I woke up around 10:30 this morning still feeling tired, but I decided that I should probably get up if I was going to accomplish any of the things I had planned.
Of course, I did spend a fair amount of time sitting around doing nothing in particular for a while, so it was nearly 1 PM by the time I ventured out into the world.
First order of business was to hit up the comic shop. Due to the holidays, new comics hadn’t been available since the week before Christmas, so I had two weeks’ worth of books stacked up and waiting for me.
After that it was on to finally get the haircut that I’d been putting off for weeks.
Once I got to the barbershop, though, I wanted to postpone it once again, as the place was filled to overflowing with parents bringing in their broods for assorted trimmings.
I think that the owners’ children, who are always huddled off in a corner watching TV, coloring, and playing video games all day, were glad to have the company, but I could have done with a little less noise, and a bit less of a wait.
While I was waiting there was some lady who was attempting to reward her kids for being remarkably good and sitting amazingly still while getting their hair cut with some candy from one of the gumball machine-style candy dispensers. She was digging through her pockets in the vain pursuit of a quarter as I sat there playing Bubble Breaker on my phone. As she wasn’t able to find one, I dug in my pocket, pulled out a quarter, and said, “Ma’am? Here you go,” thus accomplishing my good deed for the year.
I’m glad I got that out of the way early.
After finally getting my turn, I decided that I really wasn’t that inclined to gas up and go grocery shopping, as I wasn’t actually in desperate need to do either, so I decided to just grab a sandwich from Quiznos and head home.
Thinking that I could have half for lunch and the other half for supper, I bought a large sub. That plan fell apart as soon as I got home and scarfed down the first half, which led inexorably to doing the same with the second half.
I guess I’ll find something around the house to eat for supper.
Eventually, after doing some more sitting around and doing nothing in particular, I decided to take a nap, but I wasn’t especially successful, getting in maybe 15 minutes’ worth of napping out of an hour’s worth of lying in the bed.
And now here I am writing this.
I didn’t do a whole lot yesterday. I worked from home, as I did for pretty much most of the week, and at some point near the end of the day, noting that I had pretty much nothing to drink except Coke I ventured out to Super Target to get some green tea and Vitamin Water. I picked up a couple of snacks as well, which is why I didn’t really need to go grocery shopping today.
And of course realizing that today the place would be even more crowded than it was yesterday afternoon did a lot to dissuade me from heading over there.
The most noteworthy thing I did yesterday was finally getting around to watching the Grindhouse movies Planet Terror and Death Proof.
Planet Terror, a zombie movie, was okay, but Death Proof was just boring.
My primary complaint about both movies is that the whole grindhouse style is meant to be sleazy, cheap, and exploitative, with lots of sex, nudity, and over-the-top violence. They both delivered on the violence (and accompanying gore), but they were a little too slick to be considered sleazy or cheap – I think that’s a result of them trying to make intentionally sleazy, cheap-looking movies – and neither one delivered in the sex and nudity categories.
In Planet Terror we had Rose McGowan playing a classic Hollywood trope: the stripper who doesn’t strip. While they tried to get around this by explaining that she was not a stripper, but rather a Go Go Dancer, it still brought to mind some words of wisdom found at What Would Tyler Durden Do? There’s a word to describe strippers who don’t take off their clothes. That word is “fired.”
Of course, one could hardly expect Rose McGowan to appear nude in a film, as she’s the shy retiring flower who wore a fishnet dress and a G-string to an award ceremony (link NSFW).
She does have a sex scene, but is artfully posed throughout so as to prevent us from seeing too much. After all, you wouldn’t want gratuitous nudity in a grindhouse movie.
I think the primary cause of the non-nudity with McGowan is that during the filming of the movie writer-director Robert Rodriguez began having an affair with her. So his approach was to show her off in skimpy outfits as if to say, “Yes, this is the hot young piece I’m leaving the mother of my children for,” but to avoid showing off too much of her.
I’m not intending to pronounce judgment on Rodriguez or McGowan for what happened between them. People cheat, there are two sides to every story, love conquers all, blah blah blah. I honestly don’t give a shit about any of that. My point didn’t have anything to do with making any judgments about the nature of their relationship; it just seemed to me that there was clear evidence of their personal relationship having an impact on the movie.
My other problem with Planet Terror was that there was some lesbian sub-text, but no lesbian text, which is always a negative in my book. If anything, I want to see lesbian super-text.
As for Death Proof, the Tarantino contribution, all of the T&A was fully-clothed T&A, and there was pretty much nothing in the way of sexual content.
That alone isn’t what made it boring, though. A lot of people apparently love Tarantino’s dialogue, though evidently no one loves it as much as Tarantino does.
Seriously, it seemed as though the movie had originally been intended to have a run time of about an hour and a half, and then Tarantino said, “Hmm…you know what this needs? Another half an hour of people sitting around talking about this movie I loved as a kid but that no one else has ever heard of,” and some yes man said, “Brilliant! You’ve done it again, sir,” instead of punching him in his giant head and saying, “Don’t be stupid.”
(I’ve long believed that any sort of creative endeavor needs to have someone filling the role of Head Puncher. It’s like an anti-sycophant, someone who will speak truth to power. And punch power in the head.)
Death Proof consisted almost entirely of people sitting around engaging in incredibly unlikely dialogue that included the obligatory references to all the obscure pop cultural trivial dancing around in Tarantino’s massive melon for long, long, long stretches at a time, briefly interspersed with some images of women being killed in a horrific fashion.
I don’t want to read too much into it, but it seems revelatory that he would spend as little time as possible actually showcasing the female form, but then be sure to include lingering, lovingly-crafted shots of women being killed in an incredibly grisly manner. In fact, we get multiple POV shots of the moment of death so that we can see, in detail, exactly how each woman buys the farm.
I’m just saying, while Rodriguez focused just as much (arguably even more, though that’s simply a function of the fact that stuff actually happened in his movie) on the violence part he did at least give a nod to the sex part of sex and violence, whereas Tarantino…
Well, whatever. I just personally tend to favor the sex part of sex and violence, to the point that, you know, maybe we can just leave the violence part out entirely.
And I’m not trying to rag on Tarantino; I’ve enjoyed much of his work.
Just not Death Proof.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
What Year Is It Again?
So far 2009 doesn’t seem to be much different from 2008, though that’s not really surprising, and, to be fair, it is still pretty early to make any judgments.
I’ve never really been one to make resolutions, because, really, what for?
I mean, if I’m going to do something, I’ll probably just do it, or, more likely not do it. Or vice versa. Or something.
Anyway, who am I supposed to be making the resolution to, myself? And if I fail to live up to the terms of the resolution, what will the consequences be? If I’m making the resolution to myself, what am I going to do about it?
It would be like:
Myself: Jon, you’re breaking your resolution!
Me: So?
Myself: Good point.
So yeah, no resolutions for me.
I haven’t done much so far this year. I called my mom, watched some TV, took a short nap, watched some more TV, did some more hard drive hygiene and picture organizing, and washed the blanket that my sister Kristy sent me for Christmas.
I washed it because the thing was just crazy with static electricity. It was as though that was what it was actually made of, and if I had checked the label it would have said “100% Static Electricity.”
So I washed it in hopes of making it less shocking and clingy, which seemed to actually do the trick.
I’ve been seeing a minor spike in traffic since yesterday, as a link to my Scarlett Johansson picture post got put up on When Fangirls Attack! I haven’t had that happen in a while.
Note to all the Fangirl readers who have come here: sorry the post/blog isn’t more interesting. Still, I hope you enjoyed your 0-5 second visits.
I didn’t get much sleep last night, as I didn’t get home from Manassas until after 2 AM, and I’d had way too much caffeine. I drifted in and out of consciousness between 4 and 6 AM, then woke up a little after 10 and decided to get up. I’m kind of surprised that the nap I took ended up being so short.
I think last night marked the first time I left the house to do anything on New Year’s Eve since the end of 1999.
Even when I was drinking New Year’s wasn’t really that big of an event for me. I mean, I went out and got drunk, but how was that any different from a standard, run-of-the-mill Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or…you get the idea)?
I never bothered with looking for an excuse to drink.
Anyway, despite the fact that I won’t be making any resolutions, there are some things that I’m hoping to accomplish in 2009, though they depend more on how big my tax refund, bonus, and raise turn out to be than on any sort of resolve on my part.
Among the tentative plans: finally doing something about my hideously pink master bathroom, buying a new car, some other projects around the house such as doing something about my increasingly intolerable laundry set up, and actually buying a Wacom Cintiq.
I guess we’ll have to see what the future holds in that regard.
Some Further Thoughts Department:
I had a few more thoughts on the whole “set up” thing that I mentioned in yesterday’s post.
I think that, from now on, whenever I’m told that I’m not being set up with someone, my standard response will be, “Oh, good. So that means I don’t have to shower, put on deodorant, wear clean clothes, or put my teeth in. Thanks for the head’s up!”
After I wrote the post I began wondering what the other side of the conversation is like. Does the person I’m not getting set up with get a similar advance warning about the lack of a set up?
And if that is the case, I wonder what goes through the person’s head when we actually meet? I’m thinking that the words “Thank” and “God” probably pop up in her head.
In any case, I want to mention again that while I throw around terms like “useless” and “utterly useless” in describing my friends’ performance in the area of setting me up with someone, I’m not really making a value judgment. My purpose in doing so is two-fold: 1. To be a snarky smart-ass and 2. To make it clear that I don’t need to be told that I’m not being set up, as there’s been very little of that sort of thing that’s happened in my life, so I have no reason to expect that it will happen in my future.
I have every confidence that if my friends were to find some woman who was suitable for me they would make every effort to ensure that we hooked up, just as I’m sure that if someone found a unicorn or the Fountain of Youth, or something as equally mythical as a woman who is suitable for me – or, more to the point, who I’m suitable for – it would be all over the news.
I’ve never really been one to make resolutions, because, really, what for?
I mean, if I’m going to do something, I’ll probably just do it, or, more likely not do it. Or vice versa. Or something.
Anyway, who am I supposed to be making the resolution to, myself? And if I fail to live up to the terms of the resolution, what will the consequences be? If I’m making the resolution to myself, what am I going to do about it?
It would be like:
Myself: Jon, you’re breaking your resolution!
Me: So?
Myself: Good point.
So yeah, no resolutions for me.
I haven’t done much so far this year. I called my mom, watched some TV, took a short nap, watched some more TV, did some more hard drive hygiene and picture organizing, and washed the blanket that my sister Kristy sent me for Christmas.
I washed it because the thing was just crazy with static electricity. It was as though that was what it was actually made of, and if I had checked the label it would have said “100% Static Electricity.”
So I washed it in hopes of making it less shocking and clingy, which seemed to actually do the trick.
I’ve been seeing a minor spike in traffic since yesterday, as a link to my Scarlett Johansson picture post got put up on When Fangirls Attack! I haven’t had that happen in a while.
Note to all the Fangirl readers who have come here: sorry the post/blog isn’t more interesting. Still, I hope you enjoyed your 0-5 second visits.
I didn’t get much sleep last night, as I didn’t get home from Manassas until after 2 AM, and I’d had way too much caffeine. I drifted in and out of consciousness between 4 and 6 AM, then woke up a little after 10 and decided to get up. I’m kind of surprised that the nap I took ended up being so short.
I think last night marked the first time I left the house to do anything on New Year’s Eve since the end of 1999.
Even when I was drinking New Year’s wasn’t really that big of an event for me. I mean, I went out and got drunk, but how was that any different from a standard, run-of-the-mill Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or…you get the idea)?
I never bothered with looking for an excuse to drink.
Anyway, despite the fact that I won’t be making any resolutions, there are some things that I’m hoping to accomplish in 2009, though they depend more on how big my tax refund, bonus, and raise turn out to be than on any sort of resolve on my part.
Among the tentative plans: finally doing something about my hideously pink master bathroom, buying a new car, some other projects around the house such as doing something about my increasingly intolerable laundry set up, and actually buying a Wacom Cintiq.
I guess we’ll have to see what the future holds in that regard.
Some Further Thoughts Department:
I had a few more thoughts on the whole “set up” thing that I mentioned in yesterday’s post.
I think that, from now on, whenever I’m told that I’m not being set up with someone, my standard response will be, “Oh, good. So that means I don’t have to shower, put on deodorant, wear clean clothes, or put my teeth in. Thanks for the head’s up!”
After I wrote the post I began wondering what the other side of the conversation is like. Does the person I’m not getting set up with get a similar advance warning about the lack of a set up?
And if that is the case, I wonder what goes through the person’s head when we actually meet? I’m thinking that the words “Thank” and “God” probably pop up in her head.
In any case, I want to mention again that while I throw around terms like “useless” and “utterly useless” in describing my friends’ performance in the area of setting me up with someone, I’m not really making a value judgment. My purpose in doing so is two-fold: 1. To be a snarky smart-ass and 2. To make it clear that I don’t need to be told that I’m not being set up, as there’s been very little of that sort of thing that’s happened in my life, so I have no reason to expect that it will happen in my future.
I have every confidence that if my friends were to find some woman who was suitable for me they would make every effort to ensure that we hooked up, just as I’m sure that if someone found a unicorn or the Fountain of Youth, or something as equally mythical as a woman who is suitable for me – or, more to the point, who I’m suitable for – it would be all over the news.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Set Up For Disappointment
I made tortilla soup (from a mix) the other night, and, in accordance with the instructions I cut some tortillas into strips and fried them as a garnish for the soup.
Why does fried food have to be so bad for you? The soup itself was okay, but the fried tortilla strips were so good I almost filled up on them and ignored the soup.
That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in the past couple of days, so you haven’t been missing much.
Today I was wondering if Scott and I were going to do Riff Trax night tomorrow. I was going to send him a text to ask him that, but before I got the chance I got a text from Stacy inviting me to their house tomorrow night, which answered that question.
Of course, it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that this would mean having to be out on the road with all of the drunks, but oh well.
As I mentioned, not much of interest has been happening over the past couple of days. I’ve mostly been engaging in some hard drive hygiene, deleting/archiving files, and trying to organize my pictures, both those I’ve downloaded and those I’ve drawn.
Riveting stuff.
Stacy just called to inform me that they’re ordering Chinese tomorrow and to ask me what I wanted. She also mentioned that there would be someone else there whom I don’t know, and, as this someone is a woman and single, she didn’t want me to think that they were trying to set me up with someone.
That sort of thing happens every once in a while. That is, in some sort of gathering there’s going to be a single woman and my friends inform me ahead of time so that I won’t think that there’s a set up. The thing is, it’s unlikely that I would actually think that anyway.
There are a number of reasons that I’m unlikely to make that assumption, but I suppose the biggest one is the fact that I’ve never actually had friends try to set me up with someone. In fact, and I don’t say this to be insulting, just stating the facts, pretty much all the friends I’ve ever had have been utterly useless in that regard. Either they don’t know anyone they can set me up with, or, if they do, it just doesn’t occur to them to do it.
(I have several theories about that latter point which I won’t bother getting into.)
The last time I suspected that someone was trying to set me up with someone was somewhere around ten years ago, during my drinking days.
Some friends and I were headed over to Michigan Tech to check out some live performances being done as part of the Winter Carnival. Among the performers was the niece of my friend Ginger.
Ginger kept raving to me and our friend Jeff about how talented, sweet, and generally wonderful her niece – who was only a few years younger than Jeff and I – was, to an extent that it seemed as though she was trying to generate interest in her.
Jeff and I both noticed this, and, to be a bit shallow, we also noticed how everything she had to say about her niece essentially boiled down to “she’s got a great personality.”
So it was with some trepidation that we headed over to watch her niece perform, as neither of us was inclined to be set up with someone who, assuming it to be shorthand for fat/unattractive, had a “great personality.”
Once she got on stage, however, we saw that “great personality” wasn’t a euphemism for unattractiveness: she was hot.
And extremely talented.
So Jeff and I immediately changed our thinking on the whole set up thing, and were preparing to square off – as we had on several occasions with several other women – in competition for her attention.
(I lost each and every competition with Jeff, by the way.)
Of course, it was then that we found out that Ginger never had any intention of trying to set either of us up with her niece; she was just very fond of her and inclined to rave about her.
This became abundantly clear when Jeff said, “Your niece is really nice,” to which Ginger responded, “Yeah, and her girlfriend is a real sweetheart, too.”
D’oh.
(I would say that the there was a set up going on the whole time; Ginger setting us up for a cruel joke, but that sort of thing really wasn’t in her nature.)
So yeah, I don’t often worry that my friends are trying to set me up with anyone.
Why does fried food have to be so bad for you? The soup itself was okay, but the fried tortilla strips were so good I almost filled up on them and ignored the soup.
That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in the past couple of days, so you haven’t been missing much.
Today I was wondering if Scott and I were going to do Riff Trax night tomorrow. I was going to send him a text to ask him that, but before I got the chance I got a text from Stacy inviting me to their house tomorrow night, which answered that question.
Of course, it wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that this would mean having to be out on the road with all of the drunks, but oh well.
As I mentioned, not much of interest has been happening over the past couple of days. I’ve mostly been engaging in some hard drive hygiene, deleting/archiving files, and trying to organize my pictures, both those I’ve downloaded and those I’ve drawn.
Riveting stuff.
Stacy just called to inform me that they’re ordering Chinese tomorrow and to ask me what I wanted. She also mentioned that there would be someone else there whom I don’t know, and, as this someone is a woman and single, she didn’t want me to think that they were trying to set me up with someone.
That sort of thing happens every once in a while. That is, in some sort of gathering there’s going to be a single woman and my friends inform me ahead of time so that I won’t think that there’s a set up. The thing is, it’s unlikely that I would actually think that anyway.
There are a number of reasons that I’m unlikely to make that assumption, but I suppose the biggest one is the fact that I’ve never actually had friends try to set me up with someone. In fact, and I don’t say this to be insulting, just stating the facts, pretty much all the friends I’ve ever had have been utterly useless in that regard. Either they don’t know anyone they can set me up with, or, if they do, it just doesn’t occur to them to do it.
(I have several theories about that latter point which I won’t bother getting into.)
The last time I suspected that someone was trying to set me up with someone was somewhere around ten years ago, during my drinking days.
Some friends and I were headed over to Michigan Tech to check out some live performances being done as part of the Winter Carnival. Among the performers was the niece of my friend Ginger.
Ginger kept raving to me and our friend Jeff about how talented, sweet, and generally wonderful her niece – who was only a few years younger than Jeff and I – was, to an extent that it seemed as though she was trying to generate interest in her.
Jeff and I both noticed this, and, to be a bit shallow, we also noticed how everything she had to say about her niece essentially boiled down to “she’s got a great personality.”
So it was with some trepidation that we headed over to watch her niece perform, as neither of us was inclined to be set up with someone who, assuming it to be shorthand for fat/unattractive, had a “great personality.”
Once she got on stage, however, we saw that “great personality” wasn’t a euphemism for unattractiveness: she was hot.
And extremely talented.
So Jeff and I immediately changed our thinking on the whole set up thing, and were preparing to square off – as we had on several occasions with several other women – in competition for her attention.
(I lost each and every competition with Jeff, by the way.)
Of course, it was then that we found out that Ginger never had any intention of trying to set either of us up with her niece; she was just very fond of her and inclined to rave about her.
This became abundantly clear when Jeff said, “Your niece is really nice,” to which Ginger responded, “Yeah, and her girlfriend is a real sweetheart, too.”
D’oh.
(I would say that the there was a set up going on the whole time; Ginger setting us up for a cruel joke, but that sort of thing really wasn’t in her nature.)
So yeah, I don’t often worry that my friends are trying to set me up with anyone.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
That's The Spirit
I have to say that I'm pretty damned pleased with how this picture of Scarlett Johansson turned out:
For the record, this is Scarlett as Silken Floss in The Spirit.
There was a scene in the movie in which, wearing this outfit, she spends a considerable amount of time leaning forward, making it virtually impossible to focus on whatever the hell else was going on at the time, and making me marvel at the structural integrity of the bra and its ability to withstand enormous stress.
In any case, a lot of the preemptive hatred for the movie revolved around Scarlett's character. In the comics, Silken Floss - I told you that most of the female characters had goofy names - is a nuclear physicist and an accomplished surgeon, but based on the trailers it seemed that she had been relegated, essentially, to the role of secretary.
That's not actually the case in the movie, as she's considerably more than a mere secretary, and as The Octopus goes on at length about his own ingeniuty and his remarkable breakthroughs in the field of genetics, Ms. Floss gives him a lot of significant looks that pretty clearly indicate that he's not giving credit where credit is actually due. (Okay, so she wasn't a nuclear physicist, but she was still brilliant.)
Personally, I would have preferred that Scarlett's character be much more like Candyfloss (Go on, check the link; there's pretty much no chance that you have any idea what I'm talking about.)
I started on the picture yesterday afternoon, but couldn't really build up enough motivation to actually work on it, and kept finding other things to do, until I finally started working on it in earnest late in the evening. By the time I started building up some serious momentum I noticed that it was after 2 AM.
After getting derailed by the need to sleep, I finally got back to work on it sometime this afternoon.
Anyway, beyond doing the laundry and watching some TV, working on the picture is pretty much what I did all day.
For the record, this is Scarlett as Silken Floss in The Spirit.
There was a scene in the movie in which, wearing this outfit, she spends a considerable amount of time leaning forward, making it virtually impossible to focus on whatever the hell else was going on at the time, and making me marvel at the structural integrity of the bra and its ability to withstand enormous stress.
In any case, a lot of the preemptive hatred for the movie revolved around Scarlett's character. In the comics, Silken Floss - I told you that most of the female characters had goofy names - is a nuclear physicist and an accomplished surgeon, but based on the trailers it seemed that she had been relegated, essentially, to the role of secretary.
That's not actually the case in the movie, as she's considerably more than a mere secretary, and as The Octopus goes on at length about his own ingeniuty and his remarkable breakthroughs in the field of genetics, Ms. Floss gives him a lot of significant looks that pretty clearly indicate that he's not giving credit where credit is actually due. (Okay, so she wasn't a nuclear physicist, but she was still brilliant.)
Personally, I would have preferred that Scarlett's character be much more like Candyfloss (Go on, check the link; there's pretty much no chance that you have any idea what I'm talking about.)
I started on the picture yesterday afternoon, but couldn't really build up enough motivation to actually work on it, and kept finding other things to do, until I finally started working on it in earnest late in the evening. By the time I started building up some serious momentum I noticed that it was after 2 AM.
After getting derailed by the need to sleep, I finally got back to work on it sometime this afternoon.
Anyway, beyond doing the laundry and watching some TV, working on the picture is pretty much what I did all day.
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