The inconceivable has happened.
I happened upon a Bruce Springsteen tune on the car radio today and realized, "Hey, that's a damn good song... It really sums up exactly how I feel right now!"
Sure, yep, I'm probably just one step away from being buried in a pop music coffin with a John Tesh greatest hits collection, but baby, we WERE born to run.
Everybody's out on the run tonight
but there's no place left to hide
Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we'll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run...
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
More Megalodon
I just can't resist posting this... Rubber megalodon model vs. CGI submarine. It's every bit as bad as you can image it to be. And ever so much more delightful!
Revenge of the DVD Screening Room
It's been an overscheduled and manic month. Let's not even talk about it.
On top of that, I've gotten sucked into the land of radtastic TV-on-DVD that's sucked away my movie-smitten soul: the likes of Deadwood (HBO's Shakespearean Western that's probably more aptly titled 'Peckinpah was a Pussy'); Battlestar Galactica (scoff not, gentle reader, for it's a brilliant show and in the future I will blog its praises to high heaven); Weeds (smart sitcom crack); and Lost (don't tell me ANYTHING! I'm only five episodes into the first season!)...
Nonetheless, my rundown brain has absorbed a lot of craptastic cinema goodness in the past two days, and I'm feelin' the need to share. Good stuff first. Bad horror movies after that.
The Proposition (2005)
What if Nick Cave decided to write a Western morality tale? Oh, wait, he did! And it's pretty awesome - ferociously acted, beautifully filmed and scored, persistently thoughtful. If Nick Cave isn't enough to make you curious, the cast list should do it for you: Guy Pearce, Ray (Sexy Beast!) Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston and a showstopping John Hurt (rockin' an old West mullet). Set in the Australian outback, directed by newbie John Hillcoat, and chock full of meditative moments, The Proposition is a total knock-out.
Darkness (2002)
Goodness, this movie is awful. Plodding, pretentious, scary-house-where-unspeakably-nasty-things-happened-to-children kind of awful. Anna Paquin and Lena Olin give it their all, but they totally deserve better. The upside? Darkness features the FIRST and ONLY occult tracheotomy in movie history. And that's sayin' something.
When a Stranger Calls (2006)
Why a remake of this movie? And why did I watch it? Ah hell, I guess it's October. If you'll remember the original, it's actually a pretty interesting horror/thriller combo that was genuinely creepy in the 70's. I don't know about you, but it made me terrified to babysit for a long time. This remake relies on too many 'Boo - I fooled you!' moments in which normal household things are played for shocks ('Oh my god, the washing machine is on the spin cycle - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!'). The moral of this story? Don't go over on your cell phone minutes or your parents, too, will make you babysit in an isolated mansion with an asthmatic serial killer who will ruin your life. That's right: it's the greatest story ever told.
Megalodon (2004)
Megalodon? It should be called "Mega-Fun-Don!" How could I resist a movie about a 60-foot-prehistoric shark? This straight-to-oblivion flick is so bad that it's a hilariously, sharktastic good time and I hope it gets hours and hours of cable tv time.
On top of that, I've gotten sucked into the land of radtastic TV-on-DVD that's sucked away my movie-smitten soul: the likes of Deadwood (HBO's Shakespearean Western that's probably more aptly titled 'Peckinpah was a Pussy'); Battlestar Galactica (scoff not, gentle reader, for it's a brilliant show and in the future I will blog its praises to high heaven); Weeds (smart sitcom crack); and Lost (don't tell me ANYTHING! I'm only five episodes into the first season!)...
Nonetheless, my rundown brain has absorbed a lot of craptastic cinema goodness in the past two days, and I'm feelin' the need to share. Good stuff first. Bad horror movies after that.
The Proposition (2005)
What if Nick Cave decided to write a Western morality tale? Oh, wait, he did! And it's pretty awesome - ferociously acted, beautifully filmed and scored, persistently thoughtful. If Nick Cave isn't enough to make you curious, the cast list should do it for you: Guy Pearce, Ray (Sexy Beast!) Winstone, Emily Watson, Danny Huston and a showstopping John Hurt (rockin' an old West mullet). Set in the Australian outback, directed by newbie John Hillcoat, and chock full of meditative moments, The Proposition is a total knock-out.
Darkness (2002)
Goodness, this movie is awful. Plodding, pretentious, scary-house-where-unspeakably-nasty-things-happened-to-children kind of awful. Anna Paquin and Lena Olin give it their all, but they totally deserve better. The upside? Darkness features the FIRST and ONLY occult tracheotomy in movie history. And that's sayin' something.
When a Stranger Calls (2006)
Why a remake of this movie? And why did I watch it? Ah hell, I guess it's October. If you'll remember the original, it's actually a pretty interesting horror/thriller combo that was genuinely creepy in the 70's. I don't know about you, but it made me terrified to babysit for a long time. This remake relies on too many 'Boo - I fooled you!' moments in which normal household things are played for shocks ('Oh my god, the washing machine is on the spin cycle - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!'). The moral of this story? Don't go over on your cell phone minutes or your parents, too, will make you babysit in an isolated mansion with an asthmatic serial killer who will ruin your life. That's right: it's the greatest story ever told.
Megalodon (2004)
Megalodon? It should be called "Mega-Fun-Don!" How could I resist a movie about a 60-foot-prehistoric shark? This straight-to-oblivion flick is so bad that it's a hilariously, sharktastic good time and I hope it gets hours and hours of cable tv time.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
at an anime con, i'm a rock star
and random dudes want their photos taken with me.
I've spent all day writing scholarship recommendations in my pajamas while watching bad horror movies and drinking soda on the couch. I'm still in glasses, a clear indication that I'm hungover from the Fort Collins bout last night. Come over. We could make forts out of blankets and talk about G.I. Joe and nothing at all.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
a new season, a bad blog title
I remembered something tonight:
In 2002, my ex-husband had to have two fairly intense surgeries to remove tumors on his eardrums. There's a lot more medical jargon and complexity to it, but the bottom line is that a surgeon had to cut open the sides of his head, puncture his eardrums to remove the tumors and review the damage to his hearing bones, and then stitch him back up again. The first surgery was a nightmarishly tense affair for me: I was 27, sitting in the hospital by myself, being the strong, responsible, rock solid caretaker person, scared shitless. The surgery took the entire morning, during which time I read a cultural critique about reality TV, perused every Sunset magazine in the waiting room and endured a lot of nastiness from the waiting room attendant who didn't want to give me an emergency pager (I didn't have a cell phone at the time). Time seemed to be taking its own damn sweet time. At the three-and-a-half hour mark, the surgeon appeared in the hall. I nearly body checked him out of anxiety. He then explained the success of the procedure and re-explained it about 3 more times because I wasn't able to comprehend anything. Finally, I understood that things were going to be fine. And then I asked when Ray would be coming out of surgery and the surgeon responded, "He's being closed up right now and I think he'll be in recovery in about a half-hour." People in white coats have lots of authority, so I didn't feel like I could actually ask him the question that immediately worried me: who, precisely, was "closing him up?" I just went and sat down again.
A woman sitting next to me in the waiting room then leaned over and whispered, sympathetically and lightly, "Kind of makes you wonder who's flying the airplane, doesn't it?" She made me smile so much, despite the fact that I realized I was totally, completely powerless.
All this to say that I've realized that I am clearly not flying the airplane right now, and I have no idea who is, and that seems to be okay right now. There are some tremendous highs and some strange lows as October (my favorite month) gets underway. The leaves are great for crunching right now, Halloween is around the corner, this is always my season of joy. But there's a real sadness about the loss of comfortable adventures, rituals that I have counted on for many years. But mostly, the quiet comfort of drinking soda in mugs and pondering what's going to happen next.
In 2002, my ex-husband had to have two fairly intense surgeries to remove tumors on his eardrums. There's a lot more medical jargon and complexity to it, but the bottom line is that a surgeon had to cut open the sides of his head, puncture his eardrums to remove the tumors and review the damage to his hearing bones, and then stitch him back up again. The first surgery was a nightmarishly tense affair for me: I was 27, sitting in the hospital by myself, being the strong, responsible, rock solid caretaker person, scared shitless. The surgery took the entire morning, during which time I read a cultural critique about reality TV, perused every Sunset magazine in the waiting room and endured a lot of nastiness from the waiting room attendant who didn't want to give me an emergency pager (I didn't have a cell phone at the time). Time seemed to be taking its own damn sweet time. At the three-and-a-half hour mark, the surgeon appeared in the hall. I nearly body checked him out of anxiety. He then explained the success of the procedure and re-explained it about 3 more times because I wasn't able to comprehend anything. Finally, I understood that things were going to be fine. And then I asked when Ray would be coming out of surgery and the surgeon responded, "He's being closed up right now and I think he'll be in recovery in about a half-hour." People in white coats have lots of authority, so I didn't feel like I could actually ask him the question that immediately worried me: who, precisely, was "closing him up?" I just went and sat down again.
A woman sitting next to me in the waiting room then leaned over and whispered, sympathetically and lightly, "Kind of makes you wonder who's flying the airplane, doesn't it?" She made me smile so much, despite the fact that I realized I was totally, completely powerless.
All this to say that I've realized that I am clearly not flying the airplane right now, and I have no idea who is, and that seems to be okay right now. There are some tremendous highs and some strange lows as October (my favorite month) gets underway. The leaves are great for crunching right now, Halloween is around the corner, this is always my season of joy. But there's a real sadness about the loss of comfortable adventures, rituals that I have counted on for many years. But mostly, the quiet comfort of drinking soda in mugs and pondering what's going to happen next.
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