MORE THAN A MONTH?!

Go ahead and call me a slacker.
Go ahead!

Slacking on the internet - well, I can't really call that such a bad thing. I've been indulging myself in copious amounts of movie watching**, walk-taking, book writing, and music-listening. And if it's been a month and a half or so, then let's call it... five bottles of wine, a couple of daiquiris, and one extremely over-done Fourth of July.
I think there was a toga party in there somewhere, as well as the realization that I can (somehow!) pull a 900-ish pound cart uphill for about 200 feet by myself.
(I don't actually look like a She-Hulk in real life, so that was as much of a shock to me as it would have been to anyone else.) (Unless I do look like a She-Hulk in real life and don't realize it. Anyone who knows me - opinions?)
And reading, of course. Of course I've been reading. We might have established this previously, but I basically get paid stupid amounts of money to sit around and read.

I'm going to be honest - this probably all just has something to do with the fact that it's been so warm out. Winter beats the living fuck out of me, emotionally, so... as much as I hate being outdoors and being exposed to the sun, it would practically be criminal of me to squander winter's antithesis.

Seriously, though, there's been so much writing. The book that I've been working on intensively for the past year (and on and off in various iterations for the past... six?) is nearing what I'd consider to be completion.
You have no idea how fucking pumped I actually am about the fact that I can at least consider the beast to nearly be finished - publication thereof be damned.

So... that was the barebones status update. Regular posting should resume in the near future.

**Obviously, I've watched more than two movies in the past month and a half - that's just far too many movies to hyperlink in one fragment of a sentence. Let's be realistic here.

Where the fuck have I been, anyway?

I think it mostly boils down to the fact that it's summer, honestly. Doing things outside in the sun kind of kills my tendency to sit around and type about my weird little obsessions.

Pretty much any time I AM spending indoors is dedicated to Finally Finishing My Goddamned Book (It's Only Been Five Years Now, For Fuck's Sake).
That, and I finally decked out an office for myself to work in - I've got a kick-ass desk, my stereo, a lamp, all my books, my knick-knacks, my violin, my posters, a giant chunk of lead crystal hanging in the window... this place just needs a futon and another bookshelf and my den will be complete. (I'm told that I'm not allowed to call it a Man Cave because I'm not a man.)

There are certain things I do know, though. I've read 31 books cover-to-cover since starting my new job in February, 99% of which I completed during working hours.
I'm going on a small book-buying/possible futon-purchasing spree tomorrow.
I love summertime, sunshine, and all things not involving the winter.
At some point this week, I may go see X-Men: First Class. I'm told that it's relevant to my interests.

I may or may not be around more often now that my office is done.
TIME MAY TELL!

Nonsense, and stuff.

I'd like to speak, briefly, about the fact that I sympathize with Alan Moore on an creative level.

Does he use rape as a plot device somewhat too regularly? Yes.
Is he capable of waxing poetic at extrrrrrreme length (unitentional pun?) about drawing boobs? Yes, yes he is.
Have some of his comics been creepy as fuck? Again, I can only agree.

But at the same time...

'From Hell' was a good movie, but as an adaptation, it really blew.
'V for Vendetta' was an alright movie, but they butchered THE FUCK out of the adaptation process.
'Watchmen' was a glorious technicolor wonder, and while I'd certainly call it the most faithful of the films, certain things... maybe didn't need to be altered, or left out.

The absolute prime reason, though, that I sympathize with him as a creator?

Is the fact that this:

fucking beautiful example of storytelling, which obviously took a great deal of care on Moore's part** was shot, shat upon, kicked a few times in the ribs, and thrown through a turbine with a generous accompaniment of utter rubbish to produce this steaming pile of disgust:

and that I had to remain stoic when my stepmother told me how much she loved it "because it was fun".

There was something that set this post off.
I can't remember it now.

OH WAIT NOW I REMEMBER!

The complete omnibus of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is out this fall.

** I'm not trying to say that any of his other works didn't take a great deal of care. What I'm trying to say is that it takes a decent amount of talent and deliberation to carry on convoluted storylines about other peoples' characters. Throwing a bunch of random elements into a stew isn't going to work unless you give a shit about it being palatable, let alone fine dining.


I'm also not trying to lessen what a horrendous botch From Hell was, adaptation-wise. I'm just pointing out that it was a quality botch, rather than a crime against humanity. V for Vendetta was only a mild crime against humanity.

This is a post. Make of it what you will.

I was going to write something really, really long and detailed about filmed adaptations of literature.
I was.
I just don't think I have it in me.
I don't have it in me for a whole hell of a lot this week, though. Maybe next week? Maybe in a few days?
That post is coming. Just... not tonight.

I do have something I want to say about books, though, having gotten myself mot of the way through A Storm of Swords. (That's book 3 of A Song Of Ice And Fire, for those of you keeping tabs.)

I think I officially want to hug George R. R. Martin.

Not in a sexual way.

Allow me to explain, and come with me for a moment on a flight of fancy, because I like to imagine that this is what happened.

He woke up one morning, took care of necessaries, and got himself all psyched up for an action-packed day of sitting around writing A Clash Of Kings.
He sat himself down in front of his (typewriter/word processor/computer/notebook/tablet and chisel), took a sip of his tea, and dove right in.
Five lines later, though, he stopped suddenly.
He looked out the window, and a smirk formed on his lips as a mad glint overtook his eye.
Fuck this shit, he thought to himself. I have this brilliantly crafted world populated by these carefully-wrought characters who have built this intricate and devious web of political intrigue amongst themselves, and... just fuck this. I'll finish writing this story, but I am going to make them cringe like nuns if they want to find out how it ends. I shall test them. Yes. This is what I shall do.
And, with a quiet chuckle, he carried on with his day.

That's the only logical explanation I can come up with for the end of the second book and the majority of the third.

And you know what?

 

Anyone who can just straight-up pull some of this weird shit out of thin air, toss it in, and still have me completely plowing my way through the actual story without being too bovvered about it... that takes skill.
He's probably aware of that fact, and just doesn't even care.

(Mr. Martin, if you're reading this? You're one of my heroes now, and also a fabulous troll king. I mean that in the best of ways. Any confirmation or denial of my suspicions would be appreciated.)

The point to this? I keep trying to decide if I actually want to find a way to watch A Game Of Thrones. (I'm violently allergic to paying for cable.)
It looks like it's really well done, and I've heard a number of good things... I just don't think I could stomach it if they tone down the more disturbing moments in the books.

Which, I mean... makes me sound a little bit twisted, sure, but you have to understand that when it's not people (killing/plotting to kill) each other, it's become this hilarious-yet-vomit-inducing horror-show, and I can't get enough.

On a final note, I recommend Texts from Westeros to anyone who is even passingly familiar with the series. (Though I've not watched the series yet, I know who the actors are supposed to be, so it's still magically hilarious.)

In which Turtle is my hero.

This has been one of the worst days that I can personally remember having had.
Fact.
Am I going to detail it here? No, because that would be shitty of me.
Suffice it to say, I've spent 24 hours crying on and off.
Mostly on.

I'll be okay. Really, I will. Everyone will be okay. Things have been dealt with, and life will move along. Wrong things might even be fixed, though time's gonna tell on that much.

But Turtle is a fucking superhero.

I came home from work to find that she'd made me a pie.
A pie. For me.

A pear-Gruyère pie.

Just for me.

Let me tell you something, internets:

Pear-Gruyère pie is just as head-splittingly amazing in real life as I always thought it would be.

Turtle is my favorite person in the whole wide world right now.

 

Think of her as an even hotter version of Anna Friel, and you've

got a rough idea.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that cheese baked into pie crusts could solve all major global crises. MAKE THIS HAPPEN, PEOPLE.

Remember how awesome Kenneth Branagh used to be?

He was.
I mean, nowadays, I think the best thing he's actually managed was (essentially) playing himself in the Harry Potter films. Thor wasn't that bad, either.

But... he used to kick ass at directing, and even managed to act well from time to time.

***

Dead Again is a very, very strange mystery film about reincarnation. Aside from his own performance as a private detective, we're also treated to:
- Emma Thompson as an amnesiac whose only memories... are of a past life
- Derek Jacobi as a hypnotist/antiques dealer
- Robin Williams as a foul-mouthed former psychiatrist
- Andy Garcia in... one of the most stomach-turning performances I've ever seen

It's basically one of the best things I've ever seen in my whole life.



Here, he offers up some of what he does best: Shakespeare. Blah, blah, blah, Henry V, blah blah blee. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, thank you.

I'll admit that there are some blatantly corny moments in this one, but it's still fantastically awesome. I mean, aside from Keanu Reeves being EEEEEEEVIL (or maybe Keanu Reeves being evil just helps it. I can't decide! I don't know, though. I think if a person is named 'John the Bastard', they're... kind of predisposed to being... a bit mean-spirited.)
Brian Blessed is loud (even as an inconsequential side character), Robert Sean Leonard's eyebrows are enormous (His character's only purpose? Eyebrows and stupidity.), Michael Keaton is fucking crazy as Dogberry (this man should only do comedy, ever), Emma Thompson is Beatrice, one of the most fantastic snarky ladies on the planet, and Denzel Washington is wonderfully smarmy as Don Jon.
My Mom and I have probably watched this 40,000 (or maybe 12) times and it never gets old. Ever.



Oh, Branagh.
What, what, WHAT WERE YOU DOING?
Look at your life. Look at your choices.
I like Helena Bonham-Carter and all, but...
Well, let's just say I think know where your career started hitting the skids.

Even if Robert deNiro was fuckin' awesome as The Creature.
(I'm not hyperlinking you to Robert deNiro, though. If you don't know who that is, there's no help for you.)



Maybe he knew his talent was tanking. Maybe he just recklessly burned it all out by powering through with this thing. Time may only tell.
1996's Hamlet is just... overwhelming. It's so on-point in every regard that it's difficult to try and write about coherently.

The weird visual mish-mash of criss-crossing anachronisms melds together into perfection. The costuming, the sets, and the color composition of the whole thing are all stunning.
Every shot is perfectly framed.
This owes a lot to the way it was filmed. Most films (before the advent of digital filming, of course) were done on 35 mm film (the same width as camera film). This particular film (all four hours of it) was done on 65 mm film.
That doesn't make the picture itself bigger; it makes it possible to capture wider, more inclusive shots. (It also makes for higher image resolution.)

I can't find fault with anyone's performance. It's a very, very long movie in its entirety (as the complete, full text of the play was filmed, which is quite unusual for adaptations of Shakespeare), and in view of that, the emotional nuance needed for the scope of the thing is incredibly well-realized. (In stage adaptations, that tends to get lost in view of the fact that it's more important for actors to exaggerate a bit in order for their voices and gestures to be seen and heard properly by the audience.)

Not only that, but in the style of his better movies, it's utterly jam-packed with blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos.

So... nearly everything he's done since Hamlet has, indeed, SUCKED... but I'd say that's one hell of a ($18,000,000) magnum opus all in all.

Brian Blessed is the loudest man known to humankind.

And he's also one of my heroes.

Go watch Black Adder. Seasons 2 and 3 are admittedly superior, but they do not feature His Royal Loudness at any point.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, aside form the fact that if you don't know who Brian Blessed is, I think you've had a sad life and that you should educate yourself promptly.

I learned how to drive a forklift today.

And then I came home, and ate some Chinese food, and watched some stuff.

and a whole bunch of

A GLORIOUS EVENING.

Where the hell HAVE I been?

Well, I've been working. When I haven't been working, I've been writing with this fly motherfucker pasted into my earphones:

because fuck Ginsberg and fuck Howl, fuck Naked Lunch and William Borroughs, Jack Kerouac is my man.
(I allow that Gregory Corso is also face-clawingly good, but Ti Jean just has a way about reading his own stuff out loud that just... I love it.)
(And fuck On The Road. It's a good book, but fuck that. Come back and talk to me when you've read The Subterraneans and The Book Of Dreams and Satori In Paris.)
(I could wax poetical all right about just how much I love listening to Kerouac talk into a microphone, but we'll skip that for now. Let's talk about some other stuff.)

***

I saw On Stranger Tides tonight, and I was..... sadly underwhelmed. I loved Keef and Swearengen, as predicted, but the rest of the movie seemed largely unnecessary. And the things that weren't unnecessary.... I didn't quite... get.
For example: Blackbeard randomly has a magic sword that controls... ropes? And he can... zombify people? I... where the fuck are you guys going with this?
And Jack's been to the Fountain of Youth before, and knows where to find all of the hidden doodads necessary to get there, but he doesn't actually really know how to perform the ritual to get to the Fountain?
And why the fuck am I supposed to care about this Random Guy and his Random Mermaid Girlfriend who... go off to swim the seas forever together? I think?
And Jack and Barbossa have this bizarre buddy-cop moment midway through, but not really, and...
Penelope Cruz, you were a mess.
There's a moment that I wish to hell I had a screencap of, because... going back to the theme of Blackbeard Is Randomly All Kinds Of Magic... they discover that Blackbeard has a cabinet full of ships in bottles. Not like... model ships in bottles. Like... real ships, shrunk down, stuffed in bottles.
It feels like a bad Xibit joke that never pays off.
(Hey bro, I heard you like boats, so I put these boats in bottles on your boat, so you can gloat about how much better your boat is?)
I don't get it. I think that what they were trying to say was that Blackbeard was actually The Devil, but... still desperately wanted to find the Fountain of Youth?

Shit, Tyrone, get it together!

I propose a do-over. Just have Keef and Swerengen glare each other down and mock each other mercilessly for an hour. Flat-out. I'd watch that movie. I'd watch the SHIT out of that movie.


***

Speaking of Shit, Tyrone, Get It Together.

Gaga, what the fuck is going on here?
The Fame was alrightish. Monster? Was fantastic.
Way to completely drop the ball on the third try, dude.
Born This Way kind of blows.
Not all the way. Just mostly.
Judas has grown on me, but it mostly has to do with the video rather than the song itself.

(Ivan and I actually had a conversation about Why That Video Is Good, and our conclusions jointly go something like this:

"Let's look at what the MacManus brothers have been up to lately. The good-looking one has done... fuck all in the past decade. The fuggo? Has... done approximately the same fuck-all, but has managed to kick around with zombies and pour a beer on Gaga's ass in a jacuzzi. I.... think we have a winner here.")

***

I also had to keep Ivan from dying today. While I was off being trained, he decided he was gonna infect himself with strep some way or another, and he kept... just sucking on cough drops, as though they were going to cure an infection.
Shockingly, the cough drops proved not to be enough, and he finally decided he needed to see a doctor. I even made the appointment for him and drove him there.
He tells me that when the nurse finally looked down his throat during the exam, she pulled a horrified face and asked if he'd SEEN the state of his throat.
Needless to say, he has a round of antibiotics in a bottle in his possession now, and shall live to see the summer.

(Fact: If you don't have insurance and are deathly sick, urgent care centers are cheaper than a hospital visit. If you have a common variety of infection, they should be able to shuffle you in and out pretty quick and make sure you get the cheapest prescription possible. Just puttin' that thought out there.)

This had BEST be the fucking Rapture.

Look, I understand completely. Any job in customer service involves people taking metaphoric (and sometimes literal) shits on you.

But today? Had best well be the fucking Rapture.
There was flooding bad enough on the tracks in and around Albany that everything got delayed by hours.
Which is fine. These things happen.
But when 84% of Rochester decides to evacuate to Chicago for the impending cleansing of the Earth at the same time, and they all seem to want to take all of their Earthly possessions with them on said trip....

This had best be the actual fucking Rapture.

If it's not? I'm getting the fuck out of this job as fast as humanly possible, because this is not how I'm going to spend every Friday night for the rest of my working life.

On that note, I feel like I've spent a very comfortable amount of time pantsless in this life, and that I'm quite perfectly happy with how not-to-Heaven I'll be going... and that while I have regrets in life, at least I'll go out with my pride.
If this is the Rapture.

If.

(I don't have a song epic enough to honor the Rapture, should the crazies be correct about today.
Sadly.
I like to imagine it would be like David Bowie and Iggy Pop backing up Nina Simone and Freddie Mercury with a good healthy dose of Tom Waits on the piano. Or something to that effect, anyway.)
(We should make it happen, though, should the world continue.)
(Hint: It's probably going to.)

A Trifecta Of Thoughts

Huh. Well, looks like I'll be finishing off that series of music posts once I'm on the way home / once I am home.... yes, the blog will indeed continue.

With music, likely of the 1980's, and possibly some humorous selections.
And bears? Whatever.
Tomorrow's the final exam, and we all know what that means: Tuesday afternoon drinkin'.

 

(Thematically appropriate?)

Oh, and by the way? There's nothing more irritating than an instructor who simply will not admit that he sped through the course too fast and truly has nothing left to give us.

This is the face that all of us were making today -

- for about eight hours. (There were no bullshit Bob Dylan references telepathically linking any of us, as far as I am personally aware. Thank goodness.)

At lunch, we all pretty much managed to agree about how none of us have really been paying attention since Thursday, at least.

This is a half-assed excuse for a post at best right now. All I know is that I'm tired, and going to nap and/or actually sleep with some Netflix to lull me.

In the meantime, I bring you the only thing I could think of to tie this post together.
(Points go to whomever can name the theme I was going for here.)

Goodnight, everyone. I will likely inform you of my progress sometime tomorrow afternoon.

We have definitely done something to piss off Mother Nature.

Between all of those tornadoes a few weeks ago, and the rain that's going on now...
Obviously, the flooding is not as debilitating as a bunch of tornadoes just ripping shit up, but it's still kind of scary.
The creek at the end of my mother's street in Michigan is already level WITH the street, and they have a significant amount of water in their basement. This is Sunday. The rain isn't supposed to stop for another two days, at least.
One of my friends from back in Buffalo mentioned that they were having trouble getting home last night because of how the roads were flooding.
Various people in Rochester (including Ivan and Turtle) have mentioned that they have at least minor amounts of water coming into their basements.

I just want to be home to be able to deal with things.
I want to clutch my pillow and cuddle with mah boyfrenn and mah rommie (yeah that's right, I like her enough to cuddle her on the couch, come at me bro) and even Archie (that dumb, adorable feline).

Fook.

This would be depressing if it weren't so fucking hilarious.

Maybe it's because I've only gotten about five hours of sleep, or maybe it's hilarious because my subconcsious refuses to let this wreck my day.

I can't say for sure.


Quite, quite early this morning (quite, quite late last night?) a very strange thought occurred to me: I am now older than either of my parents were when I was conceived.

In my tired state, I decided to share this with the gang over on Ye Olde Book of Faces.

I phrased it in a way that acknowledged how weird of a thought it was to be having ("Thought that is vaguely creepy on many levels"), and ended it with a joke that was meant to seem as though I were phrasing it hesitantly to try and break the weirdness ("#reasontoparty?").

But then I went upstairs to bed. I thought to myself... does anyone in my life really wanna think about my parents doin' it? I don't really wanna think about my parents doing it.
So I did the only thing I could think to do: I pulled my laptop back out, logged on to Facebook, deleted the status. Nobody had even acknowledged its presence. No harm no foul. Right?

WRONG.


I went about my business... by which I mean I promptly fell asleep.
I woke up about 45 minutes ago, unable to go back to sleep.
Nothing was amiss in the world. I woke up in one of the comfiest beds ever, in one of the nicest rooms ever. Still tired, yet refreshed... nothing amiss.
Grabbed my phone.

Oh, come on.

Just when I think my father's proven himself mature enough to see my Facebook updates, things like this go down.
Essentially, his texts lead me to believe that he felt that the status (which was only posted for... what, 15 minutes, tops?) was a personal slam against him in a public forum. He even text forwarded me a copy of what I'd deleted.

Okay, first off... he gets specific text message alerts whenever I post anything?

Second... that wasn't... I... how the fuck is that a personal insult? It was a random late-night musing that I decided not to leave up for the eyes of my friends and family at large. Is it a personal slam to acknowledge the fact that everyone in the world is aging?
Well then, you know what?
FUCK YOU, WORLD. FEEL THOSE AGE LINES ETCHING THEMSELVES IN? 'CAUSE IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.
CLUTCH THEM PEARLS, BITCHES, AND MAKE YOUR REMAINING SUMMERS COUNT. 

In fact, though, it was indirectly inspired by this page, and when I realized that wow that is actually true isn't it,I decided to post about it. But then that got scrapped.

Five texts later, he's still not getting how I wasn't trying to insult anyone.

Normally, this sort of thing irritates the living hell out of me, but I cannot for the life of my figure out what part about that pissed him off.
Thus, today, today, it's just...

Breakfast time now, if I do say so myself.

(And if anyone could explain to me why it was so insulting to him, I'm listening.)
(I also realize that discussing this in a public forum has morphed into a personal insult all its own. I'm simply laughing at the reaction, not the imagined offense in regard to the initial comment.)

Some thoughts before sleep, and that's about all I'm good for right now.

I've been working on legitimate writing the whole time I've been away from home. If anything good has come from all of this, I actually have managed to get a decent bit of work done on my book - there were fundamental problems with the setup, and I think I might have hammered them into something usable.

I can't even begin to explain how tired I am, mentally.
I'm ready to come home, patch things up where it matters most, sit down on my couch, dogpile with Ivan and Turtle, and watch movies.
I'm ready to have my car back, to get in and pump some music, and take everyone up to the beach.
(I don't even like beaches. I just know that that is where we need to end up.)
I'm ready to sleep with my own pillow, in my own bed.

I have some more pictures of the Casa to share with you tomorrow, as well as the rest of DC - I have been down here for a third (and, for this trip, final) weekend.

There's going to be a third music post up. (And, likely, a fourth and a fifth.)

I started this as a way to distract myself in Delaware. It'll likely continue once I'm home...
Likely.
I'm enjoying it too much to see it die.

On that note?

Oh.

The big exam?
You know, the one that I had to come all the way to Delaware for, for a month?
I don't even know how you can count it as an exam. We're allowed to have all of our notes with us. We're allowed to have all of the handouts with us.

So............. this is just an exam to prove that we can read?


I..........

This has been what the past month led up to?

OH.

I SEE.

Massive Fucking Music Post, Part Two

Welcome to Part 2! The post can be found beyond yonder "Read More" link.

Fucking Massive Music Post, Part One

A quick note on the entry that's under the cut here:
I had wanted to arrange this so that each artist/category I was going to detail would have their own cut (like on LiveJournal), but I'm just not good enough at newer/different coding to get it to work here. Thus, for right now, everything is just as sectioned as I can get it behind one cut.
The lack of ease of navigation, therefore, frustrates me enough that I'm apologizing.
I imagine that nobody who's gonna read this is gonna give too much of a damn, I just figured I'd mention.

So now, on to what I came here to do tonight: ramble endlessly about music.

Problems, and general issues.

Here's the deal.
I wanted to make the music post tonight one massive, glorious monument to soundwaves - but one that wouldn't eat my feed page.
I just realized something completely fucking awful about Blogger code sets, though - there is no way to put more than one text cut in a single post without going through absurd amounts of html/css/things I simply do not know how to code, and I have not been able to find a reasonable way around that.
(I'd also rather not go back to Livejournal. It's a dinosaur at this point.)

I'll be making a big post later (after dinner) but it's not going to be quite as user-friendly as I'd anticipated.
It IS coming, though. Promise.

Some finishing thoughts before bed, and a preview of tomorrow:

Tomorrow (or the day after, depending on how tired I am), we will be featuring two different topics here at Pierre-Millay:
(1) Music
(2) Things that are actually interesting in Wilmington, DE. (This is the only one of the pair that's contingent on how tired I am; I haven't gotten out with the camera, and I feel like pictures can do more justice to some of these buildings than I can do describing them. For as tiny and boring as Wilmington is, there's actually some really nice architecture here.)

I would also like to welcome the Seattle contingency of my fledgling readership; you might not have commented, but I'm told that you're out there.

The Reason I Call It 'Casa del Pollo'

You may have read me ramble on about Tió Aparato quite a bit on here. (I've also been told that Tió Artilugio would be a better translation of what I was getting at with his fake name, but... well, he's already Uncle Apparatus, so that's what he's staying.)
My uncle has always been a bit of a character, but in the last decade and a half or so, he's been slowly amassing a collection of.... chickens.
This past month is the first time I've actually visited his home in about five years. He had... a few odd chickeny knick-knacks at the time, but nothing... overly noticeable.

The ensuing five years have, indeed, brought the deluge.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you - the proof, presented behind a cut because it really is a ton of pictures.