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