Movies I Actually Want to See

I find myself in the rare position of having more than one movie that I'm actually looking forward to seeing on the horizon.

The first is "Shaun of the Dead"

I like zombies. I like comedies. Bango!

The second:"The Life Aquatic"

I grew up watching Jaques Cousteau and loved every minute of it. I like comedies. Bango!

So I wonder why I'm such a movie snob that it is worthy of note that I'm looking forward to TWO WHOLE MOVIES this year. Now there have been movies that I've gone to see and subsequently really liked recently. (Spiderman 2, Napolean Dynamite, Harry Potter 3) I just wasn't really looking forward to them before I saw them. Maybe the problem is that so few movies are in the theater now that aren't either sequels or based on an established property of some sort, and, more often than not, they are just studio crap churned out quickly and slickly with a name brand stuck on them to sell tickets.

I was very pleasantly surprised that, in the case of the two sequels I liked, the directors were willing to take chances with the formula and tell a good story in the way they wanted to tell it, rather than just the same old, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Hollywood grind. Honestly, I think it is broke, and it needs to be fixed. If I see one more trailer for a movie where a little dog/ferret/cat bites someone in the crotch and gets thrown out the window, I'm buying a camera and doing it myself.

In the case of Napolean Dynamite, it was really nice to see a low-budget film that refused to do what you expected it to, and do it so well. It was a good film, plain and simple, and now we will be deluged with big-budget rip-offs that just don't get it.

Crazy Dreams

So, I'm dreaming along last night, and I'm doing pointless stuff, like I'm supposed to be fighting the monsters, but I have to do some shopping first. Then Aragorn shows up, and he's bought lunch for everybody. He tosses me a chili cheese burger, and I say thanks. Now a chili cheese burger is definitely not on my diet, and, if I were going to break my diet, it sure as heck wouldn't be with a chili cheese burger, it'd be with like some Rice Chex or a Krispy Kreme or something, but, hey, you can't turn down the free lunch that Aragorn brought you, so I eat it. I don't even like it, but he's sitting right there. I'm wondering why he got Heath a burrito, and me a chili cheese burger, because what's that supposed to mean? Do I just look like the kind of guy that eats chili cheese burgers?

Anyway, I finish the nasty chili cheese burger and I want to say thanks again, but I don't know what to call him. I mean "Aragorn" sounds kinda stuffy for a lunch break, but "Strider" sounds a little too familiar. I finally opt for "Strider" and he seems OK with that, but I can't really be sure that he didn't expect me to call him "Mr. Aragorn" or something. So he gets back to fighting monsters and stuff, and I've got to go clean the pool, and I'm feeling all crappy for having eaten the chili cheese burger, and now I'll have to be on Phase One of the diet for a whole 'nother week because of it.

Stupid Aragorn.

Artistic Fervor (ow ow ow!)

Haven't had much of a chance to blog today. Been really busy at work, but I did have a nice lunch break during which I was CONSUMED WITH ARTISTIC FERVOR(how do you make a TM symbol on a PC anyway?).

Anyway, I wrote a lot on my new story which you can check out at http://farswip.blogspot.com/

Let me know what you think of it. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum and actually get somewhere with this.

Later

Rainy Serendipity

Yes, I did have to look up the spelling on "Serendipity".

Yes, I did cut and paste the word "Serendipity".

Anyway... I wanted to walk to the park today like I have been during my lunch breaks recently. The weather has cooled off enough to make it an enjoyable experience, and I love watching and listening to the little waterfalls in the stream and walking in the shade of the trees. It's a happy place and a good break from the computer when you can get away to visit the place. Unfortunately, when I got downstairs and started to go outside, I realized it was raining rather heavily, and I wouldn't be going on any pleasant walks in that kind of downpour. So I came back up to my desk and decided to start typing an outline for an inkling of a story that's been flickering around in my head for a while.

For the first time in several years, the story just seemed to flow through me as though I were dictating something that someone else was describing to me. Writing hasn't been that way for me in a while, and I forgot how much I missed that. The best part was that the little half-formed story notion that I started with seemed now to tie directly into a much larger story that I had been wanting to tell for some time, a story that loomed behind the novel I once wrote when I was a far more dark and depressing person. That novel hadn't been very good, and only touched on the big story in a very tangental manner. The self-absorbed characters had seemed almost inconvenienced to have to deal with the big story. It all felt forced and contrived. The new story just feels right.

I am beginning anew with characters who really want to be in the story and really deserve the admiration of the writer and the reader as well. A hopeful innocence was lacking in my first attempt, and I think I have that back now. I think it will be the kind of story that you feel better for having read.

Wish me luck.

What is Narvi Flan?

Well, it's not a dessert item that's gone off a bit, if that's what you're thinking, though it did have its origin in the food industry. It happened one day that I was spinning around aimlessly in my computer chair when I looked over and noticed a box of crackers lying on the floor in the corner of the room (yes, I am a slob). On the back of the box there was printed a word jumble wherein, if you looked closely enough, you could make out words relating to the cracker product inside the box, that would, I suppose, make you want to consume the crackers at an even faster rate and then rush out to buy more. I had needed little encouragement to consume them (they were, after all, sour cream and onion flavored), but no amount of literary obfuscation was going to infuse me with the energy to rush anywhere(yes, I like big words) (and parenthesis). Perhaps the jumble was simply there to provide me with added value entertainment, which is what it now did.

I was too far away (and didn't care enough) to make out any of the intended cracker-related words hidden in the jumble, but I could clearly make out two jumbly gems that stuck in my brain long enough for me to scrawl them on the dry-erase board where I wrote things that I didn't want to forget... things like my phone number or "pay your bills". The words were, as you have long since guessed (and yet I continue to drag this pointless story out), "Narvi Flan".

I kept the cryptic name scrawled on my dry-erase board long enough that it eventually became a sort of un-erasable (dry or wet) stain, and the board now lives in my laundry room where I hope to place a washer and/or dryer someday, but that's beside the point... where was I?

Anyway, I eventually used the name for my Star Wars Galaxies character. SWG, in case you didn't know, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game where thousands of people from all over the place play characters from the Star Wars universe on their home computers. I'd provide a link, but I'm lazy, and it really is a kind of frustrating game.

Narvi was a rodian architect who wandered around collecting dirt to build houses and was occasionally poisoned to death by imperial medics. The most annoying part was that the dirt tended to move around a lot, so you'd have to keep searching for more dirt, and... well, it was about as fun as doing algebra. I cancelled my account, and will not be going back, but I still kinda miss the little green guy who couldn't catch a break, and I think of all that he could have been, if that treasure map he found had lead to something besides an old shipping crate containing a dull pocket knife and a half-full shaker of paprika. It's a pity he had to blast three space pirates to get it. C'est la guerre.

So Narvi Flan lives on, and his memory shall be a happy one. Let out-of-date desserts be named after him, and let them be cut with dull pocket knives and served with a dash of paprika!

My first Blog!

I don't even know if "Blog" is capitalized... I'm so new at this.

In any case, I've always wanted to ramble aimlessly about different things and pretend that someone was listening to me... wait, I've always done that, but now I'm WORLDWIDE BABY!!!

Sorry, I'm just excited.

Oh well, I'll finish setting this thing up now and be back shortly.