Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Your little hopes and dreams."
¤ Usage: "Poor fellow, his little hopes and dreams have all be smashed."
¤ Origin: Quipped by a whore, or pre-op transgender man, or a sociopath, or some other lowlife who was engaged in a vicious verbal battle with another lowlife guest on the Jerry Springer show
¤ Notes: While the Jerry Springer show is generally pretty lacking in opportunities for intellectual improvement, you do tend to hear some funny jokes, of the personal insult type.  This was one of the best.  One loser was arguing with another loser, and when one said something about how she'd loved her husband, whom the other lowlife had stolen away, lowlife #1 replied, "Bitch, I don't care about your little hopes and dreams!"

You'll find it applicable to almost every situation in life.  It's the "little" that really makes it work, since that just so perfectly and cruelly diminishes whatever claim to importance the other person might previously have had. -- February 20, 2004

o, I have returned. A day later than agreed upon, but explanations and other general foolishness will follow below.

First of all, I just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out what was screwed up with the archives; eventually realizing that I had overwritten the update from Thursday the 26th over the one from Tuesday the 24th.  I searched Google and AllTheWeb for it in their archives, but neither had it.  I'm sure I blogged that day, but I have no memory of doing so.  The only thing I have from it is the QotD from the temporary archive page I store them on, and it was this:

 Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up.
--John A. Appleman

If anyone can find a copy of the "Tuesday February 23, 2004" daily blog, perhaps in your browser cache (though it's unlikely, since you probably overwrote the fine the next day when you checked back to the same index.shtml main page here) I would greatly appreciate if you could send it to me so I could paste it into the archive page and save it forever and ever.

I have no idea what other content was in the blog that day; the price I pay for doing 5 long versions of this every week.  I actually thought that perhaps that was the day I talked about the Around the World in 80 Days trailer, but looking back I see that one was all the way back on the 19th.  Time flies.

Anyway, the weekend was pretty good. I'll write about it in some length for Thursday's blog. At least that's the plan.  I realize that I still haven't gotten to the whole "dad's visit and dinner in SF" blog, and he was here a week and a half ago, but like I said, time flies.  And generally in a bad way.

I got to board for several hours on Saturday, Malaya took lessons in the morning and hopped and slid down the bunny slope several times after that, and she enjoyed it. She didn't get coordinated enough to stand up for long, but she loved the brief seconds she was able to stay on her feet, and wants to get her own board and better-fitting equipment and wants to go again. In reality, she'd do just as well on a long, gradual slope, since she really wants/needs to just practice standing up and sliding down on something where there aren't 50 other noobs getting in the way, and that she doesn't have to ride a lift up to, or drive all the 3.5+ hours to Tahoe to do.  So we might find some closer place where people just sled and such, and drive up there sometime.

Basically, she just needs to get better before she can appreciate the benefits of the long, steep hills and ski lifts that resorts offer, since for now she'd just be on the bunny hill on her butt most of the time, and I'd be far away up at the top of the mountain on the black diamond slopes.

She'd never skateboarded or surfed or done anything where balance required the feet side by side, and I was afraid she'd not catch on at all and would never want to go again.  So I'm pretty happy that she's interested in it at all, despite the frustration and butt bruises of her first time, and I can imagine that perhaps by next year we'd be able to sort of snowboard together, if not the steepest and fastest of slopes that I enjoy shooting down.

Anyway, I'll talk more about my boarding next time.

We got home, me driving all the way (up and back) in our rented Jeep Cherokee.  It didn't drive poorly, to be honest.  I like sports cars, but in the past I'd driven an older model Toyota SUV, and one of those huge Suburbans at my grandparents', and a small U-haul truck during a couple of apartment moves, and none of those handled very well.  They steer when you turn the wheel, but a Suburban and U-Haul truck are boat-like; with the response very distant and floating from the steering wheel.  It's not a real pleasant experience.

The new Jeep Cherokee from Enterprise Rental was not bad though.  Nothing like the handling on my old Saturn SL-1, but it had a decent turning radius, I could park it in a regular parking space without any trouble, it did curves on the freeway pretty well even at 85MPH, and with four people and suitcases inside.  It had nice pick up also, a powerful motor, and I liked the half dozen power seat controls and other amenities.  I wouldn't want to drive one every day, but if I had a mid-sized SUV for the cargo/passenger space and only drove it once in a while, I wouldn't be too unhappy. FUH2 or not.

Sunday we slept in and lounged around the room, and finally left the hotel around 11.  We drove out of Tahoe and stopped at another resort on the way, one with intertubing, and after a couple lackluster hours of that, got back on the road and arrived home around seven  Malaya and me were both pretty tired from the exertion of snowboarding the day before, and the drive, and not sleeping that much in the hotel, so we just laid around and watched some TV (including the Oscars, as detailed below), ate lots, and read.  I polished off Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris, (yes, blog about that at some point) and stayed up until about 1am to do it, and only then did I turn on the computer and check email and do some catching up surfing.

I was tired and it got late soon and I was in no mood to write, which is why I didn't blog at all on Monday.  Try and forgive me.

Tuesday I slept about 10 hours, and felt pretty good when I got up.  We had to run a bunch of errands, returning the rental SUV and picking up my car from the dealer where I'd left it to get some work done while we were out of town, along with other stuff, but I managed to spend some hours surfing and blogging about it.  I also had some really good ideas for my novel while lying sleepless in the hotel bed (for about 4 hours Friday night, and then a couple more Saturday morning), and filled three note pages with notes on my ideas, and took the time to type them in and elaborate some Monday evening.

It was pretty cool; I was lying in bed Friday night, unable to sleep with the snoring (not from Malaya), and as my mind wandered over various absurd things such as me winning several thousand dollars playing Texas Hold 'em, or doing impossible snowboarding tricks in the halfpipe, I thought to myself, "Quit thinking about all that bullshit and think about your novel."

And I did.

That night I thought a great deal about some of the later chapters in the book, and how events need to unfold towards the conclusion. And it's a really cool conclusion, if I do say so myself.  Surprises, satisfying ending, body count, etc. But even though I know basically how it'll end, I don't have all of the details worked out, and I keep thinking of new things to add in, more plot twists or complications or details to include, etc.  And I thought of some great ones that night.  If I'd had a lap top and there weren't 3 other people trying (and mostly succeeding) to sleep in the room with me, I'd have gotten up and spent an hour or two typing them in.

Saturday morning we were up early to get to Heavenly by 8:30 so Malaya and one of the two other friends on the trip with us could get their snowboards rented, and since I only got to sleep around 4 or 5am, I was dragging, and certainly not lying around in bed for long that morning.

However on Sunday, we had no hurry to get up, and I had gotten to sleep by midnight, though I slept about two hours and woke up and laid there thinking for about an hour in the middle of the night, before managing to fall back to sleep after that.  I woke up for good around 7, when the bright morning sun filled the room from the wall-length sliding glass door with the lake view (the lake 30 feet away, all of that 30 feet covered in very puffy, light, thigh-deep snow), and since everyone else was still asleep, I snuggled up to Malaya and thought about the novel some more.

And much to my surprise and chagrin, I thought of an absolutely perfect idea for... the sequel.

Yes, sequel, that dirty six-letter word that I have so often maligned other authors for delving into, when they've clearly exhausted all creative possibilities in their story world and just want a paycheck.  But see, mine is different since um... I'm doing the whole thing for the paycheck, and not just tacking on a sequel?  Because I thought of the sequel while I'm still less than 1/4 of the way through the first novel?  Because I'm special and the rules I apply to others don't apply to me?

All of the above.

Anyway, it's a really great idea for a sequel, if I do say so myself.  As I'd said in the past, I had no interest in doing lame sequels just to fill up more pages or humor fans who didn't want to read my other work, but I can easily see myself doing this sequel, though I'd like to write another novel on some totally other subject between Gathering of Prophecy (which will probably go 2 or 3 books anyway, as long as it's going in manuscript form) and the sequel (which might be a trilogy in of itself).  Yes, I'm a goddamned dirty whore.

But honestly, it's a great sequel idea, set some years later, and it's a sequel worth writing.  None of that "further adventures of" bullshit; the world has been massively changed by events in the first novel/trilogy, and things as they were in the first 3 novels are no more.  That's what makes me interested in doing it, that it would be very different in plot and events and overall feel, yet it's in the same world.  A world that's been changed in ways the reader of the first novels would never imagine.  And that's a cliche, but it's also true in this case.  I almost want to start on the sequels right now, the concept for them is so cool.

Unfortunately, I need to finish the first novel(s) before I even think about the later stuff, and I don't have any idea how the overall plot of the later stuff would go.  I just know the basic concept to start things off with and more or less how they'd progress towards the conclusion.  Pity I can't tell you all without being a total spoiler, and even if I did it wouldn't mean anything to you, since no one but me knows how the first book(s) will go, so all of the cool twists and changes would require extensive explanation.  Explanation that will be best given over the course of two or three 700 page novels.

Patience, my friends.

Besides the blogging and the story idea writing, I'm dying to get back to work on the novel now, since I'm very close to finishing my revision of the first 3 long chapters, and I want to get to writing the new stuff, which is so much cooler than the stuff in the first 3 chapters. I've felt super full of energy all day Monday, and even though it's past dawn Tuesday morning, I feel like I could just keep typing until noon.  Or later.  Getting over a cold and sleeping damn near 11 hours the night before will do that to me.

But I must stop, since I must go run errands with Malaya later today, and I've already typed enough stuff for about the next 3 blogs, on top of the rest of this one.  If I don't get about 25 pages done on the novel later today and late Wednesday night, I will be very angry with myself.

Catching up on my surfing and blogging about a lot of it on Monday, I found myself writing about various movie things at some length.  Here they are, in no particular order.  We've got Oscar comments and photos, The Passion comments, movie trailer discussion, and the infamous "much, much more."

The Punisher?

I have to say that I'm surprised to ever find myself writing about this one. I thought the early pictures of the star looked pouty and ridiculous, and the teaser trailer was crap, but I have to admit that the full trailer for The Punisher is pretty damn good, and growing on me with each viewing.

The revenge picture is about the oldest genre in Hollywood, but it's still fun.  Most people love to see some nice guy/girl get screwed over, and then take his/her bloody, but oh-so-justified revenge. And that's really all this one is about, minus the cheesy cuteness that QT couldn't resist putting into Kill Bill.  I want to see The Punisher get hurt, and then I want to see him blow shit up, fight, and kill motherfuckers.  And really, is that so bad?  Must you deny me that simple pleasure?

The Punisher looks like the early Schwarzenegger movies, the ones before he got too famous and tried to become a comedy star, and way before he got too old and became stretched-looking.  Trashy films like Conan the Barbarian and Raw Deal and Commando.  Just a big, muscular, tough guy beating or slicing or shooting the shit out of various people who deserved to have the shit beaten or sliced or shot out of them.

I'd do a whole trailer analysis as I recently did for the misguided Around the World in 80 Days or the disastrous Garfield the Movie trailers, but The Punisher trailer is solid.  True, the last minute of tired-sounding Nü Metal would have been better with music that was less tired and less identical to every other Nü Metal song ever recorded, but the opening with the acoustic guitar and folk song is nice, and the editing is good, and the action scenes are nice, and the whole plot isn't given away and all the best stunts aren't shown and you're left wondering how he's going to kill so many bad guys and how he's going to beat that gigantic Russia guy who dents the barrel of his gun.

Plus, once you watch it and enjoy it, you'll note the total absence of any cheesy voice over narration, and the almost total absense of John Travolta's puffy face.  The voice over is my personal pet peeve, since one of those happy idiots talking is always a sure sign of a shit trailer, and any 2.5 minutes of movie promotion that can be put together using nothing but sound effects and movie dialogue is almost certainly the product of some talent from the film maker, and a decent movie to work with.

Speaking of Kill Bill 2 (sort of) the new Bride poster is especially sweet. And I think I've said that about a movie poster about 3x in my entire life.  Even the List poster is pretty damn cool, now that you mention it.

Speaking of movies and pictures (sort of) the Oscars went off Sunday night, and I saw about the last half of the show. As I blogged about going in, my only real rooting concern was for Peter Jackson to win best director for his monumental achievement in helming Return of the King, though of course he deserved it partially for doing all 3 LotR movies in 3 years. And he got it.  RotK was nominated for 10 other Oscars, and it won them all, 11 in total, the most ever wins for a single film in every award it was nominated for.  RotK also tied the all time record of 11 wins, held by Titanic and Ben Hur, both of which had more nominations, since they got some acting nods also. This actually made for sort of a boring show, oddly enough:

Although "LOTR" piled up 11 Oscars, it was as if the film was such a complex achievement of special effects that the human elements got taken for granted. The result was that the middle of the telecast dragged somewhat as one platoon of "LOTR" technical artists after another marched onstage to thank director Jackson and long lists of their colleagues.

Next Xmas is going to suck without a new LotR movie to look forward to, eh?

To complete my late and basically worthless Oscar coverage, here are a few photos from the event, with my snarky captions added.

Boo yah!

So, cold night, eh Angie?

You can't see it so well in this photo, and I couldn't find any others with larger, clearer views of Tom Cruise's face at the Oscars, but he looked creepy.  Not at first glance, but when you consider that the man is going to be 42 in July... shouldn't he have some wrinkles or something?  He's a smooth as an android, and he looks like the same smirking 20 y/o frat boy he's looked like since Top Gun.  I suppose that's nothing too different than half the actresses in Hollywood, or say Dick Clark, but it's a bit eerie when you think about it.

I wonder if one day cosmetic surgery will have progressed to the point that they can age and un-age a person at will?  Sort of like how Britney's boobies can inflate and deflate by 2 or 3 cup sizes, and stars will routinely put in or take out a forehead's worth of wrinkles, depending on the role.  Need to play a lawyer?  Dye the sideburns white and throw in some crow's feet.  Playing a college kid?  Stretch the wrinkles away and cut it short, and you're there.

Tom Cruise's face... the wave of the future.

As for his appearance, he's obviously career savvy.  He's said to be really pissed that he didn't get a nomination for The Last Samurai, thinking it would be his Braveheart. Or at least Dances with Wolves.  And then it was a modest box office success that was so quickly and completely overshadowed by Lord of the Rings Part III that it's all but totally forgotten already, just two months later. And yet he still shows up for the Oscars and presents an award, though you know it must turn his guts inside out, since he knows the importance of keeping his face on TV and in the public eye.  Regardless of whether or not he got his latest round of botox a week or two too close to the big night.  Perhaps he didn't get the news about the Oscars being a month earlier than usual this year?

And on the other hand, we've got Billy Crystal, who shows weird vanity by having every wrinkle removed from the nose up, while leaving those strange baggy protrusions on the lower cheeks, and sporting unpleasantly-thinning hair on top to go with it.  Whenever he stood in front of a non-black background, he appeared to be wearing some sort of dark brown halo around his bald head.  I found it only slightly less eerie than the lineless, taut skin on this nearly 57 year old man's forehead.

In other movie news, while I'm uninterested in Mel Gibson's new Jesusnuff film, I'm obviously pretty alone in that, since it made a fortune over the weekend, and it had cleared $125m through Sunday, in just 5 days.  After the big opening day I figured it would do okay over the weekend, and then drop off quickly, what with everyone who had any interest in it having seen it, and the word about how horrendously violent and cruel it is out.  But I didn't think it would make anywhere near the money it's made, and I'm probably wrong about the legs it'll show also.

Viewing it is like a religious experience, no pun intended, and I won't be surprised if true believers go to see it again and again, even if they don't really enjoy it or like it.  This isn't the best analogy of all time, but Scientologists are/were forced/encouraged to go out and buy additional copies of master kook L. Ron Hubbard's source novel Dianetics, over and over again, just to keep it on the best seller list, sort of as a way to tithe to their church/cult.  I can easily see The Passion following the same path, as churches urge their members to see it several times, and people simply take it upon themselves to see it.  In fact, the extremely bloody and unpleasant nature of it might actually help the box office in a way, since it's like a penance or a scourging of your own mind and sensibilities to sit through the stomach-twisting gore time and again.  A sort of time-consuming, objectively foolish thing, like saying 50 Hail Marys, that makes you feel like you've erased some sins afterwards. Not that I'd know personally.

On the topic of the film and its hyper violence, lots of ultra right wing types, people who generally spent almost as much time decrying violence on TV as they do sex on TV are giving The Passion a free pass.  For example.

Never has the division between the elites and the masses been more evident.  Many good things are happening: the smack-in-the-face that the public awarded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake; the public revulsion to the anti-marriage campaign; the firing of Howard Stern from many radio outlets; and, most of all, the public’s embrace of ‘The Passion of the Christ.’

So The Passion, which most critics agree is the most violent movie ever made, is just great; fun for the whole family. So say people who condemn every other violent action movie ever, since in those cases, violence is bad. As is some smutty talk on the radio, and anything resembling sex or nudity on TV. True, seeing an R-rated movie is an option and it's not coming into your home, but then again, TVs and radios do have power switches and multiple channels to select a program from, when last I checked.

The whole thing about The Passion that I just don't grasp is why it's so important for devout Christians, Catholics especially, to support or embrace it. I mean yeah, Mel's hardcore right Catholic, and he made it, and it's Jesus and all of that.  But so what?

It's a movie version of partially/largely fictional events in the Bible, showing Jesus dying in a horrible way.  Why is that inspirational or enjoyable to watch?

If someone made a very graphic film about the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, with all of the sex and violence and horror and virtually zero redeeming messages of peace or love or compassion, would they all rave about how incredible it was, and how it reinforced their faith in the Bible? Would all the violence and sex and grisly death scenes get a free pass from the moralists since that's how it was described in the Bible? (Hypothetically, I haven't read it and don't know exactly how that destruction is presented.)

Is it because Mel gave so much lip service to faithful Biblical rendition of events?  Because he's a true believer and unapologetically so?  Because it's gotten criticized for being anti-Semitic and Christians are never happier than when they can feel persecuted?

I don't really know, but the fever to adopt this movie as something special and amazing has been palpable, and it puzzles me. After all, no one is really denying that the Romans whipped and tortured and crucified early Christians. And no one is denying that that's a horribly painful way to die. But why do people want to see it?

Christians did things as bad or worse during the centuries of Inquisition, and with as little or less cause; should people cry out for movies focusing on that; movies that exactly recreate the crushing by stones, burning by irons, starving in cages, etc?  Should people who aren't Christian or who dislike Christians make such a movie, and then rave about how wonderful and life-fulfilling it is to see the incredibly realistic depictions of burning and torture and branding as accused witches are tortured and raped to death by priests in spiffy robes?

Also, I've never really seen that Jesus made a great sacrifice.  I mean even if you accept the Biblical version of events exactly, and Mel's version as well, where was the choice for Jesus? He was breaking the law with heresy, knowingly, and he got caught, and he got punished, and he died in agony. Just like hundreds or thousands of others in his time.  There are various miracles ascribed to him in the Bible, but I don't believe he had superpowers of combat or battle prowess.  He was all about peace and love and turning the other cheek, right?  So once the Romans had him, he was doomed; he couldn't escape, he couldn't fight and win, he couldn't do anything but get beaten and tortured and hung up like a well-secured wall calendar.  Where's the heroism in that? People get killed in nearly as nasty a fashion all the time in various civil wars around the world, in Africa, in the Middle East.  Hell, Haitian policemen got similar stuff within the last two weeks. Are they renowned and worshipped for suffering horribly before they died? Or are we just sorry about things, and damn glad they ain't us?

It's not like Jesus was Superman, with the ability to break free at any moment, or heal his own wounds (and eat M&Ms again!) or something similar.  He was mortal, as weak as any of us, despite his divine origins, and he died like any of us would in his situation. True, he took it like a man and stood up and didn't renounce his beliefs, and won over some of the crowd with his bravery in agony, just like Mel did in Braveheart, but it's not like he chose to die and wanted it to happen so he could be written about afterwards.

In the whole Bible story he rises from the dead a few days later (healed, I guess?) and goes down to Hell to save all of the true souls who had died before he died, and were therefore not properly baptized and therefore could have never entered Heaven (or something like that), but I gather that none of that is in The Passion. And while that's the whole guts of Christianity, believing that Jesus died for your sins and then rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, that part is entirely myth and legend, as far as I know.  I mean all of it is, or isn't, depending on your beliefs, but the crucifixions and tortures and such are historical fact, though whether or not there really was a Jesus is still open to debate.

But it's not like there are thousands of witnesses to the rolling back of the stone and the risen Christ; just stories about various ex-apostles and such who weren't sure they saw him, and anyway, those are just stories, very myth-like and clearly written hundreds of years later.  I don't think any historian would give them much credence, objectively speaking. True believers of course take them on faith, since they were dictated by God or angels or something, but if we're going on historical evidence, the verifiable stuff pretty well ends with Jesus in a crypt.

I'm not sure what my point is here; I'm just rambling. I've just always found it odd that Jesus is revered for dying in agony, like thieves and other criminals did back in those days, and I find it very odd that people find their faith strengthened or reinforced by seeing a super violent movie about capital punishment as practiced 2000 years ago.

It's like Malaya has been annoyed by for weeks.  The circular, illogical reasoning of the devout.

"I believe in the Bible and I believe in Jesus and here's a movie that shows how horribly he died, therefore the Bible stories about him dying must be true."

Some logic. You know, the people turning into werewolves in Underworld were damn bloody and realistic also. Does that mean they're true also? Plus, werewolves are much cooler than a bloody guy on a cross.  Even in a movie as sloppy as Underworld.

No, not my best analogy.

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