HAPPY TOWEL DAY 2010!!!

Do you know where your towel is?

32 years ago, Douglas Noel Adams gave us a most eccentric look at life among the stars! And today, WE CELEBRATE!!! :D

I have to admit that this Towel Day sort of snuck up on me. I didn't bother to take the day off or anything.

By lone (admittedly weak) means of celebrating has been to go to sleep listening to BBC's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase this morning, then listening to Douglas read Life, the Universe and Everything upon waking and on my way to work.

Soon, I need to really do the day up right. Like maybe next year. I'll take the day-of and the day-after off work, then figure out some cool thing to do with my bro to celebrate. It'll be a bit hard to figure something out, though -- I've reread every book Adams wrote, re-watched and re-listened to every version of Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently that are available numerable times. I'll have to think of some new activity that can be combined with a viewing of the movie or a listening of the radio series, maybe. Like, watching the move on my laptop while attempting to hitchhike across Austin? Or listening to the radio show in a cave?

Or something. I've got a year to figure it out.

Anyway, whether you celebrated Towel Day or not, I hope your day has been AWESOME!

And if not, make tomorrow SUPER-COOL!!! :D

Dad-Blamed TV Writers!!! :(

BASTARD TV WRITERS!!!

I just watched the Season Finale of Castle and those cursed writers are leaving me dangling for the summer!!!

GGRRR!!!

I wanna be a little bitch here and name names:

First of all, from the quick online research I've done, the man to blame here is Andrew W. Marlowe. He's the guy credited with creating such lovable, fascinating character and placed them in such an addictive world. AND... that little bugger that wrote one of those heart-breaking, keep-you-squirming-until-next-fall-when-the-show-is-back-on-air Season Finales!!!

Heartless prick! :(

Do I realize I'm being petty and childish?

Yes, I do... And I realize that those of you with cable and TiVo and don't work at a TV station -- and thereby watch more TV than I do -- are saying, "Don't be such a wuss! Season Finales are always cliff-hangers!"

But dammit, the guy has created such an addictive world!!!

And, in particular, he has created one of those perfect and compelling Ross & Rachel/Tim & Dawn relationships -- dramatized by a couple of the most lovable actors in TV right now, no less -- that just makes you wanna see them together and happy!

And now he's given us ambiguity!!! :(

I mean, yeah, sure, most likely the first episode of Season 3 will resolve the ambiguity and we'll be right back on-course for another season of fun flirty and crime-solving, but still...

Call me a sissy, but I like a Season Finale that promises HOPE for the next season! Did you ever see the TV series of The Dresden Files? THAT gave you HOPE! The Mystery-of-the-Week was solved, and everything was okay, but then the coda for the episode hinted at the potential for even more fun romantic tension for the (theoretical) second season!

THAT is a GREAT Season Finale!

Cliff-hangers are weak sauce. They are insecure writing. They're like those Big Bosses at the end of some levels of video games that nigh-impossible to kill. The game creators are afraid that if the game is too easy you won't buy the next installment. But I don't buy Tomb Raider games for the challenge, I buy them for Lara Croft and the world of Tomb Raider! Same with TV series. I don't watch them because I 3 months of anxiety; I watch them because the stories and characters are awesome!

Seriously, if Castle hadn't ended with a cliff-hanger, would it really lose any viewers over the summer? For the reals?! Who watched Castle and thinks, "If only things were more tense and anxiety-giving"?

By the way, I don't want to let the Writer's Room slide here! Andrew W. Marlowe may be the creator and the guy credited with writing the script for "A Deadly Game" butTV shows aren't written in a vacuum. IMDb.com lists David Grae, Alexi Hawley, Will Beall, Elizabeth Davis, Terri Miller, Terence Paul Winter, René Echevarria, Moira Kirland, Jose Molina and Barry Schindel as writers for the show, and you know -- you know -- that all of them took devilish glee over how much they would make us squirm with this awful ending!!!

Bastards, one and all!

May they all feel guilt and shame for manipulating my emotions that way!

I mean "our". "Manipulating our emotions that way," is what I meant to type.

I'm not shaking my tiny fists at the heavens for on my own behalf... I'm standing up for all of us who love Detective Kate Beckett and Richard Castle and want to see them fall blissfully into bed together!

...

Okay, so maybe it's mostly about me... Say, 10% Me, 90% All Castle Fans.

Or maybe 40/60...

Maybe more 80/20, BUT STILL...

...it was mean of them, and I don't approve.

Will I stop watching the show out of principal?

NO FRAKKIN' WAY!!! I friggin' LOVE that show!!! I'm just bitter that I can't watch the next episode next week!

Castle is CLASSIC!!! (Did anyone else catch the fun little in-joke of Castle watching His Girl Friday on his laptop? GENIUS!) I mean, in a world of 24 and Battlestar Galactica how can you NOT love a frivolous little series wherein the mysteries get solved every week and the angst is kept to a minimum?!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the AMAZING writing of the above mentioned shows. But I'm just saying that life has plenty of drama in it, and I am thankful for folks who just want to entertain me for an hour or so! In my teens/20s, I really appreciated entertainment that dealt with Big Issues, and I still enjoy that in the 2-hour format of movies or the self-contained space of a novel. But if I want to be horrified by man's inhumanity to man, I'll watch a documentary or watch the news. Screw the news, actually --it doesn't really present a fraction of the entire story anymore -- if I want to deal with the Big Issues, I'll ask my friends what's going on in their lives! THERE lies the true drama of life on this physical plane!

And then there's the other extreme: Brainless sitcoms that don't make any sense unless you turn your mind off and just go with the less-than-logical story logic of the hack writers of the show. I hate those types of "entertainment".

So a show like Castle is just the right temperature for me: Smart, yet fun!

And if I'm honest, this season's finale could have been much worse. It's not like they killed Beckett or made Castle an outlaw or something.

Still...

I was having a wonderful time up until the very end of the episode.

And now I'm bitching about it.

And now I think I'm done.

Horror Flicks in Buffy-Town!!! :D

I just watched George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead in Sunnydale's Sun Cinema!!!

:D


How did I get into the fictitious town of Sunnydale? Why, SecondLife, of course! :)

Someone just a bit nerdier than I am (well, maybe not nerdier, per se, but they certainly have more money than I do) bought a sim and recreated Buffy's stomping grounds.

The did a pretty good job, too!

They built Sunnydale High -- including the quad, the lounge, the library and other areas seen in the TV show -- and the Magic Box and the Bronze (though it's a restricted area, which doesn't make sense since the fictional Bronze is a public meeting place), AND the built a working cinema, where you can go and watch actual movies FREE!!!

And you can guess what's showing now!

It's a really lucky break for me, too, because I'm a HUGE fan of Romero's Dead movies, and I've been waiting forever to see this one! I was excited a couple of years ago when Diary of the Dead came out, and even more excited when I read that Romero was going to keep making them! Rebooting the franchise -- by the guy who STARTED the franchise, no less -- was a stroke of genius to those of us who can't get enough Romero-zombie action!

AND, these newer movies are better than the first ones! Not to be blasphemous, but let's be honest: Romero was learning his craft for the first 30 years.

I mean, I love Night of the Living Dead, but I believe anyone who is honest with themselves will admit that its production fell a bit short of its potential. Great story, EXCELLENT concept, decent film.

Then there was the classic Dawn of the Dead, which is a much better movie! The pacing feels quite slow by today's standards, but that's because it was made in the 1970s. Film pacing didn't pick up to the fevered pitch it is now until the 1990s.

But seriously, I've never really been a fan of Day of the Dead. Great title, and I was excited to see it just because it was the long-awaited sequel to Dawn, but in the end it was pretty dull. There were some intriguing ideas but forth in it, but the action was well bland and the story was pretty laborious (it was pretty much people in a bunker, talking, until the huge zombie kill-fest at the end).

In my opinion, the Dead series REALLY came alive (please pardon the pun) with Land of the Dead!!! Finally, the production matched the vision, and the film was brilliant!!!

The only problem with Land was the question of where the hell does Romero go from there?!

His answer? Sheer brilliance! Go back to the beginning! Start from Zero Hour and continue forward again.

AND, Romero decided to make the new batch of Dead films as an independent, like he did with Night! Dead flicks are about characters dealing with the loss of Society, so you really don't need a huge budget. Talented "no-names" can deliver their roles just as well as expensive stars! And the cost of special effects and special makeup effects have come way, way down in the last 2 decades! Back during Night and Dawn, Romero and Tom Savini and everyone were creating the Special Effects field! Now it's just another department, like wardrobe or props, on a production. And though there used to only be one Tom Savini, now there are generations who grew up learning from him! AND, they're entering the field with newer, easier and more effective (not to mention cost-effective) methods than what Savini had at his disposal! :D

So I thought Diary of the Dead was an awesome restart, and I was dying to see how Survival of the Dead would follow up...

My verdict? SUPERIOR!!! It's a great flick! Never boring! Fascinating! Scary, natch! :D

AND I GOT TO SEE IT IN SUNNYDALE!!! lol

That is, in my opinion, a really cool way to spend a couple of hours! It fed my freak-fix in so many ways! :D

May 2010 Is Starting Out GROOVY!

This has been an AWESOME weekend!!!

First of all, my Gnomey Goddess has been a bit chattier this past week that she's been able to be recently. So the work week went by particularly pleasantly! (It's indescribably what getting a text from her in the middle of a shift is like! But it's a bit like Santa interrupting your work so he can deliver a huge, shiny package!!!) So it's not like I was miserable before this weekend arrived, lol. I was doing quite well! :D

And then my weekend started with a Payday Friday -- which is always just a little extra cool for me because I work 10-hour days, so at 6:00 am Friday morning, when everyone else is getting up to begin their last day of work, I'm beginning my weekend! And on paydays, that means I get off work and have money!

Now, that's night as glorious at it might at first sound, because I live a sort of Peter-Parker existence... I grew up on Spider-Man, and one of the things that drew me into the book was the fact that when he wasn't fighting super villains, the poor guy was just trying to pay his rent, lol. When you're 12 or 14 years old, that seems a great deal more romantic than it does when you're 39. ;P So on paydays, I don't really have money to blow; but when I'm lucky, I can pay most of what needs to be paid (like, say, rent, gas and food) and then maybe buy myself a treat.

I was lucky this week!!!

Filled up the car, bought enough food to last me until next paycheck... and then...

First, I bought AVATAR on DVD!

I got to see this in 3-D in the cinemas, but my poor brother did not. So it was super-exciting to be able to get Avatar so Brian could share the joy, too!!!

Next order of business: the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake!

When we were growing up, Brian & I were Horror movie fans. (We still are, but back then we were quite a bit more obsessive about it.) I was a huge Jason Voorhees fan, and Brian's guy was Freddy Krueger. One of my proudest moments as a brother was when I was able to score Brian a Special Edition Nightmare DVD Box Set (the one where the spines of all the movies make up a picture) as a present for Christmas or his birthday. (I don't recall now which.)

Brian, naturally, learned about this remake way before I did. He and I are much more open to the prospect of remakes than most guys our age. (We grew up in the 1970s & 1980s, when the term "remake" usually meant that someone took a great older movie, stripped out everything that made it a great film, then slapped it on screen with better effects and a lot less substance. But in this new millennium, anyone who is honest with themselves has to admit that the term "remake" often means "quality" in every way, including writing.) But when he discovered that Rorschach from Watchmen was the new Freddy, he got really excited about it. It's produced by Michael Bay (whose work I love with a passion and who, you may have noticed, produces BADASS Horror movie remakes)! Now, neither of us got to see the Friday the 13th remake in the theaters: we had to wait for DVD. So I was bound and determined to take my li'l bro to see this new Nightmare Opening Weekend -- Opening Night, if possible.

And why not? I'm off on weekends now, and when Brian works Fridays, it's usually early. So, conceivably, the only thing standing in the way is the money. (Believe it or not -- nowadays there are probably more who can believe it than who can't -- $20 can be a deal-breaker.)

But the Universe smiled upon us, and after paying for rent, food, gas and Avatar, this paycheck bought me 2 adult tickets to the 9:50 pm showing of Nightmare Friday night!!!

:D

And the flick was good!!!

It was largely a jump-scare movie (with loud noises forcing you unexpectedly out of your seat every 10 minutes), but the writing and acting and cinematography and everything was excellent! And even though us old folks have seen Robert Englund in the makeup for so long that the original Fred Krueger seem irreplaceable, Jackie Earle Haley (who has a bit of a serial-killer name himself, doesn't he?) masterfully steps in and reminds us that truly great actors can make a role their own. And the writing helped him out: This Fred Krueger is a little different than Mr. Englund's Krueger -- this guy is a dead-serious monster!

Now, the anti-remake movie nerds may argue, "Yeah, but Freddy is supposed to be funny, too!" But I don't believe they understood the character... In the first 2 or 3 movies -- and I was the age range the studio was marketing to when those movie first came out -- Freddy's humor was more disturbing: The fact that he was cracking jokes and enjoying what he was doing made him a deeply unsettling killer! This was a guy who, by all accounts, you just didn't want in your life! He killed kids for fun, and now he tortures you when you're most vulnerable -- in sleep -- AND if he hurts you in your dreams, it becomes reality in your waking life, too! AND THEN, he's enjoying himself!!!

I think the "humor" element in the later Nightmare films (I put "humor" in quotes because the gags never once made me laugh) was a result of unskilled filmmakers who misunderstood the character. (Robert Englund, I should note, can't be blamed because his job was to play whatever the writers gave him straight, and hope that the directors and editors knew what they were doing -- which they, increasingly, didn't.)

When filmmakers undertake to remake a classic, their job -- as I see it -- is to take all the elements that made the original a classic, remove the "cheese" factor of now-dated writing and special effects and acting (stuff that worked back-in-the-day but doesn't work for current audiences) and then try to take those elements that work a little farther. The folks who made this new Nightmare (particularly the writers), I feel, accomplished that in spades! They didn't muck around with any of the elements, just for the sake of "making it their own", but they did alter the character of Freddy just a hair, so that he can never again be mistaken for a Comic character. And I think that was genius! You want to make a Comedy about a serial killer? Go make a sequel to Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. (That flick is dying for a franchise! It's brilliant!) But unless something goes horribly wrong, people will never again go see a Nightmare sequel with the expectation of giggles. (Unless, you know... they are, themselves, seriously disturbed.)

I so did not intend this blog entry to be a movie review, lol.

So my point was this: BRIAN & I GOT TO SEE THE NEW NIGHTMARE FRIDAY!!! :D

WOO-HOO!!!

It was awesome!

Then we came home and unwound with some Avatar. (The movie is just as good with repeated viewings!)

Then, Saturday was always going to be great for me: Texas Spirits had an investigation scheduled!

That was cool, too!

The folks we investigated for were really nice people. You couldn't call their house small, lol, but there were fewer rooms than we've been investigating recently. So we had an intimate team of 3 of us, which made this investigation unique. (Doing anything in larger and smaller groups always changes the way an activity flows, so it was really neat experiencing how a group of 3 works! Typically, we are 4-6, but we're done investigations where all of Texas Spirits are with us, then we've got up to 20 guest investigators.)

The only thing particularly paranormal that happened last night was that my stomach became very chatty during the 2nd phase of our investigation, lol. (I woke up unusually early (for me) and so breakfast came around 4:00 pm (instead of around 8:00 pm, which is my norm) and so I got hungry a couple of hours into the investigation. Lesson learned.)

There was one room, in particular, that was interesting. I look forward to reviewing the video and audio we captured.

So Night 2 of my weekend: AWESOME! :)

Now I'm onto the last night of my weekend...

I woke up around 3:00 pm again, hungry. So I made some delicious food. I'm hoping Brian & I can see Iron Man 2 next Friday, so I watched the Behind-the-Scenes stuff on the Iron Man Bonus Disc again while I ate. And while I cooked, I listened to a Ghost Chronicles podcast (episode 89) featuring Frank Joseph, author of a ton of books exploring the history of Atlantis, including a book which just came in the mail Friday: The Atlantis Encyclopedia -- if you've ever read a book about Atlantis and thought that some of the archeological evidence was interesting but that the theories the author came up with seemed far-fetched, The Atlantis Encyclopedia is for you! It is an astoundingly comprehensive examination of the evidence, and simply offers the theories as just that: theories. It's not trying to sway you, just show you (in great detail) the data that is out there.

I was hoping to stay awake until at least 6:00 am, to get my sleep schedule back on track for tomorrow, but I crashed around 6:30 pm and didn't wake up until after midnight. :(

So getting up (and then STAYING up) tomorrow may be interesting, lol.

Still, in the time between now and the time I force myself to go to sleep...

I've got some evidence I can review, naturally. And I'm excited about what might turn up there!

Then I've got this book I'm enjoying: Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and Paranormal in the Freetown Sate Forest by Christopher Balzano (excellent writer, formidable mind, and always fun to listen to when he pops up on Spooky Southcoast). I've been listening to him talk about the paranormal on podcasts for years now, and his book on investigating was the first one Brian & I read when we finally decided to get our hands dirty, so to speak; but I had never read his first book, the one that put him on the paranormal map. The book was so popular, and he continued receiving so many new reports, that he eventually followed Dark Woods up with a second book about the area: Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle, which I now own, too. So I'm eager to finish up Dark Woods so I can get to Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle, AND THEN I can read Brad Steiger's groundbreaking Worlds Before Our Own.

So my paranormal non-fiction plate is spilling over with tasty treats!

However...

I logged into Audible.com, hoping to find some non-fiction audiobooks on Atlantis (I'm becoming a bit obsessed, it seems), and I was pleasantly surprised to discover I have a credit!

...I joined this club-thingy they offer where you pay a monthly fee and you get a significant discount on every audiobook you buy from them, but you also get a credit that equals the price of any book every month, so even if you don't have any disposable income, you still get at least one "free" audiobook every month. With my aural fixation, this really does save me some money. But more than that, they now have ALL the Dresden Files novels!!! (In fact, that's how they finally got me to subscribe: I was about to buy book #5, and it was cheaper if I signed up right then (even paying the initial subscription fee) than if I were to buy the book without the subscription.) There are plenty of books I can buy for cheap with my discount, but many of the Dresden Files books (since they're still new to the audiobook format) are kind of expensive. I've read 6 out of 13 so far. And Butcher keeps putting them out. He has said that he plans to write 20 books in the "series proper" (if you will) and then finish the series with "an Apocalyptic Trilogy". So now that all the books so far are audiobooks (my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE way to enjoy these masterful adventures), I hope to catch up to all the die-hard and maybe enjoy book 14 or book 15 (and on) as they are released! I doubt I'll sign up to any of the forums and to debate and discuss the exciting new directions Butcher has thrown the series into... but it would be neat to be able to.

Anyway, so I subscribed to Audible's club-thingy, pretty much, so I can catch up on the Dresden Files series. (And, as a side benefit, I don't pay so much for Nick Pope's Summer of the Saucers or one of Doreen Virtue's books.)

But TONIGHT... I logged into Audible and discovered that I had a credit!!!

And there are a couple of fundamental shifts in poor Harry Dresden's fortunes in Blood Rites that had me bursting at the seams to see what happens next!!!

AND NOW I CAN!!! :D

So there's a good possibility that that's how I'll spend the rest of my last day off. ;)

I have to say, what Jim Butcher has created with The Dresden Files is amazing! It's this world that I just REALLY enjoy hangin' out in!!! I listened to the first 4 books in the series maybe 4 times each, because Buzzy Multimedia only produced audiobooks for the first 4, and then they released, like, Small Favor or White Night -- one of the ones that was being released in hard-back at the time, but was way ahead in the chronology of the events of the series. So I kept returning to the first 4, just to get my Dresden fix. BUT NOW...!!! I'm moving forward in Dresden's adventures!!! And though Butcher is the type of writer who is willing to change his hero's circumstances irreparably, the world itself -- Harry Dresden's Chicago -- continues to feel like a beloved vacation spot, someplace I always enjoy returning to! Honestly, reading the Dresden Files novels gives me very much the sensation I used to enjoy catching the new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer each week, back in the 1990s!!! I probably can't describe it better than that. And watching Buffy reminded me of the feeling of a new Friday the 13th or Star Wars or Star Trek movie being released when I was a kid! You know that you're going to have a great time, no matter what!

So, put that way... I guess I know what I'm going to do next...

I believe it's time Jim Butcher, James Marsters (who reads the audiobooks) and I take a walk around north Austin and see what trouble Harry Dresden gets himself into (and out of) this time!!!

:D