Dear Bastards...

Taxi Shame Driver

2012-01-23T22:29:00.007-06:00

I rose with the alarm this morning and spent some time gathering the recycling and picking up the kitchen a bit while the water for tea boiled. The wife was already up and on the computer, dealing with some e-mails, so I greeted her briefly, then got the bed made and the house opened up for business for the day.

The wife had a full afternoon ahead of her, with lunch first, then a series of meetings that would drag out until after 5:00 PM, so I left her to prepare for that and hopped in the shower to get cleaned up, then got another blog post published and started loading up the recycling, which I was hoping against hope I would be able to drop off finally, as the last time I was near the bins they looked like we were in the middle of a fucking garbage strike or something.

On a wild hair, I decided to try the recycling bins that are behind a nearby elementary school, where I was able to drop stuff the last time things were overstuffed at the grocery store, so I was able to get rid of everything except for the plastic stuff, as they don't have a bin for that for whatever reason. The grocery store was thankfully empty, so I dumped everything, then picked up a sandwich and salad for my lunch on the way back to the house.

The Venture Brothers kept me company while I ate, and the re-run was amusing in that I had completely forgotten about Dr. Mrs. The Monarch dressing up as a hot cheerleader in this past season, so that was amusing to see again.

The fridge was in desperate need of a cleaning, and since the wife had specifically requested that certain older items be removed the next time the trash went out, I took the time to give both fridges the once over and dumped a bunch of stuff, then got some laundry started before moving into the Office. I gave the movie lists a bit of time, since they are almost fully caught up at this point, then I decided to dive into a film for Movie Shame Monday.

Taxi Driver is one of those iconic films that I have watched once, possibly a decade ago, but had never really made my way back to for a second look. With the new Blu-ray that came out around the middle of last year I figured that now was a decent time to give it another peep, as I remembered most of the plot, but couldn't recall much past the climactic shooting scene near the end. I knew that there was some sort of denouement, but couldn't for the life of me recall what it was. The film naturally holds up amazingly well, as expected, and the Blu looks great. The amusing thing to me was that while the narration was telling us what a sewer the city was, the cinematography was gorgeous, lots of rain slicked night streets that really popped with life as the lights glinted off the moisture. Great film, happy to have finally revisited it.

I put away laundry after the movie, exchanging a few texts with the wife about dinner, then she finally made her way home shortly after 6:00 and we put in an order from a deli across town. We spent the evening catching up with several things off the TiVo, including Californication, House Of Lies (which I really dig) and last week's episode of Hawaii Five-O just to be current with another show. Hawaii Five-O actually offended me quite a bit tonight, as they took what felt like a full 2 or 3 minutes of show time to have the characters talk very specifically about Subway sandwiches, referencing certain varieties and how Jared had lost so much weight eating them, what a great deal the footlong pricing is; it was ridiculous pandering to a sponsor in the guise of actual dialog and I found it disgusting, quite frankly. I understand that all of these shows exist to sell advertising, but forcing straight up shilling into the middle of an otherwise normal drama is just distracting and ridiculous. Bah.

We called it a night shortly afterward, I spent some time gluing shit down for a possible background to a drawing, then hopped on the PC to get this typed up before bed.

Be seeing you.

Late Saturday, Early Sunday

2012-01-22T23:01:00.012-06:00

I pulled a really weird drunk late last night, as I had been enjoying the Old Fashioneds over the course of the evening. I put the wife and Yorkie to bed around the usual time, then hopped online and realized that I had zero interest in working on the blog, so I sketched in a few notes for a placeholder post that I'll clean up and publish...whenever, then decided to make myself another drink and re-watch a few random movies that I hadn't seen in quite some time.

I gave Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle another look, which had occurred to me after I microwaved a couple White Castle cheeseburgers for a late night snack, as the wife and I never really had a proper 'dinner' in the evening. The movie is still fun, though I have to admit that it's grown on my somewhat significantly since I first watched it, as I never imagined re-visiting it when I watched it the first time around. I suppose the camaraderie and whatnot between the lead has grown on me a bit, as i enjoy their banter.

The Kal Penn connection from this one led me to a wild hair re-watch of Van Wilder, a comedy that I hadn't seen in quite some time and one that I still really enjoy, if only because it's nice to see Tara Reid when she was in her prime looking cute, before the booze and awful boob job made her look a bit scary. Sad, really.

By this time it was pushing for the early morning, so I figured the hell with it, made myself a final (and likely ill-advised) drink, microwaved another six of the tiny White Castle cheeseburgers and popped in Van Wilder 2: The Rise Of Taj, in which we follow Van's assistant Taj (Kal Penn, yet again) to a school in England where the stuffy upper crust forces him to rally a group of misfits and make them the most desirable house on campus, none of which is anything new or truly all that original, but it has a few moments. I also enjoyed noticing that Penn's love interest has now turned up in the States as the Maggie character on The Walking Dead. Her hair is completely different, but she has a very distinctive smile that I couldn't place until I did a bit of Googling.

I finally made my way to bed close 7:00 in the AM, only to find my night of booze and shitty quasi-foodstuffs had left my stomach very rebellious. I slept a scant 2 hours before I woke feeling kinda blah, not really the 'drunk, I'm gonna puke' kinda weird, but just a weird bloating that was driving me crazy, not allowing me to get comfortable and actually sleep.

The wife and Yorkie got up shortly after I woke, and though I tried in vain to get back to sleep, their movements in the house kept catching my ears, so I eventually gave up and hit the toilet to see if I could get the stomach to settle a bit. All I really succeeded in doing was catching up on my Entertainment Weekly reading, as my on again, off again time with the porcelain convenience left me hoping for the relief of something as simple as passing wind as I blew through about three weeks worth of EW and accomplished little else.

The wife showered and spent some time on her Mac in the Office, eventually joining me in the bed around noon to catch a nap. My stomach had finally begun to calm by this time, so I put aside the book I was reading and tried to sleep a bit, waking with a start at 4:00 in the afternoon when I heard the wife's shoes clacking on the hardwood while she dressed for a meeting that one of her charities insists on calling at five in the evening on a Sunday afternoon, just when you might be trying to enjoy the last dregs of your weekend. Very odd timing.

The wife split to run an errand before the meeting and I spent some time on the PC, drinking a bit of water to re-hydrate a bit and try to get the body back to feeling normal. I got a blog post published from this time last week, as the blog creeps closer to being up to date, then spent some time with the TiVo looking to see what needed to be added to the recording schedule.

It was around this time that I learned that the NFL shit and American Idol would be cocking up the normal Fox animation fare, so I started planning out an alternate viewing schedule for the evening. The wife was kind enough to pick up some Mexican food on the way home from her meeting, so we tucked into some dinner and watched an older episode of Pan Am, a show that dances around being decent. They just don't know what kind of show it is, and it's frustrating as all hell. This week they had two of the stewardesses doing odd side projects, one wants to be a photographer, the other is writing for the Village Voice? When the fuck did all this happen? Oh well, I suppose all entertainment is a series of contrivances and conveniences, but some a re sure as hell a lot easier to swallow.

We caught up on an episode of Hawaii Five-O, then this week's Desperate Housewives and another Pan Am before calling it a night, as I was after 10:00 by this stage of things.

Tomorrow I will rise early, as I need to get myself fully recovered and back to a normal sleep pattern, lest the week get away from me.

Be seeing you.

The Madhouse That Dreaded An Education

2012-01-21T22:07:00.013-06:00

I slept in today, finally waking around 12:30 to find that the wife had recently texted about bringing home some lunch for me, as she had an impromptu lunch meeting with our friend JH.

I finally got up, got the house opened up for the day, then spent some time on the PC, working on blog and the like to pass the time until the wife got back. The Yorkie eventually wandered in to keep me company, bored with her time alone in the bedroom.

The wife returned around 2:00 or thereabouts, so I spent some time with her, the moved into the den to re-watch Madhouse (1981) while I ate, leaving her to work on some stuff of her own in the Office. The movie holds up pretty well, the atmosphere is suitably creepy and the twist is still a good bit of silly fun, as you'll likely see it coming and will eventually get to see an attack by a dog puppet, which you don't see just every day. So there's that.

The wife eventually wandered in and caught the last of the film with me, then she napped while I spent time on the PC to catch up the nerdlists, a project that I regret more and more with every passing day.

In the late afternoon I decided to bite the bullet and get out of the house to make a run to the liquor store, as the supplies around the house had become woefully depleted and I had something of a hankering for a cocktail.

The wife and I watched An Education off the TiVo in the early evening, as I enjoyed a few Old Fashioneds. The movie got a plot of buzz as I recall, and I like the two leads, but honestly it never went anywhere that you didn't expect it to go. A bored schoolgirl is swept off her feet by a suave, sophisticated man who promises to take her away from her humdrum life, then turns out to not be quite what he seems? Shocker. It's still a decent enough watch, but I wasn't really bowled over by it, maybe I'm just too jaded and went into it looking for something to be 'wrong'.

Next off the TiVo, we dove into The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which aired on TCM last night and has long been one o those 'why isn't this on DVD?' films that turns up on everyone's wishlists. The sorta faux-documentary style to the film adds a bit to the creepiness factor, though overall it is just a fairly by the numbers slasher-y film. I did enjoy the Texarkana setting, as well as the time period in which the film takes place, which gives an interesting look into a small town's past.

We called it a night afterward, though I did stay up a bit watching this week's episode of Whitney, because I'm something of a masochist I suppose. I headed into the Office to get started on this post, then swiftly decided to make myself another cocktail and re-watch a few light comedies, because for whatever reason I just wasn't feeling all that committed to the writing tonight.

Be seeing you, I'm off for another drink.

Intruders Mimic Myra

2012-01-20T22:56:00.009-06:00

Before I get too far into things I wanted to pimp a little something some friends have done, in the same vein as the 'shit (fill in the blank) says' style of videos that everyone has been doing of late.

Miles and Katie do the always amusing ShowShow, and this was their first show-related video effort, give it a look: Shit Film Geeks Say.

Cute, right? I only say cute because it'll probably annoy Miles if he ever reads this. Give their show a try, they're funny even if they're possibly too jaded for as young as they are, which is a scant few years younger than myself, so I feel like an old fuck when listening to them.

Anyway....

I got a decent amount of sleep for a change, though the Yorkie woke me with her usual yapping bullshit about something that the neighbors were doing outside, so I pulled myself from the bed and hit the bathroom, hearing the wife chitchatting on the phone in the sitting area off the kitchen.

The wife and I ran through our usual banter about what had been going on with the day thus far, then I suggested picking up some lunch since she didn't have anything going on for pretty much the entire day, save for some web-stuff that she had to deal with later. I called in an order for some Thai food, then got dressed and killed a bit of time by posting another blog entry as I am starting to get slowly caught up on the publishing dates. I retrieved the newspaper from the driveway, then headed out to pick up food, listening to a podcast on the drive to pass the time.

The wife and I settled into the den with our food and I popped in something that the podcast I had been listening to was set to review, then Blu-ray of the 1989 film Intruder, in which the employees of a failing grocery store are menaced during an overnight stocking session by what we're led to believe is a crazed ex-boyfriend of one of the cashiers. The gore is pretty legendary, and the new Synapse Blu-ray is uncut, so there's some really over the top deaths in here that evidently haven't been seen on home video due to snip-happy censors in the late '80s. The only real criticism I actually have of the film is that it may over use the concept of the POV shot, as we see shots being filmed from inside a shopping cart, inside a phone, looking up at the girl making a call, from the attacker's point of view, it just jumps all over the place with some of these and it gets a little distracting to me. The movie is a lot of fun though, so I would certainly recommend checking it out of you're a slasher fan.

The wife split to do other things after the movie wrapped, eventually catching a nap with the Yorkie in the bedroom while I moved on to another podcast-related viewing of a film, this time the 1997 Guillermo del Toro horror flick Mimic, which has recently been released in a director's cut. I broke the seal on the Blu-ray this afternoon, curious to see what it was like, as I distinctly remembered renting it once on VHS about 100 years ago and then not really thinking about it again. The film holds up well enough, as genetic tinkering with cockroaches in NYC to try to destroy a virus leads to a new horror only 3 short years later that will threaten all of humanity if left unchecked. The film is pretty decent, though I do think at least a part of me has tried to blend this film with The Relic over the years, as I kept wondering where certain character actors were, but what can you do? The mind begins to fuck with you after awhile.

After the movie I spent some time going through the mail and made myself a cocktail, then the wife joined me for a third film, which was something I decided to watch because (say it with me) a podcast I listen to was planning on reviewing it. Myra Breckinridge is a movie I've always heard of but knew little about, besides the fact that it's about a guy who gets a sex change and is then played by Raquel Welch. As we watched we were both pretty amused by the style of the film making, so I was a bit surprised when I started looking around the web a bit and saw that most everyone fucking hates it, including Gore Vidal, whose novel it was based upon. I may have to do some further reading, as I can only assume the hate is based on the way the story was adapted, not the subject matter itself, I just didn't think it was all that bad, even if it does end on something of a weird note/sad trumpet noise. Oh well, I have definitely watched worse, so I don't really get the hate for this one.

The wife and I had some leftovers for our dinner and watched the new episode of Fringe, which continues to impress, then wrapped the evening with The Life & Times Of Tim and the other episode of Angry Boys from this past Sunday before we called it a night.

The wife and Yorkie successfully put to bed, I headed to the Office to get started on this post as well as polish up one from the archives to finally get something published for the evening.

Be seeing you.

The Most Terrible Love Bites In My Life

2012-01-19T23:01:00.008-06:00

The Goddamned dog must be feeling back to 100%, because she's back to annoying the hell out of me. I went to sleep last night after reading a bit more of the Updike novel I'm slowly working my way through, hoping to get at least 7 hours sleep, so naturally the dog woke me up yapping at the neighbors Lawn Guys (not even our own!) at the crack of 9:00 this morning, ruining my chances/plans to sleep in a bit. I'm happy she's back to normal, but yeah, it's kind of a pain in the ass at the same time.

The wife had already been nagged awake even earlier to feed the selfish little bastard, so she was in the kitchen making herself some coffee, as she's become very fond of the latte and has been teaching herself how to approximate the Starbuck's white chocolate mocha, so that's kinda cool. She fielded several phone-calls in the Office while I got the house opened up for business and noted with a cocked eyebrow that the asshole of a dog had now gone back to bed since her staff had been successfully rousted from the bedroom.

Jerk.

I picked up the kitchen a bit, then looked at e-mail and whatnot on the web before finally deciding that it was time for a bit of an early lunch, so the wife and I agreed on some chicken wings from a place across town, so she called in the order and I dressed to head out and pick it up before I would have to deal with the typical lunch rush. I got home with the food just ahead of the wife leaving for a quick meeting, so I put her stuff on the microwave to rest until she got back, then grabbed a quick selection from the To-Watch Pile to pop in while I ate.

Love Bites was the second film in a set labeled 'Two From Asia Argento', this one being a French film in which a night-owl schemer type gets hired by a rich individual to track down a man and his female companion who only come out at night, then vampire hints begin to trickle in as you might expect. Argento is the vampire's companion, and doesn't actually appear until about a half hour into the film, so it's a tad disingenuous to have her on the front cover as if she's the star attraction, but I guess that's how marketing fucks you from time to time. The movie's okay, but honestly nothing to write home about; I have to say that this set was slightly disappointing all the way around.

The wife returned as I was finishing up the movie and ate her lunch while we went through the mail, then she and the Yorkie chilled in the bedroom while I moved into the Office to work on the blog for a bit and continue to clear off the desk while listening to a couple podcasts.

Since I knew there were several things we would be watching in the evening I decided to try to squeeze in another movie before 7:00 rolled around. A shake of the iPhone offered the suggestion of The Most Terrible Time In My Life, which is a Japanese film from the mid-'90s that pays homage to the trappings of the film noir genre with a down on his luck private eye named Maiku (Mike) Hama getting involved in a case involving the Yakuza and a gang of foreigners who have banded together in a power play for turf. It's a good little flick, though I was a little surprised that it ends on something of a cliffhanger feel, because while I knew this was the first of three films with this character, I wasn't aware that there were that connected.

We spent the evening with the usual NBC comedy line-up, which was fun as usual, though I for the first time really had that sensation that everyone else has been bitching about in regards to The Office floundering, as tonight's episode just felt amazingly contrived at several turns. The new season of Archer started tonight, so that was a helluva lot of fun, as Burt Reynolds turns up as a love interest for Archer's mother, irritating him to no end.

We called it a night around 10:30, after a new episode of Person Of Interest, in which our hero Jim Caviezel proceeds to beat a guy's ass in front of the gym he'd been headed to for a workout, it was rather amusing, as the guy quite fancied himself to be a badass.

I'm out kids.

Be seeing you.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

2012-01-18T23:02:00.007-06:00

The wife was supposed to be up at 8:00 this morning, so naturally when I went to grab a beverage in the middle of the night the Yorkie snapped at me, waking and agitating her. I felt bad about this, as she had trouble getting back to sleep for several hours. As my form of capitulation I had set my own alarm as I went to bed, figuring if she didn't get her sleep then neither would I, so we both got up at the crack of dawn this morning.

The Yorkie was thoroughly confused by this, but seemed somewhat reassured when it became apparent that the wife was dressing to leave and wasn't about to take her with her to yet another vet visit. I kissed the wife goodbye, fired up the PC and then got the house opened up for the day and made the bed. A cup of tea in hand, I settled into the Office to work on the blog for a bit and try to get some of the various piles of stuff off the desk, including books, CD's and other shit that's accumulated over the past month.

I worked on that project until 11:00 or so, then dressed and stepped out to mail something that had sold on Amazon over the evening and then pick up a bite to eat. I poked my head into a pawn shop on the way, but they never seem to have anything of interest there, so I left empty-handed. A quick trip through a drive-thru for a salad and a burger later and I was on my way home to chill and see if the Yorkie was still feeling okay. The dog greeted me happily at the door, so that was a good sign.

There was a specific podcast I was putting off listening to until I watched a movie they were supposed to review, so I popped in Stone off the To-Watch Pile. It's a 1974 Aussie biker flick, in which a gang of bikers find themselves being picked off by person or persons unknown after one of them witnesses a political assassination. The twist here is that unbeknownst to the killer(s?), the witness doesn't even really remember what he saw, because he was tripping balls at the time! Enter Stone, a cop who wants to pose as a gang member and investigate the crimes, which naturally isn't easy since he's a 'pig' and all that sorta shit. The movie is pretty interesting, as I really haven't seen any footage of Oz in the '70s, so it was interesting to see a snapshot of the times, as well as the typical biker hijinx as they grudgingly let Stone become one of them. Worth a peep if you have the chance.

The wife was supposed to return with groceries at some point in the mid-afternoon, so I piddled around with a few little projects while waiting on her to get home, eventually settling into the Office to work on a couple things online until I heard the familiar sounds of she and the dog in the kitchen as she let herself in.

We both chilled in the Office and caught up, kinda killing time until we were to meet the Mother In Law and her Beau for an early dinner. I was pleased to have chosen the light meal at lunch, as it allowed me to actually be hungry for dinner.

We visited over a decent enough meal, though the MIL's experience wasn't all that great, her side dish was ridiculously over cooked and she ordered a salad that never turned up. Actually, they couldn't even make me an Old Fashioned because they were out of one of the ingredients. Come to think of it, fuck this restaurant.

We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways after dinner. I had a craving for some coffee to keep me awake for the evening, as my tea seemed to have long since worn off, so we hit Starbuck's on the way home, then got into our comfies and relaxed in the den with the Yorkie and some television.

Since we still have a few things left on the TiVo from back in freaking December of last year, we watched a couple episodes of Hawaii Five-O, then the new episode of The Soup and one ep of Pan Am just to try and get that one current.

We called it a night shortly after 10:00, as the wife was crashing hard and I wanted to deal with this sooner than later.

Be seeing you.

House On Abominable Hill

2012-01-17T21:06:00.009-06:00

I was up until the wee hours last night after enjoying a few vodka and Red Bulls while we watched television, partially because I wanted to catch a buzz and partially because I was kinda paranoid to let the Yorkie go unattended while we snoozed, as God only knows what she'll be wandering around barfing on.

The Yorkie did have one final pukey moment, around 6:30 in the AM which woke both the wife and myself, though it turned out to be undigested food rather than anything too freaky looking. This led us both to believe that maybe she had just gotten overzealous in her recovery, so we just let her lie and hoped for the best. The vet had said to see how she was doing in the morning, then decide if she needed to come back in for another look. Since she seemed somewhat better, if still a bit mopey we decided to let it lie until the afternoon to see what happened, which would be roughly 24 hours from the shot that he'd given her to calm her stomach down.

The wife had meetings in the morning, so she dressed and split, while I fell back into the bed until noon, feeling kinda blah from lack of sleep and the Red Bull still twitching its way through my system. After my alarm woke me I returned a couple texts, confirming to the wife that the dog was doing about the same if not back to herself 100%, and making lunch plans with EL and DR to meet at the Thai place.

I dressed quickly and headed out to see if I could run a couple errands before lunch, sequestering the dog on our side of the house to prevent any lingering sickness from ruining carpet all over the house. I gassed up the car and hit the local books, music and video outlet to pick up most of this months' periodicals before meeting the fellas. Lunch was good, though it feels like we're taking turns being kinda blah lately, as EL seemed a bit down this time around. Weird.

I headed home, found the Yorkie kinda bouncy and happy to see me, so she and I fetched the newspaper and mail, then I gave her another serving of food, which she seemed to enjoy and keep down, so I texted the wife with a status report, as she was kind of 'on call' in the afternoon to possibly take her back to the vet if need be.

The interwebs were calling me, so I spent some time on the blog, working to get it caught up sooner than later, then eventually retired to the den to watch something off the To-Watch Pile. Abominable was a blind-buy from a Big Lots run, in which a genre star-studded cast are menaced by a decent looking low budget Yeti in a remote forested area. It's an okay watch, a breezy 90 minutes that features Tiffany Shepis in a shower scene, so that was worth the price of admission alone. What a cutie.

The wife came and went over the course of the late afternoon, catching a nap with the Yorkie before she had to head back out to be at an evening meeting.

She split for her meeting and the Yorkie relocated into the den with me to see what I was up to, which was another decent sign that she's on the mend. I gave the phone another shake and decided to check out another Film Noir title after my great experience 'discovering' Out Of The Past from Monday afternoon.

The House On Telegraph Hill was something that I had grabbed at a pawn shop for a dollar, just based on the cover and the promise of noir, so I decided to give this one a shot and see what was up. The film turned out to be more of a mystery/thriller than what the typical trappings would bill as 'noir', but it's still an enjoyable watch. A woman assumes her friend's identity when she dies in a concentration camp, only to find that immigrating to America is equally dangerous. She is romanced by a family lawyer, reunited with her young 'son' and finds herself at odds with the suspicious governess who has been raising the boy while she was out of the country and presumed dead. There's some murder and intrigue, but more than anything it was fun to see the San Francisco streets circa the 1950s, which look great in crisp black and white courtesy of director Robert Wise, who evidently worked in many different genres over the years, directing varied stuff like Curse Of The Cat People, Two For The Seesaw and The Day The Earth Stood Still over the course of his career.

The wife returned during the last half of the movie, then she and I killed some time with a light dinner before settling in with the season three premiere of Justified, a show that I have truly missed. Timothy Olyphant continues to be awesome as Raylan Givens, and the rest of the cast are fun and interesting with their various quirks, especially his boss, who has great banter with him pretty much every time they're onscreen together.

We called it a night shortly afterward, the Yorkie seemed happy to head to bed and get back to the normal routine, so I think she's fully on the mend.

Be seeing you.

Movie Noir Monday

2012-01-16T23:17:00.006-06:00

I've been going to bed each night reading further into Rabbit, Run by John Updike, which is one of those odd titles that always puzzled me when I worked in a bookstore, as I had no idea what the context was. I finally skimmed through part of one of the man's stories on Google Books or some such and found the writing style appealing enough, then finally decided to try and track down an omnibus of the four Rabbit novels at some point. I came close, snagging a collection of the first two at the Library thrift store awhile back and diving into it, though I seem to be reading it in fits and starts, so I dunno how long it will languish on the nightstand. I have to say I'm curious where the novel ends up, as the general message so far seems to be that a mid-life crisis is okay as long as you are somewhat charismatic and by the way, enjoy all that new pussy while you're out there. The writing style reminds me a bit of the way Bret Easton Ellis writes, in that the situations are filled with lingering feelings of disappointment and failure, none of the characters feel as though they are truly happy, more as if they are making do with life as it's handed to them, which I find bizarrely comforting on some level that I can't explain. Y'know, as if I may not be the only person who finds himself less than happy for no obvious reason, that nagging ennui that you can't quite put a finger on how to shake...

Or who knows, maybe it is just me.

The phone buzzing on the nightstand woke me this morning, which turned out to be the Plumber calling about popping in to fix whatever was wrong with the hallway toilet, so I checked the message and then forced myself from the bed to see what the wife and Yorkie were up to before I called this guy back. The Yorkie was still kinda moping around the house, which was sort of the same as she had been last night, so we were kind of on alert to her getting sick, which hasn't happened in quite awhile. After catching up with the wife I got the house opened for the day and called the Plumber back, telling him to drop by whenever.

They turned up within a half hour and were here for literally 15 minutes before they gave the toilet a triumphant flush and split. The Yorkie bitched the entire time, as is her custom.

The wife had an afternoon meeting, so I decided to step out and drop some of our plastic recycling and pick up a salad somewhere for my lunch. Naturally the Goddamned recycling bins looked like a major city during a garbage strike, so I just cruised on past there, gritting my teeth in agitation. I hit a drive-thru and picked up some food, then headed back home.

As I walked in I noticed that the Yorkie gave me a weird look and headed off to the Office, which is strange for her, as she normally jumps up and scratches at your calves until you at least stop to pet her. I called to the wife to ask if she was in there acting weird now and she said that she was trying to vomit. I caught her before she barfed on the carpet, moving her onto the tile, where she yacked up some brown, brackish vomit that confirmed our fears that she was experiencing the same hyper-colitis stuff again. She seemed to calm down after that, so the wife and I agreed that I would watch over her while she ran to her meeting, then she would take the dog to the vet afterward.

I ate (which seemed really appealing immediately after cleaning up vomit, let me tellya) in the den while watching a re-run of The Venture Brothers off the TiVo, keeping tabs on the dog to make sure she was still doing okay. We had actually sequestered her in the hallway to keep her from barfing all over the carpet or one of the couches, so I was feeling pretty bad by the time I finished my meal, so I moved into the Office, where she chilled in her bed and stayed pretty still while I worked on a few things online.

The wife came and picked up the dog to take her to the vet about an hour later, so I moved back into the den and decided to watch Out Of The Past, a film that I've always heard of as a seminal entry in the Film Noir genre and recently recorded via Turner Classic Movies. I was keen to see more Robert Mitchum after watching Night Of The Hunter awhile back, so when this turned up I knew I had to give it a go, and I am so very glad that I did. Mitchum starts the film as a gas station owner, dating a local gal but considered kinda shifty by the local law and her parents who don't trust him because he's so cagey about his past. A guy turns up telling him that a man from his past wants to settle up accounts with him, so we eventually learn in flashback that Mitchum used to be a private eye, who went in search of Kirk Douglas' girlfriend, only to fall for her himself, which snowballs into much greater complications and his taking a new identity in a small town running gas station. Douglas wants him to square their previous deal by helping him out of a jam with his shifty lawyer and it gets as convoluted as the average Noir plot always seems to be, but Goddamn if Mitchum doesn't look cool stalking around in the shadows, cigarette smoke curling around his head, delivering his casual acerbic rebuttals to anyone who tries to talk shit to him, it's just so good.

The wife returned with the dog about midway through the film, the dog having recieved the same shot she gets every time something like this happens, so we released her back into the 'wild', just to see what she did. She had some water, then lay on the bed for a bit, hopped down to the little bench at the foot of the bed and proceeded to barf up the water. I swear to God, we have an acre of tile and hardwood flooring in this house and that dog cannot get sick on anything that isn't carpeted or upholstered. It's borderline comical, because nine times out of ten she'll actually walk to someplace with carpet just to throw up, I dunno what happens in her head that makes this happen, it's like the legend that elephants somehow know that it's time to go to the elephant burial ground to die, some kind homing beacon in their brains suddenly goes off.

We got that cleaned up and she chilled for a bit and the wife left for another round of meetings. I decided to pop in a film that owes its' existence to the Noir of the past, so I gave the Blu-ray of Sin City a day in court, only to find that either I've grown past Frank Miller's style of writing for the material, or that I was a bit more forgiving when I first watched the film. A lot of the dialog that I recall reading & enjoying in the comic book source material now makes me wince a little bit, as it's just so wordy that it doesn't roll easily off the tongue, especially when we're talking about a ton of expository narration that's meant to happen as someone walks across a room, whereas a still image in a comic doesn't have this handicap; be as wordy and verbose as you'd like, the visual shorthand works out the kinks for you. The film does capture the look and feel of the comics, but it's cartoonishly over the top at times, almost making me wonder how much of this is meant to be taken as straight up spoof rather than what I at first felt was homage to the genre. I still enjoy it, especially the bit with Clive Owen as Dwight, that was always my favorite character in the comics and he does a good job of selling it here.

The wife returned with a late dinner and the Yorkie continued to mope around, finally barfing one final time, though I heard her little gagging sounds and was able to yank her out of the Office and onto the tile of the hallway before she did a number on the carpet in there. She settled while the wife and I blew through this week's eps of Californication and House Of Lies, then I put she and the wife to bed and got started on this post.

The dog drifted in around 1:30 in the morning and acted as if she was hungry, so I gave her a small portion of food, which she at and seemed to keep down, so I guess whatever the issue was with her stomach has finally hit bottom and she seems to be on the mend.

I'm out kids.

Be seeing you.

Inversions And Celebrity Perversions

2012-01-15T23:08:00.009-06:00

The wife woke me today at noon, the late hour kinda surprising me. I had gone to bed late after reading for a bit, then woke to hit the bathroom around 6:30 and headed back to bed figuring I would naturally wake around 10:00 or possibly 11:00. This obviously did not happen.

The wife had scheduled a private yoga lesson for a group of us to celebrate Anastasia Beaverhouszen's 40th birthday, so I dressed quickly and fetched the newspaper before we basically had to head out the door.

We arrived at the yoga studio just behind the birthday girl, her hubby Kno1 and Brian, then chit-chatted with the instructor a bit until JH arrived, then we all got our game faces on and settled onto our mats to get started. The routine was different than the private lesson that the wife and I had done, as it being filled with couples allowed for a different approach that allowed us to do things with resistance and that sort of thing. The lesson was amusing, as we're all of varying levels of beginner, though the wife, Anastasia and Kno1 have been going fairly regularly to a once a week class, so they knew a bit more of what to expect. The true kicker for the hour was the 'inversion' portion, in which we each used a strap around our hips to walk up the wall and hang upside down for a period of time, even using your hands to 'walk' yourself closer to the wall and straighten the spine a bit more. Fun, bizarre stuff.

We adjourned to a deli afterward for a late lunch, visiting a bit further and relaxing a bit, then we all said our goodbyes and the wife and I headed home.

The wife chilled in the bedroom with the Yorkie and I retired to the den to read the newspaper and watch a random suggestion off the To-Watch Pile: The Asia Argento directed film Scarlet Diva, which I have had on hand for some time and knew little about save that it was a bit racy and had at least a few autobiographical elements to it. The autobio stuff seems to be (as far as I know of her life) limited to the fact that she portrays an actress in the film who is the daughter of an actress, but most of the other stuff I have to feel is more than a little bit fictionalized. The film feels like some kind of Euro-trash travelogue that follows our lead through drama with her friends, scoring drugs, auditions, a hook up with a rock star who gets her pregnant and promptly disappears from her life, all told in a breezy manner that is stylish but keeps us distanced from the subject to the point that I never really cared what happened to her. Also, there are some truly awful line readings in here that sound like something you'd hear in middling community theater, it's pretty distracting at times. Oh and in a SPOILER-Y note: we're meant to believe at the climax of the film that our actress lead, who one assumes has at least some minor amount of celebrity has been knocked up by a musician who is married with children, a fact that she's never run across in a tabloid, read on the internet, etc., which I found amazingly far-fetched. I mean, the movie was made in 2000, not 1900, when you might have a bit of trouble looking around for background info about a person. Oh well, I guess after yesterday's arty film I was hoping for something of more substance, and this came up pretty short for me, even though I do like her next film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things quite a bit.

The evening rolled around to bring the normal run of Fox animation fare, though the airtimes were fucked up by the long-winded yammering of the post game show that follows whatever sporting event they air in the afternoon and was supposed to be over by the time The Simpsons started. I flipped over to the Golden Globes to see Ricky Gervais do his opening monologue and caught the first few awards being given, then checked to see that my Simpsons was finally airing. It was followed by the premiere of the animated series based on Napoleon Dynamite, which seems to have arrived about 8 years too late for my tastes, as the film was ridiculously popular when it hit in 2004, though I never quite drank to Kool-aid myself. I've seen it once, enjoyed a few laughs and then thought very little about it until EVERYONE went apeshit with quoting it, buying tie-in merchandise and generally beating it to death. Now, nearly a decade later they make a cartoon using the original actors for the voices and make it even more silly and asinine than the source material? I made it through the pilot and have decided that it was enough for me. Hell, I watched the entirety of that shitty Allen Gregory show that Fox threw up between two decent shows late last year, but I refuse to sit through this shit as well. Bleh.

We rounded out the night with a new episode of Desperate Housewives and one of the two Angry Boys that aired this evening, saving the other one for tomorrow night.

I put the wife to bed and headed to the Office to get started on this stuff and get another post published towards catching things up to current day.

Be seeing you.

The Birthday Fragments

2012-01-14T21:35:00.007-06:00

The wife let me sleep in this morning, thought the Yorkie had some things to say about that, barking and yapping at a few things from the front room. I finally got up and moving around noon, then spent a bit of time catching up with the wife before suggesting that we grab a bite to eat sooner than later, as we had somewhat early dinner plans this evening.

The wife and I hit a drive-thru for a burger, then chilled in the den to eat while the Yorkie watched attentively in case we should have an extra french fry that she could con us out of. I attempted to pop in a DVD from Netfux, which proved to be massively unplayable, even seeming to come close to locking up the Blu-ray player as it made a series of weird ratcheting noises as it tried desperately to read the scratched disc.

I finally gave up and threw in a random selection off the To-Watch Pile, a film purchased on the cheap at Big Lots called The Tracey Fragments. The film stars Ellen Page and is directed by Bruce McDonald, the director of Hard Core Logo and a personal favorite from the '90s, Highway 61. The set up is very interesting to me, as a 15 year old girl is riding in the back of a bus, half nude and in search of her little brother...who thinks that he is a dog. Weird set-up, right? Well it gets stranger, as the film itself is completely fragmented, presumably to indicate the different things running through Tracey's mind. This is done in several ways, with different images and time periods running in splitscreens, with the story unfolding in a very non-linear manner, and with the images layering over one another at times, making for one of the most interesting looking movies I've seen in a long time. The approach is defiantly arthouse and won't be for all (most?) tastes, but I absolutely loved the effect that it creates, keeping the entire screen moving at different speeds, building impressions about situations with noise, music and the the disparate images themselves, it's a very interesting effect and well worth a look for those of an 'artsy' mindset, I think that it will impress them a great deal.

The wife relaxed in the afternoon while I remained in the den, sorting through the day's mail and then watching another episode in my Battlestar Galactica re-watch before doing a load of laundry to make sure that the pair of jeans that I wanted wear this evening was clean. I eventually showered and shaved, then promptly decided that the shirt I was planning on wearing wasn't quite what I wanted to see, so I ended up ironing a dress shirt that I had yet to even take out of the wrapping, so it was riddled with the machine folded wrinkles. I got it looking pretty decent, which made me kinda proud, as I haven't really used an iron in several years, preferring instead to deal with either dry cleaning or just giving something a roll in the dryer when in a last minute pinch.

We headed out to secure a table at the restaurant, arriving early in anticipation of the Saturday night crowds. Kno1 had asked the wife if we could run ahead of the group, as the restaurant doesn't accept reservations for whatever reason. The event of the day was Anastasia Beaverhouszen's 40th birthday, so her sweet husband had secired the evening with us, as well as her In-Laws and our mutual friends JH and Brian, who were to all meet us at the restaurant. We got on the list and were seated fiarly quickly, then chilled at the table until the guest of honor arrived, just ahead of Brian, then JH rolled in and we visited while waiting on Kno1's parents to turn up. We visited over a nice meal, then adjourned to the birthday girl's house and enjoyed some birthday cupcakes. We chilled there for about 3 hours, moving from subject to subject as the night went on, distracted only when one of the housecats began trying to chew on JH's hair, which is apparently something of a first for the household. Very odd.

We called it a night around 11:30, as I knew that everyone is planning on a final birthday surprise tomorrow afternoon, wherein we all take a private yoga lesson that the wife is arranging for us, which I think will really surprise Anastasia Beaverhouszen, as only she, Kno1 and the wife normally go, and never on a Sunday.

I put the wife to bed, started another load of laundry, then got started on this post before I crash out for the evening.

Be seeing you.

Majestyk Television

2012-01-13T10:35:00.008-06:00

I had set the alarm for 9:00 this morning, as we had plans to call a Plumber in to check out a slow moving drain in the master bath, as well as the toilet in the hall, which had started filling amazingly slowly in the past few days. I spent the morning on the PC, working on catching the nerdlists up to the end of last year, which I was finally able to do by about noon.

The Plumbers turned up and got the drain fixed up with no hassle, as it's a recurring issue, we think that the roots of a tree directly behind the house begin to grow and clog the pipes each year, we have to do this whole routine at least annually. The toilet on the other hand proved to be more of a pain in the ass, as the part that needs to be replaced is different from what is the standard nowadays, so they won't be able to get it fixed up until Monday. Oh well, thank God we have numerous other toilets to use, this one just happens to be the most convenient.

The wife had a noon meeting, so she'd split to attend that and I found myself feeling a bit peckish, so I called in an order for some Thai food and picked it up before settling in to watch something off the TiVo and eat my lunch.

Mr. Majestyk is a Charles Bronson movie that's as old as I am, premiering in 1974 and feeling for all the world like the basis of every Simpsons parody ever done of the Bronson persona, as his delivery is just hilariously tough guy in here, as his easy-going melon-farmer character finds himself in the middle of a showdown with the mob after a convoluted series of events. It's a watchable little film and while it's nothing all that different than the average action flick, it is fun for the snapshot of the times and the fairly silly set-up. Seriously, melon farming? Migrant workers and casual racism? It's a weird selection of things to drape an action film over, but it's still fun.

The evening brought a full slate of television, including new episodes of Nikita, Fringe, Supernatural and The Life And Times Of Tim, the lot of which ate up the rest of our night until we called it around 11:00 in the PM.

Tomorrow evening we have a birthday party for Anastasia Beaverhouszen, so I know I have some thing to get done before that happens.

Be seeing you.

Ip Thursday (Or: Thursday Man...Sorry, They're Not All Winners)

2012-01-12T23:00:00.004-06:00

The wife had yoga in the early morning today, so she was up and at 'em for that while I was still snoozing, having been up late reading a book about the sleazier days of 42nd Street and Times Square in the '80s. My alarm went off at 10:00 and I looked at e-mail for a bit, then finally thought the hell with it and turned over to go back to sleep for another hour or so. The wife eventually turned up and showered, which I was vaguely aware of, then she split again to attend her usual assortment of meetings that are back in full swing in the New Year.

I finally rose after noon, having managed about 8 hours sleep for the first time this week, so that was a nice change of pace, even if it pretty much pissed away half the day. I got up and opened the house up for the day, then decided to get out and pick up a bite to eat and watch some television over a late meal.

A couple burgers later I was parked in front of the television in the den, watching an episode of the Dark Shadows re-boot from the early '90s, as I was kinda giving them a look and sorta fell out of the habit. After I ate I fired up the PC and fiddled around with trying to upload a video an interweb acquaintance had asked about, with no success. This is why I don't bother with any d/loads or torrent type shit, because certain rudimentary tech stuff eludes me to the point that I just don't feel like dicking around with the frustration of it. Oh well, I finally gave the fuck up on that project and spent the rest of the afternoon with the nerdlists, which are so close to being finished I can almost taste it. Tomorrow I think I will finally be done with that nonsense and be able to start catching the blog up, which I think I have written every day for an entire week now, but we'll see what happens.

Since I still hadn't heard anything from the wife, I eventually drifted into the den again and popped in another Donnie Yen flick off the To-Watch Pile, the 2008 film Ip Man, which is the story of the martial arts master who would eventually go on to train Bruce Lee, though this tale is set during the Japanese occupation of China in the late '30s and stars Donnie Yen in the titular role, bringing the Wing Chun style of martial arts to prominence. Yen looks amazing as always, and the only thing that bugged me was the fact that I bought this movie on DVD a few years ago in a region free disc, because I'd heard so many great things about it, then promptly let it get lost on the shelf until today, when I can buy both this and it's sequel on 2 disc Blu-ray special editions that are produced for the US, rather than having to import jack shit. Very annoyed with myself, as I despise the double dip, especially when it's due to my own ignorance.

The wife returned as the movie was wrapping up and she and I spent some time catching up on her day, then we had some leftovers from last night for dinner and watched some odds and ends that've started turning up on the TiVo, new 30 Rock, Parks And Recreation as well as the welcome return of Person Of Interest on CBS. On a side note, I came to the puzzling realization that we now watch two different shows on CBS these days, does this mean I'm officially old? That network has long had the reputation of appealing to the elderly and not many else, so I guess it's somewhat inevitable.

We called it an evening after checking out this week's episode of The Soup, so I could get started with this and be in bed at a reasonable hour.

Be seeing you.

Bachelor In Stepford

2012-01-11T13:13:00.008-06:00

The wife and Yorkie rose early this morning, as she had meetings and the Yorkie had a visit to the Groomer planned. The alarm woke me at 9:00, as I had no idea whatsoever when the Maid would decide to actually turn up. I got the house opened up for business and boiled some water for my morning tea to get the sleep from my eyes.

The next few hours I spent on the PC in the Office working on first e-mails and things of that nature, then just piddling around with the nerdlists, which still confound me and refuse to be finished. It's bordering on ridiculous at this point, but what are you going to do, I refuse to devote an entire day to dicking with this shit, it's just that stupid.

The wife called eventually to let me know that she'd spoken to the Maid, who was running late from a dentist visit and would be here around noon. I eventually let her in a bit after 12:00, she set to her routine and I decided to make myself some pasta for my lunch. I ate while watching an episode of X-Files on Netfux Instant Watch, then greeted the wife and Yorkie when they returned from their outing. Our Contractor was supposed to drop by to finally pick up a check for his work last year and install a final cover for a vent that we were waiting on, so by the time he turned up our Lawn Guys were here as well, so the Yorkie had a fine old time barking at everyone, then one by one they all finally wrapped up and got the hell out of our hair for good.

The wife spent some time on the Mac, dealing with a few things she had to get caught up on, so I ran the trash out and decided to hit the liquor store to replenish my martini supplies for the evening.

When I got back I made myself a cocktail and settled into the den to re-watch Bachelor In Paradise off the To-Watch Pile, one of the Bob Hope films I watched not too long ago and really enjoyed. The Warner Archive disc looks pretty decent, though the color does go a bit wonky for a few seconds in one certain scene, it looks pretty good otherwise for a film from 1961. The wife joined me for the film and some dinner, as she'd been making another crock pot dish for the evening, a brisket that turned out rather well I have to say. When we finished the Hope film I decided to throw on something else to continue the suburban feel for the evening.

I had never seen The Stepford Wives before, so I had picked it up cheap several months back at Big Lots, which afforded us the luxury of a theme this evening. The movie is pretty entertaining, though I have to admit to a bit of surprise that there isn't more conflict, just a bit of hey, that seems suspicious, hey, what's going on here, oh my God, THIS is what's happening, roll credits - there's no real struggle to stop anything, just here it is, deal with it, which kinda surprised me, especially given the sexual revolution of the time. But what do I know, I guess I was expecting more of a climactic showdown at the end, when I got more of a whimper.

The wife and I sat through a new episode of Whitney, which I still hope will be canceled, as I hate to just bail on it but it's gotten to a point of fucking annoyance with how unfunny it is, so that may have to happen. I also saw a show that they are pimping featuring the always unfunny Chelsea Handler and the always gorgeous Laura Prepon, which left me with a weird feeling, as I kinda want to watch Prepon, but I'd rather have my dick sewn to the couch before I'd sit through any part of Handler trying to be 'funny', so I'm glad we passed on that one.

I put the wife to bed and hopped online to work on this post and listen in on a (Cool) Shite love recording before calling it a night myself.

Be seeing you.

I'll Sleep When I'm Depressed

2012-01-10T22:33:00.008-06:00

I was up late last night talking to a friend via a series of Direct Messages on Twitter, then read another little chunk of the Milk & Cheese hardcover collecting all of Evan Dorkin's stuff from the '90s before I crashed out.

The sound of yesterday's snow melting and dropping to the roof in large patches woke me this morning, as it sounded like someone had dropped a Geo Metro on the roof several times before my sleep-addled brain finally pieced together what the fuck all that noise was.

I returned a couple texts from my aunt, who had inquired as to how we were faring in the weird weather, then asked EL if he was on for lunch or taking a snow day. We confirmed for a deli across town, then I got the house opened for business and fed the Yorkie, who seemed antsy with the noises on the roof.

Once I dressed the dog really seemed agitated, as she knew she was being left alone, so I headed out sooner than later as she was pretty much inconsolable at that point, which always seems to happen if both the wife and I are at the house for a full couple of days. I met DR at the restaurant, as he was pulling in as I did, so he and I visited while waiting on EL to turn up, then placed our familiar orders and found appropriate seating to eat and visit a bit. I gotta be honest, the meal managed to depress me somehow, which I can't quite put my finger on what was bothering me. I found myself in kind of a weird funk for most of the afternoon, even after we ate and said our goodbyes. And it wasn't as though we discussed anything of a particular weight or things of an overly depressing nature, I just kinda started feeling a bit blah over the course of the meal.

Very odd.

On the way home I spoke to the wife about when we'd need to pick up her car from the service center, as they had fixed the transmission leak, and she was on her way home from the grocery store, so I met her there and we unloaded everything from the Jeep, then dropped it at the Mother In Law's place and I took her to the Mercedes place, which has recently relocated to a more accessible location instead of the other side of town. She met me back at the house and I left her going over some things on her iPad to kill time before a meeting she had at 5:00 while I moved into the Office to work on my little nerdlist project.

The wife eventually split to do her thing and I finally called it on my computer nonsense and moved into the den to see what the TiVo had been up to and weigh my entertainment options.

After a bit of deliberation I settled on a re-watch of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead from director Mike Hodges. Starring Clive Owen, we open with a young man being attacked by an older man and his thugs in London, then taking his own life. Owen turns up as his brother, a criminal who has left town 3 years earlier and returns to London to find out the circumstances surrounding the death of his only sibling. The set-up is very similar to the director's own film Get Carter from the early '70s, but I still enjoy the slow boil that Clive Owen maintains as he slinks around London's backstreets digging for info and encountering people from his old life, most of whom want to write him off because he left, presumably showing them a weakness. The film ends on a pretty annoyingly ambiguous note that I wouldn't spoil for you, but I love the film right up to that point, it's definitely worth a peep.

The wife returned midway through the film and made some sandwiches for our dinner, so we ate while watching a few things off the TiVo, including an episode of Hawaii Five-O from back in November for Christ's sake, as well as another episode of Pan Am. Pan Am continues to be a show that I'm trying to like, but it feels like it has schizophrenia and can't decide what kind of show it wants to be. One week it's about espionage, the next it's all about romance, then we're gonna try a bit of drama this week and next week it'll be a murder mystery; it's fucking ridiculous. Choose a tone and stick with it, the reason Mad Men works so well is that it's filled with very well drawn characters populating a very real world in a certain place and time. If Don Draper were a fucking spy one week, then falling in love the next, the show would've been canceled after five episodes. I hope Pan Am sorts this shit out, as I don't mind a bit of soap opera flavor, I just want to know what to expect each week.

We called it a night shortly afterward, as we have the Maid in the AM and I need my rest before dealing with all that nonsense.

Be seeing you.

Movie Throne Monday

2012-01-09T22:37:00.009-06:00

Having slept a magical 8 hours last night, I woke late this morning to the sounds of the wife returning from running a few snow-covered errands.

That's right, we've had another snow storm blow through the area, blanketing us with what I understand are record levels of snow. Seriously not used to all this 'weather', was wearing shorts this past Friday, now there's snow on the ground? What kinda topsy-turvy world is this?

I got the house opened for business and caught up with the wife about her morning, the weather having shot down a few other things she had on tap. She chilled in the bedroom with the fireplace gas logs burning, watching some trash TV while I moved into the Office to work on my nerdlists, which finally inch closer to being up to date.

The afternoon stretched out before me, I finally decided to make myself a sandwich for my lunch and chill in the den with a Venture Brothers re-run before finally settling in with something off the TiVo for my Movie Shame Monday entry.

Akira Kurosawa's Throne Of Blood has languished on the TiVo for I don't know how long, so I decided to give it a spin and see what a Japanese adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth was like. I'm a product of the American public school system, so I can't honestly speak to how well the film compares to Macbeth, as I'm rather unfamiliar with the source material save for that "Out damned spot" line, but the movie was actually rather engaging, which I have to say is a nice change of pace for Kurosawa and me. The films I've watched of his recently (read: in the past year or so) haven't really blown up my skirt, though I do admit to choosing some of the lesser known works to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the man's work. At this stage of things, having not given the major works another look (as I have seen Seven Samurai, but it was so long ago I recall very little), I'd have to say that I more respect his work than I actually enjoy it for the most part. I can see why it's so highly though of, but I don't know how often I would return to most of the films that I have seen, but again, I've actively been avoiding the more famous works, kinda saving them for later for no good reason. I suppose I figure if I blow through Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro right off the bat I may never get to some of the other works.

I guess we'll see how this plan works out in the long run after a few more films, as I'm edging closer to a first viewing of Ran and stuff along those lines.

I made a fire in the den in the evening while watching another episode of Battlestar Galactica, then the wife and I dug into the steak dinner that she'd made for us.

The rest of the evening was taken up with several television shows, including the season premiere of Californication (which seems amusing enough even though I'm firmly convinced that the show has overstayed its welcome) and the series premiere of a show called House Of Lies, which is about a management consulting firm that ruthlessly spins information to screw large corporations out of as much money as they can. The first episode was decent enough, with Don Cheadle carrying most of the plot with asides to the audience and background info to bring the audience up to speed. It also co-stars Kristen Bell, who I enjoy in most things and has a breezy Ocean's Eleven style delivery to things that I think will be fun to follow each week.

We wrapped the evening with this week's episode of Desperate Housewives, then I put the wife to bed and actually lay in the bedroom with her halfway watching Gladiator on cable for a bit before finally getting started on this post.

Be seeing you.

The Big Bird Exterminator

2012-01-08T22:53:00.009-06:00

The Yorkie whined us out of our slumber this morning, so she and the wife got up and the wife fed her and started going through some stuff on the Guest Side of the house, as she had a hankering to organize the hall closet that's been a catch all for tons of different holiday themed decorating items. I looked at Twitter and e-mail on the iPhone for a bit, then finally got up and moving, made myself some tea and got the house opened up for business.

Since the wife was doing her own thing I busied myself with paying a few bills online and then catching up the nerdlists a bit further before finally knocking off around 12:30 and making lunch plans with the wife, who had showered and was settling in by this time to check her own e-mail. I placed an order to pick up some Chinese food and went to grab that while she did her web routine.

When I returned we settled into the den and watched the final film in the Women In Cages set, the Jack Hill-directed The Big Bird House, which was set up to be something of a spoof of the genre and just might be the best film in the set. I did sort of puzzle over the idea that Sid Haig was in the film playing Pam Grier's boyfriend, but it's still a fun watch, full of stereotypes and sleaze the likes of which we'll never see again in the average film. Good stuff, and a great little set of movies.

The wife caught a nap afterward, so I looked at the Sunday paper and watched another episode of Battlestar Galactica to try and get that whole re-watch idea back on track, as I have fallen off the past week or so.

It was getting a bit late in the afternoon by this time, so I figured we'd try to sneak in another movie before the Fox animated stuff started happening around 6:00.

I popped in the James Glickenhaus revenge flick from 1980, The Exterminator. Robert Ginty (who isn't the best action star you've ever seen, but he's what we get in this film, so let's just press on) who plays a Vietnam vet who runs afoul of a gang of hoods with his war buddy best friend when they find them stealing from their place of employment. The buddy is later viciously attacked and crippled, so Ginty goes after them in the bloodiest ways he can think of, all of which is vividly laid out for the viewer to see. The wife and I were both pretty amused by this one, as there are some absolutely asinine editing choices here and there, the most obvious of which is a scene of the guy and his buddy's wife, grieving the attack, then fade into him already interrogating a thug who he's apparently run out and caught to help find the others' whereabouts. None of which is made very clear, he's just suddenly threatening a guy with a flamethrower, but hey, I guess he gets shit done, so how can you complain? It's a pretty fun, mean-spirited little flick, and one moment in particular really shocked me, as we see a scene of a hooker being tortured with what looks like a soldering gun, then later she hassles our 'hero' about a date and he takes her to a cheap hotel, so I'm thinking some time must have passed, she's healed up or the wounds aren't as bad as we're led to believe...something along those lines.

Imagine my fucking surprise when she starts to take off her shirt to reveal these crazy boiled looking welts all over her arms and breasts, causing me to almost spit my drink out! I mean, to be really crass here, if you're paying for sex, how damaged can the goods be before you have to feel like it's the old bait & switch? She might as well just whip out a cock while she's at it, really ruin the mood completely. Yikes.

We made a bit of dinner with some various and sundry leftovers that were in the kitchen, then dove into the typical Fox Sunday night fare, tons of animated stuff, then a couple new episodes of the Chris Lilley show Angry Boys on HBO before calling it a night.

Be seeing you.

Rise Of The Women In Prison Of The Apes

2012-01-07T22:38:00.005-06:00

The wife had decided last night to get out early today and pick up a few odds and ends from Target, so when I woke with something of a start at 10:00 she was already off and running. The Yorkie greeted me briefly, then went back to sleep at the foot of the bed, so I got up and got the house opened up and hopped on the PC to pass the time until the wife returned.

I spent a bit of time on the nerdlists, as I creep ever closer to having them caught up; my dream is to be done with that project by this coming Monday and be able to start double posting and get this blog up to date again. Fingers crossed...

The wife returned and almost immediately realized that she'd forgotten a few things at the store, so she made plans to head back out to get it over with and be done for the day, offering to pick up some lunch while she was out. I put in my order and then moved back into the den to catch up on e-mail and pay a couple bills.

When she returned about an hour later I helped her unload the car, then we ate while watching this week's episode of The Soup. We caught up on last night's season premiere of The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret, a show that I liked quite a bit, but had forgotten that it ended on a cliffhanger, so I felt a bit lost as we just jumped back into the story with both feet. I think the series will grow on me as I get back into the rhythm of the show, but this afternoon left me feeling a bit "...um, what?" about the storyline, which they only vaguely recapped in the opening montage.

The wife caught a nap after the show and I watched Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes on Blu-ray off the To-Watch Pile, which I had heard a lot of good things about and decided to give a blind buy because I caught it cheap on Amazon. I would have to agree with the general consensus on this one, it's a good looking, solid little sci-fi film, though I would go so far as to call it a bit melancholy as a whole. The film opens with what we find out is the ape who will mother the key ape Caesar being captured in the jungle, then moves quickly to a lab where experiments will make her offspring increasingly smarter. We have a brief happy respite of Caesar being raised by James Franco's scientist character in his home, then he's forced by circumstances to allow him to be put into captivity, which is naturally a giant fucking downer for the next 20 or 30 minutes of the movie, just lots of things of that nature. It certainly has more sad bits than it does 'wow, cool!' moments or heartwarming stuff, which kinda surprised me. Oh well, it's a solid flick, well worth a look if you wanna prepare for the arrival of our simian overlords.

The wife woke up for the last bit of the movie, then she busied herself in the kitchen with the evening meal prep, as she had a recipe she was trying out and wanted to get started on it in case she ran into any weird hiccups along the way.

I breezed through another episode of Prime Suspect, then spent some time cleaning up the TiVo season passes for series that have gotten canned, as well as the Ghost Hunters stuff that I just can't bring myself to sit through anymore. I used to really enjoy the show, nowadays I feel like it's a chore to bother with it, as they so rarely have anything happen and when they do it's usually somewhat questionable to me. I honestly can't recall the last time I was watching a show that is still airing that I had to tap out of, but I just don't give a shit about this stuff anymore.

In the evening the wife and I got into a Shout! Factory Blu-ray that she'd gotten me for Christmas, specifically the Roger Corman Women In Cages set, kicking off with the Jack Hill directed film The Big Doll House. These women in prison (or WiP) films all follow a relatively similar set-up, fresh meat is delivered to prison, usually runs afoul of the fellow inmates and warden, then makes friends and is abused by the guards before an escape attempt brings things to a head, many of them involving some sort of Banana Republic & their revolution, as a lot of them take place in South American or other tropical locales. This freedom of plotting allows the viewer to watch for the occasional nudity and some great lines that are peppered throughout, like this one from a vicious & sexually desperate prisoner to a hapless delivery guy: "Get it hard or I'll cut it off!" I mean, how can you not be amused by a film like that?

The set features three films, plus a few odds and ends as far as special features, so we watched the behind the scenes featurette called From Manila With Love, then popped in the second film in the set: the titular Women In Cages. It's not actually directed by Jack Hill, and I think it might've suffered as a result, as the same tropes and scenarios didn't grab me 100% this time around, and while it was watchable, I would say that I'm definitely looking forward to the final film that we'll watch tomorrow afternoon, which promises more Hill, as well as Sid Haig in another sweaty, sleazy role.

We called it a night after the movie, as I knew the wife was tired and I wanted to get this written and then take another pass at the nerdlists before hitting the hay myself.

Be seeing you.

Friday Of Legend

2012-01-06T23:44:00.007-06:00

After a bit of heartburn almost got the better of me late last night, I was finally able to get back to sleep around 3:30 in the AM, sleeping in until about 10:00 this morning. The wife and Yorkie we're already getting up, so we visited briefly about our various plans for the day, then I hopped in the shower, as I had decided to get out and run a few errands to stave off the cabin fever that threatened to set in.

Since the city has been absolutely shit-house in their pick up of the recycling bins during the holiday season, I decided to brave them once more, loading up everything we had to get rid of, which was no small amount of crap I can assure you. The wife had her own agenda for the day, so we split at the same time, leaving the Yorkie in charge of the house for the afternoon.

My travels took me first to Odessa for the (sorta) monthly trawl through the two decent pawn shops, as well as Big Lots and the local books, music and video outlet, just to see what they might have used. The pawn shops both had a fairly wide selection, but I just couldn't turn up anything that I was just excited to see, so I ended up leaving both places empty-handed. I mean, there were a few DVD's that looked interesting enough, but I couldn't find that crucial 4th disc that would hit the price break that they offer, and I sure as hell wasn't going to be into these 3 'what the hell' titles for what they normally charge. Big Lots actually wasn't much better, I came out of there with a single DVD, so I pointed the car towards the books, music and video outlet to see what they might've turned up used in the past month or so.

I was rather pleasantly surprised to turn up not just one, but two Criterion films (ex-rental titles) for $5.99 and $7.99 in their foreign section, then found another $5.99 film to fill out their 'buy two, get one for a buck' promotion, so the trip wasn't a complete waste of time. I also popped into the Target next door and used the giftcards I had to grab a Blu-ray copy of Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life, which was a total blind buy, but something I have high hopes for as far as the visuals go. I also picked up another Amazon giftcard for use online later. Actually, let me reverse that thinking: I used the giftcards to pick up the Amazon card, as the other way around makes me feel crazy for not applying the card to the Blu-ray purchase. Or does it? Fuckit, I wanted the Amazon credit for later use either way, the movie was a total impulse item.

Anyway....

I headed back to town, rummaged through our Big Lots to much the same feeling of nothing really grabbing me, then stopped into Barnes & Noble to see if they had turned up any of my standard periodicals for the month, which they hadn't. I stepped into Best Buy to do the same giftcard trick in exchange for an Amazon card, simply paying the difference on it, as I know I can find something of interest a helluva lot easier on the web than I ever can locally.

My final stop (as the hour was growing late at this point) was our own books, music and video outlet, which turned up no magazines, though I did carry a couple used books around for a few before talking myself out of them. A browse of their movie section happily turned up three Blu-rays that weren't priced completely out of my window, because who in the fuck pays $20 for a used movie at this point in time? I have the internet, so I can find pretty much any film for $15 or less unless it's absolutely brand new this week, yet this store routinely prices used stuff at the $20 mark with no shame.

The wife was going over some e-mails when I got home, so I lay on the Office floor and stretched the back a bit while we caught up on the afternoon, then she ordered in some deli stuff for later delivery for our dinner. She had a baking project to get started, so she busied herself with that in the kitchen while I watched some television, then we eventually chilled in the den with some food and I popped in one of the movies I had picked up cheap today.

Legend Of The Fist: The Return Of Chen Zhen has Donnie Yen playing the character played by Bruce Lee in Fist Of Fury, then by Jet Li in Fist Of Legend. The martial arts bits are pretty amazing, any wire-work aside. I enjoy Yen quite a bit, which kinda reminded me that I have a copy of Ip Man laying around here somewhere, unwatched and ignored for who knows how long. The really amazing thing about the movie has to be learning via IMDB that Donnie Yen is turning 49 this year and still moves like a hummingbird in this movie, it's almost ridiculous.

We rounded out the evening with some more television, just so as to not get behind on any other shows, then I put the wife to bed and retired to the Office to work on this and go through the days' treasures and sort it all for later consumption.

Be seeing you.

Prime Peaks

2012-01-05T23:53:00.008-06:00

The Yorkie was whining at the back door this morning over a squirrel or who knows what, which finally woke me while I was trying to sleep in. I went to bed with the best intentions of getting up early today, but then lay in bed reading for longer than anticipated last night, so there you go.

The wife was looking at e-mail in the office, as she was free for the afternoon, so she and I visited for a bit, then I offered to pick up a bite to eat since it was after lunch time by this stage of the day.

Once I returned with food the wife and I chilled in the den with an episode of Prime Suspect, which continues to be a very middle of the road show, so I don't think I'll miss it when it doesn't come back later this season.

I spent some time on the web in the late afternoon, then watched some of the bonus materials from the Twin Peaks set while the wife piddled around in the kitchen with some baking she had in mind. She made a little chicken dish for our dinner, so we tucked into that while finishing up a fairly lengthy overview of behind the scenes stuff about the show, then we decided to tackle the feature film.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is something I hadn't seen in at least 5 years or so, and even that last viewing wasn't on the heels of a re-watch of the show, so it was nice to go into it with a fresh set of eyes (the wife) and a good memory of what had happened in the show. I still really enjoy the film, even when I feel like Lynch is just fucking with us a bit in a few sequences here and there.

The wife and I called it a night shortly after that, then spent some time picking up the kitchen a bit and that sort of thing before I tucked her in and headed to the Office to get started on this crapulence.

Be seeing you.

Dressed To Peak

2012-01-04T23:02:00.009-06:00

The wife had several meetings and errands laid out for this morning and early afternoon, just to ease her back into her normal schedule, so I wasn't surprised to find her long gone when my alarm sounded this morning. I got the house opened up for business, then made some tea and spent the rest of the late morning on the PC in the Office working on the blog first, then the nerdlists I've been trying to get up to date.

That pretty much ate up my morning, then I was in the process of getting something ready to mail to a friend when the wife returned, so we caught up a bit, then I took her order for some lunch and headed out to hit the Post Office, the Bank and a drive-thru for our food.

I ran my errands, delivered the wife's food and then settled into the den to watch a little something off the To-Watch Pile while I ate my late lunch. Dressed To Kill is an early Brian De Palma film that I had somehow never seen up to this point, so it seemed like an uncut Blu-ray version was as good a time as any to give it a peep. I have to say I was pretty well fished into the film, though I did guess the identity of the killer fairly early on. That said, the set-up is really interesting, in that it follows Angie Dickinson's character for a good long time with little beyond the Pino Donaggio soundtrack, so things almost felt like a silent film for a bit, which was a very interesting way to shoot things and really asks the audience to pay attention and keep up with what's happening. I enjoyed the film enough to look at the special features on the disc, which were kind of a pain in the ass to find, as they only turn up via a pop-up menu. I mention it beinga pain in the ass because I have to tell ya, hitting the 'menu' button repeatedly and having nothing happen was irritating as hell.

The wife was planning on making a bit of Mexican food for dinner, so she got started on that while I threw on a bit of Battlestar Galactica to pass the time with that re-watch, then she joined me and we finished out Twin Peaks. The show naturally leaves you feeling like you want more, but in the back of my head I'm also thinking that I still can't believe that this weird shit ever made it onto network television.

Tomorrow evening we'll tackle the film, Fire Walk With Me, which I've only seen a couple times and the wife has never seen before, so I'll be curious to see what she thinks of that, as the reigns are off as far as the weirdness and the adult content goes. We wrapped up Boardwalk Empire season 2 next, which ended quite a bit differently than I was expecting, which makes me wonder how much I'll actually enjoy the 3rd season when it turns up in a year or so. Oh well.

We watched the 2nd episode of Angry Boys off the TiVo, then called it a night. I put the wife to bed and got started on this post, as I'm going to be postponing actually publishing anything until I get my lists updated and can do the January 1st post as I normally do, with a full list of things watched in the past year.

So the sooner I get this written, the sooner I can finish those lists. Right?

Be seeing you.

Horrible Lists

2012-01-03T22:42:00.004-06:00

In my efforts to try and get the blog closer to being caught up, I set my alarm this morning so as not to sleep most of the day away as I've been doing over the past holiday weekend. When I went to bed last night I ended up reading to relax for a bit, still slowly working my way through the sixth and final volume of the Starman Omnibus collections, which I hope to finish this week. I really enjoyed the series back when I was still collecting monthly comics but had never finished out the run, so it's nice to finally be riding it down to the bitter end in these nice collected editions.

For whatever reason I found myself wide awake 2 minutes before the alarm was set to go off, so I turned it off to let the wife sleep in peace, then lay in bed for a bit, looking at e-mail and Twitter. I finally got up and moving, got the house opened up and started some water boiling for tea, then fired up the PC to see what I could get done before I was supposed to meet EL and DR for lunch, assuming that they were available.

I got a blog post published and then spent an hour and a half working on catching up my little nerdlists that I maintain each year, as I still have yet to put last years' lists to bed, because I can procrastinate with the best or them. The wife and Yorkie drifted in and said good morning, then they chilled in the sitting area off the kitchen, where the wife looked at stuff on her phone and the Yorkie busied herself with Yorkie things, yapping at the occasional jogger, shit like that.

The wife eventually split to run a quick errand and I confirmed lunch plans, then dressed and went to meet the fellas at our usual Thai place. We visited a bit, tried to cheer up DR, who was kinda down over some family drama. He seemed in better spirits by the time the meal was over, then we said our goodbyes and went tour separate ways. I cruised by the recycling bins to confirm my fears that they would be overflowing after the holidays, which they were, so I suppose I may be able to get rid of our recycling by this weekend if I'm lucky. Bah.

The wife was already home when I returned, so she and I caught up a bit, then I finally settled into the den and watched my daily dose of Battlestar Galactica, as I figured I would try to turn my normal schedule around and catch some television in the afternoon to allow for watching a movie with the wife in the evening.

The wife eventually joined me and we breezed through a few other television re-runs before some dinner was ordered for delivery and we settled in to watch Horrible Bosses via Netfux rental. The movie was amusing in much the same way modern comedies tend to court humor, with tons of over the top vulgarity, which isn't a bad thing per se, but there's only so much swearing you can throw at me during a 2 hour period until I start to roll my eyes slightly. It's a funny enough movie, but I was rather puzzled by the appearance of Ron White for quite literally 3 lines, playing a cop who questions the leads in connection to the murder of one of their bosses. I guess White may've just been there to collect a paycheck, but it really seemed really odd to see him in such a throwaway role.

We wrapped the evening with the penultimate episodes of two different series, Twin Peaks and the second season of Boardwalk Empire, so tomorrow night will be somewhat climactic all the way around. At least with the 'Peaks we still have the film to look forward to, which gives something of a capper to the events that went before, but it's naturally frustrating to think that the series ends on a cliffhanger.

Oh well.

I put the wife and Yorkie to bed then got started on this post for the day so I can head to bed sooner than later.

Be seeing you.

Movie Citizen Meltdown

2012-01-02T22:16:00.006-06:00

The wife and I both slept in today, though she was up and moving before I was. When I finally stirred it was just in advance of our friend JH texting the wife to offer to bring some lunch by to us and visit for a bit, as she was a woman without a country. Amusingly, she has been house sitting for some folks on our very street, and their housekeeper turned up today and surprised the hell out of her, so she was out and about trying to kill a bit of time until this lady was out of the house. Since she was basically out running time she had decided to see what we were up to, so we agreed to entertain her for a bit and texted back with our lunch requests.

JH turned up shortly as I was getting the house opened up for business, then we settled in at the kitchen counter for a bite to eat and a bit of a visit about the last few days, kinda decompressing from the holidays. The wife and I eventually started talking about plans to take down the Christmas decorations, which JH actually pitched in with for a bit, completely surprising me, as I wasn't expecting her to do anything except maybe chill out after lunch. She eventually found out that the housekeeper had vacated her abode and split to go and relax with a good book, so the wife and I spent a good two hours getting everything packed away again and the house back to normal.

The wife chilled in the bedroom afterward and I found myself kinda migrating into the den to watch a little something off the To-Watch Pile that I was feeling bad for neglecting in this new format for so long, having received it as a birthday gift in November. Today's selection for Movie Shame Monday (which I will be more religious about seeing to in the coming weeks) turned out to be a re-watch of Citizen Kane from my brand spanking new Blu-ray set. The movie naturally holds up as well as you'd expect, but the picture quality is truly a thing of amazing detail, stunning for a film from 1941.

The wife joined me as I was throwing in a second film, something completely different, as it turned out. Meltdown is a Jet Li movie more commonly known as High Risk in Hong Kong, and something that I wanted to give a look to since a podcast I listen to is planning on reviewing it soon. The movie is something of a riff on Die Hard, what with the terrorist situation taking place in a large building and Jet Li being the only person who can stop the villains, but there's also an odd slapstick element that I don't quite understand. Some reading on the interwebs tells me that the director evidently hated working with Jackie Chan on a previous film so much that he turned this one into a fairly obvious attack on the man, as Li plays a bodyguard for an action star who 'does all of his own stunts', though he is a drunken, cowardly buffoon for the majority of the film and even has Li double for him at least once early in the proceedings. Other things I read tells me that this film is meant to be a parody of films like Die Hard, though it never really hits what I would feel is a full-on parody tone, more poking fun in certain moments here and there. I would say that it's worth a look, definitely a fun little flick.

The wife and I ordered in a pizza for dinner because it just seemed easier than doing something else, then we watched an episode of Boardwalk Empire, as I want to finish out the second season before anyone manages to spoil anything else for me, as I think I already know where at least one plot line is headed due to loose lips on the interwebs.

We rounded out the evening with another episode of Twin Peaks (only 2 left!), then I put the wife to bed and watched another ep from the first season of my Battlestar Galactica re-watch, as I wanted to get that back on track.

I finally headed to the office to finish off a nightcap and get started on this post.

Be seeing you.

How I Spent My 2011

2012-01-01T23:16:00.013-06:00

In keeping with the tradition of the past few years (2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively), here is the gigantic list of all the shit I wasted my time watching this past calendar year.

The list is pretty straightforward, titles in the order they were watched, by month, with parenthetical notation if it was a re-watch or the year when it may be a common title that several films share.

Who knows, maybe this is the year that I'll finally get back to writing some reviews, or maybe the world will just fucking end.

___________________________________

2011 Watched Films

January

The Prowler
The Bride Wore Black
Bonnie And Clyde
The Education Of Charlie Banks
The Gate
Best Worst Movie
The Curve (Again)
Mad Dog Morgan
Full Moon High
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
Shaft (2000) (Again)
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (Again)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
The Walker (Again)
The Extra Man
Predators
Switchblade Sisters
Downloading Nancy
Splintered
Kidnapped (AKA Rabid Dogs)
The Social Network
Easy Virtue
Blow-Up (1966)
Winter’s Bone
Undertow
Return Of The Living Dead Part II
Clean, Shaven
Dark Night Of The Scarecrow (Again)
Roy Colt & Winchester Jack
Baron Blood (1972)
J.D.’s Revenge
Venom (1982)
Extreme Movie
The Philadelphia Story (Again)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Starcrash
Hot Times At Monclair High
Micmacs
Always…But Not Forever
The TV Set (Again)
Legion
Jonah Hex
Black Dynamite
In Dreams (Again)
Dogtooth
Scary Movie (Again)
Scary Movie 2 (Again)
The American
Walkabout
Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work

Television By The Season - January

Lost Season 2 (Again)
Bored To Death Season 1 (Again)
Masters Of Horror Season One (Again)
Lost Season 3 (Again)
Boardwalk Empire Season One
The Guild Season One
The Guild Season Two
Breaking Bad Season One

___________________________________

February

Jewel Robbery (1932)
Another Thin Man (Again)
Easy Virtue (Again)
The A-Team
Please Give
MST3K: Blood Waters Of Dr. Z
MST3K: The Beatniks
MST3K: The Crawling Eye
El Mariachi (Again)
Desperado (Again)
Once Upon A Time In Mexico (Again)
Machete
Demons (Again)
Demons 2 (Again)
Night Of The Demons (2010)
Paranormal Activity (Again)
My Chauffeur
Evelyn Prentis
Tomboy
Weekend Pass
Angel-A
Playtime (Again)
His Name Was Jason (Again)
An Affair To Remember
Bright Lights, Big City (Again)
Angel Of Death
Midnight Movies: From The Margin To The Mainstream (Again)
Invasion Of The Bee Girls
Reincarnation
Spider Forest (Again)
Not Of This Earth
Hot Pursuit
Karate Bullfighter
Karate Bearfighter
Karate For Life
Crank (Again)
Crank 2: High Voltage
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Death Trance (Again)
Salem’s Lot
Kiss Me, Stupid
Splice
Big Bad Mama
Big Bad Mama II

Television By The Season - February

Lost Season 4 (Again)
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist Season One
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist Season Two
Lost Season 5 (Again)

___________________________________

March

Big Fan
The Awful Truth (1937)
To Live And Die In L.A.
Prince Of The City (Again)
Avenging Angel
Fierce People
Eight Legged Freaks (Again)
Service
Enter The Void
Timecop (Again)
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage
The Spanish Judges (Again)
Pretty As A Picture: The Art Of David Lynch
Coffin Joe: The Strange World Of Jose Mojica Marins
Holiday (1938)
Red (2010)
Fight For Your Life (Again)
Teenage Graffiti
Teenage Mother
Without Warning (1980)
Student Bodies
Police Academy (Again)
Don’t Answer The Phone!
Trekkies (Again)
I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
Murder By Decree
Slumber Party Massacre
Slumber Party Massacre II
Slumber Party Massacre III
Tokyo Gore Police (Again)
The Yakuza
The Wild Man Of The Navidad

Television By The Season - March

Lucy, Daughter Of The Devil (Again)

___________________________________

April

City Of The Living Dead
Screwballs
Wicked, Wicked
Tough To Kill
Masters Of The Universe
Wake Up, Ron Burgundy
The Terror Within
Dead Space (1991)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Again)
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
Deadly Outlaw: Rekka
Rifftrax Shorts Vol. 1
The Sasquatch Gang
Snowbeast
Django (1966) (Again)
Wild Target
Machine Gun McCain
I Spit On Your Grave (2010)
Piranha (2010)
The Blob (1988)
The Comedy Central Roast Of William Shatner
Malibu Express
Hard Ticket To Hawaii
Picasso Trigger
Savage Beach
Police Academy 2
Police Academy 3
Auto Focus
Pontypool
The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer
The Last Exorcism
Act Of Vengeance (AKA Rape Squad)
Visiting Hours
Dark And Stormy Night
Repossessed (1990)
MST3K: The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy
North By Northwest (Again)
Reform School Girls (1986)

Television By The Season - April

Extras: The Complete Series (Again)
The Guild Season 3
Spartacus: Gods Of The Arena
Deadwood Season One
Mildred Pierce Mini-Series
The X-Files Season Two
Animaniacs Season One
Ducktales Volume One
Fear Itself Season One

___________________________________

May

Payback: Straight Up Director’s Cut
Kingdom Of The Spiders (Again)
The House Where Evil Dwells
Guns (1990)
Do Or Die (1991)
Hard Hunted
Fit To Kill
All About My Mother
Robocop (Again)
The King Of Kong
Bottle Rocket (Again)
Full Contact
The Replacement Killers
The Video Dead
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
The Talk Of The Town
Desperate Living
Polyester
Hairspray (1988) (Again)
Rapid Fire (1992) (Again)
Monkey Business (1952)
Zodiac (Again)
Grindhouse (Again)
Damaged Goods (1961)
The Hard Road
Road Games
Hamlet 2 (Again)
Maximum Risk (Again)
Trapped (AKA Baker County USA) (1982)
Sexy Timetrip Ninjas
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) (Again)
Hot Dog: The Movie
Nerdcore Rising
Easy ‘A’
Twelve (2010)
As Tears Go By
House (Hausu)
The Punisher (2004) (Again)
Punisher War Zone (Again)
The Room
I’m Gonna Git You Sucka! (Again)
Mad Ron’s Prevues From Hell
About Schmidt (Again)
Whatever Works (Again)

___________________________________

June

Vigilante Force
Breaker! Breaker!
The Cocoanuts
Animal Crackers (Again)
Monkey Business (1931) (Again)
Horse Feathers (Again)
Duck Soup (Again)
Little Darlings (1980) (Again)
Must Love Dogs (Again)
The Hidden Fortress
The Dorm That Dripped Blood
Alley Tramp
MTS3K: Laserblast
Over 18 And Ready
Midnight Blue: Deep Throat Edition
Drive Angry
Trekkies 2 (Again)
MST3K: The Corpse Vanishes
MST3K: Night Of The Blood Beast
MST3K: Warrior Of The Lost World
The Room (Again)
White Noise (Again)
The Boogeyman (1980)
Return Of The Boogeyman (1994?)
Dazed And Confused (Again)
Catfish
Shiver
Let Me In
Torso
Room For One More (1952)
Piranha (2010) (Again)
Palimpsest: A Hypnotic Mystery
Cat In The Brain
Tapeheads (Again)
The Room (Again)
Rubber
Enemy Gold
The Dallas Connection
Day Of The Warrior
Return To Savage Beach
The Exorcist (Again)
Exorcist II: The Exorcist
The Exorcist III (Again)
Marwencol
Runaway (1984)
The Dirty Mind Of Young Sally
Teenage Bride
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (Again)
Boogie Nights (Again)
St. Elmo’s Fire (Again)
Paranormal Activity (Again)

Television By The Season - June

Afro Samurai Season One
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
Deadwood Season Two
Poirot: Murder On The Orient Express
Poirot: Appointment With Death
Robotech: The Macross Saga Vol. 2
Will & Grace Season 6 (Again)
Will & Grace Season 7 (Again)
Will & Grace Season 8

___________________________________

July

Hannah & Her Sisters
Scream (1996) (Again)
Scream 2 (Again)
Scream 3 (Again)
Beyond Re-Animator
Every Girl Should Be Married
Paul
Space Battleship Yamato
Wanted (Again)
The A-Team (Again)
The Expendables (Again)
Must Love Dogs (Again)
Up In The Air (Again)
Under The Tuscan Sun

Television By The Season - July

Deadwood Season 3
Poirot: The Third Girl

___________________________________

August

Charade (Again)
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (Again)
Convoy
The New York Ripper
Kentucky Fried Movie (Again)
TV Carnage: Casual Fridays
Star Of Midnight
Pootie Tang
The Witch Who Came From The Sea
I Saw The Devil
Tourist Trap (Again)
The Wild Angels
The Beastmaster
Bliss (1997)
Highball
Sleazemania: The Complete Collection
American: The Bill Hicks Story
The Grapes Of Death
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (Again)
A Stranger Is Watching
Junk (2000)
Insidious
Confessions Of A Police Captain
The Executioner Part II
Nightmares In Red, White And Blue
The Informers (Again)
Two For The Seesaw
Shaolin Soccer
Paranormal Activity 2
The Love Merchant
The Van (1977)
The Beach Girls
Hunk
Trail Of The Screaming Forehead
Body Melt
Cavegirl (1985)
Coach (1978)
My Tutor
Jocks
She’s Out Of My League
Expired
Night Of The Hunter
Season Of The Witch (2011)
Extract
The Ninth Configuration
The Reef (2010)
Deathdream (1974)
The Grass Is Greener (1960)
Final Destination 5
The Layout
Replicant
American Beauty (Again)
Fight Club (Again)
Hobo With A Shotgun
Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night
Fascination (1979)
Sorority Row (2009)
Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama

Television By The Season - August

Robotech: The Macross Saga Vol. 3
Archer Season One (Again)

___________________________________

September

The Violent Kind (2010)
Big Fish (Again)
The Darjeeling Limited (Again)
American Splendor (Again)
Ghost World (Again)
Casablanca
Due Date
Nomads
Day Of The Animals
Hang ‘Em High (Again)
The Departed
Rumble In The Bronx (Again)
Chloe
Vampire’s Kiss (Again)
The Holy Mountain
Cleopatra Jones
Natural Born Killers (Again)
Super (2010)
Devil Dog: The Hound Of Hell
Damnation Alley
Cradle 2 The Grave
Bring It On (Again)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Again)
Ripley’s Game (Again)
Halloween II (2009) (Again)
Dinner For Schmucks
Baadasssss!
The Red Balloon
East Of Eden
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (Again)
The Virginity Hit
Amos & Andrew
Rock & Rule
The Illusionist (2010)
Cruising
Shaolin Vs. Vampire (1980)
Talk Radio (Again)
Snatch (Again)
Roger Dodger (Again)
The Marc Pease Experience
Boogie Woogie
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Virgo, The Taurus And The Capricorn
Nightwish
Rituals (AKA The Creeper) (1978)
Basket Case
Deep Red (AKA Profondo Rosso)
The Black Dahlia (Again)

Television By The Season - September

Nightmares & Dreamscapes: The Complete Series

___________________________________

October

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (Again)
A Bucket Of Blood (1959)
Nightmare Castle
Fido (Again)
Day Of The Dead (1985) (Again)
Return Of The Living Dead (Again)
Resident Evil: Extinction (Again)
3 Extremes II
The Horror Of Party Beach
The Curse Of The Living Corpse
Up From The Depths
Demon Of Paradise
Nightmare Man (2006) (Again)
Simon, King Of The Witches
Phenomena
Night Train Murders
Seed Of Chucky (Again)
Burnt Offerings (Again)
House Of Wax (1953)
House Of 1,000 Corpses (Again)
The Devil's Rain
Mark Of The Devil
The Toolbox Murders (2004) (Again)
Tucker & Dale Vs Evil
The Blood Spattered Bride
Satan’s Blood
Dr. Giggles
Drive-In Horrorshow
Nightmares (1980)
Tenebre
Shock (Again)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Again)
Never Cry Werewolf (Again)
The Uninvited (1944)
Hideaway (Again)
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue
Psychomania
Resident Evil: Afterlife
The Nine Lives Of Fritz The Cat
The Nesting
The Devil’s Backbone (Again)
The Burning (Again)
Iron Man (Again)
Vampire Circus
The Cottage (Again)
The Incredible Hulk (Again)
House By The Cemetery (Again)
The Eye (2002) (Again)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Again)
Houseboat Horror
Red: Werewolf Hunter
Graduation Day (1981)
The Eye 2
The Eye 3
The Blob (1958)
Trick R Treat (Again)
Monsters Crash The Pajama Party
The House Of The Devil (Again)
Halloween (1978) (Again)

___________________________________

November

Iron Man: Extremis
Iron Man 2 (Again)
Thor
X-Men: First Class
Naked Lunch (Again)
Captain America: The First Avenger
La Dolce Vita (Again)
High and Low
Boxcar Bertha
Daredevil (Again)
Repulsion
Down By Law (Again)
Red State
M. Hulot’s Holiday (Again)
The Last Days Of Disco (Again)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (Again)
Caged Heat
Rock N Rolla (Again)
Bridesmaids
Juliet Of The Spirits
Tightrope (1984)
A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas
Pulp Fiction (Again)
Jackie Brown (Again)
Less Than Zero (Again)
Vice Squad (1982)
Fear City
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
Thankskilling (Again)
Wonderland (Again)
Casino Royale (1967)
RKO 281 (Again)
The Cat’s Meow (2001) (Again)
Trainspotting (Again)
24 Hour Party People (Again)
Groove (Again)
Wanted (Again)
Seven Deaths In The Cat’s Eye
Hell Night (Again)
Blue Velvet (Again)

Television By The Season - November

Poirot: Three Act Tragedy

Poirot: The Clocks

__________________________________

December

The Shining (1980) (Again)
To Be Twenty
Poor Pretty Eddie
Scream 4
A Single Man (Again)
I Love You, Phillip Morris
District B13 (Again)
Louis CK: Live At The Beacon Theatre
Heavy Metal
Penny Dreadful (2006)
Sexy Battle Girls
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Bonnie’s Kids
Green Lantern
Romance (1999) (Again)
Rammbock: Berlin Undead
Silent Night, Deadly Night (Again)
Bad Santa (Again)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Again)
Super 8
D.C. Cab
Paul (Again)
Enter The Ninja (Again)
Revenge Of The Ninja
Pray For Death
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Trust (2010)
30 Minutes Or Less
Smooth Talk

___________________________________

As I mention pretty much every time I do these stupid lists, I go into them thinking it'll be an easy 'copy and paste' from the Word document I keep everything in, then the next thing I know, I've wasted hours dicking with the formatting and making sure everything is boldfaced or italicized to my liking, which is pretty ridiculous all the way around. I dunno what's wrong with me, it has to be a borderline OCD thing or something, because I'm sure that no one else cares.

The totals shake out like this:

I watched 513 films this year, most for the first time, though that does include re-watches, and please, don't be that pedantic a-hole and write in to tell me that re-watches don't 'count', because I've obviously got a lot of free time on my hands, so I just might use it to make it my mission to see you dead.

I (we?) watched 33 seasons or series worth of television over the course of the year, which always freaks me out, because I can assure you that I do leave the house from time to time, I'm not just some freaky Boo Radley-type shut-in, so I always have a hard time believing how much time has been spent with the collective TV, all of which I'm judging by just what was watched on DVD. This doesn't even count the various stuff recorded as it airs on the TiVo, which would bump it up to numbers that would probably make me actually feel ashamed for not doing anything with my life.

Ah, who am I kidding, I'm already ashamed, just not enough to change anything.

So there ya go, another year down the drain, seeya next time for more of the same unless these Mayans actually come through and all of this goes in the shitter before this time next year.

Be seeing you.

The Evil Of The New Year Gaga

2011-12-31T12:26:00.013-06:00

The wife and I rose with the alarm this morning to go and make a final pass through the local library thrift shop, as they still had a 75% off sale running on their current inventory. This unfortunately for me meant that they still had most of the stuff I left behind on my last visit and not much more, though the wife found a few items since she hadn't been there in quite some time. We encountered the usual grouchy elderly woman checking us out, who whinged about the $20 bill I paid her with, because it ate up some of her change. I really have never seen a more miserable person, it's almost comical if it wasn't so irritating.

The wife and I hit the Starbuck's drive-thru for some coffee, which was filled with several of those idiots who refuse to get more than five feet from the vehicle in front of them, regardless how long the line is and whether or not we have people actually sitting in the street because they can't get into the parking lot. I truly hate these people. If they would pull their head out of their ass and roll forward a few feet, the line could compress dramatically, but instead they want to sit there as if they're on the highway and need a few car lengths between them and the person in front of them. Bah.

We picked up breakfast burritos on the way back to the house, then ate at the kitchen counter while looking through the newspaper and halfway watching part of a Marx Brothers marathon that had started on TCM. The wife took the time to set the table for the 'progressive dinner' that we were going to be a part of in the evening, then she and I moved into the den to watch something appropriate off the old TiVo.

I had never seen New Year's Evil before, so I jumped on it when it was shown on TCM last weekend. A horror film from 1980, it's about a nutjob calling himself Evil who calls in to a TV hostess celebrating New Year's Eve in grand New Wave style, telling her that he's going to kill a person on the cusp of the New Year in each timezone, culminating in a murder in L.A. It's a fairly silly film, and while I guessed the twist right away, it was still fun for the '80s setting and all the inventive kills, including a woman smothered in a giant bag of weed. Fun stuff.

I busied myself in the afternoon with the blog and getting some laundry done, as I had a certain dress shirt I had in mind for the evening. The wife got her dessert item prepped, so all we'd have to do was heat it when we got home tonight, then we both set about getting cleaned up and dressed for the evening.

Since the weather has been mild enough to accommodate me wearing a suit without sweating through it, I decided to dress things up, so the wife matched me on that, making us fairly overdressed for what was to be a pretty casual affair. We joked that we were just going to our own party, regardless of what the night held for us.

The progressive dinner was to begin at Brian's place, where we were to meet at 7:00 for appetizers and about an hour of socializing, then move on to the next stage of the evening. We arrived just ahead of Anastasia Beaverhouszen and Kno1, who brought their friend GH with them for the evening. We headed up to Brian's place, snacked on some pigs in a blanket and some chips & dip, then chilled and visited for awhile in his living room.

As the hour got close to 8:00 Kno1 indicated the time, so their party excused themselves to run ahead of us and get the final touches put on the entree for the evening. We spoke with Brian for a few, then left him to close up his place, heading to the Beaverhouszen's place where Brian joined us shortly after, and we tucked into a nice fresh salad and a chicken pot pie. More conversation and merriment followed, then the wife and I said our goodbyes and slipped away to get things ready at our place for the final stop of the evening.

The hour still being somewhat early, we didn't really encounter as many obvious drunks as you would expect, so we got home pretty quickly, I texted JH, who was to join us late, then the wife popped her little cheesecake confection in the oven to bake for a quick 20 minutes. Our guests arrived and we settled in for cocktails and then a nice little dessert at the formal dining table in the front of the house. We eventually spread out a bit throughout the house, as Brian soon had to split to be at a family engagement and the ladies spent time in the wife's craft room spit-balling ideas about the new configuration.

The gentlemen and I flipped channels until I settled on a couple new episodes of Cathouse on HBO, because the lives of whores are just fascinating. Plus, who are these fucking weird guys who allow themselves to be filmed for this show and outed as whore-mongers on national television? So crazy.

We all eventually settled into the den and watched an encore presentation of a Lady Gaga concert performance on HBO, which I really enjoyed the first time we saw it. I have to say, all weirdness and costuming aside, Lady Gaga has a great ass, so what more could I want from her? Great ass, weird theatrics and fairly catchy music, what's not to love?

The new year came and went, we flipped over to the Dick Clark nonsense to see that the ball had dropped an hour before, so all gave each other a kiss and toasted, then finished out the concert, at which point the guests bailed, as it was around one in the AM at this time.

The wife and I decompressed a bit and chilled, then called it a night shortly after.

Be seeing you.

Lunch And Smooth Peaks On The Television

2011-12-30T23:35:00.006-06:00

I was able to manage a decent amount of sleep again last night, rising around 10:00 today to see what the wife and Yorkie were up to in the rest of the house. The wife remains on the weird cleaning jag that she got on when she discovered a series of possible storage methods for the Craft Room. She's been hot on the idea of getting the place into a workable order so that we can possibly re-paint in there before loading it up with the various shelving and tables to store her various and sundry craft elements and materials.

This was what she and the Yorkie had been up working on for an hour or so, though to be fair, the Yorkie doesn't really pull her weight, leaving the wife to do most of the actual moving and sorting. We visited a bit in the sitting area off the kitchen, then decided to go and have an early lunch. We left the Yorkie holding down the fort and hit up the alternative Thai place for a bit of food. Afterward I dropped something in the mail and we spitballed a few ideas about what to do with the afternoon, eventually settling on checking out some paint swatches for the Craft Room, then grabbing a coffee on the way back home.

The wife piddled with the Craft Room a bit more, so I spent some time on the PC in the Office working on the blog a bit, then eventually drifted into the den to chill out and watch something off the Tivo. As we get into the New Year I want to try to be more active in my approach to the rotation of the entertainment options, so I have been making an effort to keep the TiVo at least sort of cleaned out, by which I want to start watching the junk from January of this year,since we're almost done with December.

Smooth Talk is a movie I had grabbed months ago after reading an article about it in the always swell Paracinema Magazine. The film is the story of a 15 yr. old girl coming of age in the mid '80s, which stars Laura Dern (looking somewhat older at age 18 than the character is meant to be, but try to bear with things here) as the restless lead who alternates her time between arguing with her mother over....well, basically everything and wandering the mall with her two friends where they flirt and try to look older than they are. She eventually catches the eye of a couple different boys, as well as the oily older guy played by Treat Williams, who tells her quite blatantly that he's "watching her", complete with a pointed finger and a wicked smile under his aviator shades. The film ends on a rather ambiguous note, with the ultimate interpretation of events left to the viewer, which may not please everyone, but I enjoyed it pretty well.

The wife eventually joined me in the den and we spent most of the evening with tons of television that's been hanging around on the TiVo, wrapping up eventually with a new episode of The Life And Times Of Tim and our daily dose of Twin Peaks.

We called it a night shortly afterward, as we have plans to go poke around at the little library thrift store to see what they have in their year-end clearance.

Because we need more books. Right?

Be seeing you.

30 Minutes Or Trust

2011-12-29T23:06:00.005-06:00

The upshot is that I managed to get a whopping 10 hours of sleep, the downside to this situation is that I slept half the day away to do it. I call it a wash, as I did wake up feeling a helluva lot better than I have the past few mornings, I guess the lack of sleep got the better of me again.

The wife was out running errands, so I greeted the Yorkie, who was still chilling at the foot of the bed, then got up and got the house opened up for business. I looked at e-mail on the iPhone and browsed through Twitter a bit, then decided to get dressed and grab a bite to eat.

I picked up a burger and headed back home to watch a little something that had been hanging around for longer than I care to think about from Netfux: A movie from director David Schwimmer (of all people) called Trust, in which a family is nearly destroyed when their teenage daughter falls victim to an online predator over the course of several months. The film is surprisingly realistic in the portrayal of the fallout after the incident, as well as the unfortunately depressing realities of how hard it may be to track down someone who is accustomed to spreading disinformation and lies over a period of time. Good little flick, though it may leave you wanting something more final in the finale.

The wife returned during the movie and we caught up a bit, then she chilled with the pup in the bedroom while looking at e-mail on her iPad. I decided to get out and throw the Netfux movie back in the mail sooner than later, so I took her order for a beverage from Starbuck's and headed out to hit up the Post Office.

Starbuck's was surprisingly painless, then I headed home to drop off the wife's beverage and see if the mail had arrived, as I was still laying for the Postman to see if he came through with my missing package from yesterday, or if a kind neighbor would drop it off. I was rather pleasantly surprised to find the missing parcel in the box, but casually tossed in with the regular mail, which to me says that the Postman fucked up yesterday afternoon and marked it delivered, but decided to let it lie overnight and drop it today as if nothing happened. I was both relieved and annoyed, as there's no other real explanation of why it was MIA for 24 hours, but I'm just happy it's here and I don't have to dick around with filing a claim for lost goods, etc.

The wife was piddling around on the web a bit, looking at some new organizational options for her Craft Room, so I spent some time in the den with the last episode of Nikita that I had been ignoring on the TiVo, then the wife joined me to check out another movie, as I wanted to do a clean sweep of our Netfux rentals to get a fresh start in the New Year.

The wife had made a beef stroganoff dish in the crock pot over the course of the afternoon, so we tucked into that over 30 Minutes Or Less, the Jesse Eisenberg film in which he plays a slacker pizza delivery guy who finds himself strapped with a bomb and sent into a bank to rob it for a couple of half-assed local criminals. The movie was filled with funny folks (Aziz Ansari & Danny McBride) and didn't overstay its welcome, clocking in at a short 83 minutes or so, making for a breezy, fun little flick.

We caught up on our Twin Peaks for the evening, as well as last night's ep of The Soup, then called it a night so that the wife could work on the Craft Room a bit more and I could get a jump on this crapola for the day.

Be seeing you.

Bringing Up Wednesday (Or: Where The Fuck Is My Package?)

2011-12-28T23:08:00.006-06:00

Having made a point of trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour last night I was able to get up with the alarm this morning with little incident. The wife dressed to go and run a couple errands, so I got some water on the boil for tea and opened the house up for business.

I spent some time on the web working on the blog a bit while the wife ran her errands, then she returned and we put away some groceries, the odds and ends of what she missed the other day when she went to the store. She and The Lobbyist had been texting back and forth about getting some lunch, so they finally nailed down a time and a restaurant, meaning I needed to get dressed so we could leave.

We picked up TL from her mother's home and headed to a Mexican restaurant downtown, which was fairly empty when we first arrived, as we'd made our move early. The food was good and I let the ladies visit for the most part, as they have more mutual acquaintances to catch up on than I have an interest in trying to keep track of. When we finished with lunch I asked if the ladies would humor me with a visit to our local public library, which is located within walking distance and is a place I haven't set foot in for the better part of a decade.

The idea for me was to see if I had the same gut feeling that I had the last time I was in there, which was basically a feeling that you can't go home again. A quick wander through the place confirmed this, as a renovation some 10 years or more ago dramatically changed the layout of the building (moving the entryway from one street to what was previously the 'side' of the building, which just doesn't feel 'right' to me anymore. Call me an old stick-in-the-mud fuck if you like (because I probably am), but I just can't get used to the new layout of the place, nor what feels like overly bright, antiseptic looking lighting thoughout. In my mind's eye I see the old place as a large, darker building where I spent countless afternoons and weekends during my youth, happily browsing the shelves and discovering new writers and subjects, but this new place just feels hollow and empty to me. Maybe this is because I just haven't been in the habit of absorbing information in this way in a very long time, or just because that time has passed for me. I guess at this point in my life, since we have the time and means I would prefer to spend time building my own personal Library to have on hand to refer to should the need arise than hoping our local will have something I'm actually interested in.

So today's lesson for me is that you can't go home again.

We grabbed a beverage at Starbuck's afterward, no real coffee though, as they were out of espresso, then we headed back to TL's house to drop her off and say our goodbyes. The wife and I headed home, where she chilled out in the bedroom with some trash TV and the Yorkie to keep her company while I moved into the Office to work on a few of my nerdlists, which remain ridiculously behind. That ate up the majority of the afternoon, then I managed to end on a down note by checking the status of a package I was expecting, only to find out that it was marked delivered two hours earlier, yet was nowhere to be found on our porch. Considering that half of the mail that was left for us yesterday turned out to belong to our next door neighbors, I can easily imagine whatever clown delivering our mail this holiday week accidentally leaving it God knows where...this block? Two blocks over? So now I guess I play the waiting game for 24 hours or so to see if anyone is honest about it and drops it on our doorstep or if I have to figure out what the process is for collecting on a lost package, or if the sender has to do that and then re-ship stuff. Blah.

I had a sip of the Macallan while watching Bringing Up Baby off the TiVo, just to try to fill in more holes in my Cary Grant viewing. I have to say that maybe my mood wasn't what it should've been due to the mail fiasco, but I wasn't all that blown away by this one. The slap-sticky nature of a not of the humor just left me a bit cold; I definitely enjoyed Grant opposite Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story a helluva lot more. Oh well, it's by no means bad, it just wasn't as amusing as I was expecting it to be.

We snacked on some leftovers for dinner while watching a couple Family Guy re-runs on cable, then took in tonight's Twin Peaks episode before pretty much calling it a night.

I got started on this post and poked around the web a bit, as is my custom in the evening.

Ninja, Please!

2011-12-27T23:10:00.005-06:00

The first part of me ruining my next day usually starts with me having some random though about a subject/interest/what have you while on the way to the Office in the late evening. This usually means that instead of sitting down and logging into Blogger to dutifully catalog all the stupid shit I wasted my time with that day, I instead sit down and hit up Google for information about this or that, and that road never leads anywhere good, because I look up two hours later and I've written nothing for the blog beyond a title like 'Sunday Shits" or some other kinda placeholder instead of anything 'clever'. There are those that would argue that I have yet to write anything clever even after numerous drafts, but those people aren't nice and my mother once told me that I don't have to listen to them.

This is a long winded way of saying that instead of getting down to business with this dumb shit last night I found myself lost down a rabbit hole of idiocy on YouTube, watching videos of fellow social retards showcasing their movie collections, which always makes me feel a bit better about the amount of junk we have here, as there's always someone who's gone further overboard, God bless their pale, pasty and unsocialized asses wherever they are out there in interweb world.

I found myself reading in bed just before I went to sleep at 5:00 in the freaking AM, so I naturally pissed away my morning today, waking at 11:00 grudgingly when the Yorkie alerted me to someone ringing the doorbell. I figured it was a package delivery and ignored it, pulling myself from the pillows and finally getting moving.

The wife got home from running errands about an hour or so later, so I helped her put away groceries and visited a bit about the day thus far. She spent some time with e-mail in the Office, then she and I went through the large pile of mail that'd arrived while we were in the kitchen. I decided to go mail something and pick up a bite to eat for my lunch, so I dressed and got out to do that. I also dropped off the rather sizable handful of mail that we'd gotten by mistake for our neighbors next door, so I had to sort of wonder where the rest of our mail had been dropped off. Oh well, maybe we got lucky.

With the wife and dog relaxing in the bedroom, I ended up on the den to eat my take-out food and watch soemthing off the TiVo, as I want to get back in the habit of rotating the entertainment options and it's been rather ignored of late. Enter The Ninja was the first of three Cannon Films that I watched today, which is a company synonymous with '80s action and the VHS boom of that decade. I did start to recall the movie as I got further into it, but figured I would set it out again just for the hell of it. Franco Nero as your ninja lead is amusing, because God forbid we not shoplift something interesting from another culture and then shoe-horn a fucking white guy into the lead, right? It must also be noted that there is a weird variation of tone to the movie, because you have really violent bloody things happening for a good amount of screen time, then there's a scene in which a man's hook hand is yanked off and thrown back to him, which is accompanied by the comedic sad trumpet, which felt amazingly out of place. It's not like the guy dropped his dessert that was eaten by the family dog, his hand replacement was brutally torn from his body and thrown at him. And then this happens. Weird.

Since I was going for a theme, I had made sure to watch these in the order of release, so next on the docket was Revenge Of The Ninja from 1983. This one felt like the quintessential '80s actioner, from the gawdawful clothes to the fairly predictable plot 'twists' that you can see coming a mile away. I really dug this one quite a bit and was keen to move on to the final selection off the TiVo.

The wife joined me for Pray For Death, which again starred Sho Kosugi as a man trying to live a quiet life who has outside forces throw him back into a word of violence and blood. I think I would have liked this one a bit better had the final villain that he squares off against been more of a threat, but he was a middle-aged gangster type (played by James Booth, who I've most recently seen as an elderly man on Twin Peaks) who looked as if he's a bit past his prime and relying on a handgun, then he proceeds to go toe to toe with a ninja, a guy we're supposed to believe has near supernatural skills when it comes to killing and assassination. Yet they fight for what felt like 30 minutes in the final reel, which just felt ridiculously padded. At least give me another ninja or someone with martial arts skills dammit, Shooty McGangster here is just not believable as a guy who can fight a trained assassin to a standstill several times over the final reel, but what can ya do at that point? Oh after writing out that little ranty paragraph, a bit of further web digging tells me that Booth actually wrote the script, so maybe that's how you have him magically be such a badass, eh?

We had some sushi for our dinner, then watched the normal episode allotment of both Twin Peaks and Battlestar Galactica before I put the wife to bed and got started on this post.

Be seeing you.

D.C. Paul

2011-12-26T23:03:00.005-06:00

I was able to somehow sleep for a reasonable amount of time last night, presumably my week of piss-poor rest finally caught up with me, but whatever the reason, I'll take it. I was down from 2:00 in the AM until noon today, which left me feeling refreshed if a little guilty for sleeping so late in the day.

Since my sweet wife had been up for a bit in the morning, I actually found her back in bed napping with the Yorkie, as she t3ends to take advantage of these days when she's not tied up with tons of meetings and other dumb shit. I got up and spent some time in the kitchen doing some dishes, then moved into the Office to work on a few things and look at e-mail.

The wife and pup eventually got up and said hello, then I joined them in the bed and we watched most of Mr. Mom (of all things) on cable while I enjoyed the rest of my tea, then I decided to get out and grab a bite to eat. I left the wife and pup chilling and drove across town to pick up a burger, then headed back home to relax in the den.

A quick shake of the iPhone offered up the random selection of D.C. Cab from the To-watch Pile, so I popped that in while I ate. I can honestly say that I know I've seen the movie, but it was so long ago on network television that I'm pretty sure I didn't recall anything about the film beyond the premise of it being set around taxis in (duh) D.C., so it was like watching it for the first time today. It was pretty amusing, though being an early '80s film it managed to be in that weird area when you could casually say shit like 'nigger' and 'fag' in a movie without having people turn out in droves to crucify you; I honestly can't imagine this getting made today. I enjoyed the movie well enough, it's an interesting capsule of the time period and offers a look at Joel Schumacher being a decent filmmaker before he fucked his career up good and proper with the Batman franchise.

The wife and Yorkie got up from their long winter's nap and she got on the Mac in the Office and looked at e-mail for a bit while I picked up the Christmas shrapnel in the kitchen counter area, putting away this and that, cologne and clothes that turned up in the stocking, busying myself with stuff like that.

We eventually settled into the den and I popped in the Blu-ray of Paul, a movie that I watched on our flight to England on our way to that cruise over the summer. I had been wanting to give it a re-watch with the wife if possible, so I figured since I had her cornered for the evening no was as good a time as any. It holds up well on the re-watch, and the wife seemed to enjoy it pretty well, so that's cool too.

We rounded out the evening with an episode apiece of Twin Peaks and Battlestar Galactica, then I put the wife to bed and got started on this post, which will be published God knows when, as I now approach this blog more as an overall record of my boring ass life rather than a daily journal.

Be seeing you.

Sunday The Christmas

2011-12-25T23:11:00.007-06:00

The idea I had when I went to bed last night was to sleep 6 or 7 hours and then get up with the wife and make a fire, relax with tea and presents before we had to head over to the Mother In Law's house to spend time with the extended family. What actually happened was that I slept about an hour and a half, then woke up with sinus issues that had me hacking and cooughing to the point that I finally gave up on sleep and read for about an hour and a half, finally falling asleep again after 7:00 this morning. I had made the effort to set my alarm, so I woke at 10:00 and was greeted by my sweet wife, who had been up and making some breakfast since around 9:00 or so.

I got up and started some water boiling for tea, then made a nice roaring fire in the fireplace before we settled into the den to do the traditional stocking routine. The wife seemed pleased with her customary charm bracelet selections, and I really do think I may have to start a second Pandora bracelet for her, as the first one has to be getting full at this stage of things.

We did our gift thing in the front room this time around, sitting under the warming glow of the tree in its new placement, which kinda drove the Yorkie around the bend, as she'd already gotten some treats from her stocking and was really curious what the hell we were doing in the front room. The wife treated me to several variations on a certain cologne I was keen to try out, as well as several items from the Amazon wishlist, including several Blu-rays in the Roger Corman collection from Shout! Factory and some books as well. She seemed happy and pleasantly surprised with her gifts, including the assortment of frames that I had purchased to start displaying our wedding 5 X 7 pics, so that will be a fun little project we can tackle in the hallway once we get into the New Year.

Once all the hubbub wound down a bit, the wife caught a short nap on the couch, which I found amusing since I was the one who only got 4 hours of sleep last night, but whatever. I checked e-mail and piddled on the web for a few, then we both dressed for the mid-afternoon Christmas lunch/dinner thing at the MIL's place.

We were supposed to eat at 2:00, so we arrived just after the Older Sister and her family turned up, and the Druncle had already brought Grandmother over. The Middle Sister had called to say that they were running late, so we could start without them, which is what we did, serving up food and settling into the formal dining room...

...just in time to hear the others arrive, which kinda left us in that weird place of 'do we eat or do we wait?', watching our food get cold and the gravy develop a skin before our very eyes. Once the late arrivals sat down it was fairly apparent that the MS had 'come in hot' again, as she just seemed put out to have to sit down to a meal with us, because what's worse than the holidays? Family holidays, amirite, internet?

We finally tucked into the food and were having what passes for a decent time when something must've disturbed things at the other end of the table, because the next thing I notice, both the MS and her husband are MIA, and when someone finally goes into the kitchen for seconds it's revealed that they've moved into the other room to eat. Huh? Since we're all unwilling to make waves, no one really asks "Hey, what the fuck are you doing in there?", so we instead finish the meal on our own, kinda commenting among ourselves about the general oddness of the situation.

Then it gets really weird, because the Older Brother In Law goes to put away his dishes and finds the Druncle and MS smoking in the next room (which always irritates the OS's family's allergies), so he decides he had had enough and leaves for their house back across the street. I dunno if his departure caught the attention of the MS or what, but the next thing we know, she's again taken it upon herself to start washing all the dishes, obviously fuming at the prospect of doing so, as she has nothing but terse commentary for anyone who speaks to her while she works.

Being that I don't really care what her problem is, I find all of this endlessly amusing, because who cleans to 'show them', y'know? "I'm pissed off and I'm gonna wash their dishes and then make all the beds! See how they like them apples!" Again, I say: huh?

Anyway, long story short, the rest of the family kinda tiptoes around this whole 'scene', visiting at the table and then the next thing I know the MS has gathered her child and is out the door, completely ignoring me when I tell her goodbye, so Merry Fucking Christmas to you to, eh? I mean, she even paused mid-cleaning to snap at her son to sit in his own chair when he was sitting on the Niece's lap, as if anyone showing him attention was a bad thing. He wasn't doing anyone any harm, and was asked to sit there.

I also feel like I have to pause here to reflect on how pissed off I would have been had we actually given her the piece of art that the wife had intended, only to have her make this kind of scene about the holidays? If we'd given her a piece of art that I like, only to have her act like a total asshole when we saw her? I would have loaded it back into my trunk without a single fucking word. Yeesh.

Once we got them out of the house, they were followed by the Druncle and Grandmother, who had another houseful of relatives to go visit, then we spent about an hour decompressing from all that bullshit. We were even joined by the BIL, who returned freshly medicated and showered to venture once more into the smoke and scented candles to see what his family was up to.

Morris turned up around 4:00, as we'd made plans to have him drop off the Jeep and let us drive him to the airport to catch his flight. He visited with everyone for a bit, then we said our goodbyes and swore to never speak of this again (okay, maybe it wasn't that bad but Jesus Christ...), then we took him out to the airport and dumped him off with time to spare.

The wife and I headed home to see what the Yorkie was up to, then the three of us relaxed in the den with another fire and popped in something from Netfux so that it canget back in the mail. Super 8 was something that got a lot of great reviews, so it was nice to finally give it a look since I'm apparently too old and curmudgeonly to get my ass into a theater more than once a year these days. It has a nice feel for an era that I can definitely be nostalgic for, though I have to admit to being a little over the way JJ Abrams uses the Goddamned lense flares almost constantly, as it adds to the tension in certain instances but is distracting if they're there in every other scene.

We snacked a bit and spent the evening with the normal Fox animation fare, calling it a night around 10:00.

Honestly, aside from the weird drama from the Middle Sister's side of things it was a really nice day, but it's nice to have another Christmas put to bed.

On to the next.

Be seeing you.

Saturday The Eve

2011-12-24T23:19:00.006-06:00

The wife and I both slept in this morning, which was a nice change of pace, as I actually got a decent amount of sleep in the process and was able to get up and about to spend the late morning with my lady love.

Once we finally got up and moving we fed the Yorkie and checked out the still-falling snow, which didn't let up for the entire day, which is a real rarity for this area.

I got the house opened up and made myself some tea, then fired up the television and started a little Christmas film while the wife grabbed a shower. I hadn't seen Silent Night, Deadly Night since last year around this time, so it was fun to watch a murderous Santa run amuck. The wife joined me for the movie and we enjoyed a little summer sausage gift basket thing that our friend JH had given us when she was over the other night. We eventually moved on to another perennial favorite, the always awesome Bad Santa, then Morris called about dropping by and doing the gift exchange thing with the wife and I and visiting a bit before his family dinner this evening.

We visited a bit, then a friend of Morris' came by briefly to drop off a phone charger than Morris had left at his house, because Morris would forget his head if it weren't attached. I love him, but God bless him, he leaves stuff scattered in his wake sometimes. The movie ended and I put in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for the wife as background noise while she worked on some gingerbread cookies, then I hopped in the shower to get ready for the evening.

Since the In-Laws always do a Mexican dinner thing for Christmas Eve I had offered to make some queso for the meal, so I started browning the meat and sausage to go in that while Morris got ready to go and pick up his mom for the evening. We said our goodbyes, then made plans to meet at the In-Laws house tomorrow afternoon, as the wife and I have to take him to the airport so he can be at work the day after Christmas.

The wife and I finished up the various dishes we were to take, then gathered the gifts and other stuff we had on our plate and made our way to the garage to load everything up. We drove through the winter wonderland to the Mother In Law's place, then unloaded and kinda settled in to visit with Grandmother and the Druncle, who is in town for the holidays. The Older Sister and her family soon arrived and we sort of all compared notes on whether or not the Middle Sister would turn up, as that's always sort of up in the air until they actually hit the door, y'know?

They did actually show up, so we settled in for a meal, all kinda crammed around the large (though not quite large enough) table in the kitchen area. The Middle Brother In Law managed to open his conversation with me with something about comic books, which isn't something I'm ashamed of reading, but why do you want to discuss it in 'mixed company' in front of a roomful of people who don't give a fuck about them? I read all sorts of different shit, so why would I lead with Spider-man? So annoying.

We did have a nice moment of levity when the new Beau asked the Middle BIL if he watch "hardcore porn", by which he meant the show Hardcore Pawn, and even though he immediately corrected himself it was still making me giggle hours later, so it had to be preserved for posterity both here and on Facebook. Great moment in the family for sure, will definitely come up again in the future.

In a puzzling turn of events, the MS decided to take it upon herself to start doing all of the dishes, which never happens, so no one knew quite what to make of that. I suppose it was something of a martyr move, in that she came to Christmas dinner and 'had to do the dishes, because they treat me like the help' or some other poor me type shit. The bottom line is that she certainly didn't seem to be doing it as a joyful favor to help out, more as a way to getting out of having to socialize with anyone. Very odd.

The evening eventually dwindled, the Middle Sister and her family split first, though it's always hard to judge the 'mood in the room' with her, so we don't exactly know if that was due to being over the evening or that they were actually ready to split for the evening. We ended up doing some gifting stuff between us and the Middle Sister's child, and after they split so early the remaining two sisters both opened their gift from the MS, though the idea has been that the family isn't really exchanging gifts in recent years, though this invariably gets ignored by someone and makes the others involved feel slightly weird, so it's all an exercise in futility. I mean seriously, once the gifts were opened we ended up putting them back under the tree, re-boxed and ribboned, lest the MS be pissed that they'd been opened in her absence when we do Christmas lunch/dinner tomorrow afternoon. We visited for a bit with the Older Sister and her family, then they split to be at an evening church service, which I took as our cue, though the wife kinda lingered afterward for a bit.

When we finally split I decided to take her for a long wandering drive through the still-falling snow, as this is a very rare occasion here locally. We wandered through several neighborhoods, admiring the weather and the various Christmas light set-ups before finally making our way back to the house shortly before 10:00 or so. I had to finally break our Twin Peaks rule and just watch part of the 24 hour (!) marathon of A Christmas Story that's currently happening on TBS this weekend.

The wife and I each took time to get the other's stocking stuff together, then I put her to bed and I settled into the Office to work on this post for a bit before calling it a night.

Be seeing you.

Damn Friday, You Cold!

2011-12-23T23:06:00.006-06:00

The sinuses naturally didn't allow me to sleep very well last night, so I was up and down pretty much every forty five minutes between 4:00 AM and when my alarm went off at 9:00 this morning. I got up and kinda made a pass through the house, but since Morris wasn't stirring yet I figured I'd lay back down for another hour or so, which helped to take the edge off of things.

We finally got up and moving around 10:00, so I got the house opened up for business and picked up in the kitchen a bit while the wife checked in with Morris, then he showered while we got ready to pick up the Jeep and send him off to make peace with his mother. We were going to stop to drop off a few gifts at the Older Sister's house on the way, which turned into an actual visit, as she seemed agreeable to guests, so we spent about an hour or so there catching up with her and the kids, then headed across the street to pick up the Jeep.

The Mother In Law and her Beau were actually home, so we chitchatted with them for a bit, then went our separate ways, leaving Morris to keep the peace with his mom and the In-Laws to go and work out, as is their mid-day custom.

The wife and I had sandwiches at a deli across town, then stepped into Target, as I had the idea to use the two freebie $10 giftcards I still had to pick up another Amazon giftcard, which they were naturally sold out of. I said to hell with it, as I had been thinking about doing the same thing at Best Buy, but figured that they would likely be sold out as well, which would just piss me off after we fought our way in there, so we just headed home and pretty much headed straight to bed, as I was really feeling my late evening and wanted to try to catch a nap, something that I rarely (if ever) bother with.

We slept most of the afternoon away, under the soothing glow of the firelogs in the bedroom. The wife got up around 5:30 and piddled around the house with various Christmas wrapping and things of that nature, though I found myself falling back asleep and woke up after 6:00, finally forcing myself out of bed as I heard the dog starting doing her weird hacking and gagging routine, because why wouldn't she get sick here on the holidays, right?

She thankfully seemed to bounce back after hacking up a small amount of that weird white foam that she produces, though she did kinda mope around for the rest of the evening, finally seeming back to normal as we started heading to bed.

The wife and I spent the evening with some television, including a new episode of The Life And Times Of Tim, then our usual doses of both Twin Peaks and Battlestar Galactica while I made a fire in the den to keep us cozy. The pup seemed to feel better as the evening progressed, so I kinda of had to wonder if her earlier hacking was possibly related to her hair around her muzzle, which will sometimes get into her mouth and down her throat. Thankfully, she seems fine as I type this.

The wife and I spent some time picking up the house, then I got started on this post while the wife hopped on her Mac, working on sorting through some photos from the limo ride and party last night.

I'm out kids.

Be seeing you.

Tour It: The Christmas Edition

2011-12-22T22:29:00.013-06:00

The wife and I woke early this morning, having set the alarm to make certain that we were up and about to go and fetch Morris from the airport. He is to be in town over the holiday weekend, leaving in the late afternoon on Christmas day, so that's something nice to look forward to for the holiday season.

Thankfully his flight was right on time, so we grabbed him and then hit up Starbuck's for a tasty beverage before heading back to our house, as we couldn't pick up Morris' borrowed vehicle from the Mother In Law's place until after 4:00 in the afternoon, since it had to be available for her Maid or Handyman to use should they have to run any odd errands.

We hung out at the house visiting for a bit and the wife piddled around the house while Morris and I chilled at the kitchen counter, then I finally had to voice my opinions about giving away one of our recently purchased sculptures, because the wife has been making noise about gifting it to the Middle Sister as a Christmas gift and I have repeatedly said that I kind of don't want this to happen. The wife finally got it, but this left her stumped for a gift for the MS, so that kind of sucks. With that on our minds and since it was after noon, we finally decided to head back out into the world and grab some lunch.

We hit up Barnes & Noble after food, as Morris had a few odds and ends he was after and I can always give it a browse, then we headed home where the wife and Morris worked on Christmas stuff like wrapping a few gifts and things of that nature for a bit while I flipped channels on the television. Once they came to a stopping point we stepped out to drop off a handful of gifts at various friends' houses, a trip that included a stop by the Hairdresser's place of business to say hi and give them a little something to celebrate the season.

We drove past the MIL's house on the way back home and since it was only 3:30 the vehicle we need is naturally gone, presumably because the Maid had an errand to run, so we head back to the house, figuring on picking it up later in the evening.

We burn down the remaining 3 hours before people are meant to start arriving while I watched a few things on cable to pass the time and the wife and Morris get the house ready for the evening and started putting together a gingerbread house kit, which is something of a tradition for them if Morris is able to be here for Christmas.

Our friend The Lobbyist (as I call her every other time she turns up here, particularly tonight, as her initials conflict with another friend involved in our evening) turned up a bit early to visit, and once we noted her mode of dress as well as what the wife was wearing, both Morris and I decided to change clothes for the evening.

I kinda gave up and threw on a suit while Morris put on a nice sweater and jeans, then we joined the ladies in the kitchen to visit and have a cocktail. Morris and I both got into the Macallan I had on hand, while TL had brought some wine along with her.

Our other guests arrived, as well as the food the wife was having delivered, then we ate and visited for a bit over more drinks while waiting for the limo that the wife had arranged to drive us around town. Our friend Anastasia Beaverhouszen was very kind and brought the stuffed jalapenos that she made for her last party, as she knew how enamored of them I had been, so I loaded up on those before we even got into the actual dinner we had planned: take-out barbecue and all the trimmings for simplicity's sake, plus some sweet tea.

While we were kinda milling around waiting for the limo to turn up, a little group of kids randomly approached our door and the wife said something like "I think we have carolers" as she went to answer it, which I thought would be a strangely appropriate turn of events. Typically, we find out that they were selling some kinda candy bin crapola and didn't even sing a single note after Morris gave them a $10 donation for whatever bullshit charity they were collecting for. What a rip-off.

Oh well.

I was on the phone with the limo guy when his driver finally turned up a few minutes late, but we were kinda antsy after this same company stood us up completely at our wedding. We loaded up and spent the next couple hours taking a tour of the various noteworthy Christmas light locations in town, stopping a few times here or there to grab a few pics of either ourselves in the setting or of the lights themselves.

We finally ended up back at our place, snacked and visited further over more cocktails, then our guests started calling it a night around 11:00 or thereabouts.

Since we never got back to the MIL's place to grab the Jeep, Morris was figuring on staying with us instead of heading to his mother's place, which instigated a phone argument between the two of them over how inconsiderate this was, which of course blows my mind a bit, as I haven't had family of any real description to deal with in years, so it throws me how a grown man is getting this kind of guilt trip dropped on him.

We kinda talked him down over the whole situation, then watched the normal evening diet of Twin Peaks and Battlestar Galactica before I finally called it a night, though I did lose the wife and Morris after the 'Peaks, as they were both wiped out.

I jotted down notes for this post before calling it a night myself, making a few notes as well for a few things I need to get done on the web tomorrow before I run out of time for the month.

Be seeing you.

Errands, Grooming And Customer Service

2011-12-21T23:33:00.005-06:00

I managed to sleep like total shit last night, due in no small part to the idiot snacking I did while re-watching Battlestar Galactica in the late evening/ealry morning hours. I was thus awake on and off for most of the 'night', having crashed out around 3:00 in the AM. I finally got to sleep for an extended period of time after 7:00 this morning, waking just shy of noon. Bleh.

The wife and Yorkie were out of the house, as the pup had a Groomer's appointment and the wife had numerous errands to run. I started gathering the recycling, as things are starting to get out of hand a bit and will only get worse over the holiday weekend. The wife returned while I was piddling with this stuff, bringing some lunch with her, so we visited over a sandwich or two and made plans for the afternoon.

She had a meeting to be at around 2:00, then would be home unless the dog was ready at the groomer, so I agreed to pick up the dog if she was ready while I was out running my own errands, which included recycling and exchanging a belt that I had picked up yesterday as if I was buying for myself in the '90s, back when I was actually relatively thin. The wife split while I loaded stuff up, the ran it to the bins and took a moment to stop into the books music and video outlet to look for a few periodicals that I was still in the market for here at the end of the year. I picked up a few things, then pointed the car towards the old menswear place to see if they gave me any hassle about the exchange.

The were markedly less busy than they were yesterday, though the amazing service was still the same, which is to say that no one acknowledged me walking in and the manager (of all fucking people) who checked me out yesterday made the exchange with the same lack of conversation, which makes me really want to go back in there all the time and spend money. Oh, wait, no. It actually doesn't. I just can't believe how far customer service has fallen, and this is from an older man, at least 20 years my senior, who should fucking know better. I mean, I can kind of give the kid pouring my Coke at a McDonald's a pass, because he's of a different time, when no one gives a shit, but a person older than me should remember what the hell service is, especially if he's the fucking manager of the store. Yeesh.

End rant, suffice to say I got the belt I needed and got the fuck out of there.

I grabbed a coffee at Starbuck's, speaking to the wife from the line about her plans regarding the dog and her ETA from the Groomer. We decided that I would pick her up and then the two of us would go grab the dog, so I swung by and grabbed her and then we fetched the pup, who was happy to see us and damned well ready to go home.

The wife busied herself with some dinner-related chores in the kitchen while I got the rest of the house presentable, as we were to be joined for dinner by the Mother In Law and her Beau, so I figured things should look decent in case we had to tour the place or anything.

The In-Laws arrived around 5:30, so I let them in while the wife was putting the final touches on the food, then I made some drinks and we settled in for a quick little meal. I gave the Beau a tour of the finished renovations on the Guest Side of things after the meal, then they were both kinda craving a cigarette and decided to call it an early evening. That may sound abrupt, but honestly it was cool by me, as I knew the wife had other baking junk she wanted to get to and I could relax with some television in the meantime.

I watched last week's episode of Person Of Interest, then the wife and I settled in together for another Twin Peaks, which is now getting into the backside of the series which kinda begins to flounder a bit for my tastes. The wife worked on some more Christmas related stuff in the kitchen while I started in on the 2nd disc of my Battlestar Galactica re-watch, then I called it a night and moved into the Office to work on this as well as last night's post, none of which will be posted anytime soon.

Be seeing you.

Food, Clothiers, Annoying Friends And Television

2011-12-20T23:20:00.011-06:00

This morning I found myself sleeping in late, rising with just a scant hour before I was to meet the fellas for lunch at a deli across town. I confirmed the location via text, then frantically threw on some clothes and rushed out the door so as not to keep anyone waiting.

I still managed to arrive a few minutes early, which is typical of my normal timing, so I headed inside and was killing time looking at e-mail on the iPhone when I ran into EL's mother and his kids, who just so happened to be having lunch at the same restaurant. I chitchatted with them a bit, then we were joined by DR, then finally EL himself. He mentioned that BR was going to join us, so we waited around for a few until he turned up and then we said out goodbyes to the mom and kids before ordering up sandwiches and chilling in a corner booth to eat and visit for a bit.

In a rather random turn of events I decided to check out a sale happening at a local menswear store on the way home, so I stopped there to see if I could turn up a few dress shirts as part of a 'buy one item, get two free' sale that they were having, presumably in an effort to scare up last minute shoppers before the holidays. As it turned out I ended up buying several shirts and a new belt. I was slightly dismayed that such a niche store had fairly lackluster customer service, as I think I was browsing (with merchandise in my hands) for nearly 20 minutes before anyone even said hello to me, so when I checked out and the store manager cheerfully asked me who had been helping me I made sure to tell him "Actually no one at all.", just so he has a good idea of what they might need to work on.

Once I got back to the house and got my new purchases unloaded, I visited with the wife for a bit and then started to kinda steel myself for the evening ahead, as I was rather dreading the whole process.

In a rather surprising turn of events, dinner with Blather & her new beau was actually pretty painless save for feigning interest in her life. The only real thing of note was learning that her new beau isn't actually her fiance, but rather her husband, as they eloped at the time she started sending people pics of the ring a month or so back. Cool? I guess? I mean, the guy seems decent enough, but he almost studiously ignored making any kind of eye contact with me, speaking more to the wife, which I found slightly odd, and they did manage to casually bring up their sex life and how he's feeling slightly neglected in the past week because she had ankle surgery, so that's a weird turn of events in the first month of wedded bliss. I only note this because the whole sex life thing is something that she tended to use as leverage in her previous relationships, so it's maybe fucked up to have it coming up when they've been married about 8 minutes or so. Hell, this gal fucking bragged that she wasn't sleeping with her second husband, as if that was something she dangled in front of him like a carrot, which I find amazingly shitty. Oh well, she's not my problem.

We were happily able to extricate ourselves after the meal without the usual 'so what're you doing now?" chitchat/hassle, so that was cool, then we headed home to see what the dog was up to and relax with a bit of television.

The wife and I watched another episode of Twin Peaks once we got home, which included the reveal and fallout surrounding Laura's killer, then she called it a night. I decide to stay up late on a really wild hair, pop in the first disc of the Battlestar Galactica set for a re-watch, as the whole 'one episode a day' procedure has been successful for the Twin Peaks refresher, so I may continue to apply it to other shows, instead of the 'feast or famine' approach of marathoning shows and ignoring other shows and movies altogether.

This put me up until the wee hours of the morning, so I finally called it a late night after getting some notes jotted down for this post.

Be seeing you.

Dinner Undead

2011-12-19T22:53:00.006-06:00

The Yorkie was acting rather skittish this morning due to a storm that rolled through in the wee hours of things, which had her 'treed' at the head of the bed, trying to get comfortable on our pillows and failing miserably. Her scratching at them woke me, though I made a point of not looking at the clock, as I knew I wasn't destined to get even the 6 hours of sleep I was shooting for and didn't want to know how much I was getting shortchanged. I burrowed back into the pillows and slept what felt like another hour or so, then finally gave up and turned the alarm off, moving into the Office to fire up the PC and put some water on to boil for tea. I spent some time on the web, poking around a bit, then eventually heard the wife and Yorkie stirring, so we visited a bit while the wife baked some rolls using a new recipe that she'd been keen to try out.

The rolls turned out really great, so I heated up some leftover beef tenderloin from our party late last week and made little sandwiches for our lunch, which were rather tasty if I do say so myself and I was happy to be able to enjoy such a simple little meal with the wife in the middle of her weirdly busy week. She had a meeting in the late afternoon, which was to proceed our dinner with her friend Blather and her new fiance, which will be husband number three for those of you keeping score at home. Third time's the charm, right? Anyone? Who had three in the pool? You could very well be our winner...

I freely admit to not looking forward to this dinner at all, as the woman's company simply exhausts me, and I have little faith in her finding a guy who will be able to tolerate it for very long, but since it's an 'occasion' I felt that I should accompany the wife, where I would normally just let them go have lunch and catch up, leaving me out of things entirely.

The wife eventually started getting ready for her afternoon meeting while I piddled with other stuff around the house, including a watch of a movie that Buckaroo Banzai had loaned me months ago at this point, that I'm ashamed to admit has just been sitting on the coffee table. Rammbock - Berlin Undead is a short little film (barely over an hour) that is set in a small block of apartments in Berlin during a zombie outbreak. It's watchable enough and doesn't overstay its welcome, though it does still manage to hit the standard plot points of people saying shit like "...but they're still people!", even though said people are hyper-violent and eating others at this point, which to me puts them in a different category altogether, but I guess I'm a judgmental sort. It's worth a look, and I understand from the web that it's now turned up on Netfux Instant Watch, so you've got options, y'know?

The wife split to make her appointment while I started getting cleaned up myself, showering and shaving to make myself at least remotely presentable for the evening.

When I got out of the shower I notice several texts from the wife indicating that Blather will be arriving late to town due to some weather she's encountering on her drive here from Austin, so we instead made plans to meet the Executive Director from the museum and his boyfriend for dinner, where we were to finally meet the BF after hearing about him for the past 5 months or so. He has finished school and was finally able to join his boyfriend here, so it's nice to finally have a face to put with the name. We met them at a Mexican food place somewhat near the house, visited and got to know each other over a good little meal, then called it a night an hour and change later, pausing to visit with EL, his wife AGL and their kids in the lobby of the restaurant where they were waiting on a table. We said our goodbyes, then I made the random decision to pop into a liquor store on the way home, as there was a little gift set that I had sen onlin that I wanted to check out.

Happily, I was able to grab a Crystal Head Vodka gift set, which comes with two little skull shot glasses and looks really cool, even if the bottle and the glasses would probably be a pain in the ass to actually serve from or drink out of, due to their odd shapes.

We headed home, watched tonight's Twin Peaks installment, then got fished into a few episodes of Family Guy on television before finally calling it a night.

Be seeing you.

Life And Times Of Romance

2011-12-18T03:10:00.003-06:00

The only thing that happened of much note today was that I packed in a ton of time with the television and that I realized that my evenings for the rest of the week are going to be eaten up by various and sundry dinners and entertaining, which is just fucking frustrating to consider, regardless of whether or not I actually want to spend time with any of the people involved.

'Tis the season, I suppose.

The wife and pup were up this morning around 10:30, while I slept in until around half past noon myself, finally catching a full 9 hours of sleep for one night of the week.

The wife had been up wrapping gifts and piddling around the house a bit, so she and I visited for a few, then made plans for me to pick up some lunch for us while she continued to work around the home. I dressed and drove across town to pick up food, then headed home to get back into my pajamas and chill out for the rest for the day, as I figured the rest of the week may be a bit hectic.

We ate and watched the season premiere of The Life And Times Of Tim, which was a show that I had all but given up hope on, as it feels like it's been off the air for well over a year. It was every bit as amusing as the previous seasons, so I'm really happy to have it back at long last.

The wife napped after the show and I spent some time flipping channels, then the Mother In Law dropped in for a visit and we shot the breeze with her for about a half hour or so. During that time I fielded a call from a friend who I haven't seen in forever and then made a fire in the fireplace in the den, as the chill in the air caused the MIL to mention it and put it on our heads. She eventually split after finding our new sculptural art lacking, but whatever, I don't think a lot of people will really 'get' them, they're just fun, whimsical little pieces involving hamburgers (of all things), so you'll either think they're cute or be a killjoy about it. I'm more amused by the technical proficiency of taking a bunch of odd metal parts and managing to somehow forge them into a reasonably convincing facsimile of a food item than anything else, but to see these in a strange context pleases me to no end.

A shake of the iPhone suggested a movie called Romance from French director Catherine Breillat, so I popped in that little selection from the To-Watch Pile next, as I knew that we'd spend the evening with a ton of television. Breillat never disappoints with her transgressive approach to film making, but the general storyline of a put out woman whose lover refuses to sleep with her yet tells her he loves her, all the while she starts finally acting out in other ways sexually with other men; it's a very strange experience to be sure. The main thing that agitated me about the film is that there's absolutely nothing to indicate why she would even stay with her asshole boyfriend at all, he's not even vaguely affectionate, much less loving to the point that you'd understand why she'd stick around if he's basically making her beg for sex. The one-two punch of the ending is worth the wait, but you may be frustrated along the way getting there, so there is also the odd draw/notoriety of having some actual penetrative sex thrown in here and there, which was an odd trend in French indie cinema circa the late '90s and early '00s.

When the film was over we were getting into the early evening, so the rest of the night was comprised of the normal Fox animation stuff, including what I hear was the last episode of that awful Allen Gregory show, so good riddance if that is indeed the case. Awful, unfunny show. Bleh.

We caught the season finale of Dexter next, which ended on the first cliffhanger that they've ever bothered with, presumably because they've already been renewed for the next two years. I would guess they figure they can play a long game with the plotting instead of wrapping things up as neatly as they have for the past seasons, as there's more than a few questions left hanging, including what the deal is with the intern kid who seems so fascinated with Dexter, plus stuff that I would be a jerk for mentioning here for fear of spoilers. Still a great series, though one of the mid-season reveals still kind of annoys me, even if I know why they plotted it the way they did. Oh well, it's still a show I will always turn up for, as they've never let me down completely and I love Michael C. Hall in the role.

We rounded out the evening with another episode of Twin Peaks, which finally reveals to the audience who Laura Palmer's murderer actually is, making for some great visuals and leaving us on a cliffhanger again.

We called it a night shortly afterward and I got started on this post for the night.

Be seeing you.

Bonnie's Lanterns

2011-12-17T23:49:00.009-06:00

The alarm woke me this morning and I turned it off and slept for roughly another hour, because I had again managed to be up later than intended. The wife and Yorkie stirring around the house finally got me up and moving at 10:00 so that I could hit up an estate sale that promised the magical trio of 'DVDs, books & CDs', which piqued my interest a bit.

I dressed quickly and grabbed a Red Bull to wake myself up a bit, then kissed the wife and pup goodbye and headed out across town, following the directions the iPhone had come up with for me when I mapped out the address.

Since the sale had begun Thursday I didn't really hold out a lot of hope for anything all that interesting, but I ended up picking up about 5 DVD's that I figured were worth the $3 apiece the sign indicated, then I find out that they're selling for $1 apiece, which obviously made for an even better deal. I headed to the car, vaguely considering loading up on some other stuff just for possible Swap A DVD fodder, then decided against it, as I already have a good amount of credits over there that I'm not really using for anything and it seems kinda pointless to continue to stack up credits to never use them.

The Starbuck's drive-thru line didn't look all that terrible, so I picked up coffee for the wife and I on the way back to the house, then we had some of the bagels that our sweet friends Dylan and Christine had sent to us in a little care package from NYC, which was a fun little Christmas surprise. The wife was working on a few baking items this afternoon, mostly prep work, then planned to spend some time on her closet for a much needed culling of the shoes.

I left her to that and spent some time in the Office piddling with a few things online that I've been having trouble tracking down, then finally gave up on that and settled into the den with some Chinese leftovers for my lunch and Bonnie's Kids off the To-Watch Pile.

The movie is directed by Arthur Marks and stars Tiffany Bolling as one of two sisters who finally shoot and kill their abusive drunk of a step-father, then take it on the lam to hide out with a rich uncle and become embroiled in further drama as the film moves along. Bolling is gorgeous (a Playboy pictorial is out their for those with a decent amount of Google-fu skills) and keeps things trucking along as she lures a private detective into stealing a huge chunk of money from her uncle, who has himself proven to be shady by sending his unsuspecting niece to pick up the cash. The movie was a tad long at an hour and forty five minutes, but Bolling makes it easy to hang in there for that final reel.

The wife and I killed the rest of the afternoon with various and sundry stuff around the house, then I eventually stepped back out to pick up some dinner for us before we chilled out in the den to watch Green Lantern courtesy of Netfux. I'd kinda been putting this one off for awhile now, as I had heard some really bad things, with the kindest reviews being along the lines of "...it's not as bad as some people are saying...", which isn't much of an endorsement. I was kind of hoping that the silly looking CGI costumes would look less fake on the small screen at home, and that my lack of interest in the character aside from a few casually read issues here and there would allow me to be forgiving of the faults, since I'm not 'invested' in the comics continuity or character backstory. For the most part this worked, combined with my enjoyment of Ryan Reynolds in most things, though by the time the credits rolled I have to say that the movie was...well, that was a movie, wasn't it? I don't have much of an opinion beyond that, there was never a moment when I thought "Wow, that's cool!" or when I felt like I was doing anything besides watching an almost animated feature. The CGI is so video game-ish it's just distracting from start to finish. I mean, people like George Lucas can make that shit look pretty tangible, this looked every bit like the interstitial film bits that one sees in video games nowadays and it never allowed me to be fully immersed in the film, because it looked so fake. Oh well, it's an okay watch, but good Lord it could've been better and a great start would've been someone veto'ing those silly ass CGI costumes.

After the movie the wife worked on her bread a bit and I spent an hour or so in the Library getting a couple of the wife's Christmas packages boxed up and ready to wrap, then I retired to the Office to work on this post and maybe get to bed early tonight.

Be seeing you.

Dreadfully Sexy Exports

2011-12-16T01:14:00.000-06:00

Having taken care to note the hour when I finally bedded down last night, I adjusted my alarm to allow me to grab a whopping 7 hours of sleep, though I still managed to wake at 7:00 AM with a start, making that final few hours of sleep hard to get back to. Because why should I ever be able to sleep straight through the night, right?

The wife was off running several errands, pedicure, Christmas shopping, etc., so I got the house opened up for the day and spent some time in the Office on the PC dicking around with the blog and things of that nature, then finally got dressed around 12:30 and stepped out to pick up something to eat for my lunch. Being that it was right smack in the middle of the lunch hour this whole process took almost a freaking hour for the round trip, due to the perpetually backed up drive-thru at the restaurant where I decided to grab some chicken.

The Yorkie greeted me happily, then moved back into the bedroom to sulk and ignore me. Presumably she's still pissed about the party last night. I settled in to eat and popped in Penny Dreadful, a random horror selection off the To-Watch Pile. The movie wasn't bad, but ultimately the story of a girl with a car-related phobia being trapped in one while fending off attacks from without perpetrated by a vicious hitchhiker who has stranded her in the woods just never completely gelled for me. I enjoy Rachel Miner well enough, so it was an okay way to pass the time, though I doubt I will come back to this anytime soon. The wife returned from her outings while I was finishing up the movie, so she and I spent some time on the couch catching up on the day thus far as well as what the evening had in store, as she'd made dinner plans with Brian, along with their usual gift exchange in which they buy one another gift cards for presumably the same amount each year; it's kinda funny to me one some level, as it feels like they should just resort to cash at some point, like grandmothers.

The wife managed to catch a nap in the afternoon, so I popped in something short to kill the time until Brian was set to arrive. I'd had the Pink Eiga release of Sexy Battle Girls laying around for what feels like forever, so I popped that in and spent an hour puzzling over the plot sandwiched in between the typical pinku film ratio of one sex scene per 10 minutes of screen time. The disc actually has a decent little trivia featurette, which gives some (for me anyway) much-needed context to the story of a girls school student who finds herself at odds with her fellow students at first, then eventually the crooked staff once she learns what kinda of shady things are going on behind the scenes. Plus tons of sex. It's a fun watch, and I would recommend these films to people based on the sheer weirdness of it all, there's never a whole lot of time to get bored with these because something weird should be along in a few minutes.

Brian arrived and we visited for a few, then headed out to try and grab some Chinese before the restaurant got too packed. We seemed to arrive just minutes ahead of the dinner rush and were able to eat and split while the lobby area quickly filled up with irritable customers who didn't seem to understand that it was a Friday night and tons of other people would be out and about as well. We grabbed a coffee from Starbuck's on the way back to the house, then settled in to watch a movie I picked up last week on a blind buy, just based on the almost universal good word of mouth it has gotten.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a Finnish film that explores the older, darker mythology behind the Santa character, eschewing the jolly Coca Cola fat man in favor of a creepy tale that sees an excavation bringing a monstrous figure back to life, and the only person who knows what's going on is the young son of a reindeer farmer. The boy must find a way to convince his small village that something is amiss before Santa and his elves are allowed to fully run amuck. The Blu-ray made great use of the surround sound and the film looks amazing, I'd definitely suggest giving it a rental at the very least. Great stuff.

Brian split shortly after the movie, as he had an errand to run on the way home, so the wife and I watched tonight's episode of Twin Peaks, then called it a night.

I got started on this so that I can be in bed relatively early, as I want to hit an estate sale in the AM before all the dregs of humanity are out and about.

Be seeing you.

Last Hurrah For Christmasery

2011-12-15T01:24:00.000-06:00

Tonight's post title is a play on a John Woo movie that I've never actually seen, which is called Last Hurrah For Chivalry, which I only point out because I figure about one person in a thousand would get the reference and even less would think it's clever, so I may as well beat you over the head with it just to amuse myself.

I went to bed later than intended last night, so I made a point of setting the alarm for an hour later this morning, as I find that 6 hours is my bare minimum that I can get by with nowadays.

The wife was heading out and about to be at a meeting, then run a couple other errands, so I pretty much said 'hi' and 'bye' to her on her way out, then opened the house up for the day and spent some time on the PC in the Office working on the blog and seeing what sort of hassle I am in for since the Blogger interface remains unchanged 24 hours later. I think I may be able to get it to work with me if I do everything on the 'new' side of things, then use the old interface to add any pics involved, as editing photos in the new version is a straight-up pain in the ass, or at least as far as any way I've tried to do it.

At any rate, I feel fairly confident that I can deal with this weird new turn of events, regardless of how annoying it is. I suppose one of these days I will need to migrate everything to a legit site just to have more control of it, but I honestly can't be bothered to mess with it at this stage of things.

Since the wife was to be out of the house until the mid afternoon I decided to get out for a bit and pick up a Christmas item that I had found out wasn't going to be available online as I was planning to purchase it, so I ran that errand and also popped into Barnes & Noble for a magazine since I was out, then picked up a burger and fries for my lunch on the way back to the house. I couldn't find anything on the TiVo that I was all that crazy about watching, so I ended up re-watching Heavy Metal off there just to pass the time, as it was something I recorded awhile back just for the hell of it.

My sweet wife returned with coffee for both of us moments after I finished up the movie, then we caught up on the day and the plans for the museum Christmas party that we were to host in the evening. She busied herself with the beginnings of the food prep and I took the time to step over to the Guest Side of the house to wrap a few more of the wife's gifts, just so I don't have to do it all at once and eat up an entire afternoon closer to Christmas. I worked on that for about an hour, then picked up our bedroom and took a quick shower, as we were expecting people to start arriving at 6:00 for the party.

The crowd was comprised of the museum staff and members of the board, should they care to visit and partake in the mingling and fun. We had a decent turn-out of both board and staff, everyone seemed to enjoy the wife's food and we managed to clear out almost our entire supply of both wine and beer, so that's a nice change of pace, as we can start fresh with new supplies as we get into the New Year. The party was to last until 8:00 in the evening, but after a round of gift exchanging and the customary trading or 'stealing' that goes along with it, I noticed that a good number of people started to thin out, so we had a smaller crowd that hung around visiting and whatnot until around 9:00-ish. One of the ladies on the board even played a few songs on the ukulele that she's been learning to play, which is possibly the last thing I ever expected to write when working on the blog, so never let it be said that life doesn't throw me curve balls.

Our friend Scrawny McTall had managed to leave her phone behind when she left earlier in the evening, so the wife called her house phone to let her know where it was and since she lives only a few blocks away she soon turned up in her PJ's to pick it up and ended up visiting with us a bit while we picked up and kinda recovered from the party. She eventually headed home and the wife and I got into our pajamas and settled into the den for a quick episode of Twin Peaks before calling it a night.

The Yorkie again seemed rather resentful of me for locking her in the master bathroom for the duration of the party, so I guess I have to try and coax my way back into her good graces over the weekend. What a pain in the ass.

Be seeing you.

Nail Gun Horror Story

2011-12-14T22:19:00.006-06:00

So I find myself writing this within the 'new' Blogger interface, which is a giant pain in my ass, but something I've been forced to deal with since the 'old' interface suddenly opens this morning missing several of the editing buttons I've come to depend on, including the ones to make text italicized or boldface. The only downside to being forced into using this other interface is that the preview screen makes the post look weird as hell, interpreting the line breaks as two lines instead of one for reasons unknown to me, meaning I find myself writing here, then flipping back to the 'old' view and uploading pics there to make sure it all turns out looking right when it's all said and done.

So irritating.

Anyway...

Since we had the Maid on tap today I rose with the alarm and got the water boiling for some tea, then opened the house for the day. The wife split to make a grocery store run to get ready for a party that I'm being forced into participating in tomorrow night, so the Yorkie and I chilled in the Office while I worked on the blog a bit, only to discover that it was completely borked. I signed out and crossed my fingers in hopes that it would eventually heal itself.

So instead of getting anything really done I dicked around the web for most of the morning, then let the Maid in to start in on her routine. The wife returned with groceries, which we unloaded and put away, then we both spent time in the Office working on our computers separately, as we both had shopping to do for the holidays and that sort of thing.

I eventually made us a couple sandwiches and we ate lunch while I watched an episode of The X-Files via Netfux Instant Watch, as is my normal 'Maid day' custom, then the wife chilled in the little sitting area near the kitchen to make a few phone calls while I watched the newly released Louis CK special Live At The Beacon Theater, which is available exclusively from his website for $5 right now.

The new set is hilarious, well worth the money and it was cool to know that he's already made his money off of the thing and then some, as the guy deserves all the success he has had in the past few years.

The wife and I got out and about around 5:30 to pick up an early dinner for ourselves, then we watched something off the To-Watch Pile to pass the time until the highly anticipated American Horror Story came on late in the evening.

Nail Gun Massacre is a largely terrible horror film, but man is it a hoot to watch people 'die' from a nail to the hand and the chest, y'know, from wounds that aren't anywhere near any arteries. The movie is silly as hell, but plays it totally straight, which makes it all the more entertaining. I picked it up for a few bucks and can say that it was worth every penny. Worth a peep for fans of bad movies, happy to cross it off the list, because how can you not be intrigued by that title, right?

We watched the penultimate episode of American Horror Story, a show which I have to admit has grown on me a great deal over the course of the season, though I do still have to roll my eyes here and there with certain twists, but as far as a straight up ghost story on a mainstream network, it's been pretty fun. I will definitely be checking out the next season, especially if the show ends up as I expect it to, given the things that've been building up these past couple episodes.

We watched the new episode of The Soup before calling it a night, then I spent some time picking up the den, as I figured it's easier to do it now than have to rush around tomorrow afternoon trying to get the house ready for guests and tomorrow night's party.

The wife headed to bed and I eventually found my way into the Office to find that Blogger still isn't playing ball with me as I would like it to, so I took the time to submit a question about it to their forums, just to see if anyone else was having the same issues I have been tonight, then finally resorted to using the new interface, as it would at least let me edit as I am accustomed, even if the formatting looks weird on this side of things.

I'm tired and kinda frustrated, so I'm out kids.

Be seeing you.

District Tuesday 13

2011-12-13T23:21:00.005-06:00

The alarm went off at 9:00 this morning, continuing my efforts to be awake during more daylight hours, so I looked at e-mail on the iPhone for a few minutes to try and get the sleep from my eyes, then got up and opened up the house and started water boiling. As I did this I noticed that a floral delivery van had suddenly appeared out front, so I put up the little gate to sequester the Yorkie so I could sign for the arrangement in peace without her going for this poor guy's throat.

The flowers were from her dad, with a little Christmas message, so we found a place for them on the kitchen counter and then she called and left a message thanking him while I got the PC fired up and published another blog post in my efforts to get the blog closer to being up to date. We both piddled around in the Office for a bit, then I started planning out my day, as I had a couple errands I wanted to run around the normal lunch meeting around 1:00. I got the recycling that'd accumulated over the past few days loaded and headed out to drop that off before I stopped into the local books, music and video outlet.

Imagine my surprise to find the recycle bins still fucking overflowing, with tons of stuff just dumped in piles around the bins because people just gave up and left it there like litter. I shook my fist and hit the nearby books, music and video place, gave it a good prowl before finally leaving empty-handed, as they had no magazines I couldn't live without and nothing of note in the movie section.

I wasted a good amount of time wandering around to the other recycle bin locations that I knew off the top of my head, where I managed to get rid of about half the shit I had loaded into the trunk of the car, but I was still stuck with a couple large shopping bags of assorted newspapers, magazines and catalogs that I had no idea where I was could get rid of them. I stepped into another arts and crafts store to look for more stuff for this project I'm planning for the wife's Christmas (shh) and was happy to find pretty much everything I was looking for. I think I may actually be done with my shopping locally after this afternoon, everything else will be done via the interwebs for my own convenience.

The hour was upon me, so I flew down the Loop to meet the fellas for lunch, which seemed to take forever for no apparent reason, but it gave us time to catch up a bit, so it all comes out in the wash I suppose.

Once we finished up lunch I made one final stop at LOCATION DELETED, where I picked up what has become a customary yearly gift for the wife, so it was nice to get that taken care of and be on my way.

The notion struck me that there were recycling bins near a school in our neighborhood, so I gave that one last try and actually found a place to drop off all the Goddamned newspapers, so that was nice. I was in our alley with my hand on the garage door opener when I spotted the damned Netfux envelope that I had taken with me to mail, so I rolled on by the house and drove to the nearby Post Office to throw that in the mail.

Back at the house I ran all my stuff inside quickly, as it appeared that the wife and Yorkie were in the bedroom for a nap, so I was able to get things squirreled away in the back without really having to be all that sneaky about it. I changed clothes and chilled out in the den for a bit, halfway watching most of Scott Pilgrim since it was on cable, then the wife and Yorkie wandered in and said hello, so I caught up with them a bit, then the wife started getting ready for the evening, as she had plans to attend a 'girls' party with a friend.

I eventually gave the iPhone a shake and it suggested District B13 off the To-Watch Pile, so I gave the old French action flick another peep on Blu-ray, which looked pretty damned good, I have to say. The Parkour stuff in here is occasionally jaw-dropping and I really dig the way the film is shot, give it a look if you have the chance. I guess I need to check out the sequel at some point, as it's been out for quite some time.

The wife's friend Scrawny McTall picked her up for the party, so once I had her out of the house I took some time to work on the Christmas stuff in the Library, then was about to settle down for some television when the wife got back, so she and I watched our daily dose of Twin Peaks before calling it a night, what with the Maid coming tomorrow and me being fairly tired and hoping to get to bet at a reasonable hour tonight.

Be seeing you.

Having A Gay Old Time

2011-12-12T23:44:00.006-06:00

The past few days have seen me staying up later and later, so I decided to try and get to bed by 3:00 AM last night (which for some reading this is probably a ridiculous time to still be awake by any stretch of the imagination), then set my alarm for 9:00 this morning so that I can force myself to get back into a reasonable sleep schedule.

When I went to bed I read for a bit and kinda watched the wife doing her weird little restless leg thing where she moves one leg around until it meets resistance and then she pulls it back toward her, then the process repeats. As she kept doing this she was basically nudging the Yorkie each time she stretched the leg out, so I found it amusing that the poor dog just tolerated it, occasionally sighing as if resigning herself to the situation.

I finally bedded down after reading for a bit, then was awakened shortly by what my drowsy brain interpreted as a strange thumping sound, which turned out to be the Yorkie vigorously scratching at the comforter to 'get it like she likes it' as we say, so by the time I registered what was happening she had finished building her little 'nest' at the head of the bed between the wife and I, as she'd obviously got tired of the wife almost nudging her in the face with her feet over and over again. As amusing as this turn of events sounds, it was still fairly annoying, as being startled awake in that weird twilight haze before sleep never fails to keep me wide awake for at least an hour or so afterward, so by the time I got to sleep it was after 4:00 in the AM.

Bah.

The wife was stirring shortly before my alarm was set to go off, which I did my best to ignore, trying to squeeze in at least 5 hours of sleep before the alarm started going off. I finally got up with the alarm to find the wife long gone to run errands. I started water to boil for tea and got the house opened up for business, then was surprised to find the wife suddenly home again, as her appointment had fallen through due to the shitty record keeping of the salon where she had a facial scheduled. We visited for a bit and then she discovered the actual appointment card given to her by the salon and went back there to vent her frustration, as they had acted as if she just randomly made up the appointment since no one had written it down on their side of things. I fully encouraged this behavior, as most businesses service is completely in their ass nowadays and they should be called out on completely fucking up, not make you feel crazy for being there.

My tea was ready, so I moved into the Office and spent some time working on the blog a bit, then got a package ready to mail at the Post Office, as something I had for sale on Amazon had finally sold over the weekend. When the wife returned we compared notes on plans for the rest of the day, then I took her lunch order and called it in, as I figured I could hit the Post Office on the way and then kinda be done with my outings for the day.

The Post Office was pretty hassle free aside from an elderly woman doing this antsy 'pee-pee dance' style box step in line ahead of me as if she was coming out of her skin waiting. Or who knows, maybe she did have to pee. Anyway, I dropped my stuff in the mail and then picked up food and headed home, where the wife and I ate while watching today's episode of Twin Peaks, which turned out to be an hour and a half long, surprising me, since I was expecting a normal episode and this turned out to be the first episode of the 2nd season.

The wife and the Yorkie chilled in the bedroom after the show and I spent some time wrapping a few Christmas gifts and taking stock of what else I need to do for the wife's holidays.

As we started to get into the early evening I shook up a martini for myself and settled into the den to re-watch A Single Man off the To-Watch Pile, because I was curious how it would look on the new television. The movie holds up amazingly well, touching and sad at the same time, filled with gorgeous visuals from start to finish. Colin Firth plays a despondent professor whose boyfriend is killed in a car accident, adrift in his life and looking for a way out. Tom Ford is a great visual stylist and it really shows in all the details of this one. Such a great film, well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Plus, I like saying that the director of the movie I'm watching made the cologne I'm wearing, because that never happens.

The wife and I both had a great time with the movie, then I put in something a bit lighter to round out our viewing: I Love You Phillip Morris, in which Jim Carrey plays a con-man who does whatever he has to in his efforts to keep his boyfriend Ewan McGregor in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed. It has some really amusing moments, especially considering that it's based on a true story, portions of which took place right here in Texas. It's a fun watch, give it a peep if you want to see Carrey in a different role than we normally see him in.

I watched an episode of The Venture Brothers that'd turned up on the TiVo while the wife headed to bed, then I got stated on this post in an effort to wrap things up early so I can try to catch up on my sleep a bit tonight.

Be seeing you.