September 2003 Archives
Halle Berry as Catwoman. Truthfully, though, I think that damn mask makes her look like Chinchilla Woman but that's just me. And those open-toed shoes? How do we, the adoring geekboys, expect her to kick ass in those? And the pants? I'm a little unsure about this whole thing.
Angelina Jolie as Wonder Woman is fine with me as long as Gina Gershon gets to play Wonder Girl and there is some pent-up lesbo-amazonian sexual ferver. I'm just saying.
The day just keeps getting better: The entire season (9 episodes) of Patrick Warburton as the The Tick is now available on DVD. It was obvious this show was way too smart and funny for Fox to hold on to.
HBO's Carnivale is as awesome as I hoped it would be. Just enough melencholy to suit me mixed in with David Lynch-eque weirdness. Of course I'm sure the whole set up of the main character's missing relationship with his unknown but former carny father who also had the healing gifts he's now revealing will be a big let down just because these kinds of stories always are, but the ride is nice.
It's been so cool watcing NBC's "Las Vegas" these past two weeks knowing that the casino interiors and exteriors are all filmed at Mandalay Bay where Jeff and I stayed with my brothers and their wives this past June. We were a little put off last night watching the surfing competitions in the wave pool because there was none of that going on while we were there and the waves were pretty pithy but the casino itself is as beautiful as it' looks on TV.
As I'm learning through reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, it's become painfully, anxiously apparent that I am an Expectant Catastrophist. Not the kind of Catastrophist Bill Bryson who wrote the book talks about in regard to the two school of thought regarding the demise of the dinosaurs, but rather, the kind of Catastrophist who, upon reading how in the last 4.53 billion years of life on Earth, humankind has only existed a fraction of a fraction of 1% of that time. It seems to me that whether he's talking cosmology, quantum physics, biology, geology, meteorology, or evolution, we're all just basically fucked as a race. From the looming doom of impending, uncharted asteroids hurling into earth without notice to the uncharted, hyper-catastrophic impending eruption of Yellowstone National Park (because I'm sure everyone knew except me that Yellowstone is basically a 40-mile in diameter volcano that's due to explode in such a way as to bury Manhattan under 500-feet of ash) I've simply resigned myself that homo sapiens tenure on Earth is statistically irrelevant in the course of the long history of the Universe. And not sort of statistically irrelevant but MAD CHEDDAR irrelevant. Read Bryson's excerpt as he explains if you compared the total history of the Earth in terms of a 24-hour clock, life or something like it first appeared somewhere in the late afternoon and human-kind as we know ourselves is like somewhere around 11:59:59. The sky is falling the sky is falling, I say!
Best Book Read in a Long Time: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Accessible, well-written dips into all things science from astronomy, physics, ecology, biology, evolution, and everything in between. But the thing that makes this book SO great is all the great back stories about the scientists making the discoveries. It's encouraging to know that in most instances, scientists and science in general is all based on assumptions and theories which will ultimately be proved wrong when the next smarter person comes along with new ideas and theories. And the stories about those scientists are hilarious. Really, it's surprising that a book about such dry stuff can be so engaging. Definitely worth a read.
I hadn't planned on such a stretch of time away from the Blog but as these things go, that's what happens. In this case, it's death, death, death. The sudden death of Jeff's uncle from a horrific car crash last week in Pittsburg to the death of my DSL modem at home to finding out this morning about the apparent death of one of my Mom's cat's.
The stark comparisons between the long-term, lingering death of someone and the sudden, here today-gone tomorrowness death from a car accident have been weighing heavily on my mind. You always wonder which would be better and I can tell you, both are equal in every way. What is good about one is horrific about the other and what is almost inhumane about the first is merciful for the second. But in the end, dead is dead and then we go on with our days, hopefully a little more alive and aware and present.
The death of my DSL and my lack of internet connections at home this weekend is just a plain, brown bagged bitch of a thing. While I could have been looking at porn or blogs or porno blogs, instead, I spent the day yesterday sewing up pillows for Jeff's mom's new furniture. This whole "Queer Eye..." thing is making the Gays seem a little bit too zealous for home remodeling and makeovers if you ask me. That being said, I do make a good pillow when I put my nose to the grindstone and my foot to the Singer Sewing Machine peddle.
The apparent death of my Mom's cat, Queenie is sort of weighing heavy with me. She went off to live with my Aunt Pam after my Mom's death and I can't think of a more perfect place for cats. A nice rolling farm with lots of love and caring but for Queenie who was a old ragamuffin kind of thing, it wasn't too be, I suppose. Despite her name, she was a real doll of a cat. We spent lots of time together, her sitting on my lap, licking my fingers as I took care of Mom in those last weeks and I began to appreciate how deeply I equated her with my Mom. I can't help but believe Queenie's life just became a blur of strangeness after my Mom died and eventually, she started following the breeze that carries my Mom's memories that's been blowing around us since she's been gone. Queenie just went for that long walk to find my Mom again and that's quite a journey. I will tend not to think of Queenie as dead so much as just moving on with the wind as cats tend to do, on some quiet business of their own. It's weird to be so sentimental about a cat but Queenie and her brood were so much a part of my Mom's life that with one being gone, I can't help but sort of just be sad about my Mom all over again. Damn.
I have my MusicMatch on Demand set to mixing Pink Floyd, Coldplay, and Radiohead all day and they just announced Christian Bale is playing the new, younger Bruce Wayne/Batman in the new movie adaptation directed by Memento's Christopher Nolan. It's all good today.
Our friends just over the hill from us invited us to hike their new plot of land them closed on a few days ago. It's situated way back along a private lake and from the lake, the land holds a run off stream that, as it starts approaching the river, takes several severe, sheer drop offs causing the most spectacular waterfalls. As the land around here is more than just really rocky with bluestone, the course of hike was mostly over these amazing, huge boulders of tumbled and shattered bluestone with the water cascading in and among the rock. Then we[d come to a sheer cliff about 30 feet tall and have to navigate ourselves down and around until the land leveled out a bit for further walking. In all, there were three major waterfalls, each over 30-40 feet high with smaller pools and dams of water or more modest waterfalls in between. We hiked the afternoon away, finding abandoned bear-dens and while we didn't see any, I was sure we tumbled over several suspicious timber rattler dens. All this was just a few miles from our house and it makes the amazing quality of the land and why we're so crazy about being here all the more evident to us.
The short of this story is, however, that over every waterfall, through every stream, over every slippery moss-covered rock and down every sheer cliff, I was snapping photos left and right, traipsing through water and under falls, just snap, snap, snapping away and then Jeff, standing firmly on flat ground next to one of the streams, wants to take a picture so I hand the digital camera to him...and he fires off one picture before suddenly dropping it into a pool of water. A POOL OF WATER! I swear you could see the little puff of smoke when the memory stick and inner-circuitry fried as it sank to the bottom. So, alas, no pictures and no more camera. I do have to say though, that for the blubbering idiot I am when something like that usually happens, I was so into the groove of the area, it just rolled off my back. "Shit happens," I said and meant. Of course, the idea that a new digital camera in my hot little hands helps, but overall, it's still all good.
Last weekend up in our neck of the woods was the annual "Day To Be Gay" festival for Sullivan County. Sort of the Gay Pride for up that way. This was our first year going as, lets face it, Jeff and I are just about gay everyday, but we'd heard good things about the get together from last year so we thought we'd give it a go this time around. It was a fun day in the sun with good people, no drama, and some good entertainment. I mean, we're still trying to figure out how much they paid to get Lypsinka up there, but it made the festival pretty cool. It was all laid back, sitting on blankets and lawn-chairs around the stage and eating picnic food off paper plates. The poor teenage, skater bois who'd set up their jumping ramps on the basketball court next to us didn't know what to make of the performing drag queens and all the homo hand holding and queer talk but they pretty much left us alone so it didn't matter. So then the local paper does a story in this week's edition and not only did they incorrectly identify Yolanda as Lypsinka (I mean, really!), but apparently we're still living in 1973 when it was OK to call drag queens, transvestites. I can't WAIT for the editorial backlash in next week's paper from all the shocked, conservative locals who had no idea not only were there gays living in and among them, but a shitload (as the day's festival goers were numbered somewhere between 400-500 people) of gays in a very rural, very unpopulated county.
I just dropped $44 at the comic store. Someone is in deep crap. Though in my defense, I did opt out of dropping $80 on porno this past weekend so basically, in New Math, I'm ahead of the game. Yah ME!
I was grousing to Jeff yesterday about the little writing project I have up and running. I mentioned the night before, I lay staring at the ceiling after lights out, rolling from side to side looking for even one idea for a story and was getting bubkis. There is still plenty of time, I know and wasn't really worried other than the hours I wasted looking in an empty and obviously too-tired brain for a story. As Stephen King would say, the moving guys were still down in the basement and hadn't started moving furniture up stairs for me to rearrange. So whatever.
Then I swear to CHRIST, yesterday as I'm power-shuffling across 23rd street to catch the uptown 6 train, a character starts to form and then two and then a story starts unwinding in my brain and I'm sure as shit going to miss the opportunity if I wait until I get home to the AMBR to get it entered so I get on the subway, pull out my faxed lab results from my physical last week which is my only spare paper in the bag and start furiously scribbling the wedge that's stuck in my head. And so I guess that's how that particular muse is going to dance for me. I'm keeping some spare paper handy from now on to catch all this righteous brain leakage from now on.
I love how things are categorized and organized into groups by distinguishing characteristics and given definition by being in those groups. In my life, I've gone out of my way to collect collections, even if they hold no personal interest for me. Books seem to be my biggest guilty pleasure this way; I've bought and still continue to buy whole series and collections of books even if I can't get past the first, awful one simply because in my heart and mind, a collection needs to be kept together to hold onto some theoretical synergistic magic. Anne Rice has profited significantly from me based on that crack-pot theory.
In thinking about a writing project I wanted to work on, I decided to focus on using collective nouns as an engine for starting stories. Collective nouns, as we all know, are nouns that give names to groups of things or people: bunch, group, handful, swarm, bundle, etc.. In historical times, they took these collective nouns and made them into a language to help describe the groups of animals they were hunting: a flock of geese, a pride of lions, a bevy of quail. Known as 'terms of venery', the language has expanded outside hunted animals to include just about everything and anyone imaginable. So my little brain latched on the idea and the almost poetic nature of these groups and the idea of a Collective Noun Writing Project started forming. Getting excited, I thought I could use up the rest of my natural born life writing short stories using all the venery terms as titles and subjects but being basically a good-natured and social member of the worker bee class, I started thinking with so many talented writers out in the Blog, I'd really be missing out on an opportunity if I didn't open it up to people interested in taking on a writing project with me.
So here's the deal: I'm looking to throw together this project with anyone who's interested. All the skinny about the project is here or you can also find it through the collective noun writing project link at the side. Guidelines and rules and legal stuff is all over there. Please email me for more information or if you want to participate.
My biggest gripe about living in New York City and what I feel is my biggest failure at trying to be a New Yorker or even a good 'mo, really, has been my abysmal lack of collecting any original art. I could never even round up a friendship with an artist who was willing to make me some art I loved to hang on the wall. I'm 33 years old and all my artwork is store-bought; a little of it was moderately expensive but mostly, it was cheap and came from places I won't name. It's an embarrassment I live with for the sake of having a home that looks finished. My thought has always been, when I do start collecting friend's original art work, I'll replace the cheap shit piece by piece.
Today, Jeff and I bought our first piece of original art for our wall. We found a local artist who has a shop in the town next to ours and commissioned a piece. We picked it up today and it's everything. Of course we understand it's not everyone's taste and might question our choice of putting in the spare bathroom, but then again, art is in the eye of the beholder and right now, we're beholden to the other white meat.
Old kitchen, new kitchen with the new counter and new sink. It's d'lovely.
