HOORAY! Solid food has completely reentered and commandeered my diet once again!
Of course, this solid food includes a lot of boiled-into-pulp mashed/pureed veggies, toast, bananas, but there are moments. Last night I had a daring helping of pot roast and a completely irresponsible quarter-cup of bleu cheese cole slaw. I'm still being good about alcohol, though. There's a wine festival coming up soon -- I'm abstaining. I was supposed to go paint a faux masterpiece and drink wine in a semi-supervised setting, and I'm abstaining from that, too. (Okay, so that's more due to lack of funds, but still. Marking it in the ledger.)
A. and I are going to see Dust Up tonight! We should probably watch the Vice Presidential debate, but I'm pretty sure they'll be awfully similar, so it's all good.
So I was delighted to discover this weekend that my favorite Mycroft, Mark Gatiss, wrote and produced a horror doc for BBC a few years ago (which I found while looking up stuff about John Carpenter, you know, as you do) called A History of Horror. I poked around and found it where most online videos are to be found, and let me tell you, friends, it is absolutely great.
Gatiss also does some poking around himself into movie archives, and shows off stuff like Lon Chaney's makeup kit, and documents from a censor board's opinion of all that dirty sexy Christopher Lee vampirin' going on in Horror of Dracula. I spent most of the episode exclaiming things like, "Oh, that movie? Yeah, it's my favorite, too, Mark! Let's be best friends!" Ah, but that's a horror of a different color.
The second installment is fantastic, if you're a Hammer and/or Peter Cushing fan like I am. There's an especially great moment at or near the 50 minute mark, where a brief interview bit is shown with Cushing and Vincent Price on the set of Madhouse. As an aside, if you haven't seen it, Madhouse is wonderful, a great combination of horror, mystery and send-up of Hollywood/movie biz.
I'm saving the third installment for tomorrow. So far I can't find it anywhere to purchase online, but who knows? Maybe it'll pop up somewhere soon. It's a nice companion piece to books like Danse Macabre and Projected Fears, and I'd recommend it to any horror fan.
Also: needless to say! But if something's needless, you can count on me to spell it out. Between this and Tank Riot's Zombies! episode, my to-watch horror movie list has ballooned to freakish, atomic-influenced proportions.
So last night I was having trouble fall asleep, and rather than follow those obvious solutions like warm milk (ugh), hot tea (it's too hot outside), or sheeply counts, I found myself trying to psych myself up to drift off. "C'mon!" I encouraged myself. "You can do it! Just fall asleep! Yeah!"
Clearly my head's been too stuffed with manly men masculinely bellering their love for tea to realize this is not the only or wisest strategy. I didn't fall asleep, but I did laugh for a while and kept the dog up with me.
The red band trailer for Lawless (John Hillcoat's new movie) popped up a few days ago, and it looks great. (I'd recommend watching the red band though it's got some lady nudity, because the "clean" version [aka no scarifying tits but plenty of blood] is overcharged and tiresomely formulaic in comparison.) I've been hearing bits and pieces about this for a while now, and while I'm still skeptical of the La Boofster's acting abilities, I hope he can rise to the level of the chops surrounding him. And also, hurray for more Nick Cave and Warren Ellis soundtracks!
It makes me want to watch The Proposition again. Speaking of scarifying.
Yes, that's right. It's time again for laudations and libations, that happy feature of this blog where I discuss all things great and small, some imbibable, some not at all. Enjoy.
These were bizarre. I think someone (maybe P & S) described them as "more fudgy" if you made them in a square instead of a cake pan, and since I cannot resist any fudge knownst or unbeknownst to man, I used the little 8 x 8 pan A. and I found in the yard. (Yeah, this was about three months ago and yeah, we washed it first. MAYBE. Come have brownies at my house, yo!) Anyhoo, when I pulled the pan out of the oven the brownies had expanded into a giant fluffy pillow. I put it on the counter and started washing dishes. A. came over and said, "Wow, they're huge!" and I said, "Yeah, weird, huh!" and then I heard a quiet putt, putt sound, and then A. said, "Oh. Shit. Sorry." I turned around to see the brownie pillow: cratered and collapsed in upon itself. Said A.: "I was poking at the bubbles."
Although Christmas was ruined, the brownies tasted amazing.
Beans
I've discovered that my gut does not like lentils. My gut has "issues" with a lot of things, but normally I can shame it into eating and digesting them anyway. A dinner with lentils, however, make the UC grumble in its sleep. Two dinners with lentils make the UC roll over. Three, four, five wake that nasty blaggard up and hence woe, woe, woe was me last week. Luckily A. and I finished the leftovers, so I'll wait a month or two before trying them again. But I'd like to get me some more protein on a regular basis, so I'm currently boiling up a pot of pinto beans. (If you don't make your beans from dry, you should try it; beans smell wonderful and earthy when they're cooking.) Mark Bittman from the NYT and How to Cook Everything says that it's possible to get your body more used to beans (ahem: less gas) if you eat them more regularly, so we'll see.* But to quote the Kids, none of my furniture has any resale value anymore, so it's a moot point.
The Wire/Wallander
A. and I have been switching it up on Masterpiece Sundays. Inspector Lewis was getting awfully predictable: is there an attractive young lady in the thick of it? She'll be dead by the end of the second act. Plus A. and I have started doing voices - he's Lewis, and I'm Hathaway - and everyone knows that's a nail in the coffin for taking a show seriously, so we started watching Wallander instead. We just finished season 2, which I enjoyed more than season 1. What the show has really made me want to watch, though, is the original Swedish version. Roger Ebert does a review of the movie/mini Revenge here, but as with most Ebert reviews (these days?), you'll need to beware of too much information if you click through. My preferred mode for seeing movies and TV these days is to avoid all reviews and then check them out afterwards, which is kind of ridiculous given my dual laud to the first season of The Wire, originally airing back in 2001? 2002? Yeah. And speaking of spoilers:
A. and I watched this with friends recently - mostly because I cataloged it at work and none of us had ever heard of it. (I thought the DVDBlu-ray case said "The Boogers" at first.) For me, it was worth it for the dialogue and the old dude creeping around (see 00:27 of the trailer for the ominous close-up), but overall it was giggle-inducing and not scary at all.
I am having some serious trouble with this book. By which I mean I am hard, hard pressed indeed to put it down at night. Nor am I able to stop thinking about the plot and characters and my god, what the hell is Kvothe going to get into by the next page. It's frustrating as hell, so I recommend you do not read. Really. Don't pick this one up. You'll be sorry. Your soul won't be your own any more. I am WARNING YOU. DON'T DO IT. Okay?
But seriously now. This is book number two of the Kingkiller chronicles, which Wiki and the author's website tell me is a trilogy. And it's good. I'm bothered by how good it is and how deeply it claims my attention - mostly because I'm jealous and it's a debut novel (the second volume has a blurb on the back from Ursula K. Le Guin, for god's sake! The swoons! The dream of dreams! Eaargh! Er, suffice to say that if I were this dude, I'd have had several heart attacks by now) - but also because it's been a while since anything I've read has engrossed me so, and without the use of cliffhanger chapter endings! I am shocked, shocked, to say the least.
I think my favorite thing about it is that Rothfuss has already revealed a great many things about the main character and the plot by jumping around in time in the telling; for example, we know certain things have happened to Kvothe in his youth because he references them as an older man, and yet when we dive back into his story, I'm still in suspense.
Anyhoo. If you like fantasy, give this a try. If you don't, give this a try. And don't be fooled by the slow start of book one. It's a damned lie.
Libations
I've been enjoying some Alaskan brewing company beers, particularly the Summer kolsch. Also recommended: the Hedgeline Vineyards riesling. It's cheap and not terrible.
* Although I don't know if I can trust him; so far HTCE is turning out to be a book I use only for looking up definitions, meat temperatures, possible cooking times, etc., because all the recipes out of it I've tried have run the short gamut of uninspiring to awful. Okay. Only the pancake recipe was awful. I don't fancy myself Julia Child, but I won't be straying from my own pancake recipe from now on.
I really enjoyed this when I first saw it on Julia Child's 100th birthday. PBS and John Boswell seem to be doing a lot of this lately (see the PBS Digital Studios Channel on youtube), and with apologies to all the sound engineers/mixers who've had their jobs made infinitely simpler by the tech, I think it's the only use of autotune I can fully get behind.
In other news, I updated my Safari browser and got an interesting surprise: the address bar has combined with the search bar. I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer has had this capability for a while, and Firefox calls their version of it "The Awesome Bar" - which, to briefly change the subject, is a name that annoys the hell out of me, because it's such uninterestingly simple marketing. It's like Mozilla decided, eh, just say it's awesome, that'll bring everyone on board. Simplicity is the new thing. And all of us consumers, we're supposed to say, Yeah, I'm not old, I'm hip! I have the Awesome bar! Just a second, I've got to go get a glass of Radical Milk to eat with my Bestest Ever Cookies and my bag of Super chips. If someone tried to sell me a So-So Bar, I'd probably drop dead.
And incidentally, I DON'T find Safari's version awesome or otherwise. Technically I suppose it can't be "awesome." If I find my user experience "awesome," does Safari have to pass some trademark/infringement cash to Mozilla? Hrm. I usually used the little search bar space to stick text I was planning to search, or text I wanted to copy format-free. But it doesn't matter. I'll get used to you, Awesome-or-Otherwise Bar.
Rerun of Aerosmith on 60 minutes! Eek. PBS is doing a special on rats. Time for The Wire, yep.
Whoa, wait, Hank! Are you saying that in a society where you are supposedly able to follow the religion of your choice,* civil (CIVIL!) marriage and all its benefits still shouldn't be held to the standards of a particular religious text? That's amazing! My head had literally blown off my shoulders!
WHO WILL MARRY ME NOW, HANK, THANKS A LOT
*as long said religion does not infringe on the rights of others
But even with all my Fillion love, I never knew his humble roots till I sought them on the preserve of youtube.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Fillion! You have made me laugh many, many times, and your hair and vesty goodness in that last clip shows me that your ability for hilarity abides.
The week is starting again. Have ten minutes of Van Halen.
A. and I were doing some air guitar and piano on our bikes this morning, and it made me wonder if any guitarist has ever done the Mozart Turkish Rondo thing, which some of you may remember from the '95 Pride and Prejudice:
I've been unable to find any Van Halen recording of it, though...so I'll sub some Tenacious D Bach-excerpting instead.
Also, Boing Boing did a great round-up on William Shatner's birthday last week, which I'm ashamed to say on pain of decommissioning that I missed.
Cinemark has always had a similar one. But when A. and I went to see Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, there was a new bit about shutting off phones. I can't find a video version of it online, but basically it said: use your phone in the theater during the show, and we'll ask you to leave. Turn it off or take it outside. Yay! Cinemark does still have ads before the previews about its iPhone apps, which I find a bit ironic. And of course it's no Alamo Drafthouse, but the attempt at courtesy enforcement still made me happy.
It only takes an extra moment to be courteous, Ray.
STOP SHOWING ME THIS FREAKYASS DISGUSTING AD. RIGHT. NOW.
Honestly. That's just gross. And not only is it gross, but it's played. Right, Mister Gilliam?
This has been a public service announcement from the dystopia of your choice via the Anti-Cosmetic Facelift legion, party of one. It's okay to let a little wrinkly character into your faces, people.
It's October! October is a wonderful month. Not only is the weather gorgeous with stark, achingly blue skies and crisp fresh air - even down here in Texas, we've finally hit the fifties-sixties and I am back to happily shrouding myself in layers and cardigans and fuzzy knee socks - but it's Spooky Halloween Month! The perfect excuse to watch scary or silly movies, AKA most of Vincent Price's glorious repertoire. And I just discovered today that one of his oldies I've been haunting the rental places for is up on youtube. Witchfinder General, anyone?
There is trouble coming to this village...VINCENT PRICE TROUBLE, that is.
His hat is the best hat ever. Reminds me of Solomon Kane's. Which I suppose is the point, given it's a movie about horrible witch trial inquisitors/torturers in...England? I'm not sure, I was drinking wine. It might be early America. Again, I cite the hat. What do you think, internet historians?
In other news, I've been reading voraciously the past few weeks. Probably the heads-up that I'm reading stuff should not be considered news ever again, but whaddayougonna do? Currently tamping down my slowest-read-ever Anna Karenina are The Monstrumologist, The Mockingbirds, The Franklin Affair, A Live Coal in the Sea (which I mostly chose for its title, thanks, Ms. L'Engle), and the Echo comics. Due to my experiences today, I highly recommend The Monstrumologist for any and all dental visits. Trust me. I sat reading in the dreaded dental chair and waited for my doc to get done with another patient, and by the time he finally showed up, well. I was an incredible contradictory mixture of aghast and mellow. Again, trust me. Five chapters into that book and you will fear no drill. A caveat, though, I have had to stop reading it before bed.
So, to reiterate: Evil Pilgrim Vincent Price=good The Monstrumologist, pre-dentist=good The Monstrumologist, pre-sleep/dreams/horrifying somniloquy and/or creaky stairs=not so good Anna Karenina=still unfinished
