Watershed

Announcement

For those of you who didn't notice, or still caught up in candy comas, NaNoWriMo starts this month.  Get your keyboard out and start pecking our words, y'all.

Halloween Treats

Amanda over at Pandagon posted about Kubrick's THE SHINING, and it got me thinking about my favorite horror movies.  I posted much of the following as a comment over there, but added some more for this.

As a young kid, the movie/book combo that scared the holy hell out of me was CHARLIE / WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.  I had nightmares about scenes from the book, cast with the characters from the movie.  (Especially the "smaller and smaller rooms" scene.)

As a somewhat older kid, MOTEL HELL tied into every "don't go into the basement" paranoia I ever had.  MOTEL HELL sucks, but it nails that late 70s/early 80s exploitation vibe, just like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, FRIDAY THE 13th, and (the best of the bunch) HALLOWEEN. 

That said, the msot exploitational movie I have ever seen is I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, which soils you just by watching it.  And the "cut off the penis" scene is not much fun, either.

I grew up near Lake Michigan, fresh water, and even so, I still have skin crawling reactions in the water, thinking about JAWS.

John Carpenter's THE THING is the best existential horror movie I have ever seen, though the first two INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS movies -- 1956 and 1978 -- are good, too.

The two best over-the-top, insane, gross out (but you'll probably laugh) horror movies are EVIL DEAD 2, and Jackson's DEAD/ALIVE (AKA BRAINDEAD).  (Though THE ABOMNIABLE DOCTOR PHIBES has some nice bits as well.  Hoorah for Vincent Price.)

Oddly, over the last few years, with the rebirth of the SFX-driven gore film, I'm not as excitied by them as I used to be.  I saw CABIN FEVER, but still haven't seen SAW or HAUTE TENSION, or any others I would have snapped up, even in my late 20s.  Tastes change, I guess.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD is still genius, though.

Spouting Spate of Stories

I've been collecting a lot of links over the past week or so.  From publications like the New Scientist (thanks, Sping!) to the New Yorker (thanks, Em!).  I'll throw them all up right now, and probably come back to some in more detail.

Game Day

I was just IM'ing shit with my pal Clive, and I asked him about what he was working on.  And his response was to say:  "google these terms" that he then threw at me.  Faster than actually explaining, you see.

So we went back and forth about the uses of that kind of short hand, and decided that the following formulation is just excellent in its combination of meaningful and meaningless:

Just google "X" and "Y" and you'll understand what I'm working on.

(That is:)
Just google "psychopharmacology" and "medieval torture devices" and you'll understand what I'm working on.

Alternate version:

Just google "X" and "Y", and you'll understand how my day is going.

(That is:)
Just google "kittens hanging from tree branches" and "endurance marathons", and you'll understand how my day is going.

(More specific)
Just google "going" and "postal", and you'll understand how my day is going.

(More surreal)
Just google "Richard the Lionheart" and "Thai hookers", and you'll understand how my day is going.

Try it for yourself!  Fun for the whole family/office/carnival!  Use it in email or IM today!

Keeping Faith

Ah, jet lag.

In town, can't sleep, did some work, then net jogged.  Watched some CSPAN BookTV, bought something on Amazon based on it, then bonked around the net some more.

I ran across John August's journal.  He's a screenwriter, has worked with Tim Burton a lot -- CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, for one -- and BIG FISH.  If you don't remember BIG FISH, it's about a son who can't understand why his father keeps telling stories that are patently untrue.  In this case, the stories are clearly mythical and magical, but the underlying theme for me is fundamentally religious.  The son, to his Dad:   "why won't you admit the world works the way I say it does?"  And, like an adult, the son doesn't give up his worldview, but finally stops trying to impose it on his Dad for no good reason.

(BTW, I don't think that's the way August, or Dan Wallace, the writer of the orignial book, think about the story.  In fact, I think their sense of the story is much more balanced than mine.)

Reading this August interview of Wallace got me to thinking about death.  Especially after this:

John: What I did like so much about the ending, is they didn't have that "Let's hug and cry" and "We've grown so much." I like that he dies like a real person, in terms of what you actually show on screen. I was there when my father died and when my grandmother died. Death is a really strange thing, because it's not like this event, it's just suddenly an absence. And there's the weird moment — do you call somebody, or what do you do next?

So this reminded me of something that I can't write about publically.  And that's the real point of this rambling post. 

I can't write about this thing, not because it's foul or embarrassing, or illegal, but because it would be inappropriate for me to do so.  It involves some people who I think read this site -- trust me, don't think it's you, because it's not  -- and it would be wrong for them to be aware of the actual situaiton of something I did for them.  Because they would be embarrassed that I did exactly what I did, which was much more unpleasant than what I said I did.  In the circumstance, they already felt guilty enough because I handled the event instead of them.  To know how it actually went down would make them feel more guilty that I was the one who , um, cleaned up the mess. 

If you've ever gotten drunk, and thrown up in someone else's house, you know how you feel both relieved that you didn't have to clean up your own puke?  But also guilty, because someone cleaned up your puke?  It's kind of like that.  In fact, very MUCH like that.

The point is, as if this really has a point, is that truth is like fertilizer.  Nothing can grow without it, but too much of it is a poison.  And sometimes you make large things you did for people seem like no big deal, because it would be childish and wrong to do otherwise.

OK, time to try and sleep again.  Office in the morning.

Existence

I just got an email from the Rents demanding a Proof of Life post.

Hi!

Doppelganger, Faded

One strange thing about living the living in hotel lifestyle overseas is that you listen to TV background noise in new ways.  For example, I almost never watch CNN.  But here, I have it or the BBC on all the time in the background.  And sometimes, a word or two cuts through the din.

Just now, I heard the name of the CNN reporter covering the Cuba and Castro right now.

"Morgan Neil."  A guy.

Little did I know that one of my alternate universe selves had crosses over to this world, and got a job as a TV journalist.  His coverage was just fine.  Hate to think a doppelganger would be incompetent at his job.

Flesh and Fashion

On the stupid tip, I spent some time in the pool yesterday -- without putting on sun screen.

So of course, my chest and my dress shirt today are approximately the same pink color.

Nice job, genius.

At least I got work done, in between being dumb and in the pool.

1:36 left

For some reason, I've run out of things to do with over a minute left on the hotspot.  So here:  poop!

Poop!

Poop!

Poop!

God bless the Internets, that I can do such a thing.

Hard Drinkin' Nightlife Reporters

Since I have noticed two examples of something, I think that makes it a trend by the standards of journalism.  I'll have to check with my journalist pals, to be sure.  In the meantime, this is a Trend Post.

Florida seems to have adopted the idea that the nightclub reporter should be a woman.  A hard drinkin' woman, obviously.

The Orlando Sentinel has Kelly Fitzpatrick of the column "Irish Handcuffs" (a Guinness in both hands).  Fitzpatrick comes from a journalism background, and tends to focus on three basic themes:  1) were the drinks tasty and/or cheap?  2)  Did the music suck?  3) Was the joint smoking friendly?  In the midst of all that, the activity is focused on her and her companions for the evening.  More like a restaurant review than anything else.

Originally a smoke-free establishment by choice (no food is served), the bar caved in after a few months and allowed us dirty smokers to continue our nasty habit under the bar's beautiful open roof -- beams still exposed.

They also keep a respectable beer selection at respectable prices, ranging in the $2.50-$4 realm. Well, at least right after work, when 50 cents is knocked off the price. Also, martinis and wine can be ordered. Or created, as my friends did a couple of visits back. (I'm sure the bartender loved us, but he was very fun-loving about it.)

From the July 14 column, "It'sbeen a year now -- Cleo's downtown is smokin'"

By some bit of contrast, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times has Marya Summers' Night Rider column.  Summers is from a Lit background -- art writing, slam poetry, teaching English -- and her columns tend to be explicit slices-of-life either during events (like a event for Girls Gone Wild).  Interestingly, then, she does a lot more interviewing of other patrons -- from self-aggrandizing residents of Boca Raton to Fetish folks to random passers-by.

"So what exactly is supposed to happen tonight?" I asked. "Is it a show?" 

"Nobody has any idea," Cutie Pie said. "It's just a vague iniquity of possible nudity." 

Someone had been spending time with a thesaurus. 

"It's a recruiting trip," Bauble Babe said. "They have professional girls that go from show to show."

The drink-slinging hotties were all dressed in GGW boy shorts and tank tops. I guessed those were the pros. 

In the lobby bar, a jiggly Pocahontas sported gourds so ridiculously enlarged that their weight bowed her back. She was plainly using her ass as a counterbalance. She jittered the long fringe on her flesh-colored bikini top into a perpetual swish as she exuded a self-absorbed nervous energy that fed on attention. I pegged her as an amateur hoping to go pro.

From the July 20, "Call of the Wild"

Which you prefer is a matter of taste -- Fitzpatrick tends to be consistent within her approach, whereas Summers can be trapped by the stupidity of the people in her environment.  But both ar vastly preferable to the Sun-Sentinel approach, which is CitySearch guidelike.  The CitySearch guide concept has it benefits and drawbacks, but it has almost no personality. 

(In fact, I am trying to remember if I ever wrote for some cityguide equivalent back in the mid-90s in NYC.  I almost must have, but I don't remember any particular bit.  And since I didn't save any of my writing for cash until '98 or so, I have no records.  Anyway, if I did, it was bland blurb work, I'm sure.)

I'd wonder what the Herald did, but I never read the Herald.

So that's the trend:  hard drinkin' female bar reporters.  Coming soon to a paper or free weekly near you.