Okay, so I was a little cranky last week. It was bad, people, and we’re best not dwelling on it. However, I did manage to snap out of my malaise with the help of a biannual relaxation ritual, which consists of two important elements: a big Japanese dinner (even though as of late I have become one of those wacky low-carb folk) and a marathon viewing of Gone With The Wind. Yes, you read that correctly: I love Gone With The Wind, okay? It’s overwrought, yes. Revisionist claptrap, surely. But the minute Vivian Leigh opens her mouth and proclaims, “Fiddle dee dee!” I am completely and utterly hooked.

In any case, oddly enough the Atlantic Monthly is one’s best source for GWTW articles online, including this detailed look at the casting and shooting of the film, and an interesting review of Gone With the Wind’s racial policies. As God is my witness, I will never sit around the house eating peanut butter from the jar and shouting at CNN again! (Or, at least not for the rest of the month…)

Movies I Have Seen Lately That I Wish to Babble Pointlessly About:

Resident Evil – More fun than Ghosts of Mars (and yes, that is a compliment), and scarier than 13 Ghosts. A shallow but fun thumbs up!
Series 7 – Orwellian reality show satire that almost made me feel bad for watching Survivor. Thumbs up for meaningful indie movies!
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring – Okay, so Elves are good and smart, and Dwarves are tough and loyal, but neither group seems to realize that if they just put in a couple of elevators instead of elaborate jutting staircases of doom, maybe escaping monsters would be that much easier. Sheesh, get these people an interior designer and a copy of the “Worst Case Scenario Handbook”! Thumbs up for bringing the sequel out toute suite so I can find out what happens to poor Sean Astin!
Leprechaun in the Hood – So bad (and not good bad) that not even a final scene featuring the evil Leprechaun rapping on stage with his posse can redeem this dreck. Thumbs down for movies with too many sequels!

Poor Kevin
McDonald.. not as cute as little Dave Foley, not as wierd as
Bruce McCulloch, but still bringing the funny with this href=”http://www.nerveco.com/nerve/clients/thomason/santo/intro.html”>se
ries of television ads for a car dealer in Portland.

This is just so I can shamelessly claim victory in public over a bet
with a friend: neither the href=”http://www.caesar-salad.com/”>origin of the caesar salad
nor the origin of the
delightfully refreshing caesar cocktail have anything to do with
Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. (The latter link proudly proclaims that
clamato is in fact “the undisputed market leader in the Seafood Blend
Juice category”, which brings to mind concoctions like ‘Orange’n'Squid!’
which are best left unthought.)

The Invisible
Library is a catalog of imaginary books that appear in other
books. (link clipped from href=”http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/19453″>MetaFilter)

Sorry, y’all — I’m too full of existential angst to be amusing this week. In the meantime though, Fred updated metascene, so go read that, yes?


(Crippling Desire to be Different + Crippling Desire to be Like Everyone Else = teenage angst, Too Much Free Time + Poverty = early twenties angst, and as I’m learning Car Payments + Long Work Weeks = late twenties angst. I’m looking forward to the delightful differences in angst I know the early thirties will bring!) (Wait. Not that I am anywhere near 30. No. No, sir, that would be wrong and bad and.. slander! Yes! Um, I have to go now.)

On Saturday night I joined 300,000 other people to see the final night of the international fireworks championship, Celebration of Light. Once the show was over, a deluge of watchers, mostly young, drunk, and happy, swarmed the streets heading back downtown. About three blocks from the viewing area, some poor sucker turned their car onto the main street and tried to slowly navigate between the pedestrians. One kid jumped onto the back of the car, pumped his fists into the air, and then hopped off and ran away. His friends cheered. Stupid, irritating, yet harmless fun. Then it happened: less than ten feet away from me, a swarm of young men ran up to the car shouting. One leaped on top, and started jumping on the roof, while two others started smashing the tail lights. All of a sudden I was standing in the middle of a World’s Scariest Police Video, or some kind of hypothetical question you get asked on personality tests: “You see a violent crime being committed. What do you do?” What do I do?

Despite what I might declare to friends after a few too many beers, I am in fact not in possession of “the mad Kung Fu”. The worst I could do was deliver a pithy tongue-lashing. So I moved along, continuing my march towards town. Just as I was getting out of earshot, the driver of the car, a woman in her fifties, got out from behind the steering wheel and started pleading for restraint from the angry group, which was collectively trying to remove the back bumper. The mood was ugly.

Maybe this sounds pretty silly for hardened city dwellers — I suspect I’m still a small-town girl at heart — but suddenly I have a scary new appreciation for just how easy it is to avert your eyes and keep on walking.

My tragic imported magazine addiction can live again! I just discovered that the late Neon Magazine (aka. “Jess’ Favourite Movie Magazine Forever and Ever”) has been virtually reincarnated (with a different writing staff) as Hotdog. Same layout and typeset, same love of 70s cinema, and only slightly less snark toward the Hollywood machine. We are amused.

The Long of the Short of It, in which Donna and her friends rate the.. umm.. performance of metal bands from the early 90s, most of which haven’t been heard from in the last ten years. (Skid Row, I’m looking at you.)

Pardon me while I become a complete nerd: If I had £ 300 to spare, I would so be all over this Doctor Who autograph set, which even features an entry from the actress behind the absolute best companion.. yes, you can keep your Ace, your Leela, your Sara Jane. It’s Tegan Jovanka all the way, baby. (First runner-up goes to Jo Grant.) And while we’re on the topic, here’s a nice little article from 1983 on the departure of Nyssa, who always paled next to Tegan.

Big Brother Lookalikes, notable only for being the poorest collection of lookalikes I have ever personally witnessed. (Okay, except for Jason and that Van Der Beek kid. That one’s a little eerie.)

Not feeling terribly prolific today, but here’s a couple of links.. will try to work on the commentary part later in the week, after several thousand more cups of coffee. (As a preview, there is a guide to John Carpenter movies in the works.. except possibly for Vampires, since I have made it a personal goal to never, ever watch that one again. Ever.)