessed with monster models and posters (just like I was!!!) and his dead friend scratching on the window, "Mark, let me in"!!!
I'll bet that's the movie that put Stephen King on my radar screen, too.
I haven't had cable for 3 or 4 years, so I may be speaking out of ignorance, but why aren't there more great made-for-TV horror movies? I thought Stephen King's ROSE RED was really, really good, but we don't seem to have any GREAT made-for-TV horror flicks.
Blah.
Okay, thank you for joining me on my little trip down Memory Lane, lol.
I fell asleep listening to the audio commentary for GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS and so I suppose my subconscious was just really influenced by questions about my formative Horror movie experiences, and so I kind of HAD TO write this entry and explore it for myself.
OOH!
Sometime in the near future I should explore my formative Sci-Fi film experiences! That's bound to be interesting! (For me, anyway, lol.) I remember Sci-Fi and Horror being sort of the ONLY genres that interested me until I got into Theatre and started actively expanding my artistic horizons.
Weird, that.
Anyway, if you were born somewhere around 1970 I hope my memories jog some of your own and bring a nostalgic smile to your face.
If you're of a different generation, I encourage you to ask yourself what your first horror movie was and what, specifically, scared you about it. I think you'll find that the more details you get into the more memories you'll unlock. :)
And that got me thinking.
I saw GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS just a few years ago, so it didn't scare me at all. (Though I did appreciate it a great deal, because as a teen I had seen some of the 1960s/70s Godzilla flicks -- where he's sumo wrestling other giant monsters for the amusement of children and the mildly retarded -- and was stright-up DISGUSTED that this clown was dubbed the greatest MONSTER of all time! This was no monster that I saw in those flicks, it was frickin' Bozo the Clown! So when I saw that the first Godzilla movie REALLY WAS a horror film, I was very pleasantly shocked and impressed!!!)
And how we feel about movies and genres of movies seems to have A LOT to do with when we experience them! I know of grown men who saw the original KING KONG and were terrified. But I didn't see it in the 1930s or 40s or 50s so I couldn't possibly imagine being frightened by it.
But I DO remember being terrified of Jason Voorhees!
It's true!
In 1981 or 1982 I was spending the night with a friend from school and we watched FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Very traumatic and wonderful! But NOTHING compaired to being 13 years old and seeing FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER opening weekend... ON a Friday the 13th!!! THAT was BLISS!!! I somehow actually talked Mom into taking me to see it! And I jumped! And I screamed!
And... I'll bet my 16-year-old daughter could watch it and go "You thought THIS was scary?"
But see, I was 13! And I had been hearing and reading about FRIDAY THE 13TH since I was 9! I actually got a sweet, sweet taste when I was 10 or 11, but that was in the safety of my friend's home and not nearly the same thing as the raw experience of seeing it in the theater!!!
I HAD experienced all of 3 or 5 minutes of FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D in the theater... Brian and I had gone to see YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 3-D (or one of those bad 1980s 3-D Sci-Fi stinkers) and we sneaked from our theater to the Ft13 theater. I only saw a few minutes because I was terrified of being caught; Brian had the balls (little bastard alwasy had balls as big as church bells!) to actually watch most of the movie!
But here, on Friday the 13th, 1984 I was ACTUALLY ABLE to experience the mighty Jason in all his crimson glory!!! I was a happy 13-year-old!!!
But that wasn't my first Horror flick in the theaters.
The year before, my mom took me to see PSYCHO II!!! She had been a fan of the original, and so she took me to see the sequel!
That was great, too! I didn't jump as much as I would do in Ft13TFC, but it was creepy and mildly disturbing!
But thinking about these formative experiences with the horror genre is curious, because I was developed in an odd way. The first 7 years of my life almost don't count becuase we were living with our abusive biological parents. It was a very oppressive atmosphere and we didn't get to explore and learn the way other kids did. I didn't really get to start discovering who I was until I was 9. I wasn't allowed an opinion before that.
So I started casting back in my memory, trying to remember the first horror movies I had ever seen. Would people younger than I have considered them scary?
I remember seeing DUEL on TV at some point when I was really young. It must have been a rerun, though, because it originally aired before I was a year old.
One blessed Halloween in 1981-- I would probably have just turned 11 -- my parents dragged Brian and me to some friends' of theirs and let me and Brian plop down in front of a TV where we were treated to a Disney Halloween special that ended with an abridged version of THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (which was wonderful for me, because I remember seeing the ads for it on TV but never got to go to the movie theaters to see it; undoubtedly a re-release as ir originally hit theaters in 1949). But then, after the Disney special I got to see a made-for-TV Movie of the Week called DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW!!! This was GREAT! I've obtained a VHS copy of the very rare flick and re-watched it the past 2 Halloweens and it still holds up as a classic ghost story, if not particularly scary, per se.
I can also remember watching VAMPIRE CIRCUS on TV when I was 8 or 9. It was cool.
But what was the FIRST horror movie I saw?
Then I remembered that I had actually seen the remake of KING KONG on the Big Screen when I was still with my biological parents! It was at a drive-in movie theater, no less!!! How cool is THAT?!! I'm guessing I was 5 years old. And I don't specifically remember being scared, but I DISTINCTLY remember Kong wrasslin' with a gigantic boa constrictor (and Kong tearing it in half!!) and SURELY that scared a 5-year-old version of me, lol!
I also seem to remember watching at least part of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA on my bio-family's tiny black-and-white TV, but I doubt that scared me. I was probably merely thrilled to see the giant monster battling the giant robot version of himself. So I wouldn't really call that a horror flick. (For me, anyway.)
Then it came to me... The FIRST horror movie I must have ever seen.
Also, the first movie I had ever seen in a movie theater, because all the rest of the flicks I saw with by bio-parents were at the drive-in.
And THIS movie explains A LOT about me, hehe.
I don't remember if this was the original release or a re-release, but I remember seeing it in the theater.
My biological father took my sister and me to see THE EXORCIST.
I didn't make it past the shaking bed part. When the mom goes into Regan's room and the bed starts bucking back and forth I LOST IT and spent the rest of the movie in the lobby!
And I don't feel any shame about that because I was maybe 5 years old, and adults TODAY are still pissing themselves the first time they see that flick. (Besides, I've seen is many, many times since then, lol.)
I wanna say that this must have been a 1976 re-release of the movie because I remember that my bio-logical mom took Brian to see THE SHOOTIST with John Wayne, and that came out ib '76.
The reason I believe this memory explains so much about me is because the two sub-genres of horror that I'm obsessed with writing are demonic possession and zombies. I think the reason for both is because of the terror that I knew watching THE EXORCIST as a 5-year-old. The demon-thing is obvious -- the movie was about a girl who became possessed -- and the zombie-thing I believe may have come from the frightening way regan looked after the demon had had control of her for a while -- green-ish/grey-ish skin with open tears in the flesh and those white/yellow eyes. I think my zombie obsession may have come from seeing DAWN OF THE DEAD as a young teen (maybe 15 or 16) and subconsciously flashing back to Possessed-Regan and how scary she was.
But remembering now that THE EXORCIST was my seminal, most traumatic Horror movie experience explains to me -- finally -- why only supernatural horror does it for me. For some reason a really visious guy killing folks just isn't completely fulfilling... unless he himself has been killed several times already and keeps coming back from the dead, or he was murdered and kills kids in their dreams! There has to be some supernatural component for me to thoroughly enjoy a Horror story, and now I think I understand why.
Ironically, my initial horror over seeing that film at such a young age didn't put me off horror movies forever... In fact, if I've got my timing right I saw KONG that year or the next. (But KONG isn't strictly a horror movie, really. It's more of a Fantasy Adventure.)
I think the movie that hooked me on Horror, though, was JAWS 2. I hadn't been able to see the original JAWS by the summer of 1979 (I think) when HBO re-ran JAWS 2 again and again. It scared me so much that I hesitated going into the swimming pool of the apartment complex we lived in. (This is significant, because I am an aquatic mamal -- I LOVE being in the water! Still do!) I think the repeated excitement of watching those kids terrorized by that shark and watching Roy Scheider lure that shark to that electric cable again and again and again and STILL feeling the excitement every time started me jonesin', for the first time, for those darker reaches of story-telling. (And that's a little curious, really, because if you watch JAWS you'll see it's not a Horror movie at all... It's an Adventure movie, very clearly and undisputeably. But watch JAWS 2 and it is DEFINITELY a Horror movie. I think the fact that the sequel jumped genres may have created a bit of confusion that lead to the second and third sequels being as bad as they are. If they had been developed in the Adventure genre JAWS 3-D and JAWS: THE REVENGE might have been better movies. Just a thought.)
Ooh! Another great horror flick I saw as a kid on TV was Tobe Hooper's forray into Stephen King's universe with SALEM'S LOT!!! Mr. Barlow's blue skin and white eyes, the kid who was obsessed with monster models and posters (just like I was!!!) and his dead friend scratching on the window, "Mark, let me in"!!!
I'll bet that's the movie that put Stephen King on my radar screen, too.
I haven't had cable for 3 or 4 years, so I may be speaking out of ignorance, but why aren't there more great made-for-TV horror movies? I thought Stephen King's ROSE RED was really, really good, but we don't seem to have any GREAT made-for-TV horror flicks.
Blah.
Okay, thank you for joining me on my little trip down Memory Lane, lol.
I fell asleep listening to the audio commentary for GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS and so I suppose my subconscious was just really influenced by questions about my formative Horror movie experiences, and so I kind of HAD TO write this entry and explore it for myself.
OOH!
Sometime in the near future I should explore my formative Sci-Fi film experiences! That's bound to be interesting! (For me, anyway, lol.) I remember Sci-Fi and Horror being sort of the ONLY genres that interested me until I got into Theatre and started actively expanding my artistic horizons.
Weird, that.
Anyway, if you were born somewhere around 1970 I hope my memories jog some of your own and bring a nostalgic smile to your face.
If you're of a different generation, I encourage you to ask yourself what your first horror movie was and what, specifically, scared you about it. I think you'll find that the more details you get into the more memories you'll unlock. :)
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Got Me A New Skill...
Virtual skill, that is... I can now make clothes in SecondLife!!!
I mean, I could before. That's one of the first things you learn when you become a Resident. But now I know how to make quite complex textures that take me from the arena of making "Newbie" type clothes to the arena of making enough L$ to translate into US$.
That's not necessarily my goal, though.
One of the reasons I'm excited about being able to make better clothes in-world is because I'd like to have more money in-world. But mostly I'm excited because it's another skill I've acquired!!! The avatars that I've made so far, I've had to have Brian's help making at least one part of the clothing (because he's always been just WAY ahead of me at creating in there, hehe). I'm pretty good at making the shape and face and stuff, but Brian knows clothing better than I do.
But now I can do it ALL myself! :D
Don't get me wrong, though... I still need practice. Here are the first 2 shirts I made:
And the front's just boring.
I put the logo and the brand name on the back, thinking I was being clever. But once I saw it on myself I decided you need more going on in the front.
But that's how learning takes place, hehe.
And it's not that I didn't design a good logo. Here's what Brian did with the logo:
Nice, isn't it?
Simple.
No brand name, either. Which makes it feel more like it belongs to the wearer rather than the seller.
And this is his own design for Mangey RaidWear:
Stunning, isn't it?!! So simple, yet so STRIKING!!! He described it as a sort of "tribal skeleton" thing. Why can't I come up with ideas like that, lol?!
Don't get me wrong, I like my logos. I'm quite proud of the little cartoon-y skull-and-crossbones guy. And there's another on I haven't thought of a shirt for, but he's pretty funny, I think.
I'm still learning design. I didn't do college, so the extent of my training in graphic design is my own personal tastes, what I've read off the Internet on the subject, and my high school Art classes, lol.
I mean, granted, all art tends to be largely instinctive for those who nurture their artist side (and I believe we ALL have as much of a creative side as an analytical side, just most of us choose one side and neglect the other). But I believe in many aspects, Brian's instincts are stronger than mine. At least in some areas.
I was about to say that his instincts are better when it comes to visual media, but that's not really accurate at all. Sometimes I'll actually suggest something be added or subtracted that improves something he's made or designed or drawn or animated or whatever. So it's just that we seem to balance each other's eye out.
Blah.
OH! Brian finished the Classic TREK uniforms!!!
I made those pants!!! hee-hee That's an example of what I mean by "newbie" type clothing. It's just a single color, and all you're really doing is determining the length and cuff-flare and stuff, lol. But it just so happens to be perfect for the Classic TREK uniforms. (The boots were made by neither Brian or me; they're the boots that came with the movie-era TREK uniform I was wearing in pics in an earlier blog entry. NICE boots!)
And there's no particular reason I'm human in the Classic TREK uniform other than I can't make copies of the Neko gear (cat ears, tail, teeth, etc) and changing clothes is easier when you just drag-and-drop a folder onto your avatar, so it's simpler to use a body I can copy into the folder with the uniform.
Again... blah, lol.
Oh, I wish I could have saved and copied this morning's and this evening's Gnomey conversations to post here!!! She's SUCH AN ANGEL!!! OMG!!! We haven't gotten to spend all that much time with each other lately because Life seems to be keeping each of us pretty busy... But the time we HAVE spent together is just BEYOND BELIEF!!!
I kid you NOT.
I don't think I could describe it to you and do the feeling justice... If were a poet I would spend a lifetime trying to communicate accurately how Wendy feed my soul and envelops me in a sense of joy and well-being!
But here's an illustration:
(In prose; my primary medium, lol)
When I woke up this evening Brian wasn't feeling well, and he mentioned that he needed to run to the store to grab some food for himself. Since he's not feeling well, I volunteered to make the run for him after Gnomey went to sleep, if he could wait.
He said that would be groovy.
When I mentioned this to my Goddess Gnomey she told me to go ahead and go, she'd be online when I got back.
So I hop in the car and drive past the high school next door where kids are practicing sports (didn't pay attention to which one, lol). The sun is setting, painting the sky in brilliant colors. The breeze is light, refreshing. The 3- or 4-block trip to the grocery store reminded my just why I love living in residential-type areas so very much -- there were pockets of pleasant human activity everywhere, without feeling claustrophobic or cluttered. There's a fire station just across from the high school, and there were firemen out... doing something, lol. I didn't notice which.
But the whole scene was like Norman Rockwell 2007, lol. All this life, just families and community members going about their business, living out their own simple domestic stories around each other on a beautiful almost-Spring day!
And the reason I took in all these details is because I had spent half an hour chatting with Wendy (and at least half an hour before I woke up dreaming about holding hands with her and snuggling with her and stuff)!!!
If it weren't for her, I would not have noticed the quaint joy all around me. I would have driven to the store, annoyed by the traffic as maybe hundreds of people return home from work, completely unaware of the embarrassment of beauty around me! She put me in such a happy, joyful head-space that when I got in the car I was able to notice all the little treasures God hid in plain sight all around me!!! :D
And how does she do this?
THAT is the mystery, lol! She is HER, that's how. She just is how she is and it plays my sense like a fine-tuned musical instrument. The most beautiful music, too! She's supportive of my creative endeavors, but if I go to far she tells me honestly that she thinks maybe I need to focus on what's already on my plate. I tell her Brian's not feeling well and she tells me she won't mind if I need to let her go to cheer him up!!! I mean, she GENUINELY cares about what and who ("whom"?) I care about!
Argh, lol.
I'm getting that feeling I get when I talk AROUND something without effectively getting to the point I'm trying to make, lol. I just know that anyone in a great relationship reading this is going "Yeah, AND? That's what a soul mate does! Duh!"
Anyway...
I'm gonna enjoy me a nice cup of fake-uccino (powedered cappuccino just IS NOT real cappuccino, even when mixed with coffee rather than water, hehe) and relax and enjoy the last day of my weekend.
I hope that this week is treating you well and continues to do so!!! :D
And to my baby:
LOVE YOU, GNOMEY MUNTS MUNTS!!! x o x o x o TY BABY!!!
*******************************************************
P.S.
One more thought about relationships...
I heard a slightly older song on the radio (Audioslave, if I'm not mistaken) and the chorus was:
"I'm not your rolling wheels, I am the highway/I'm not your carpet ride, I am the sky"
I love that lyric!!!
We sometimes want a friend (and especially a girlfriend/boyfriend) to be our means of locomotion, but when we're willing to "drive" ourselves, they are actually and entire journey!!! And as such they can lead us through so many more destinations and experiences that we never would have gone to by ourselves, or even had the strength/tolerance/patience to experience. But with our soul mates our journey becomes much richer, much more rewarding.
Maybe THAT is what I was trying to decsribe above, lol.
I mean, I could before. That's one of the first things you learn when you become a Resident. But now I know how to make quite complex textures that take me from the arena of making "Newbie" type clothes to the arena of making enough L$ to translate into US$.
That's not necessarily my goal, though.
One of the reasons I'm excited about being able to make better clothes in-world is because I'd like to have more money in-world. But mostly I'm excited because it's another skill I've acquired!!! The avatars that I've made so far, I've had to have Brian's help making at least one part of the clothing (because he's always been just WAY ahead of me at creating in there, hehe). I'm pretty good at making the shape and face and stuff, but Brian knows clothing better than I do.
But now I can do it ALL myself! :D
Don't get me wrong, though... I still need practice. Here are the first 2 shirts I made:
And the front's just boring.
I put the logo and the brand name on the back, thinking I was being clever. But once I saw it on myself I decided you need more going on in the front.
But that's how learning takes place, hehe.
And it's not that I didn't design a good logo. Here's what Brian did with the logo:
Nice, isn't it?
Simple.
No brand name, either. Which makes it feel more like it belongs to the wearer rather than the seller.
And this is his own design for Mangey RaidWear:
Stunning, isn't it?!! So simple, yet so STRIKING!!! He described it as a sort of "tribal skeleton" thing. Why can't I come up with ideas like that, lol?!
Don't get me wrong, I like my logos. I'm quite proud of the little cartoon-y skull-and-crossbones guy. And there's another on I haven't thought of a shirt for, but he's pretty funny, I think.
I'm still learning design. I didn't do college, so the extent of my training in graphic design is my own personal tastes, what I've read off the Internet on the subject, and my high school Art classes, lol.
I mean, granted, all art tends to be largely instinctive for those who nurture their artist side (and I believe we ALL have as much of a creative side as an analytical side, just most of us choose one side and neglect the other). But I believe in many aspects, Brian's instincts are stronger than mine. At least in some areas.
I was about to say that his instincts are better when it comes to visual media, but that's not really accurate at all. Sometimes I'll actually suggest something be added or subtracted that improves something he's made or designed or drawn or animated or whatever. So it's just that we seem to balance each other's eye out.
Blah.
OH! Brian finished the Classic TREK uniforms!!!
I made those pants!!! hee-hee That's an example of what I mean by "newbie" type clothing. It's just a single color, and all you're really doing is determining the length and cuff-flare and stuff, lol. But it just so happens to be perfect for the Classic TREK uniforms. (The boots were made by neither Brian or me; they're the boots that came with the movie-era TREK uniform I was wearing in pics in an earlier blog entry. NICE boots!)
And there's no particular reason I'm human in the Classic TREK uniform other than I can't make copies of the Neko gear (cat ears, tail, teeth, etc) and changing clothes is easier when you just drag-and-drop a folder onto your avatar, so it's simpler to use a body I can copy into the folder with the uniform.
Again... blah, lol.
Oh, I wish I could have saved and copied this morning's and this evening's Gnomey conversations to post here!!! She's SUCH AN ANGEL!!! OMG!!! We haven't gotten to spend all that much time with each other lately because Life seems to be keeping each of us pretty busy... But the time we HAVE spent together is just BEYOND BELIEF!!!
I kid you NOT.
I don't think I could describe it to you and do the feeling justice... If were a poet I would spend a lifetime trying to communicate accurately how Wendy feed my soul and envelops me in a sense of joy and well-being!
But here's an illustration:
(In prose; my primary medium, lol)
When I woke up this evening Brian wasn't feeling well, and he mentioned that he needed to run to the store to grab some food for himself. Since he's not feeling well, I volunteered to make the run for him after Gnomey went to sleep, if he could wait.
He said that would be groovy.
When I mentioned this to my Goddess Gnomey she told me to go ahead and go, she'd be online when I got back.
So I hop in the car and drive past the high school next door where kids are practicing sports (didn't pay attention to which one, lol). The sun is setting, painting the sky in brilliant colors. The breeze is light, refreshing. The 3- or 4-block trip to the grocery store reminded my just why I love living in residential-type areas so very much -- there were pockets of pleasant human activity everywhere, without feeling claustrophobic or cluttered. There's a fire station just across from the high school, and there were firemen out... doing something, lol. I didn't notice which.
But the whole scene was like Norman Rockwell 2007, lol. All this life, just families and community members going about their business, living out their own simple domestic stories around each other on a beautiful almost-Spring day!
And the reason I took in all these details is because I had spent half an hour chatting with Wendy (and at least half an hour before I woke up dreaming about holding hands with her and snuggling with her and stuff)!!!
If it weren't for her, I would not have noticed the quaint joy all around me. I would have driven to the store, annoyed by the traffic as maybe hundreds of people return home from work, completely unaware of the embarrassment of beauty around me! She put me in such a happy, joyful head-space that when I got in the car I was able to notice all the little treasures God hid in plain sight all around me!!! :D
And how does she do this?
THAT is the mystery, lol! She is HER, that's how. She just is how she is and it plays my sense like a fine-tuned musical instrument. The most beautiful music, too! She's supportive of my creative endeavors, but if I go to far she tells me honestly that she thinks maybe I need to focus on what's already on my plate. I tell her Brian's not feeling well and she tells me she won't mind if I need to let her go to cheer him up!!! I mean, she GENUINELY cares about what and who ("whom"?) I care about!
Argh, lol.
I'm getting that feeling I get when I talk AROUND something without effectively getting to the point I'm trying to make, lol. I just know that anyone in a great relationship reading this is going "Yeah, AND? That's what a soul mate does! Duh!"
Anyway...
I'm gonna enjoy me a nice cup of fake-uccino (powedered cappuccino just IS NOT real cappuccino, even when mixed with coffee rather than water, hehe) and relax and enjoy the last day of my weekend.
I hope that this week is treating you well and continues to do so!!! :D
And to my baby:
LOVE YOU, GNOMEY MUNTS MUNTS!!! x o x o x o TY BABY!!!
*******************************************************
P.S.
One more thought about relationships...
I heard a slightly older song on the radio (Audioslave, if I'm not mistaken) and the chorus was:
"I'm not your rolling wheels, I am the highway/I'm not your carpet ride, I am the sky"
I love that lyric!!!
We sometimes want a friend (and especially a girlfriend/boyfriend) to be our means of locomotion, but when we're willing to "drive" ourselves, they are actually and entire journey!!! And as such they can lead us through so many more destinations and experiences that we never would have gone to by ourselves, or even had the strength/tolerance/patience to experience. But with our soul mates our journey becomes much richer, much more rewarding.
Maybe THAT is what I was trying to decsribe above, lol.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Better Rested
Hi again.
:D
I reread last night's entry and was surprised at how coherent it was, lol! I was thinking about the entry during a smoke break at work and couldn't remember making any sense.
I found this podcast a few days ago called Screenwriters' Toolkit and I LOVE it!!! It's really, short, but each podcasts list 3 exercises to free up a writer's imagination! I just checked out the website, which is here and I love that too! If you write for fun or profit, I SO recommend this site!
I used on exercise in particular and was, frankly, astonished at the results!!! It's called something like "Our Divergent Paths" or something, and what you do is you think of a character in a situation, then think of three different journeys that character might take during the course of a movie. THEN, you think of 5 major events that might happen along each of those three paths.
The result is a sort of sketch of 3 different movies (or novels) that could stem from that single situation!!!
This is super-cool, because this is how animation studios tend to develop their flicks. One of the reason good animated features SO kick live-action features' asses is that animation story teams will explore every possible story avenue they can think of.
Which really makes a lot of financial sense for them, because their medium is REALLY expensive! It costs so much more and takes so much longer to animate something (even if you were talking about 2-D animation, or Flash animation, for that matter) that a live-action feature.
So animation story teams tend to make sure (well, as much as humanly possible, anyway) that they have the BEST possible execution of their story. Because it's gonna take A LOT for them to make a profit on their investment.
However, there's no reason live-action filmmakers can't use this same technique... At least to some degree. Rather than developing the first line of action that occurs to us, we can explore different lines of action, and see what sort of cool scenes arise in our imaginations from each.
And something I discovered today is that sometimes, with a little creativity, a cool event from one throughline can be fit into a different throughline... But you had to explore that other throughline in order to even come up with it!
Another thing I noticed from my experimentation with this exercise is that a seperate throughline could become a subplot to enhance the main throughline! (When you're writing a screenplay or novel, I have found, you can never really have too much story -- you simply leave out what doesn't fit when you're writing -- but you can EASILY have too little story! This isn't precisely true, as you can have too complex a story or simply too much going on to fully explore each important moment, but it's a decent Rule of Thimb because it's much easier to pare-down than it is to come up with more stuff.)
Blah.
My sweetheart's not online. :( And it's a full hour earlier than I usually log on.
But she usually works on Saturdays, so she may be asleep. Or maybe having computer problems.
Still, I had a really naughty dream about her last night, so I feel close to her even though she's not online, hee-hee.
I probably shouldn't blog about stuff like that, huh?
It's not particularly classy of me.
But then... It is IMPORTANT to me, hehe.
I guess I'm kinda rambling now.
Does this bother you?
When I ramble?
Do you find yourself thinking "Why do I bother to read this putz if he's got nothing interesting to say? Why do I do this to myself? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with HIM that he WASTES the opportunity to say something important, to move people, to touch people, but just writing crap until he gets bored with it and I've LONG stopped reading?"
Just curious.
Anyway, hope you have a SPECTACULAR Friday night and weekend!!!
Ooh! Do something weird this weekend! Something that will make a cool story to tell at the next party you go to!!! Just think of something bizarre that might make a good story, and try it! remember that sometimes everything going wrong can make a better story than everything going right!
It''l be fun! You'll see!
KISSES TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! x o x o x o
:D
I reread last night's entry and was surprised at how coherent it was, lol! I was thinking about the entry during a smoke break at work and couldn't remember making any sense.
I found this podcast a few days ago called Screenwriters' Toolkit and I LOVE it!!! It's really, short, but each podcasts list 3 exercises to free up a writer's imagination! I just checked out the website, which is here and I love that too! If you write for fun or profit, I SO recommend this site!
I used on exercise in particular and was, frankly, astonished at the results!!! It's called something like "Our Divergent Paths" or something, and what you do is you think of a character in a situation, then think of three different journeys that character might take during the course of a movie. THEN, you think of 5 major events that might happen along each of those three paths.
The result is a sort of sketch of 3 different movies (or novels) that could stem from that single situation!!!
This is super-cool, because this is how animation studios tend to develop their flicks. One of the reason good animated features SO kick live-action features' asses is that animation story teams will explore every possible story avenue they can think of.
Which really makes a lot of financial sense for them, because their medium is REALLY expensive! It costs so much more and takes so much longer to animate something (even if you were talking about 2-D animation, or Flash animation, for that matter) that a live-action feature.
So animation story teams tend to make sure (well, as much as humanly possible, anyway) that they have the BEST possible execution of their story. Because it's gonna take A LOT for them to make a profit on their investment.
However, there's no reason live-action filmmakers can't use this same technique... At least to some degree. Rather than developing the first line of action that occurs to us, we can explore different lines of action, and see what sort of cool scenes arise in our imaginations from each.
And something I discovered today is that sometimes, with a little creativity, a cool event from one throughline can be fit into a different throughline... But you had to explore that other throughline in order to even come up with it!
Another thing I noticed from my experimentation with this exercise is that a seperate throughline could become a subplot to enhance the main throughline! (When you're writing a screenplay or novel, I have found, you can never really have too much story -- you simply leave out what doesn't fit when you're writing -- but you can EASILY have too little story! This isn't precisely true, as you can have too complex a story or simply too much going on to fully explore each important moment, but it's a decent Rule of Thimb because it's much easier to pare-down than it is to come up with more stuff.)
Blah.
My sweetheart's not online. :( And it's a full hour earlier than I usually log on.
But she usually works on Saturdays, so she may be asleep. Or maybe having computer problems.
Still, I had a really naughty dream about her last night, so I feel close to her even though she's not online, hee-hee.
I probably shouldn't blog about stuff like that, huh?
It's not particularly classy of me.
But then... It is IMPORTANT to me, hehe.
I guess I'm kinda rambling now.
Does this bother you?
When I ramble?
Do you find yourself thinking "Why do I bother to read this putz if he's got nothing interesting to say? Why do I do this to myself? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with HIM that he WASTES the opportunity to say something important, to move people, to touch people, but just writing crap until he gets bored with it and I've LONG stopped reading?"
Just curious.
Anyway, hope you have a SPECTACULAR Friday night and weekend!!!
Ooh! Do something weird this weekend! Something that will make a cool story to tell at the next party you go to!!! Just think of something bizarre that might make a good story, and try it! remember that sometimes everything going wrong can make a better story than everything going right!
It''l be fun! You'll see!
KISSES TO MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! x o x o x o
Takin' A Quick Break...
Work is kinda hectic tonight -- it always is on ThurFri -- but I miss my baby so I wanna make sure my baby has something to read when she wakes up, hehe. ;)
I missed her tonight before I came to work but I had a lot of fun with her yesterday! We played Minesweepers for the first time in a while. She kicked my ass twice, but I was just about to kick her ass for the first time when her computer died. (She was faking, I know she was, haha.)
My sleep schedule's kinda wierd... I only got 4 or so hours last night. :( HOWEVER... When I woke up I had some ideas to get me started writing. In about 2 hours I got 6 pages written. So I'm kinda thinking that maybe there's some Cosmic Scheme going on at the moment, one I can't control or understand.
But then, at this very moment I'm fighting to not fall asleep. I have 3 hours left in my shift and PLENTY of work still to do, but all my body wants to do is get some friggin' SLEEP.
I know there's more interesting stuff to share, but I really can't think of it at the moment. (I really am quite punchy at the moment.)
Okay, if you're not Gnomey: PEACE, LOVE & HAPPINESS!!!
If you ARE Gnomey: I LOVE YOU BABY!!! I hope your sleep was deeply fulfiling!!! x o x o x o
I missed her tonight before I came to work but I had a lot of fun with her yesterday! We played Minesweepers for the first time in a while. She kicked my ass twice, but I was just about to kick her ass for the first time when her computer died. (She was faking, I know she was, haha.)
My sleep schedule's kinda wierd... I only got 4 or so hours last night. :( HOWEVER... When I woke up I had some ideas to get me started writing. In about 2 hours I got 6 pages written. So I'm kinda thinking that maybe there's some Cosmic Scheme going on at the moment, one I can't control or understand.
But then, at this very moment I'm fighting to not fall asleep. I have 3 hours left in my shift and PLENTY of work still to do, but all my body wants to do is get some friggin' SLEEP.
I know there's more interesting stuff to share, but I really can't think of it at the moment. (I really am quite punchy at the moment.)
Okay, if you're not Gnomey: PEACE, LOVE & HAPPINESS!!!
If you ARE Gnomey: I LOVE YOU BABY!!! I hope your sleep was deeply fulfiling!!! x o x o x o
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