What, Me Guilty?

Trying to get back into writing-about-movies headspace—I have two articles to turn in by mid-July, one on Deepa Mehta’s finally-finished Water (for Montage magazine), the other on a documentary about cult films called Midnight Movies (for POV magazine…thank you, Marc Glassman)—but I keep drifting off into plotting out new short stories. This is good in a way, or possibly more than one: I recently was pissed off to discover that a story I thought had already been safely placed has reverted back to me, necessitating me finding it a new home; also, the Chiaroscuro short story contest has just started up again (see jack_yoniga for details), and I’m determined to finally send them something this time ‘round. Plus, it’d certainly be easier to write said something from scratch rather than cut the aforementioned homeless story down to fit their 4,000 words or under cut-off point.

Checking in at the local Rogers Video, meanwhile (in faint hopes of finding that latest Prophecy sequel…yes, I know it’ll probably suck, but I love that universe), I was very happy indeed to discovered that H2O is out on DVD. As not a massive Paul Gross fan to begin with, I still think it's one of the best performances I've ever seen from him. Also: Smart, political, quite emotionally wrenching, vicious in its refusal to back down from Big Issues with Real Consequences, logical in that bleak way a lot of CBC productions are—in other words, one of those overachieving TV movies that makes me wish like hell we could produce stuff like this for the big screen. American who want to check it out due to Due South resonance should be aware that Callum Keith Rennie’s role is plot-centric but screentime-poor, and that it also involves Canadian governmental structure and French.

Oh, and I bought another album by Nile, that serpent-worshipping bunch of Egyptian-themed death metal freakazoids. Haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but the track-listings promise an execration text about Akhenaten ("Cast Down the Heretic"), along with a 9-minute epic based on an H.P. Lovecraft reference ("Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten", which—as Nile founder Karl Sanders points out, in his long and detailed footnotes—is actually less "unspeakable cults" than "unpronouncable cults"). Dude’s such a pedant. But anybody who credits someone on "exorcism chants and Pazuzu bowl" for one track can’t be all bad.;)

Tonight Lena came over and Steve and I took what’s becoming our usual stroll to the Paramount Chapters, where I exchanged a really awful book he bought me for Douglas Clegg’s latest Harrow novel, The Abandoned. I also bought a recently trade-paperbacked book about rats (called, oddly enough, Rats) in New York that I’ve been tracking since it was in ridiculously expensive hardback. Its author was on Letterman at the same time Mom and I visited New York last year, before Cal was born; I remember them staking out the same alley he’d studied with a stationary "rat-cam", which they kept cutting back to every time a rat appeared. The author would then give commentary, his observations ranging from the scholarly to the simply repelled ("Yeah, they’re truly horrible creatures with no redeeming features, Dave"). A must!

At any rate: We hung around in Chapters for a while, then ate (I had edamame and sashimi with water and tea, to make up for breaking Atkins last night and the night before by getting shit-faced drinkin’ Cosmopolitans—and yet, I’ve already lost weight. Must be that basic lack of carbs thing) and came back, spitballing ideas for various things all the way. Because that’s what happens when two writer get married, ideally…they help each other out. And I do like to think it goes both ways.

Okay, well. To return to the subject of my first paragraph, here’s the long-awaited FINAL installment of that stupid "Five Movies Blah Blah Blah" meme. Look beneath the cut for further torment.( Read more... )

‘Night, guys. Steve’s snoring, and I am very done.

And Yet Again--

--we prove, once more, that Callum J. Barringer cannot be trusted to do a damn thing without endangering his own life. Yes, he's only eight months old, yadda yadda yadda. But Holy Fuck!

Today, after bad diaper rash, his first visit to Mass, a caterpillar xylophone (bought by Mom) and a lovely toy phone with google-eyes on a string (bought by Mom's friend), we returned home and Steve actually started doing chores so that I could do other stuff, like shop (for us) and work out. Cal played around throughout this, getting steadily whackier. And then he threw himself off the damn bed again, raised a massive goose-egg on one temple, and opened a deepish cut in the bridge of his nose.

So we cleaned it with alcohol, slathered it with Polysporin, stuck an ice-pack to his head. He almost went to sleep--his first post-trauma reaction of choice--but not quite. An hour of screaming/apparently completely forgetting about it and wanting to play frenziedly later, we stuck him in his crib and left him there.

Now he's asleep, and Steve's asleep, and I'm up, trying to exhaust myself, with my back still like knitted wires. And I never even got to take a shower, because the chore Steve was on at the time was trying to scrub it of concentrated bodily effluvia, albeit with not much success--selfish, I know, in terms of stuff to fixate on. But screw it: It's been a shitty day.

Also, the DVD Marc Glassman gave me won't play past Chapter Six, which makes interviewing its director sort of dodgy. Jesus Christ. Will this drama never stop?

Okay, I think the Nytol is kicking in. 'Bye.