Silver Bells, Silver Bells

[handful_ofdust]

So it’s Silver Lenas time again. Basically, this is where my friends get together and give out their own set of movie awards; we vary from most systems in that we have both "best" and "coolest" categories, which to my mind works a whole lot better than the Golden Globes’ Drama vs. Musical or Comedy insanity. At any rate, this means that I’ve been forced to take stock of all the films I saw last year (or all of last year’s films that I saw, whichever comes first), thusly:

Alone in the Dark, The Amityville Horror, Assault on Precinct 13, Batman Begins, Boogeyman, Bride & Prejudice, The Brothers Grimm, The Cave, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Constantine, Cry_Wolf, Cursed, Dark Water, The Devil’s Rejects, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Fantastic Four, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hide and Seek, A History of Violence, Hostage, House of Wax, Howl’s Moving Castle, In Good Company [mainly], In the Realms of the Unreal, The Island, The Jacket, Kingdom of Heaven, King Kong, Kung Fu Hustle, Land of the Dead, Pride & Prejudice, The Ring Two, Sahara, Saw II, Serenity, Sin City, The Skeleton Key, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Undead, Walk the Line, War of the Worlds, Water, White Noise, xXx: State of the Union.

As ever, it’s interesting—and a bit sad—to realize how little any of the above meant to me in any functional way, beyond the obvious lure of A) big-screen spectacle/cheap entertainment and B) time away from home/my thoughts; a few of them tweaked me, certainly, but no new fandoms were born. This might be good or bad, depending on how you’d prefer my spending my spare time.

Speaking of which, I’m making a concerted effort to try and break back into "Niemand" and/or one of the novels (Blood from the Air vs. The Speed of Pain). The latter would probably work better within context, considering that everything else I’m contemplating right now takes place specifically within my "Toronto as supernatural crossroads"/Dark is Better ‘verse, and shares pretty much the same cast of characters as "The Narrow World"…"Pen Umbra", "Heart’s Hole", "Niemand", plus possibly "Drone", "Dead Voices on Air", "Every Angel", "History’s Crust", and even something that used to be called "Make Your Bones" but will probably end up being called "Twa Een o’ Tree". If you can catch that last reference, feel free to poach the basic idea, but—yeah, this may work; this may finally, when assembled at last, actually be something worth devoting my midnights to. If I can just keep bloody going.

Last night was agincourtgirl’s birthday, so I made her a mix and gave it to her, along with Shakira’s Ficiajion Oral Vol. 1 (or whatever). The dinner-and-Devil’s Toast thingie thrown for her was co-hosted by Ms. I Hate Kids, but I feel I was rather admirably restrained throughout, aside from telling her frankly how little I like jazz; getting drunk certainly helped. Halfway through a concoction involving two types of rum, brown sugar and fresh ginger, I observed mushily to our mutual friend Jason Taniguchi: "Man, if this really was what pirates were drinking all the time, it explains a lot. My face just went numb."

And now I go back to the "Niemand" file in a puff of smoke, foof. I want 1,000 words tonight, no bullshit—tomorrow’s a bit too damn long for fucking around.

Comments

[theengineer.livejournal.com]

Halfway through a concoction involving two types of rum, brown sugar and fresh ginger, I observed mushily to our mutual friend Jason Taniguchi: "Man, if this really was what pirates were drinking all the time, it explains a lot. My face just went numb."

Just as long as it wasn't The Paralyzer.