Also

I've recently found the best way to entertain oneself in a thoroughly distracting manner is to watch the final hour of Dune while having no idea what is going on. It's similar to attending a piece of performance art - you are confused, but fascinated at the same time.

Dagnabbit!

So my big trip to Destin has been canceled due to stupid Hurricane Gustav, and because my whole family is evacuating (wisely, I might say), I can't even go to NOLA to visit them. This hurts somewhere deep inside I will try to ignore for a little while.

Anyway, can those of you who are also in NOLA, but are not my family please find a way to keep in touch so I don't worry about you too? I know this thing is too far away for us to even speculate now, but I can't stop the memories of how difficult it was to find everyone after Katrina, and I figured preemptive notice may help.

I know at least one of you will not be evacuating due to part ownership of 53,879 dogs. Should the worst happen, I would appreciate if you could find a way to let me know you and yours are okay. If you need my cell # again, email me.

I can't stop wanting to share

From de-noted:

Brilliant!

After all my whining about last Sunday's LOCI season finale, I am ready to eat crow, because that was some of the sickest, most brilliant, out of nowhere shit I'd seen on television in a long time. I'm almost sad Warren Leight waited this long to impress me (though I really could have done without the flashbacks, and not because I had seen the episodes before, but because I thought they were pretty weakly inserted). Over at the VF blog, James Wolcott agrees with me (with spoilers):

The dramatic peak of Sunday night's viewing wasn't the submersive emotions dulled from rusty disuse on Mad Men (which more and more seems like a simulation exercise) but the phenomenal season-end arc climax on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, in which all of the pieces were cleared from the chess board in an Oedipal showdown between Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) and his mentor, played with seedy, reedy panache by John Glover, dressed in the stained white of a disreputable Southern lawyer. The psychic clash of Goren's sunken-vessel misery and Glover's glinty-eyed dementia against the bluish confines of the interrogation room elevated the series to an existential plane without losing the edge of glee that comes from actors seizing the electric moment. (I also enjoyed seeing Ilana Levine, whom I met on the set of Robert Altman's Tanner '88, in the early scenes with Goren's ravaged brother, played by Tony Goldwyn.) Taking Goren back to tainted zero (no mother, no brother, no mentor, no nemesis, and a dead serial killer for a father), It sets up the next season of Law and Order: CI beautifully upon return in November, when--in the other partnership--Jeff Goldblum's ostrich head will attempt to fill the spot vacated by Chris Noth.

I too look forward to what is now in store for season 8.

Make me Laff

Over at Bookshelves of Doom Leila and her husband plan Philip Seymour Hoffman's next movie.

And if any of you have an opinion about sex in stories, feel free to comment. But first, you may want to read my post (and comments) about it on my livejournal.

I have nothing else to add. I've been writing. PORN! Actually, NOT!porn!, as you will see by my post.

At least it's not a blogthing

Your result for The Director Who Films Your Life Test...

Ingmar Bergman

Your film will be 61% romantic, 31% comedy, 38% complex plot, and a $ 41 million budget.

Your life will be portrayed on film as an intense psychological drama, likely with some actresses screaming at the camera (Persona), or maybe a pleasant chess game between the Grim Reaper and a Crusader (The Seventh Seal). This Swedish director's films are intensely scrutinzed and studied in colleges all over the world to this day. This means that most Americans still don't understand his films! Still alive, he released in the U.S. in 2005 his first film in 23 years (Saraband), and he can still take on one more project to make your film biography. If curious, start with his films Wild Strawberries and Smiles of a Summer Night.

Take The Director Who Films Your Life Test at HelloQuizzy

Friday (not) Frivolity

When I'm not whining about my life, or reading and writing PRON, or, you know, working, I'm entertained by the internet.

I am a happy ending junky. Mostly because I've long ago accepted the fact that we're all going to die. Life doesn't really get a happy ending, just quiet acceptance--if you're lucky enough to figure it out. Or if you, like Michael Keaton in My Life, know ahead of time and have the money and resources to make pithy educational videos about yourself. So yeah, happy endings are nice. They don't have to be syrupy sweet, but I rarely complain when the guy gets the girl or the heist is pulled off with a minimum of casualties. But of course, movies with happy endings never truly examine what happens after (that's what fanfiction is for). Luckily, we have Cracked.com' s The 6 Most Depressing Happy Endings in Movie History to inform us:

Back to the Future - while the movie wants us to cheer Biff becoming a menial laborer for the McFlys as a nice bit of karmic comeuppance, we can't help but think that it's a bad idea to give a house key to the guy who once tried to rape your wife.

~~~~~

How is it the Joker kicked so much evil ass in the Dark Knight? Why do I keep reading fandom secrets in which little girls (and possibly boys) post pictures of Ledger's Joker with the words "I'd So Totally Hit That" scrawled over his face? Why do I find most superhero movies boring? io9 attempts to answer these questions with an excellent commentary about the rise of mediocre villainy in Why We Deserve Better Villains:

The problem of villain suckage is endemic in heroic narratives, where villains get redeemed, become sympathetic, or lose their menace too easily.

My favorite reasoning:

Good villains make great stories. A truly chilling villain makes the hero seem more important because the stakes are important, and the hero's actions matter.

~~~~~

Why do I--a quasi-intellectual spiritual seeker that can find as many reasons to defy an organized religion as follow it--read the God's Politics Blog? Because it seems politically aware Christians are less afraid to point the finger (just as Jesus did) when Big Government stomps all over people. I get more news from this blog than I do almost anywhere else. What I truly love about them is they offer steps beyond praying and finger-pointing, and instead offer actions, contacts, and steps one individual can take to help right wrongs. In a recent article, The Jungle in Postville Affects Us All, we are reminded the action and inaction of everyone can make a difference:

We should also care because "we" are "them." "Our" lives outside of Postville are bound up in "their" lives inside of Postville. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny." The apostle Paul said: "If one member of the body suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." Our actions and inactions affect one another. Together we must act so honor can replace the suffering of us all.

~~~~

And finally, fans of the movie Soylent Green my be unaware it is based on a book, or that there is so much more to this story than "Soylent Green is people!!!" Now is your chance to find out in a beautiful reissue.

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Okay, not so finally because I realize this was way less frivolous than I wanted. So for those who've always suspected there was something fishy in Batman's relationship to Robin, I offer you my tasteless comic panel of the day:

On to another obsession

Thanks to Music Wench and Google Alerts, I now have even less of an idea what is going to happen this Sunday on the LOCI season finale.

Here, I try to break it down with my filters off:

I am a little concerned about the promise of repeated shockers. One of the aspects of the past two seasons I've liked the least is the constant reveal, timed just so to keep the viewer on her toes, but mostly doing little more than not allowing me to digest what I'm being shown before a second "Huh?!?" kicks in. Plus, in one hour of TV (roughly translated into 44 minutes), there's only so much that can happen. I'm afraid this will be too reminiscent of "Purgatory," the second-half opener, which relied too heavily on deus ex machina (or just plain coincidence) to keep the dramatic tension high and resolved nothing while making little to no sense.

And yes, apparently Nicole Wallace is back. Which is a shame. I don't understand why, with everything else that's going on in Bobby's life [to recap, for those who don't know: recently dead mother after a bout with cancer and life-long battles with schizophrenia- who right before her death revealed she wasn't certain if Bobby's father was the bastard he'd known or someone even worse, drug- and gambling- addicted brother, nephew on the lam from the law (thanks to Bobby's interferance), issues within his work environment (everyone but his partner thinks he's a nutjob), and issues with his own stability (he's possibly a nutjob)]. So to bring back The Nemesis (think Moriarty to Bobby's Sherlock) seems a bit of overkill. Plus, in the episode "Great Barrier" we saw Bobby finally able to move beyond Nicole's manipulative mind-fucks, and any return she's made since then has felt false and unnecessary.

But here's the teaser that kills me:
given her murderous ways of the past, what happens with Nicole is not at all what you would imagine

OMFG, if he has sex with her, I'm going to enter his fictional universe and fucking kill him.

Other than Nicole's return (who is, uncharacteristically, going after everyone close to Bobby - which makes me want to ask her, "Really? You are some mad genius who can apparently get anyone to do anything you want them to, everyone wants to fuck you, and you, after almost 3 years still carry a vendetta against one cop? So you return to the one city with cops gunning for you, where you have a warrant out for your immediate arrest for kidnapping and the like, to settle this vendetta? How much of a genius are you?"), there is also something shocking in a box (shades of Se7en, anyone?), and everyone's a suspect for something (Please, please, baby Jesus, let it be for killing Nicole).

The article gives little else away, but promises it will be bizarre. I don't know that I'm looking forward to bizarre. I don't watch this show for the bizarre, the weird, the deluded crap that they've been trying to feed us on and off for the past 2 years. But watch it I will.

I am looking forward to John Glover's return as Declan Gage.
I am looking forward to having some loose ends tied up (one thing that was promised).
I always always look forward to seeing Vincent D'Onofrio do what he does best.

If I survive Sunday night, I will let you know what I think.

In something completely unrelated: I GOT MY SPACED DVD SET! I GOT MY SPACED DVD SET! NEENER! NEENER!
Okay I'm officially a dork. But I'm a dork for Simon Pegg. And one of the most infectiously watchable geek-love British television shows ever. Trust me when I say there has been nothing on American TV that rivals this. My affection for it goes far beyond my love of Pegg (who made it a point recently to state in his blog that he's 5'10", not 5'9", as related by IMDB, which for some reason I found adorable), and extends to each character and quirk we meet. I had to buy this set the same way I have to buy books I love instead of borrowing them. There's just something in the ownership of a thing. As if perhaps by owning the DVDs, I have some unique priviledge or knowledge - and free passes to that special club.

So I will spend my weekend leading up to possible mind-fuckability completely engrossed with Tim, Daisy, Mike, Brian, Marsha, and Twist (and Colin) in a world that exists just a slight distance out of my reach.

For Keyser (Rosebud) Soze

In honor of Nicholas Cage's hair.

My favorite quote:
Somewhere on a ranch in Montana, a horse cries silently when it wakes up and realizes its tail has been removed so it can be used as an accessory on Nicolas Cage's head.

Remember, folks, no matter how bad life gets, at least you are not Nicholas Cage.

I lied

You Are a Crossword Puzzle

You are well read, and you have a good head for remembering facts. You are a wordsmith. You have a way with words, and you're very literate. You are a mysterious person who enjoys dropping little clues every now and then.

What Kind of Puzzle Are You?