A couple of colours in this one.

Really lethargic today. Got up at 3 something and had a two hour nap at 8. The time is currently 12:25am.

Who’s that guy that says “the time is currently…” I feel like there’s some radio guy that does that.

I imagine I’m mostly just worried about this brown discolouration at the base of my left hands middle finger. I just noticed it Monday- I’ll set up a doctors appointment tomorrow to get it checked out. Of course if I get any useful advice from my doctor it’ll be the first time. Yeesh. I’ll probably die of skin cancer and the guy’ll tell me to get some bed rest or something.

I’ve got a bunch more library comics to talk about, but I’m actually just about to start work on my weekly reviews, so I’ll hold off on that.

I spent about an hour at the gym today, from 10:45pm-11:45pm. Despite my lack of energy it was the best non running workout I’ve had in a long while. The music system played that “Boys of Summer” song, I’m not sure what it’s called, but I do love to hear it at this time of year. Maybe it’s a little late in the season to be listening to it- nah it’s still appropriate. I’m not entirely sure if it was the rockin’ out awesome version that I like, or the original- but if I’m not sure, then it was probably the new one. Whenever I hear the old one it’s super obvious it’s the old one. It’s the slower pace you see. The song feels more methodical then.

I also heard Pearl Jam’s “Alive” on the radio. I’d like to check out the lyrics sometime, it sounded like it’s about some guy who fails to perform with his girl (possibly because of some survivors guilt?), or else just isn’t excited at all to be with his girl. I don’t know, like I said, I’d like to check out the lyrics sometime.

This is my last post for September, finishing off my first month of blogging without actually having the internet at home. I’m surprised how well I did, a couple weeks back I thought for sure I wasn’t going to be able to meet my quota, but here I am, moonwalking across the finish line. Or whatever you do when you’re about to cross the finish line and are supremely confident about winning or something.

Oh, I beat Catherine last night. The last couple of levels I had a bit of coaching help, but that’s just because I wanted to be done with the whole thing. Other than maybe trying some versus mode, I’m done with that one.

Yesterday I had this dream where I was being pressured to take this drug that made you super smart and fit. I felt bad about it- but I did take a swig of that blue bottle, reminding me now of Alice’s various size changers. This led to me taking some brutal exercise course with, I suppose, whomever developed this system and a bunch of other class mates.

I remember this one old woman, slightly over-weight, who was having trouble breathing, that the instructor stopped to berate for not keeping up because she wasn’t using “all that strength she had to keep herself standing” for the exercise. I thought that was horrible and woke up soon after.

I thought there’d be potential for a story somewhere in that dream, and I guess there still is, but I realized it would just be a slightly modified version of Limitless- which I already thought was an awesome movie/story.

It’s 1am now, I’d better get on those comic reviews. I’ve got seven to do, which isn’t too bad at all.

Oh, yesterday after the rain there was a rainbow- how amazing is a universe that has rainbows? I totally get where double rainbow guy is coming from.

The good really does outweigh the bad

Well, that’s two really rough days at work over with. They had me sweating bullets, with the little juggling act I did with a CPU and pretending I wasn’t doing anything with the CPU. That took acting skills. I may have just earned a daytime emmy.

But there were some really nice things too. A gorgeous girl gave me chocolate and told me about an experiment involving neutrinos going faster than light. I’m pleased in that has-to-be-the-smartest-person-in-the-room jerk way that I already knew about that experiment, but it was still super great.

And a really nice resident gave me two chocolate bars just because. I haven’t eaten them yet, but still, really nice.

Man, that’s actually a lot of chocolate.

And today I found a perfect condition copy of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay that someone just left out to be recycled. I was like “… yeah, I’m taking this.”

It was at least at one point my buddy’s favourite book, and he even loaned me his copy so I could read it (I know, generous). That was actually back in that year of school when we lived together. That was a crazy time. A good time, now that I think back on it. Though I guess everything is relative.

AND someone was getting rid of some random weights! Now THAT’S crazy. Weights ain’t cheap, son! So now I’m the proud owner of a single 30lbs dumbbell, two 5lbs weights, a 7lbs weight, a 10lbs pound weight, and a bar for those weights to go on. Not sure how useful the SINGLE 7 and 10lbs weights will be, but we’ll see what happens.

Maybe they’re cursed weights.

Okay, so now I sound like a scavenger going through trash for this stuff- a thought that, trust me, I find pretty gross, germaphobe that I am, but the book was on top of a box, not on the gross ground at all, and it called to me.

The weights… well, weights are expensive! Also, it’s not like I trust the cleanliness of the weights at the gym anyways.

Enough of me being defensive.

I said I was going to talk about more of those library books I picked up, uh, but actually I’ve just got hit by the sleepys. I did only just now get back from my security shift- I think it’s legitimate for me to be tired!

It’s raining right now, which is good. It’s cooling. I feel like I’ve been stuck in sweat mode the last couple of nights trying to sleep. It’s gross.

And I see we’ve got daylight poking in the windows through the trees. I wonder what I’ll be up to today? Sleep first, find out later.

Looking at some books

Okay, let’s do a couple of blurbs on these comic book collections I picked up from the library. So, in not necessarily the order I read them in (so I may have forgot the order, so what?):

Vol. 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Season 8”
I picked up the first, I don’t know, 12-16 issues of this series for a friend- actually, I was just going to get her issue 1, but then I didn’t see her, so I picked up issue 2, then 3, etc. etc. so I got to read a fair amount of this series.

Volume 7 collects issues 31-35, so I’ve definitely missed a bunch. Mostly all the different things that Dawn has been transformed into, in a sort of running joke I guess (she started the comic series off as a giant!)

Eh. Buffy has awesome superman style powers in this book, which I take it most fans found sacriledge. I do agree that it changes the book too much, but obviously I don’t care all that much. Seeing Xander geek out over the powers was fun, and having a sour faced Dawn show up in panels repeating the idea that these powers are going to turn out to be bad was pretty funny.

The likenesses of the characters are captured pretty well- but sometimes not. Those are the stupid panels. And there’s an impossibly long sex scene in the book, so maybe go buy it for that.

The Goon vol. 10 Death’s Greedy Comeuppance
The Goon is an amazing series that I’ve somehow read entirely out of order. And by somehow, I mean I kept grabbing random collections out of the library. It’s written and illustrated by Eric Powell, and illustrated is definitely the right word, because his books are beautiful… which is an interesting counterpoint to the horror and dark (dark) humour of the books.

It’s that humour that sets the book apart. The Goon himself is so quiet that his sidekick (okay, I forget his sidekicks name at the moment…) does most of the talking, thereby elevating the silliness level. Again, I’d like to stress the darkness of the humour- this book series ain’t for the easily offended.

The backup story is about this deathless death-seeker named Buzzard, sort of an anti hero in the Goon books (uh, Goon is already an anti hero… so Buzzard is a super anti-hero? Buzzard is sort of a mostly good zombie, so take from that what you will.), travelling around with this kid on a quest to kill this monster that’s been terrorizing a village or somesuch.

In the end, Buzzard doesn’t die (which means he failed in his goal) and his travelling companion kid does get killed. It’s pretty sad. The kid’s last line is “I prefer to not know what it’s like to not be in awe of the stars.” On account of Buzzard mentioned that you get old enough things lose their shine and interest for you, the stars being the example he gave earlier in the book. But then Buzzard ends the tale looking up and “remembered a time when I was in awe of them.”

So those are two books, I’ve got a bunch more, but that can wait until tomorrow.

Complain complain

I’m so tired. I just finished my comic reviews, after giving up on sleep, a rough wake-up-a-lotty four hours isn’t going to cut it for today.

I had a terrible dream yesternight that I won’t go into, but I know exactly what it’s trying to tell me, and I’ve got to figure out what to do about it. I know, I know, my ambiguity is enthralling.

Returned Ulysses to its rightful owner. She’s moving to B.C., so I’ve got to find a new copy to read. Hopefully a similarly annotated version, even though it’s the fact that I’ve got those extra notes to read that really slows down my progress. I’m sure I’d understand it well enough if I plowed through, but so long as those notes exist I-MUST-READ. Them.

In the meantime, I picked up a bunch of comics from the Fairview library, which has a superior collection of comics. Before bed last night I read through the first volume of Jeff Smith’s Rasl, and then my body was all “wow, that was cool! You know what else is cool? Never sleeping again!”

So, my body is a big jerk.

Argh okay, I’m going to try for another hour. I’ve got plans at 2pm-ish, so this degree of tiredness is unacceptable.

I wanted to write more here, but this is going to have to be it.

Oh, but even as I was distressed by terrible dreams, yesterday I found attached to my toiletries bag (what, you don’t have a toiletries bag?) a little sticker looking thing of a dove. It was a good little calming message for me, so that was cool.

P.S.- I’ve now slept throw everything. That’s wonderful.

Drive

Drive was an amazing film. A lot of it was silence, a silence that was left to us to interpret, but that was a task that readily clicked into place.

What are the thoughts in those silences, what do they mean? If you didn’t think about the answers to those questions you weren’t actually watching this movie.

Not that this should be anything but obvious, but by not narrating everything, by not telling us what the characters are feeling (“That makes me feel angry!”) a multiplicity of meaning is opened up for us. The sort of inner dialogue that I privately infer won’t necessarily be the same that you hear in your mind.

And BAM, man, I love the strong silent type. This film makes me want to go hang out with a crowd of mostly strangers, since in that arena I usually slip into the silent role. Ah it’s so cool.

There was this cool 80’s thing going on with the lettering and music. Pink cursive writing, and I don’t even know what it was about the music that was 80’s to me, I forget, but it was.

Oh, here’s a tip going into it: Drive is a super hero movie. A violent, Punisher-esque super hero, but still. He’s even got a symbol, that giant scorpion on the back of his jacket!

The violence was a little much. When it finally kicked in this kid (or maybe just a fragile woman) started crying and had to leave the theatre. If it was a kid, hey parent, maybe don’t take your kid to a movie like this, and if a grown woman… uh, don’t take yourself to a movie like this.

I’m amazed (sure let’s talk about this some more) how well the silences worked here. It ratcheted up the tension to the umpteenth degree without being awkward (like that one long black screen in Captain America that was supposed to symbolize his hibernation, that got laughs from people due to awkwardness). There was, however, ONE scene where Gosling and Mulligan are looking at each other meaningfully and I was thinking “is- is she about to smile there? Or laugh or something? It doesn’t look like she can hold this silence much longer…” But it was just that bit that was a close call. Everything else was smooth, appropriately tense sailing.

And you know in real life the main character couldn’t just be about driving. He’d have a fishing hobby or something. But most of these characters have been boiled down to their basic archetypal essentials. Have you noticed I haven’t mentioned the Driver’s name yet? Either it wasn’t mentioned much, or it just wasn’t mentioned period. (I’m not sure)

The hero, the mentor, the love, the villain, the rival. Not so much ‘the kid’ though there is a kid there. Anyway, it’s a super economical film. I keep saying to people that the whole of the dialogue is probably only twenty pages of the total script.

I think that’s a good estimate for the sake of comically saying that there isn’t a lot of dialogue here… you know, if a script is usually about 110 pages or some such for a movie then, then 20 pages is a low percentage of pages is what I’m trying to say.

But yeah. Strong silent type. I’d love to hang out with someone and just be able to sit there with them. None of this talkin’ talkin’ talkin’ I usually do because I have to keep you entertained in me (or maybe just entertained period.). Let’s just be.

Brief look at Dillinger’s and Fatboys (that sounds weird)

I “borrowed” from the library two movies. And by that I mean I borrowed them legitimately with my library card and everything. Who’d steal from a library?

I guess you can mentally thrown in the appropriate dig at the Ford bros. right here. Ford bros.? Can you imagine if they made a Mario parody based on those guys?

I picked up the films Public Enemies and Run Fatboy Run.

For those not in the know, Public Enemies is based on the true story of depression era bank robber (I mean 1930’s, not Twentynow’s, even though the times have been increasingly blurred together) John Dillinger- possibly the best name for a bank robber ever- and the agent that’s on his trail, Marvin Purvis. You know they stuck with the real names when they make a movie with a “Marvin Purvis” in it.

Dillinger is a sort of Robin Hood figure, at least that’s how people idealize him. He takes only from the rich, but he doesn’t exactly give to the poor. He was really charming in that scene with the reporters after he was captured- which is a thing that really happened! - But for the most part he was a little on the creepy side. Dillinger was played by Johnny Depp, so maybe that’s just what I should’ve been expecting. Great in Edward Scissorhands though.

That said, when Dillinger became cut off from his support network because they’d found better ways to become rich than robbing banks, you felt for him. He was the last of a species, quickly becoming outpaced in a new age. Factor in the fact that he’d become such a liability partly because the syndicates were so eager to use him, making him a famous criminal that couldn’t hide out so well AND Dillinger only became a hardcore criminal after spending ten years in jail after he robbed a convenience store as a kid (it’s a good picture for jails as criminal factories) well, Dillinger really was a tragic figure. That’s how the movie plays it anyways.

Purvis is an excellent foil to Dillinger as another man out of time (and wonderfully played by Christian Bale who really did his homework on the man. Bale really is a great actor; I don’t care if you think his Batman voice is silly.). I thought the opposite at first- Purvis was a champion for new crime fighting technologies and strategies- he was very much on the cutting edge, but as his co-workers got increasingly desperate to capture Dillinger (a small fry in the grand scheme of things, but a famous one) Purvis felt more at odds with himself, that he was betraying his “southern gentleman” values.

In the end Purvis wasn’t the man to kill Dillinger- the perils of a chiefly accurate adaptation of real life- so no climactic gun battle here; Purvis, by that point, wanted to wash his hands of the matter anyways, so the films emphasis on Purvis not taking that final shot is a deliberate one.

Also, it gives more opportunity for Purvis’ right hand man to look cool. Seriously, that guy was amazing. My brother Simon thinks he was the evil general guy from Avatar. Yeah, you know, THAT guy.

I only just watched Run Fatboy Run yesterday, but man was it sweet. I was surprised by the degree to which I disliked the protagonist at the beginning, actually, I’m getting ahead of myself.

So the film is about a guy who left the love of his life at the altar, when she was pregnant, and five years later, threatened by the new man in her life who often brags about running in marathons, he decides to run in a marathon to show that he can be dedicated to something, a changed man.

The film is pretty formulaic, but comfortably so. It hit all the beats where I wanted the film to hit them- “and here’s the part where he decides he’s running for himself, his own self worth, instead of just for the girl”- and they were such that if the movie DIDN’T hit those beats I’d be disappointed. The story is more genuine and affecting for those beats.

I was surprised at the degree to which Hank Azaria’s “new boyfriend” role descended into villainy. Of course he seemed perfect at the start, but even before the actual race when he goes really bad you could see that he was too high strung, too forceful. Things were his way, or no way. (Conversely, the highway. Wait, I did that wrong…)

But having that guy be clearly bad makes it possible for a reconciliation between hero Danny Doyle and ex- fiancé Libby. It’s super sappy at the end of the race, but again, I liked it. And the sappiness is even pointed out in the film itself- when Danny finally crosses the finish line, collapsing into the waiting arms of Libby, with their five year old son also waiting to embrace dad, the scene cuts to Hank Azaria back in his own bed room (or someplace) looking at the news camera view of the scene shouting “I can’t beLIEVE this!” as the commentator says in a joyful tone “Doyle’s done it, oh and he has a son! Can you believe he has a son?” suggesting “isn’t this too perfect?”

Fortunately, the ex-couple aren’t just immediately back together afterwards. Life pretty much is back to normal except Danny now has a running hobby (I approve) and self respect. He asks Libby to dinner next week, she says okay, and we’ll see what happens in the future.

Reasons why I’m not an impartial reviewer for Run Fatboy Run: I like running, I like Simon Pegg and Simon Pegg movies. But I still recommend it.

Read that headline thing below in a nasal voice. You know the one.

I’ve been holding onto the Toronto Star’s Entertainment and Living section from last Tuesday’s paper because there’s a story in there that I found fascinating… and now that I’ve scanned the paper I re-remember what that was.

The article starts by outlining a typo an author made in her latest book that changes a sex scene (I assume it was a sex scene) from racy to racier. It’s like Speed Racy. I just wanted to say that.

(For the curious, she replaced “shifted” with “shitted” in the line “He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shifted on the ground.”)

But from what was really a non event (HEADLINE: BOOKS LOOKS SPOOKS PALOOKS- this wasn’t actually the headline, to be clear, I just wanted to sound old time newsy) then gets turned into a quick look into a new reality in publishing, that of the too quick turnover, with little time for comprehensive copy editing.

As an additional example, the end of the article cites an Australian cook book, Pasta Bible, “whose recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto needed salt and pepper, but instead called for “salt and freshly ground black people.””

That- that isn’t a typo, that’s a whadaya call-it, a Freudian slip on the part of the writer. ‘Cause that example’s just crazy.

Past couple of days I was feeling down, but I put on my blue jacket, only the second time in the season I’d done that, and felt more truly myself. I guess there’s only so much of wearing someone else’s uniform, being someone else’s stooge, that a guy can take.

The stars were gorgeous the past couple of nights.

And going back to my old school diet of pasta and pumpkin seeds (plus raisins when I find some… and the concoction really does need the raisins) has been a book for my late nights. Where as just before I started this regimen I’d had some of the toughest times staying up in recent memory, with this new diet my last five shifts were pretty easy to get through.

Ulysses is still a rough read through, haven’t gotten very far and I’ll have to return the book to its owner soon.