lastbestchance

I am at a loss for words right now. I was just flipping through channels and saw a woman on the Food Network make a hamburger that was comprised of two whole glazed donuts sandwiching a hamburger bun, a fried egg, and two slices of bacon.

So I was just flipping thru channels and came across "The Silence of the Lambs" in HD. I stopped for a minute to watch because it looked really pretty. I didn't realize it was on AMC, which butchers any movie they show, taking out all the interesting scenes and lines.

I tuned in at the part where Clarice is just about to meet Hannibal Lecter for the first time. As she's walking down that damp, dark, spooky hallway toward Lecter's cell, one of the other crazy inmates comes rushing up to the front of his cell and sniffs the air and says in a creepy whisper...

..."I can smell your scent."

Not quite the impact of the original version of that line, eh?

A couple of years ago in the middle of a hissy fit, I deleted all my entries from this journal and haven't really used it much since except to keep in touch with some folks here. I've regretted that decision as I had no backup for any of those entries, but I figured out today that I have copies of any of my old entries that somebody actually commented on in my gmail archives, so I think I'm going to slowly post and back-date those old entries over the next few weeks. Wish there was a 10-day waiting period to delete multiple entries on here and I wouldn't have lost them in the first place.

Also, you people are being ridiculously quiet this week. Entertain me!

I often think back to the time when I was eight years old and my parents sat me down and told me that there was no such thing as Martin Luther King Jr. I refused to believe them and still left milk and cookies out by the fireplace before I went to bed on MLK Eve. I believe that the next morning when I woke up to find the plate still full of cookies and the glass of milk untouched was the moment I forever lost my innocence.

I'm bored and home alone again, so I'm going to try and watch some more movies tonight. I doubt I can stay up as late as I did last night (4 a.m.) since I woke up by nine this morning and didn't take a nap all day. I did go check out some movies from the library and just finished watching the first one:

I just drank one Mountain Dew and have two more. Since I don't usually do the caffeine thing anymore, that oughta help some. Coming up next--Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

EDIT: 1:20 a.m. Just finished movie number two of the night. I've got one Mountain Dew left and I'm going to try and watch a movie I haven't seen in years--Airplane!

I doubt I'll be able to do it, but I've decided I'm going to stay up all night tonight watching movies. I haven't done that in years, but it's shitty weather here and I have no plans all weekend long. Diana's out of town until Monday, so I'm home alone. So why not?

First up--Preston Sturges' classic Sullivan's Travels.

EDIT: 1:49 a.m. Just finished movie number one.

Sullivan's Travels
1941. Directed by Preston Sturges. Starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.

I might think about taking up the life of a hobo if I meant I got to spend my life with Veronica Lake. She is absolutely gorgeous in this movie, even when they tried to dress her down. This is a great movie, though that 10 or 15 minutes towards the end when Sullivan is on that chain gang are kind of hard to watch. Still, I love how this movie, for the most part, does a pretty job of constantly swerving away just when you think it's about to fall into the same old Hollywood plotlines. Grade: A

I'm doubting I make it through another whole movie, but I'm going to try. Next up: The Seven Year Itch. I don't think I've ever seen a Marilyn Monroe movie except for Some Like It Hot. Well, and All About Eve, but that doesn't really count.

EDIT: 4:04 a.m. Amazingly enough, I made it through movie #2. I'm not even really sleepy right now but I think I'm going to call it quits. I just can't find anything in my DVDs that looks entertaining at this point. I'll go to the library tomorrow and find a few things to watch, after I sleep in of course. Oh, who am I kidding? My idea of sleeping in will mean I wake up at 9:30 a.m. at the latest.

The Seven Year Itch
1955. Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe.

Wow. I really, really got a kick out of this movie. I had no idea what it was about before I started watching it. All I knew was that at some point Marilyn Monroe stood above a subway grate. Anyways, I enjoyed Monroe's performance, but it was Tom Ewell that was a revelation. I've never seen him in anything else except for that clip from The Girl Can't Help It that's shown in the The Beatles Anthology, but he nailed this part. Funny movie, good writing, great acting. Loved the Technicolor vibrant colors too. They suited the material perfectly. Grade: A-


 

It appears I have gained the ability to cause musicians to die just by going to watch them perform. Within a one week span in early December of 2009, I went to see Vic Chestnutt and then Jay Reatard here in Austin. Now they're both dead.

If anyone wants to contribute towards buying me a ticket to see John Mayer here in a couple of months, I'd be willing to sit through his show just so that my powers could be used for good instead of evil. Carrie Underwood and Patti Lupone are also playing here in the near future.

The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You By Pop Culture
by Nathan Rabin

Started: January 11, 2010
Finished: January 12, 2010

This was yet another memoir of a fucked-up life written by someone under the age of 35--in this case, Nathan Rabin, head writer for The Onion A.V. Club. The catch here was supposed to be that each of the chapters was named after a song, movie, book, or television show that represented what Rabin was going in through in his life during the time period discussed. I don't think he really pulled the concept off. The pop culture elements seem shoehorned into many of the chapters and not really necessary to the storytelling. Also, writing for The Onion and all, Rabin tries to interject a lot of comedy into his writing, usually in the form of pop culture references or sarcastic lies. Most of the jokes fell flat to me. They weren't bad, but they never really made me laugh out loud. The best parts of this book were his stories of the other inhabitants of a Jewish Children's Home that Rabin lived in for most of his teenage years. This wasn't bad, but it also really didn't stand out from most of the other similar memoirs that have been written in the last ten years. 339 pages. Grade: B-