Sunday, August 30, 2009

Phase 2: ?

Beyond doing the laundry and working on a picture that didn't turn out for crap, I haven't done much today. That is, however, hardly surprising.
Speaking of pictures, I'm not 100% (or really even 90%) pleased with how yesterday's Carla Gugino picture turned out. Certainly it didn't turn out as well as the picture of Wendy as Queen Etherea, but in fairness to me, I did actually have some time constraints on the Gugino picture - I wanted to have it done in time for a relatively early posting - whereas I was free to work on the Wendy picture at my leisure.
I also think that the white outline that worked so well in the picture of Wendy didn't work out so well with the Gugino picture. Looking at it now, I might have approached that a little differently and gone for a different effect.
My approach to that picture was almost the exact opposite of the Wendy picture. With the Wendy picture I did the painting first, then brought it into Illustrator to add the line art. With the Gugino picture I did the line art first, then did the painting.
Ah well; it is what it is.
Yesterday when I was in line at Target to pay for my groceries there was a girl in front of me who looked rather disheveled, rummaging through her backpack for any stray change she could find. She looked to me as though she was following something, like a festival (a la Dead Heads and Phish Phanatics or whatever they called themselves). In any case, it seemed clear that in her recent history, and for the foreseeable future, she had been living out of her backpack.
After dredging up as much change as she could find, she asked the cashier, in reference to the top she was buying, "Is there going to be tax on this?" The cashier responded in the affirmative, and gave a percentage when the girl asked how much. This sparked the girl to engage in more furious digging in her backpack.
As was to be expected, when the time came the girl came up short. She told the cashier that she had a friend who had some money, but she didn't know where her friend was. I said, "How much do you need?" She said "Twenty-three cents." I dug in my pocket and pulled out a paltry eighteen cents, put the change back, got out my wallet, grabbed a dollar, and said, "Here."
She thanked me multiple times, collected all of the change she'd dug out of her backpack and tried to hand it to me. I said, "Keep it; I think you need it more than I do."
She thanked me again and went on her way.
After I'd been rung up I was on my way out the door when the girl came running up to me triumphantly clutching a crumpled single in her hand. I tried to wave her off, but she forced it onto me saying, "I insist," and then went on her way.
Before you say anything, no, I didn't do this just because she was cute...because she wasn't.
(The pierced lip and the fact that she looked like she hadn't bathed in a few days didn't help matters any.)
I did initially think that she was wearing a Coraline T-shirt, which made me slightly more inclined to be charitable, but it turned out to be something else.
Mostly I did it because I remember what it's like to be stuck scrounging for pennies and coming up short when trying to buy someting...though in my case it was usually when buying cigarettes or booze, so I couldn't help but be moved to a tiny, almost non-existent act of charity.
Last night I watched Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. From the title alone I knew it was going to be bad - indeed, that's why I'd decided to watch it, though having previously seen a clip of the titular Mega Shark leaping out of the ocean and taking down a jetliner added to my desire to endure the cheesiness - and the fact that it "starred" Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas prepared me for just how mind-numbingly bad it would be.
Or so I thought.
As bad as I knew it was going to be, it somehow managed to be even worse.
I think my "favorite" scene was not the bit with the shark taking a bite out of a jumbo jet, but the montage of the "scientists" busily engaging in "science," mixing colorful liquids together, then shaking their heads in disappointment. That we were given no indication of what the hell they were supposed to be doing only made it that much more entertaining.
The title characters really didn't get all that much screen time, and when they did, it tended to be repeats of the same handful of shots of the poorly-CGI-ed ocean dwellers swimming around not doing much of anything. Most of the "action" occurred off-camera, and rather than seeing some exciting tableau of mass destruction we got treated to scenes of the principal characters reacting to the devastation...despite the fact that in most cases there was no possible way for them to actually see the devastation in order to react to it.
Still, as I said, I knew it was going to be bad, and I went into it wanting to see a terrible movie. It's just that I got more than I bargained for.
In any case, that pretty much wraps up this entry. Yet again my plan to spend a weekend doing nothing and having that somehow result in me becoming independently wealthy* didn't quite work out, so I guess I need to start preparing for another week at work.

*It's kind of like the business plan of the Underpants Gnomes: Phase 1. Sit around doing nothing. Phase 2. ? Phase 3. Profit!

1 comment:

Merlin T Wizard said...

Durn it! I missed Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus! I meant to set it to record when I got home and then promptly forgot.