Surfacing

So, y'know, I guess I'm another victim of this blogosphere posting malaise that has struck. A week or more between posts. No real urge or desire to blather on about this and that. Just a big ol' "whatever." But here I am. Figure I'll just type for a while and see what happens.

Anyway.

Busy Busy Busy

This Summer seems to have been unusually busy for us. I had figured it would be really laid back, since my in-laws are around and have their own place for the duration. We have built-in babysitters that the kids fall over themselves to spend time with, which would seem to suggest that a lot of spare time would magically appear, enabling us to read or watch films or just hang out at will.

For some reason, though, this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I mean, we're doing some cool stuff. The occasional visit to the bookstore to sip coffee and browse (I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Haunted" a few chapters at a time. I don't like it enough to buy the thing, but I'm intrigued enough to steal it, intellectually, piece by piece, during our infrequent bookstore visits). We've NetFlixed a bunch of films, many of which have sat, unwatched for a week or more at a time (this list currently includes "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," "Throne of Blood," and "Gods and Monsters"). We've instituted Monday Night Family Movie Night (kid-friendly fare with lots of snacks and no set bedtime) and have watched a few classic kids things that were not nearly as good as we remembered, really ("Benji," "The Love Bug," "Honey I Shrunk the Kids," and "Beethoven" were all diverting and more or less entertaining but not particularly good) and one terrific movie ("Holes" was fantastic). Hit Sea World for a day. Lots of swimming crammed in between all of this. And then there's the usual occasional BBQ type stuff. But it's all very distributed, and tends to make things feel very, very busy.

Odd. All this time on our hands, taking away all the time on our hands.

Other Things

Haven't played World of Warcraft in almost a month, which is kinda silly since I pay $16 a month to be able to play whenever I want. Might need to rethink that.

Did have a few friends over the other night for an evening of drinkin' and horror movies. I've been thinking of getting a horror movie viewing crew together for a while, and I finally pulled the trigger. I set the theme for the evening at Classic Giallo and we watched Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond" (not good) and Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (beyond brilliant), and drank far, far, far too much.

This is going to become a monthly occurence, I think (the movies, if not the "drinking far too much" -- I mean, drinking will occur, but I can do without the hangover, thanks a bunch), with the next movie night being devoted to Basic Monster Movies. I define these as "movies in which a group of not terribly famous celebrities encounter a monster that proceeds to pick them off one by one."

Examples of this genre are nearly limitless, but I think I'll be going with my all-time favorite bad movie, "Anaconda." So, so awful, and it's knows it, as does every single actor in it, including a pre-superstar J Lo, pre-fame Owen Wilson, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, and Jon Voight giving the most eccentric and ridiculous performance this side of Eric Roberts or Gary Busey. Second feature will probably be one of the crop of late-90's /early 00's semi-star driven monster movie vehicles. Perhaps underappreciated, lobotomy-required fare like "The Relic" -- starring celebrity meth fiend Tom Sizemore! Or maybe the incredibly gory, incredibly silly "Deep Rising." Or the bizarre horror movie in space riff on Solaris "Event Horizon" with Lawrence Fishburne. So many to choose from....

Finally caught "Batman Begins" last night, and it was fantastic, if uneven. As talented as he is, Christopher Nolan needs to learn how to film and edit an action or fight sequence. When things were slowed down and dramatic the film was amazing, but the minute the pace picked up and the punches started to fly it was a chaotic mess. But the look of the film, the story, the acting (aside from Katie Holmes, who was pretty damn lame), and the overall effect was great.

I mean, aside from that ridiculous polot hole with the microwave transmission thing boiling all the water in the sewer from hundreds of feet away, but not boiling the water in the bodies of anyone else nearby it. Dumb dumb dumb. But otherwise, terrific.

Well, I think I've babbled long enough. It is pretty much a certainty that I will have interesting news to disclose about my professional life in the near future. Sadly, I don't know how long it will be before I can do so. Not that it's so interesting, really, but it's just that I know that these un-disclosable events are taking up a huge amount of my thoughts and are almost certainly contributing to my dearth of postings lately, and I'd like to clear the pipes already.

But it'll have to wait.

Sigh.

Mood: Drowsy
Now Playing: The Avalanches, "Since I Left You"