Two days ago, I came home to find a lovely book-shaped package tucked between the front door and the screen door. This is not an unusual discovery; one-click shopping may not be the literal death of me, but it
Something Squirrelly
No, I’m not referring to happenings at the lair…although I do believe that you are due an appy-polly-logy for yet another Friday come and gone and nary a Flashback Friday in sight. Do have pity on me, though, denizens. I was still in the glorious throes of food coma this past Friday, being the day after Thanksgiving and all. And the food was well worth the coma, let me tell you! Loba is indeed spoiled by a cousin with mad culinary skillz.
Besides eating, however, I did have several chances to try out my latest gadget. Seems that, after slightly more than six years of rather strenuous use, my lovely little point-and-click Kodak digital camera has decided it is time to rest. I’ve been so impressed by it throughout the years, that I decided to replace it with a new Kodak. I went for the EasyShare C195. Yes, I have the purple one. I didn’t order it in purple, but it was a lovely surprise and didn’t cost me anything extra. So I stuck with it.
I haven’t given this new camera a proper workout yet, but what I have done with it so far has been all right. Nothing mind-blowing, which I suppose isn’t the greatest review, eh? I find that I miss the ease of my old Kodak’s setting wheel when choosing different photo scenes. I also miss a view finder. That great big 3-inch LCD screen is lovely for reviewing photos, but nothing beats setting up a shot the old-fashioned way. Plus, I can see from the battery icon that this little camera is going to devour power like Augustus Gloop on speed!
However, it was quite reasonably priced, has lots of new photo scene options and, at 14 megapixels, I’m hoping it’s going to provide me with some great high-resolution shots. I just have to get used to it. (I also need to download the full manual, which apparently only is available online…yay for tree-saving!) So I’ve been carrying it with me to visit family, taking all the prerequisite animal photos that my family is required by genetics to take. This includes these lovely shots of two chubby, fluffy visitors to my aunt’s deck:
I know that my British compatriots are not fans of the American gray squirrel. I remember on my first trip across the pond, I was wandering through St. James’s Park, snapping photos of the wildlife. A rather large gray squirrel ran across my path and began to follow the woman slightly ahead of me and to my right. She was eating some sort of delightfully gooey-looking pastry, which the squirrel was obviously trying to charm her into sharing. Instead, she audibly “tsk”ed the squirrel, looked over at me, and said, “Cheeky little bugger, innit?”
I laughed but said nothing more, for fear that she would hear my blatantly Yankee twang and order me to take this fat, demanding American squirrel with me when I left. He was, indeed, cheeky…just like these voracious little visitors sneaking about, consuming anything they could shovel into their chubby little faces. Still, look at them! They’re so cute. I do have a soft spot for squirrels, obnoxious little tree rats that they are. I am sorry that they’re such bullies to their smaller British red cousins…but what can I say? They’re American 😉
Stunning, Sunning Sea Lions
I hate being touristy. I prefer to blend into the local colors, to savor the flavors around me as if I belonged to that particular tribe. It’s how I’ve sneaked past HRH’s defenses defences three times now without being sussed out as an” other” on first blush (God save me and Queenie when I open my Yankee yap, though).
However, when I learned that I was going to get the chance to return to San Francisco, a city I adored upon first visit in 2007, I knew that there was a destination I’d missed that first trip that I needed to catch this time around. Pier 39 is grossly touristy, with its cacophonous cavalcade of gift shops, kitschy themed restaurants, and way too many people for someone with well-defined personal space boundaries. But there’s something at Pier 39 so special…so wonderful…so adorable-beyond-belief that even I was willing to put aside my inherent disdain for humanity to witness.
You can hear their bellicose barks all the way from the main turn-off for the pier. Sharp, stereophonic yarps…benedictions, banishments, or simple berating for sticking a cold, wet nose or flipper where one is least appreciated. As you walk closer, your initial impression is one of somnolent (and slightly malodorous) mayhem: soggy, stinky sea lions, piled in surly, sleepy stacks under sanguine sunshine.
What is there not to love about that?
Okay, the smell is indeed abrasive when you get your first few (hundred) whiffs. Then again, they’re not Chanel No. 9 perfume models. They’re sea lions! Adorable, cranky sea lions, napping anyplace they can find the room…even if that means sprawling in confused tangles with the rest of the denizens of this unique little diversion from the main frenzy of Pier 39.
I couldn’t get enough of them and spent a good portion of my stop simply observing. You’d think that watching sleeping sea lions would be boring. However, they were a constantly shifting mass of fur and flippers as they moved across, over, under, about, aboard…prepositional beasts of perpetual motion all of them, vying for the best position to catch some rays before that infamous San Francisco fog rolled back down through the Golden Gate (which, indeed, it did only a few hours later).
I did finally snap out of my observational mode to snap several photos of this whimsical behavior. Here, then, are three of my favorite shots. As the sea lions would undoubtedly say: “Arrr! Arr arr arrrr! ARRR!”
😉
BookBin2010: A Painted House
I actually finished another book prior to this one, but I want to re-watch the movie version of that story before I post my thoughts. I think there are significant issues there that deserve addressing…but that’s for another day.
This is the point in the year at which I start looking at my book stacks, realize what a flaming sci-fi geek I am, and lament that I’m not reading enough non-sci-fi books to keep my tastes well-rounded. I’ll inevitably then start sorting through the piles, looking for something as far from science fiction as I can find. Thus, how I pulled John Grisham’s A Painted House as my next read. What makes this even worse is the fact that someone lent me their copy of this book, and I promptly released it to the wilds of my collection to languish for almost a year now. Oops.
While I’ve seen several movies based on Grisham’s novels, the only other of his novels that I’ve ever read was The Client. I loved this movie (how do you not love it? Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones? WIN!) and was equally pleased with the novel (don’t tell anyone, but I even liked the television show that starred JoBeth Williams, John Heard, and Polly “Kiss My Grits!” Holliday). However, my opinion of lawyers is about on par with my opinion of politicians, so the thought of subjecting myself to more stories that feature lawyers as heroic was about as alluring as sitting down to watch Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
[Loba Tangent: My disdain for lawyers is, of course, a blatant generalization. I have met wonderful, upstanding lawyers who are decent, lovely people. I have also met sci-fi geeks who are socially functional and don’t still live in their parents’ basement. Every opinion has its exceptions. Except mine about politicians. And Sarah Palin.]
This Grisham novel, however, has absolutely nothing to do with lawyers. There are, of course, elements of illegal behavior and there is murder, mayhem, and mystery, but overall, it is a simple, slow-paced story told from the viewpoint of Luke Chandler, a 7-year-old Arkansas farmboy. The year is 1952, it’s time to harvest the family’s 80 acres of cotton, and “hill people” and Mexican laborers have been hired to help the Chandler family with the picking. To pass the limited free time he has, Luke listens to baseball on the family radio, dreams of the day when he’ll play for the St. Louis Cardinals, and harbors a secret crush on Tally Spruill, the daughter of the family of hill people his grandfather hired for the harvest season.
This is a period piece of such strong Southern flavor that you can almost taste the fried okra and sweet tea being served at the annual Baptist picnic. Since I hate okra, sweet tea makes my teeth ache from the sugar overload, and I find Baptists about as pleasant as a hungry lion with hemorrhoids (again, another generalization), I didn’t find a whole lot in this list to savor. I think that’s my biggest complaint about this story: not that it’s not written well (it’s an age-appropriate delivery, respectful of the fact that the narrator is a child but also not overdoing this truth and thus making it unreadable), but that it’s a tale and a time about which I don’t really have any interest.
What, in my mind at least, had the potential of being as exemplary a Southern tale as To Kill a Mockingbird instead delivered a story of predictability and, I’m sad to say, mediocrity. There wasn’t really much of anything in this story that you couldn’t see marching across the cotton fields a mile away. And, to be honest, the titular task could give serious competition as one of the most anti-climactic moments in literary history.
Final Verdict: I’m not regretful that I read this story, but I also see no reason to seek out my own copy or to ever revisit these characters again. I shall be returning this to its owner with a humble apology for taking this long to finish it and a heartfelt thank you for lending it to me and introducing me to something beyond the confines of my geeky preferences.
And now back to our regularly scheduled literary geekery…
The Stakes Are High
First, a flashback to a post from my Angry BloggerTM days, originally titled, “imagined conversation edition”:
I went to bed relatively late last night. I had to work on something for the office, and I find that I must succumb to my creative muse, no matter what time she visits. Needless to say, it was after midnight before I finally settled down and tried to fall asleep. I was wired on enough Cafe du Monde to hold sleep at bay, but not without creative consequences. I imagined the following conversation that I would love to have with any Hollywood exec:
Me: Hey, why is it that you guys can’t come up with anything new?
Hollywood Exec: We’re coming up with new things all the time.
Me: You do realize that this year is barely halfway over and you guys have already released three movies based on old TV shows.
Exec: But we gave them all new twists!
Me: New twists that made them all lousy. What next, Mr. Ed played by a camel?
Exec: (eerie silence)
Me: That’s not something you should be writing down, by the way.
Exec: Well, we are considering a movie based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Me: That was a movie first.
Exec: Right! We’re proposing a movie based on a television show that was inspired by a movie. And we’d like to cast Kristy Swanson as Buffy. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Me: What’s the matter, did Sarah say no?
Exec: Well…she said that she would like to broaden her acting selection.
Me: Plus, she’s busy filming Scooby Doo 3, isn’t she?
Exec:
Me: Right. Then there’s the inordinate number of books being turned into movies.
Exec: But those are often excellent adaptations of very original stories.
Me: I agree. But they aren’t original on your part. Neither are the movies based on video games, Japanese horror movies, cartoons, comic books…and sequels don’t count either.
Exec: But the sequels-
Me: Are usually to movies that were based on ideas that came from somewhere other than you! Then, of course, there’s the one original idea that is then passed among the studios like Paris Hilton’s video at a sperm bank.
Exec: Well…actually, that sounds like a great idea for a movie. Can we buy the rights to that?
Me: No.
Exec:
Me: Anyway, so which one of you guys was the first to hit on the airplane concept? Which came first: Flightplan or Red Eye?
Exec: I’m not at liberty to say, for legal reasons. Although, between you and me, we were first.
Me: Right. But the other guys got bigger star power.
Exec: Hey, it’s not always in the actor’s hands. A big portion of the success is all about the writing.
Me: My point exactly.
Exec:
Me:
Exec: Hey, how about a mockumentary movie about a blogger trying to uncover the truth about lame movie ideas?
Me: How about I hang up now and go buy stock in Amazon.com. I think a reading revolution is just on the horizon…Obviously, I should stay away from too much caffeine before bed…
I wrote this back in 2005. I was striving to be as silly as I could be.
Now, a link: Buffy remake is going ahead and Joss Whedon responds.
No word yet on whether or not my “silly” suggestion to cast Kristy Swanson again has also come to pass.
Sigh. I might have to destroy all traces of my blog if Mr. Ed the camel ever comes to the big screen…
Flashback Friday: Big Wheel
I never actually owned a Big Wheel of my own, which is a crime in itself. However, our neighbors’ daughter, who was 6 years my senior, would sometimes let me play with hers. Plus, there were other kids in the neighborhood who had their own Big Wheels and would let me ride them now and again.
There’s really not a whole lot you can say about the actual product. It was made almost completely of primary-color plastic, had one of the most uncomfortable seats imaginable (especially when you were jouncing along on rough pavement), was nearly impossible to peddle if you were one of those unlucky “growth spurt” victims, and should have probably been targeted by Ralph Nader for its “unsafe at any speeds” ability to flip, skid, roll, or in some other way bounce you in violent and painful ways if you use the handbrake at the wrong moment. And, let’s be honest, nearly every moment was a “wrong” one when it came to the Big Wheel.
Then again, that handbrake action was what made the Big Wheel so awesome. If you figured out how to do it just right, you could yank the brake, lean into whichever way the trike started to pull, and send yourself spinning down the street, joyfully oblivious to surrounding friends, pets, or the random oncoming car. This was early roller coaster glee for those of us not yet tall enough to ride the real things.
True the Big Wheel could in no way outclass my Sweet Thunder, but it was definitely an integral part of growing for almost every child of the 70s and 80s. Sadly, the original company that produced Big Wheel went out of business in 2001, but a Cedar Rapids-based company picked up the trademark and re-launched the product in 2003. You can read up on the history here as well as see a couple of cool Big Wheel shots, including the one above.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/HjTAA_da97w?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6
Big Wheel Bonus
While searching for images for Big Wheel, photos of Tori Amos kept popping up. I couldn’t figure out why at first…then I remembered that she had a song called “Big Wheel” on her studio release, American Doll Posse. Here, then, is the video for “Big Wheel.” Sorry, no actual Big Wheels are shown in the video.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/fKq6IVL64qc?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6
Poster Picks: Identity
Here’s a secret confession for you, denizens. In conjunction with Doctober, I had originally planned to do weekly Poster Pick entries on some of the horror/thriller movie posters I love. Sadly, though, I routinely ran short on time due to many more obligations than I was expecting (plus, Doctober became much more of a creative challenge than I had initially planned on it being; it was just too much fun to come up with more and more elaborate ideas!).
Who says I can’t keep the Halloween spirit going after the fact though, right? Right. So here, then, is one of my favorite scary movie posters. Actually, some of you may remember that I chose Identity as one of my Top 10 Halloween movie recommendations last year (it’s okay if you don’t remember…just go here and you’ll be all caught up!). I think it’s a brilliant bit of writing from Michael Cooney and some great performances from a rather impressive ensemble cast.
The mainstream American theatrical poster for Identity was a bit dull, however: a photo montage of Ray Liotta, John Cusack, and Amanda Peet, hovering over a rainy, night-time shot of a sleezy-looking motel.
Yawn.
I’ve said this before (and you’ll notice from my previous Poster Picks that I stand by my statement): I find posters that prominently feature giant (and relatively unaltered in any interesting way) photos of the movie’s main actors to be a bit boring and a bit of a cop-out.
Then there was this teaser poster. We start with a stark white background, which already puts me ill at ease. To me, there’s something intrinsically unsettling about a horror movie poster with a white background. Something so dark and sinister subjected to such a bright, antiseptic treatment is a perfect way to immediately set me a bit on edge. Plus, I find so much brightness to be jarring and a bit painful to my somewhat light-sensitive eyes (hey, a movie poster review and an optometric update…just two of the many services offered here at the lair!).
Right at the top, we kick things into gear with the movie’s tagline: “Identity is a secret. Identity is a mystery. Identity is a killer.” Nice little teasing trilogy of statements there, disappearing further and further down the rabbit hole of delicious deceit and murderous mayhem (and annoying alliteration as well).
Then we move down to the poster’s sole graphic: a dark, slightly smudgy handprint. Anyone even remotely familiar with crime analysis knows that one of the primary bits of evidence that analysts search for in identifying a criminal is fingerprints. So what better way to visualize the concept of “identity” than with those potentially incriminating prints? Only here the fingerprints have been manipulated into silhouettes, and a face has been super-imposed over the palm…a somewhat unidentifiable face, with wide eyes and gaping mouth (two things automatically associated with a fearful expression), but most other features washed out from a bit of overexposure. So basically, we’ve got six figures whose identities are completely hidden from us (including the five “fingers,” thus marvelously reversing the assumed revelatory nature of fingerprints), but one of whom is apparently witnessing something quite horrifying. Remember, “Identity is a killer.” We hit this home with a nice color fade from black into a bright, blotchy blood red at the bottom edges of the palm and thumb.
Next, we get our primary ensemble cast line-up, all capital letters (with a nice small cap treatment for the “and” and Clea DuVall’s and Rebecca DeMornay’s last names) in a strong, simple serif font and a red that matches the bloody bottom of the preceding image. Similar font treatment for the movie title, only this time it looks like we’re going bold, and there’s a lovely black and red color fade that mirrors the graphic’s color fade. Sometimes it really is the little touches that make the effort all the more extraordinary, eh?
And one more tagline, in black, sentence-case serif: “The secret lies within.” Call me a word nerd (and I will answer), but there’s something deliciously suspect about this statement. I’m getting a distinct double-meaning vibe from the presence of the word “lies.” From the first tagline and the bloody graphic, I think it’s safe to assume that this movie is going to be about mystery, murder, and obfuscation…about showing us just enough and hardly anything at all. We’re obviously going to have to work to find the answers, but I think we’re also going to have to work to find the truth as well. The secret lies within. Don’t believe what you see, don’t believe what you hear, and don’t believe what you think is happening.
All in all, I think this is a tantalizingly clean and mysterious tease for what I discovered to be a delightfully eerie movie experience that I’d highly recommend.
Black, White, and Brooding
It must be the weather. I feel dark and brooding today. Therefore, I give you this photo that I took recently during a trip to visit Stratford Hall. This is the entrance to the Lee family burial vault, found at the end of the Great House’s eastern garden. I ran a color desaturation and a color burn of some of the darker parts of the photo, and then I added a pattern overlay to give it a bit of a worn, scratched look. Why? Because I like worn and scratched.
Definitely a contrast to yesterday’s bright burst of autumnal color, no?
Fantastic Fall Foliage
I’m still working on putting together a pictorial account of my latest adventure, but I’m keenly aware of each day that slips by me without a visit to the lair (especially after the tour de force blogging event known as Doctober!).
So, quick though it might be, here is a shot I recently snapped of some gorgeous autumnal color. Guess all my worrying about the fall foliage was for naught.
Flashback Friday: Debbie Gibson
Holy Flashbacks, Batman! It’s the return of Flashback Friday!! And the return of Loba (who has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do for disappearing from the lair with nary a peep to my peeps as to where in the world Loba San Diego was heading this time…no worries, denizens, a pictorial explanation is imminent).
I’ve mentioned this before in passing, but it’s time to officially come out of the closet: I am a HUGE Debbie Gibson fan. Yes, am. Not was. There are many musical obsessions from my youth that I have gladly released to the ether of adolescent missteps (please don’t mention NKOTB to me; I will plead the fifth). But Debbie Gibson still makes me happy. Happy enough, in fact, that I’m listening to her right now as I write this post.
Hers was a syrupy-sweet, infectious sound that slipped between your bones and candy-coated your heart hot pink. But it was her sound; even at 16, she was writing her own music. In fact, according to that scion of inscrutability Wikipedia, she “remains the youngest female to write, record, and perform a #1 single to date” for her song, “Foolish Beat.”
Her outfits were never salacious, but always cute and oh-so-80s: high-waist stone-washed jeans with ripped knees, primary color blazers with shoulder pads built for tackling, Sun-In-streaked hair with scrunchies and bandanna headbands, friendship bracelets and Swatch watches (the more the merrier!), vests, ruffled skirts with belts as wide as possible, and those trademarked-for-total-cuteness-overload fedoras. She doodled faces on her knees and hugged teddy bears in her videos. She never spun around a stripper pole or was arrested for cocaine possession. Her biggest rival was Tiffany, but they never fanged each other in tabloids or tried to kill each other. They just tried to outsell each other in concert tickets and albums.
I know she prefers to be known as Deborah now. She also prefers to pose in various stages of undress and make really strange SyFy movies that pair her up with her former musical rival.
Okay, honestly? I was excited when I first heard about Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid. I expected it to be a cheese of gargantuan proportions, possibly even surpassing the schlocky greatness that is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. The clip that SyFy chose to release of Gibson and Tiffany’s cat fight, however, was ludicrous and offensive. Obvious tweakage and unnecessary overuse of the word “bitch” were both huge deterrents that ensured I would never find out who the ultimate winner of this ongoing playful feud was. Also, the last line of this clip was too ham-fisted, even for me.
Regardless of what she prefers to go by or what she prefers to wear (or not wear) now, Debbie Gibson is forever burned into the memory bank of my Electric Youth. And looking at my music collection, she’s also probably the girliest musician on my iPod (minus the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid…ahem).
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/cOoIlN5S0hY?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6
