singles

It's my last post as a single man people,let's make it count.

Perhaps as a sign of good faith K came through with excellent gifts on Easter. She's had a little trouble getting into the groove of book buying for me but she hit the nail on the head this time. I got Under the Black Flag, a factual account of some pirates and their evil doings and I can't remember the name of it by Robert Howard, which I didn't even know about. It's a university of nebraska press thing that JUST came out, part of a series of FIVE books collecting his short stories. And they are in paperback instead of those damned 40 dollar special collection things.

The book of course led me to the computer to see why I hadn't heard of it, whereupon I discovered the other Howard books and the publisher website. I then proceeded to scour the sale page. Forty dollars later I had found some Hardback versions of Max Brand westerns for NINETY percent off. Can you believe it? So it turns out that I got these HB books for only 4 or 5 dollars. They, of course, cost 40 or 50 usually. It was early Sunday morning and I was in my mid coffee drinking daze and it seemed like a good idea. I kept thinking that we could give them to Steve (father in law as of tomorrow) for Xmas or Bday presents, but now I've come to grips with the fact that I'm really buying them for myself. I know that once I get the package and handle the books I won't want to get rid of them. Such is the book addiction.
Started reading Speaker of the Dead, the second book in the Orson Scott Card Ender's Game series and it's good so far. Something about his writing... I can't pin it down, but it's just damned readable. More later.
About half way through the pirate book and it's fun, thoough sometimes there's a little too much fact fact fact fact fact when you really want to hear some myth.
I'm sure I've read some other stuff, oh yeah, read some PKDick shorts which, of course,are good as always. Read after discovering that Nick Cage is in new pkd adaptation. Speaking of which, saw Waking LIfe last night and enjoyed. At first I though, damn! this is gonna be boring --meanwhile a skeptical futurewife is asking 'is this gonna have a story-- but it got better - sort of hypnotizing, and I got into it about midway. Enjoyed Linklater's PKDick monologue at the end and was given new hope for his Scanner Darkly movie despite misgivings about Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Downey Jr.
MOVIES
Nausicaa of the valley of the wind
it was good. Excellent fantasy even with man destroying environment moral. Enough humanizing that moral took back seat. Unlike Dogville, which was nothing but morality play. Kept thinking I could have saved some time and read some medieval morality plays. At least I would've have gotten the devil. Seriously though, very disappointing considering all the hype and the fact that I had the damned netflix disc around for months. Actively hated it for a few days then got over it and moved on to other things. Still: I'm sure that I understand what dogboy is doing with the film and I guess it's just a matter of whether you give a shit about that sort of thing. I find I don't have the patience for it. I don't think I learned anything about human beings by watching it, and it certainly wasn't entertaining, but somehow it was thought provoking just because I thought it sucked so hard. I liked Dancer in the Dark better, but then there's something so quirky and bjork like about bjork that at least it was a movie about bjork. As good a superstar as Kidman is I never really related to the character. At least she's had the sense to back out of future installments and give it over to someone who seems to want to make her career working for overated directors. (Yes, I'm talking to you little richie cunningham. Maybe Trierypants and Shamaloo can get together. Shammy can give some characters and a bit of story and maybe Triery can cure Shammy of his Twilight Zone twists. Or maybe I can just stop watching both their movies)
What else?
Oh, watched the Incredibles. Enjoyed that one. I expected to be disappointed, but the action was fun, the ideas clever, the characters good enough and the movie looks great, even though when we watched the RED component cable was loose, leaving us wondering why the costumes were yellow in the movie since all the promo stuff has red. Oh well.
Played Champions of Norrath Return to arms over K's spring break. It was disappointing. Ah, so much disappointment.
Oh, also listening: Arcade Fire. The album rocks. Gets stuck in my head. And to think, I thought I'd be disappointed.
Gotta go get the shirt washed, and suit out and get ready for the marriagin'. hope you all have good times and I'll see you when I'm married. You've got 24 hours ladies.

tiptaptyping

Apparently blogging on the couch while lying on one's side results in typing errors. Sorry blog types!!
On Wednesday they have old Star Trek on sci fi during the day.
Just in case anyone is home all afternoon on Wednesday. A friend of mine--I'm sure some of you can guess who--just bought the first season DVD set. I will have to borrow those. I've wanted to buy it myself but I can't explain to myslf (or futurewife) why that one hundred dollars would be well spent.

Finished that first Gunslinger book last night while WarGames was on TCM. They almost started to mix in my head which would have been entertaining. I don't think I've seen WarGames in 20 years, if I've ever seen it at all. I'm leaning toward 'seen part of it', because I sure didn't remember anything at all. It was fun though. Cold War.

I'm thinking about starting a Dickens book now, maybe Little Dorritt. I've been hankering for something a little meatier than what I've been reading. Though maybe I just mean longer? Don't know. I will let you know what sort of decision I make. It seems like I'm in the middle of a lot of books, but I'm just reading short stories and such in collections and I'm not about to sit down and tear through them. Let's look at the situation:

There's that McSweeney's collection I blogged about in Smarty Pants Edge which I've warmed up to a little bit.
Then, Children of Cthulhu which contains 'horror in the vein of . . . " (BNoble Clearance)
The two Conan books and Solomon Kane.
Every once in awhile I awake and say to myself: I'm gonna' read a Conan story. That's the way to read Howard, trust me. There's no trudging through story after story. I mean, you could, but it's really something best served in small portions. Llike a good gorgonzola cheese or piece of delicious dark chocolate.

I'll blog about that Cthulhu thing when I get a better sense of it.

Oh my God!! Kirk has been transported from the Enterprise into some sort of Arena to battle a lizard man. The lizard man has eyes like diamonds. Kirk is trying to get past his revulsion and remenber that the creature is intelligent, despite it's choice of leopard print lame tunic.

Last Blog I had to bail because the Buffy ep was the season 2 finale and I didn't want you guys to see me cry.
later

The thing about the aftenoon is that fx shows two Buffy episodes from 12-2 and it's really hard for me to not watch them. Today, for instance, we've got some great end of season 2 episodes. Luckily I don't have anything to do other than surf around the internet and blog. I've already done some dishes and made delicious lunches. I'll have to share all my ground turkey recipes with you bloggies sometime. Prepare yourself for my stuffed red peppers!!

A drink on Sat at local bar with K and a friend (He hasn't signed the clearance form) was interesting mostly because there wer a couple of grizzled rocker types in the corner, surrounded by local folks who looked excited and somewhat privileged to be hanging out with these grizzled forty something guys in black with sunglasses and mussed hair. Well, someone had a shirt and whatnot and the brain clicked: it was, you know, that guy from the Replacements.

Paul Westerberg was just sitting there smoking a lot of cigarettes and doing a lot of shots of whatever the adoring throng was bringing him. (Adoring throng was only about 8 people, one of whom was the club owner -- PW having played a show that night). I imagined how he's maybe done this sort of thing most nights for his whole life and how, really, the rock star life would suck. Just a thought folks.

Had a good workout yesterday, including some basketball shooting. It's been a damn ass long time since I've shot those basketballs, but it was fun. Looking forward to maybe playing a bit sometime soon. Who wants a piece of me?

Ah, poor Giles. Drusilla has tricked him into seeing Jenny Calendar instead of her and he's telling Dru/Jenny the secret that Angelus wants to know: Angels blood is the key.
Ah, poor everyone. Such sadness.
Well, back to Buffy

the end, a couple of songs, bad album

Ah, Saturday.

We've finally got some sunshine and fifty some temps here in the place I live and it's gettin' me excited about some springy type days.

Me and the little missus is hitchin' up on april one, as some of you know -- so everything becomes official at long last. It's strange. I try not to think about it. I'm excited and then I'm a little bit scared and all that shit that I'm sure more than half the world already understands, eh?

Mostly excited, but it's time to tap into my earning potential isnt' it? Yi Yi. Time to grow my grownass up.

Here's some tidbits of fun for you.

We finished ANGEL season five last night and it was a sad moment for us. There is no more Joss Whedon tv to watch. We're going to have to actually watch those netflix movies we have now; we're going to have to have these little flings with characters we don't know and love, directors and writers who are trying to cram all this stuff down our throats inside of two hours. It's time to move on.
Any of you who haven't: do yourself a favor and invest those 250 odd hours in Buffy and Angel and Firefly. You'll not regret it.

Almost bought the Mars Volta cd this week because my BOYZ at circuit city wanted only 6 bucks for it. I listened to it on Rhapsody yesterday and I can tell you that I'm glad I didn't. They tried to trick me by calling it prog rock!! It's suck rock!! And it doesn't even really rock. Suckers!!

Good time listening: Fiery Furnaces EP. I love the first three tracks. It's great driving tunes. The sibs are gonna play here in April and I've gotta get some tickets. Supposedly touring with their grandmother: bonus points. Now these guys are prog rock. Quirky without being downright stupid. Supposedly there is something in the mars volta album going on concerning a black gay hiv positive gigolo conceived during a rape. If I have to explain what's wrong about that idea you're reading the wrong blog people.

Also lately enjoying The Streets A grand don't come for free in the car. It's made it through the year. Go buy it!!

later,
bloggy blog pants