I can't remember whether or not Michael gets mad about posting between his end of the year posts. I've decided to post anyway, since I've only posted once this month.
So I was considering posting about some other crap that's been happening lately, but it basically revolves around me not having enough money and/or time for certain things and being bad at other things. It's not really that interesting, and I have no real spin on it to make it so.
I went with the Comstocks and Saralyn to see the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still today, and I think it is a perfect example for my argument in favor of the validity of remakes. It got panned in reviews, but I think the fact that one of the reviews includes the phrase "Dumber and dorkier than the dumbest dork you know" sort of invalidates anything the author might say about, well, anything. It contained many nods to the original, but clearly had its own artistic vision and message. An new message is probably the most valid reason for remaking anything. Using an concept to do something new, or making the original message more accessable to a modern audience both give the movie industry a real and human purpose. The movie purist's prejudiced hatred of remakes has always baffled me, because a remake can still be it's own movie. Naturally, there are exceptions, such as Steve Martin's attempt at the Pink Panther series, which is less "Hey, I like that idea, but let's run with that concept and do something new," and more "I loved those movies! I wish I were in them! Wait, I'm rich, I'll do it myself!" I've sort of got away from my point, though, which is that the new TDtESS clearly keeps the spirit of the original, and even Dave and Jonah Comstock, both of whom came in expecting and ready to hate the movie utterly, walked out pleasantly surprised, and that has to count for something.
Oh, as an after thought, Keanu Reeves was, as usual, Keanu Reeves, but type casting really works for him, and I still stand by my argument that he was the perfect villain in Much Ado About Nothing. No one cares that other people are typecast for their talent in a particularly intense or energetic role that is essentially them playing themselves, but everyone says Keanu Reeves can't act just because he's always cast as these stoic, more or less emotionless characters. It works. Sometimes that's what you need, and a number of actors get flack for what is more or less the responsibility of directors, casting or otherwise.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
30 December 2008
23 December 2008
In Which There Are Words
Alright Compendium, I need to get this out. I'm told by Nate and Marten that Michael "considered it a snub" when I Facebook-replied that I wasn't coming to Sunday's con-thing to which I wasn't invited. That's great. Imagine how I felt when I had to find out from Facebook's Newsfeed of all things that all of you were getting together to do the things that we always do when we're home and no one had invited me or even told me about it. Talk about snubbed. The defense I heard was that everyone knew I was going to be in Bloomington and therefore didn't bother to invite me, but I think that's bullshit. Every time we do these things we first try to find a time that works for everyone, and we do that by telling everyone what's going on. And even if that wasn't possible, if I'd known the slightest thing about this gathering I might have amended my plans so I could be around. I wasn't even in Bloomington at that point, I was in Indy, and if I'd been asked I would have seriously considered cutting my time with Saralyn a little short to come down. I've done it before, because believe it or not, spending time with you guys over break is important to me almost as much as seeing Saralyn is.
Perhaps I would be more understanding, but to tell you the truth the treatment I got the last time we got together, especially from Michael, was enough to make me expect the worst. There is a point where a joke stops being funny and fake-mean becomes so regular and relentless it's indistinguishable from real-mean, and y'all found it at Thanksgiving, and to follow it up with this makes me wonder if you're all just so insensitive that you're oblivious or if I did something to make you really dislike me. Either way, I'm done being Compendium's punching bag. If you all want me on the blog, and as your friend, start treating me like one. Otherwise, I'm happy to leave.
This doesn't apply to all of you equally, so if you think I'm being too harsh to you you're probably right and I apologize. But it's not all Michael, or I wouldn't have posted it on the blog.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
Perhaps I would be more understanding, but to tell you the truth the treatment I got the last time we got together, especially from Michael, was enough to make me expect the worst. There is a point where a joke stops being funny and fake-mean becomes so regular and relentless it's indistinguishable from real-mean, and y'all found it at Thanksgiving, and to follow it up with this makes me wonder if you're all just so insensitive that you're oblivious or if I did something to make you really dislike me. Either way, I'm done being Compendium's punching bag. If you all want me on the blog, and as your friend, start treating me like one. Otherwise, I'm happy to leave.
This doesn't apply to all of you equally, so if you think I'm being too harsh to you you're probably right and I apologize. But it's not all Michael, or I wouldn't have posted it on the blog.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
14 December 2008
It is better that you were too stupid to carry out instructions
When they said car bull shit comes in threes, they lied.
I'm home, finally. I assure you, getting here was no small effort. So you remember how I crashed my girlfriend's car? Okay, so maybe you don't since I didn't post about that. So, the weekend before thanksgiving break, I was taking Claire to my house to meet the folks and have a relaxing weekend sort of thing. Unfortunately, Columbus is a shitty place to drive, and I rear-ended an SUV with her Ford Contour while trying to change lanes. Now the court is trying to pin a speeding ticket to me, but that's another pile of crap that I'll get to later. Claire was awesome about it, and did not throw me off the bridge or anything. Wait, I should tell you why I was driving Claire's car to my house: my clutch cable snapped, and I couldn't fix it without my dad's help. The plan was to bring my dad back with us, we'd fix my car, he'd drive my car home, and Claire would drop me off at my house on her way to Chicago to do Thanksgiving with one of her EKO sisters. Anyway, I totaled her car and she didn't kill me, which probably by itself makes her the best girlfriend ever. So we waited at an awesome bar and billiards place and got an inspiring speech about how lucky I am from an anonymous black woman ("See? Your woman happy, you should be happy") while we waited for a friend to pick us up and bring us back to Wooster. I was then sentenced to be the official EKO chaufer, a fair ruling which mostly entailed driving Claire and Tori around, usually to get starbucks.
Because we are busy college students, we never had time to go back to Columbus and take everything out of Claire's car. I suggested that Claire fly out of Indianapolis to go home to California, and we could just stop at Columbus on the way. We tried to leave on Thursday, but not 20 miles out of Wooster do we get stopped for speeding. I was driving 67 in a 60 zone, but luckily, the cop was charmed by my car. He said he only really stopped us because the car was wiggling back and forth, and I told him that it could be it was so full of stuff. He just gave us a warning, and we were on a merry way. For about 5 miles. At that point, my tire went flat. I was able to change the tire fairly quickly on account of being a manly and capable individual. Unfortunately, the spare was also flat. Crazy, right? I mean, what good is a spare tire if there's no air in it? Anyway, I called AAA and got towed to all manner of(read: 2) places to get the right size tire, and, about 6 hours after we left, we were back in Wooster. We decided to try again the next morning, rather than pull in to Indy at midnight.
The drive to Columbus went surprisingly well, and we were transfering stuff from Claire's totaled car to my not-totaled car when Claire asked me to ask them about removing the after-market stereo and sub-woofer(heh, 'woofer'). I walked from the car to the body shop and asked, and the ford guy asked if it was authorized by the insurance company, so I walked from the body shop and asked Claire. She said yes, so I walked back to the body shop and the ford guy said what's the insurance agent's name? Since they could get in trouble for letting us take it, he had to double check, so we called, were put on hold, told to call this person, who told us to call someone else, were put on hold again, and had to call Claire's mother before we determined we could take the stereo. This whole thing puts us back by about 2 hours, and my car was way low to the ground again, but we made it anyway.
In my next post, since I am being called to rake leaves: An invalid ticket, Jury Duty, Auditions, ACTF and possibly more.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
I'm home, finally. I assure you, getting here was no small effort. So you remember how I crashed my girlfriend's car? Okay, so maybe you don't since I didn't post about that. So, the weekend before thanksgiving break, I was taking Claire to my house to meet the folks and have a relaxing weekend sort of thing. Unfortunately, Columbus is a shitty place to drive, and I rear-ended an SUV with her Ford Contour while trying to change lanes. Now the court is trying to pin a speeding ticket to me, but that's another pile of crap that I'll get to later. Claire was awesome about it, and did not throw me off the bridge or anything. Wait, I should tell you why I was driving Claire's car to my house: my clutch cable snapped, and I couldn't fix it without my dad's help. The plan was to bring my dad back with us, we'd fix my car, he'd drive my car home, and Claire would drop me off at my house on her way to Chicago to do Thanksgiving with one of her EKO sisters. Anyway, I totaled her car and she didn't kill me, which probably by itself makes her the best girlfriend ever. So we waited at an awesome bar and billiards place and got an inspiring speech about how lucky I am from an anonymous black woman ("See? Your woman happy, you should be happy") while we waited for a friend to pick us up and bring us back to Wooster. I was then sentenced to be the official EKO chaufer, a fair ruling which mostly entailed driving Claire and Tori around, usually to get starbucks.
Because we are busy college students, we never had time to go back to Columbus and take everything out of Claire's car. I suggested that Claire fly out of Indianapolis to go home to California, and we could just stop at Columbus on the way. We tried to leave on Thursday, but not 20 miles out of Wooster do we get stopped for speeding. I was driving 67 in a 60 zone, but luckily, the cop was charmed by my car. He said he only really stopped us because the car was wiggling back and forth, and I told him that it could be it was so full of stuff. He just gave us a warning, and we were on a merry way. For about 5 miles. At that point, my tire went flat. I was able to change the tire fairly quickly on account of being a manly and capable individual. Unfortunately, the spare was also flat. Crazy, right? I mean, what good is a spare tire if there's no air in it? Anyway, I called AAA and got towed to all manner of(read: 2) places to get the right size tire, and, about 6 hours after we left, we were back in Wooster. We decided to try again the next morning, rather than pull in to Indy at midnight.
The drive to Columbus went surprisingly well, and we were transfering stuff from Claire's totaled car to my not-totaled car when Claire asked me to ask them about removing the after-market stereo and sub-woofer(heh, 'woofer'). I walked from the car to the body shop and asked, and the ford guy asked if it was authorized by the insurance company, so I walked from the body shop and asked Claire. She said yes, so I walked back to the body shop and the ford guy said what's the insurance agent's name? Since they could get in trouble for letting us take it, he had to double check, so we called, were put on hold, told to call this person, who told us to call someone else, were put on hold again, and had to call Claire's mother before we determined we could take the stereo. This whole thing puts us back by about 2 hours, and my car was way low to the ground again, but we made it anyway.
In my next post, since I am being called to rake leaves: An invalid ticket, Jury Duty, Auditions, ACTF and possibly more.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
04 December 2008
In which Jonah ponders heroic employment
So maybe someone can help me with this. It's a Heroes question. It occurred to me while Nate and Petey Petrelli were trekking through the jungle and Peter's all like "You're a senator, I'm a nurse" and I thought, 'You haven't been a nurse since the first season.' And then it occurred to me. No one in Heroes has a real job at this point except Nathan. What do the rest of them do for money? Hiro and Ando walked out on their job in the first season and haven't been back since, Peter just putzes around, even Suresh quit his taxi driver job. Granted now most of them either work for the company or for Pinehurst but honestly, those are companies that don't actually do anything - at least not anything that brings in an income. And they probably cost a lot to run. And the guy who could turn things to gold is dead. In this economy, how do the Heroes stay in business? And has Claire like quit school now? Did she graduate? I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the show started out about normal people who had superpowers, but now they're just people who have superpowers. They're mysteriously jobless (or independently wealthy) and spend all their time fighting evil, just like regular superheroes.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
01 December 2008
YOU DRUNK I'M THINK, DON'T YOU?
As promised, my entry of debauchery.
(Return of the Jedi is on right now. It just got to the part where Leia slowly sees the Ewok.)
So, I wasn't going to do anything for Halloween, but I got talked into going to a Halloween party. I went as a person who didn't know she was going to a Halloween party until about an hour before she left. It was okay, except that drunk people kept harassing me to hit on a guy, which was uncomfortable. I didn't do it. They did persuade me to stay longer than I wanted to, but Kimberly rescued me by taking me back to play with the cat.
But the weekend after Thanksgiving I went to a party which was actually fun, and the fact that I enjoyed this more just shows you how dorky I really am: it was an Irish dancing potluck dinner. I brought fruit. And then we (a bunch of the first years and Amity) learned some Irish dancing. Two of the first year girls had taken lessons, and they taught us some Irish group dances, which was really fun, especially after I realized that it was basically how they dance for fun in Jane Austen. I'm pretty sure that they actually often did Irish dances back then. Amity and I started quoting Pride and Prejudice, because we were the most awesome people there. I got along better with the other first years than I usually do-- it's not that they're not perfectly nice, but they don't as a rule quite share my sense of humor, I guess-- so I was glad Amity was there. I totally want to do it again.
A couple of weeks ago, I had just turned in my first paper, and I felt like being social. So I went out to the party for a guy I'd just met passing his special fields. A whole ton of people were there. I let Amity buy my first drink, and then I unwisely let it slip that I'd never really been drunk before. They very insidiously set about remedying that. I had about two and a half rum and cokes and a pretty large shot of whiskey. Everything went swimmingly until about twenty minutes after the shot. I wasn't drunk enough to forget the evening, but I did the next morning look back on it thinking, "Did I really say that?" I tentatively agreed to learn belly dancing and kickboxing, and I quoted Keats, and I flirted a lot more openly than I ever have before. About twenty minutes after the shot of whiskey, I kept going, "This is so weird," because it felt like I had been spinning around in circles for a long time when I had not been doing so at all. I was taken to a second location by my friend Ann to get food. I had fries and ate them, I was repeatedly told, very slowly. Then Ann took me home. I turned on the TV and fell asleep on the couch.
I have since been apologized to by several people for not going to the diner with me and giving me a shot without realizing that I have, like, zero tolerance. It's weird because I think I drank more the time I ended up just tipsy, but I guess I had more to eat then. Anyway, the next morning I had my first hangover, which consisted mostly of just feeling vaguely naseous and fatigued all day.
But I managed to get over it in time to bake Arley a cake for her birthday. She makes cake for everyone, so I thought it would be nice to overcome my fear of the oven and make a cake for her; it turned out really well, I think. Everyone who ate it liked it.
Wow. This entry contains mention of Irish dancing, drunkenness, and cake. That's quite a range.
I might as well add that I accomplished the following non-academic goals over break
1) saw all the people I wanted to see
2) saw all the movies I wanted to see
3) ate at Steak'n'Shake
4) had meatloaf
5) found midrise jeans in the juniors section (Miracle!)
6) got along with my family
7) went to church
It was a break well-spent.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
(Return of the Jedi is on right now. It just got to the part where Leia slowly sees the Ewok.)
So, I wasn't going to do anything for Halloween, but I got talked into going to a Halloween party. I went as a person who didn't know she was going to a Halloween party until about an hour before she left. It was okay, except that drunk people kept harassing me to hit on a guy, which was uncomfortable. I didn't do it. They did persuade me to stay longer than I wanted to, but Kimberly rescued me by taking me back to play with the cat.
But the weekend after Thanksgiving I went to a party which was actually fun, and the fact that I enjoyed this more just shows you how dorky I really am: it was an Irish dancing potluck dinner. I brought fruit. And then we (a bunch of the first years and Amity) learned some Irish dancing. Two of the first year girls had taken lessons, and they taught us some Irish group dances, which was really fun, especially after I realized that it was basically how they dance for fun in Jane Austen. I'm pretty sure that they actually often did Irish dances back then. Amity and I started quoting Pride and Prejudice, because we were the most awesome people there. I got along better with the other first years than I usually do-- it's not that they're not perfectly nice, but they don't as a rule quite share my sense of humor, I guess-- so I was glad Amity was there. I totally want to do it again.
A couple of weeks ago, I had just turned in my first paper, and I felt like being social. So I went out to the party for a guy I'd just met passing his special fields. A whole ton of people were there. I let Amity buy my first drink, and then I unwisely let it slip that I'd never really been drunk before. They very insidiously set about remedying that. I had about two and a half rum and cokes and a pretty large shot of whiskey. Everything went swimmingly until about twenty minutes after the shot. I wasn't drunk enough to forget the evening, but I did the next morning look back on it thinking, "Did I really say that?" I tentatively agreed to learn belly dancing and kickboxing, and I quoted Keats, and I flirted a lot more openly than I ever have before. About twenty minutes after the shot of whiskey, I kept going, "This is so weird," because it felt like I had been spinning around in circles for a long time when I had not been doing so at all. I was taken to a second location by my friend Ann to get food. I had fries and ate them, I was repeatedly told, very slowly. Then Ann took me home. I turned on the TV and fell asleep on the couch.
I have since been apologized to by several people for not going to the diner with me and giving me a shot without realizing that I have, like, zero tolerance. It's weird because I think I drank more the time I ended up just tipsy, but I guess I had more to eat then. Anyway, the next morning I had my first hangover, which consisted mostly of just feeling vaguely naseous and fatigued all day.
But I managed to get over it in time to bake Arley a cake for her birthday. She makes cake for everyone, so I thought it would be nice to overcome my fear of the oven and make a cake for her; it turned out really well, I think. Everyone who ate it liked it.
Wow. This entry contains mention of Irish dancing, drunkenness, and cake. That's quite a range.
I might as well add that I accomplished the following non-academic goals over break
1) saw all the people I wanted to see
2) saw all the movies I wanted to see
3) ate at Steak'n'Shake
4) had meatloaf
5) found midrise jeans in the juniors section (Miracle!)
6) got along with my family
7) went to church
It was a break well-spent.
Friends. Couple. Married. Scientist. Rocks.
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