Managed to get 2,131 new words last night on novel.
Lost my fantasy football game by 4 points.
Not feeling all that great tonight, I’m a little worried that I might be having a set back on the road to recovery from this weekends cold. I’m going to try and get some sleep before this gets any worse.
One month until the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The 11th annual word chase to see if you can wrangle up 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th. They call it a novel, I call it a good chance to get back into the eb and flow of writing and get half a novel done in one month. I’ll be participating, will you? Come on. Give it a chance. You know you always wanted to be a writer. It’s only one month out of your life and you know you’ve got enough of an idea for a book to get 50,000 words down. Join the fun.
I’ll be doing a detective story, crime fiction, whatever you want to call it. Tentatively titled “Crazy, Deadly, Cool”. It’ll be my first attempt at first person narrative and I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for the story at this point. I’m going to take the month of October to frame up a loose outline of the story, flesh out my characters, and toss around some ideas with Doug to get the old juices flowing. The basic idea of the story involves the problems that three women (his gun-happy partner, unstable ex-wife, and a teenage gypsy) cause for our good detective as he attempts to earn a living doing routine casework. I know that’s a pretty crappy synopsis, but I don’t want to give it away until I’ve gotten it nailed down. So that’s what you’re left to work with.
Now, go on. Go get yourself ready, there’s only a month of planning left. Later.
So I’m sitting in the hotel eating my Domino’s Pizza when the phone rings. A pleasant enough female voice ask’s which room this is. I tell her. She says that she got a call asking her to call my room. I tell her that it wasn’t me and it wasn’t anybody else because I’ve been here two weeks. She says, ok. Then asks me if maybe I want a little company. I decline politely and wish her a good night.
I just got called by a whore. An actual whore, prostitute, call girl, hooker. I don’t know how to feel about that. Does this kind of crazy shit happen to anyone else? Just thought I’d share. Later.
In my efforts to stay in the Tallahassee area so as to avoid a repeat of last weekend’s T-Mobile fiasco (I was at St. George Island when their AC went down.), I went to another movie this afternoon. This time around I saw G.I. Joe.
This is not the G.I. Joe I grew up with. That Joe was the size of a Barbie and had fuzzy hair and beard and looked a lot more like the U.S. Military soldiers than this Joe does. This Joe is based on the little Star Wars sized action figures that my kids had. A Joe that was far more technically advanced than my good old boys were. The movie was pretty much exactly what I would expect. It was a CGI spectacle. A rock ‘em, sock ‘em action fest. Damn near one big explosion with just a dash of story to make it all make sense. Not make it plausible mind you, just make it make sense. I can’t say that I was impressed. The CG was exactly what we’ve come to expect from this sort of movie, good in places, not so much in others. I was entertained and I’d go see another one if/when they make it. Like I said, this isn’t my Joe, but the kids in the audience seemed to like it.
I only have two real complaints about the film, given what it was, a popcorn-action adventure. One, does everything have to blow up? I mean really! Can’t some stuff just get crushed and broken? At some point in one of these movies I expect to see somebody crumple up a piece of note paper and throw it over their shoulder and have it take out a skyscraper with a huge fireball. Two, Marlon Wayans needs to settle it down and play it a little less for the laughs. I’m okay with a little bit of this sort of thing, after all it is for the kids, but come on. The guy ends up reminding me of Jar Jar Binks the way he over reacts to everything and goes out of his way to get the laugh. I blame the director. His character was alright and could have been good, but they chose to go over the top with it. Everything was just as I would have expected.
I enjoyed this way more than I did District 9, but I can’t say that it was great. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that hit all my buttons to be considered great. But in all fairness, I don’t really like movies; they always leave me thinking about how I would have done it had I been in charge. Maybe the Count of Monte Cristo (2002) would be the last movie that hit all the right buttons for me. Later.
I just got back from watching District 9… I was disappointed. I didn’t have any real expectations going in, just saw that it was getting better reviews than G.I. Joe and it looked interesting. So the aliens are bugs who live in a South African slum. The aliens were well done and the weapons made a big fancy mess out of the stuff they were fired upon. But I was bored by the film, annoyed by the camera work, and found nobody to sympathize with in the whole movie. And to top it off; it looks like they’re suiting up for a sequel. You can count me into the ‘don’t care’ crowd for that one.
The reviews are comparing this film to Blade Runner and Alien. Two movies that are good, this one’s not. They’re saying it’s got vision, grit, and realism. But I found it boring, slow, and not at all compelling; a complete waste of my ten dollars. I should have gone to see G.I. Joe, at least that movie knows that it’s all about the popcorn and action and doesn’t try to be something that people don’t care about. I’m annoyed.