Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Review: Parasite

At first I thought Parasite was the perfect movie to watch on Amazon. Sure, Gary would take advantage of the home setting by giving it a commentary track, but who cares if he talks during a foreign film? It’s subtitled. 

One half hour in to the movie he announced, “I hate this. There’s —.”

“No one to like,” I sighed. This is a deal-breaker for Gary. “Go take a nap. I’m not forcing you to watch this.”

”No, no, I’ll gut it out. For you.” Our love only carried him for another half hour, when he announced, “This is awful. Why was this nominated for an Academy Award?”

“Go nap. Seriously. I’m fine here.”

He came back after an hour nap and watched the end. The end didn’t revise his opinion. It generally left me cold as well. I don’t know if I would have agreed with the audience in Canne and awarded it the prize. Perhaps if I had seen it without Gary’s counterpoint of negativity I might have liked it.

The Novel: The Judgement

On the whole ... I liked parts of it. The writing is really poetic in places. Still, no one needs a chapter about the poetry of an oil strike any more than they need a chapter on how to get ambergris out of a white whale.

Characters - Perhaps a few too many, and the sheriff’s eyes were described as pig-like more than once, but they all had at least two dimensions. The good guy’s a bit too good, and he seems to run only on emotional extremes, but the main female character Aggie is really well-developed. The villain is probably the most interesting, of course, as they often are.

Setting  - Well, I would have liked to have been reminded it was 1930 between chapters 1 and 14. And there are two towns mentioned: One in Arkansas and one in Oklahoma, and it’s essential you know where you are because flashbacks are in Arkansas. That’s confusing.

Conflict - Drinking vs the demons: guilt, fear, self-delusion. 

Plot - Instead of a bell curve of rising action, climax, falling action, it’s a flat line until three fourths in, when there’s a steep spike upward, a plateau, and then an immediate and even sharper plummet down. (“The trial took three days ... THE END.”)

Resolution - I’ve written essays for junior high that had more thought put into the resolution. 

Theme - Drinking is bad, don’t do it.

So am I doing anything with the novel?

Well, I want to, because parts of it are good. The parts that let you picture yourself in the action, those are great. The parts most writers hate: what my one fiction professor described as “getting out of the apartment and down to the car” — those parts are actually pretty enjoyable.

Hoo-boy, that plot though. Entire chapters need to be gutted and swapped around so that something actually happens. Do I have enough imagination for that? I once was able to daydream for hours, in my youth.

Now of course, I worry for hours. Is that the same?

Sounds like a project. Hm. 

 

Weekly Paint Progess: 1/16

This week the vases went from this craziness ...

to this intense drug trip ...

But then I did some research and found out what I did wrong. I should have started with an underpainting using opaque colors (or opaque black and white, like I did with the teacups). I knew that, but I thought I could do multiple layers of transparent colors, as you do with watercolors. The problem is how to make them pastel. If you lighten by mixing it white with a transparent (like I tried with the pink pitcher) that makes it opaque. 

So then, before I threw it in the trash I put opaque on what I had and I got this:

What I’ve ended up doing is to paint it all backward, transparent then opaque instead of the right way. But I kind of like it. I think I need to add depth and color to the pink pitcher and tidy up the top corners of the right pitcher. 

Of course, given that I put a thick opaque layer over a thin transparent layer it will peel and crack and not last for centuries, but that is a blessing.

The Novel: Chapter 18

At three pages long, it reads strongly of “Good people are alive, bad people are caught, gotta wrap this up because the paper goes to press at 3 p.m.” 

It also has a touch of It’s a Wonderful Life, because Our Hero Joe has his long hospital stay paid for by the cast of colorful characters, so that’s sweet. Then he gets engaged to the Plucky Waitress Mary and continues his life in the oil fields, the end.

Literally, it has “THE END” centered and capitalized. Across the decades you can hear him think “Finally, I can say I finished my novel. Time for a drink.”

Review: 1917 (no Spoilers)

• Evidently the escape to the movies continues into 2020. I am afraid to calculate how much money I could have saved if I hadn’t seen any movies, or if I had only seen good movies. I wouldn’t call this movie an escape, though. 
• Who knew war could be so ugly and so pretty? The cinematography was lovely. 
• After the movie I was in the Des Peres Cinema bathroom, washing my hands. Each sink had an automated soap dispenser, automated faucet, and I swear to you, an individual automated hand air dryer. I had just spent two hours thinking nothing but “Thank God I’m not a soldier,” so having my own personal hand dryer was quite the contrast.

The Novel: Chapter 17

Okay, Jerry truly must have seen the original ending of Fatal Attraction, because in that ending Anne Archer finds tapes that prove Michael Douglas didn’t kill Glenn Close (when she actually committed suicide), and then here, Hero Joe’s friend finds the diary entry of the dead Moxie that discusses the evil plot to kill Aggie and frame Joe. 

(I dimly remember diaries of dead people aren’t admissible in court, because you can’t cross-examine the dead person. Upon further research I find that point’s iffy.)

I was looking forward to the trial, but this is all that’s there: “The trial took three days. Flick testified for the  prosecution and got off with life in prison...” and then it lists each character and what punishment they got — as if it were a newspaper article. 

He’ll devote a chapter to an oil well or snorting coke, but the climax of his plot gets a paragraph. Makes no sense.

Weekly Paint Progess: 1/9

This week the vases went from this ...

to this ...

This is terrifying. It has all gone too dark. I know I’m supposed to paint from dark to light, but I don’t know how I make that a pink pitcher now instead of a red pitcher. Screw it, it’s a red pitcher now. I wonder if a layer of “transparent” white will fix anything or if it will make things muddy. 

Bah! Looks like I’m going to make dark Fauvist pitchers, see how that turns out, and then I’m starting over again the way I did with the teacups, with a black and white opaque painting. 

An Unexpected Review: Cats

Gary heard Cats was a train-wreck, cringe-worthy, an abomination. My only guess is that the makers of Cats have publicized its flaws virally so rubberneckers like my husband want to see it out of morbid curiosity.

“I’m not spending money to see a bad movie,” I said. Yet still, he wore me down and two tickets were purchased, because I will spend money to avoid an argument.

I was influenced by this review, that characterizes the movie as bad, but so in-your-face unapologetically bad that it becomes appealing.

We agreed to nudge each other if we saw anything really bad. There was a lot of nudging.

We couldn’t get lost in the movie because some graphic artists hadn't been given enough time to perfect their work. The artist who made Ian McClellan into a cat had enough time.

But then the main cat looks like a cat wearing a rubber human mask. So, I never truly suspended my disbelief. 

Oh hai. Do you has a flavor?

The whole thing culminates in a reprise of Memory, and of course when the music began to build my eyes began to leak, but at the same time I began to laugh. I laughed at two things: first, it was sung by a CAT with a FACE and second, said cat chewed that scenery like Meow Mix. Way over the top.

I felt a little bad for having criticized the young man at Little Women who did not share the feelings of the rest of the audience. People around me were still sniffling when the same CAT flies off in a HOT AIR BALLOON (spoilers). I just clamped my hand over my mouth so no one could tell I was simultaneously laughing and crying. I hope it looked like I was just quietly sobbing.

Afterward I did my usual post-movie research. The musical was a second draft of a song-writing exercise based partly on first drafts of unpublished poems (so I suppose it’s right that the movie was still in draft form when it got to the theaters). I wondered why Judi Dench allowed herself to be filmed in a cat costume and then read the history of the stage musical and found she had been slated to be Grisabella until she had an injury.

Elbow-nudging now forgotten, Gary has decided he loved it, partly because he has a crush on the cat-human hybrid above. 

The Novel: Chapter 16

Okay, chapter 16 is 20 pages long instead of the measly 4 pages we got in chapter 15. And it has three (count ‘em, three) murders: Aggie, Aggie’s Friend in Drunkenness and Innocent Bystander Moxie, and an attempt on Our Hero Joe.

Aggie’s murder scene is unnecessarily unpleasant. The villain lights a cigar and tells Aggie that if she can smoke it until it’s ash, she can live, but if she spits it out before it’s burned down all the way he’ll shoot her. (Spoiler alert! She dies.) One of my earliest unpleasant memories of Jerry is of him holding my asthmatic brother down and making him smoke a cigarette until his lips turned blue. We hate the villain already, it seems perverse to add extra cruelty. That scene might need to go away.

Dark. It’s a dark chapter. However, when Joe is taken to the hospital to be pronounced dead, he isn’t quite dead yet, so we will see what happens.

Epic Party

Friend #2 threw an epic surprise 50th birthday party for her husband.

If you have forgotten, here’s a recap of Friend #2 - she’s the friend who introduced me to the band Cowboy Mouth, has the identical twin girls, and I threw her a surprise party about a decade and a half ago, if not more. 

I am so ashamed of that surprise party now. It was in the great room at my house. We ate gumbo from a restaurant, there was no music I can recall, and there was a giant snowstorm so a) attendance was limited and b) she decided to stay home. (Her husband, understandably, spoiled the surprise to get her there). I don’t even remember if there was a cake at the party I had for Friend #2. Oh wait, there was — that was the cake I sprinkled powdered sugar on, only to discover it was actually cornstarch.

Here’s how Friend #2 throws a surprise party:

She rented out a huge party room at a barbecue place.

She fed us from a full barbecue buffet with appetizers and dessert, and liquor.

She hired the lead guitarist from Cowboy Mouth to provide the music. There he was, John Thomas, in his hat, playing China and some covers and some original work, for hours, while we all sat around and chatted and ate barbecue. He even played a slow version of Everybody Loves Jill. I’ve never seen this song without the crowd volley of Red Dairy Queen spoons. I tossed a white plastic spoon casually across the table so tradition was maintained.

And then, her husband’s high school friend, who has his own professional band, got up there and played some music with John Thomas Griffith of Cowboy Mouth, and then the birthday boy got loose enough to join them and they played a while as a trio. Imagine, making music with your old friend and the songwriter/guitarist from from your favorite band.

Through all this the husband remained happy but dry-eyed. He only got teary when he saw his grade-school best friend, who his wife brought in from god knows where.

It was hands-down the most epic party I have ever attended. It was the party to end all parties.

To a Boy On a Date Who Needs Some Guidance (No Little Women spoilers)

Dear young man,

You were right next to me at a screening of Little Women. On your other side was a perfectly lovely young woman who enjoyed the movie. She cried at the sad parts, laughed at the funny parts, gasped at the gaspy parts (naughty Amy!)

You, however, are a psychopath, because your reaction to all those parts was to sigh dramatically, shake your head, hurl yourself back in your seat, and check your very bright Apple Watch.

You even sighed at a tender part during which I held my husband’s hand because HE WAS CRYING like a normal human being. He was not sighing, or clutching his brow, and he did not turn on his phone for twenty minutes so he could plan where to eat after.

During the credits I tried to catch your girlfriend’s eye as you were leaving so I could pantomime “break” (pencil-breaking motion) “up” (pointing up) but she was wiping her eyes so she didn’t see me. 

You sighed so loudly that the people in front of you noticed. I know, because we discussed you after the credits. You radiated that level of drama. Why would a teenager so uncomfortable with displays of emotion broadcast his feelings so publicly?

Also, how can you not love Little Women, you misguided boy? It’s like the last Star Wars movie. You love it for what it is, not how it is. And it was excellent. 

The Novel: Chapter 15

In this four-page chapter, Aggie the Drunk Cokehead gets sad, finds the gun that the sheriff forced on Our Hero Joe, and takes it with her. 

It’s a little like the original ending of Fatal Attraction. You just know what’s going to happen next: her suicide will look like a murder. It’s set in the 1930s. Could they detect gunpowder residue in the 30s?

I can look this up.

Aha - I bet that’s why it was suddenly 1930 a chapter ago. Wikipedia says the earliest gunshot residue analysis was “introduced in 1933.”

It ends with a diary entry from a minor character, Moxie, the guy Aggie drank with in the chapter that waxes poetic about drinking.

Four pages, though. Either Jerry was drunk or he just finished reading A Death In the Family, with its one-sentence chapter. That was the book with the one-sentence chapter, right? Or was it As I Lay Dying?

I can look this up.

Why, yes it was As I Lay Dying, because A Death in the Family is the unfinished novel James Agee left behind when he died suddenly and someone else had to edit it into a usable form. They both have death in the title, that’s what confused me. Sure. Why else would my subconscious be tossing unfinished novel A Death in the Family around? 

Weekly Paint Progress: 1/2

This week, the vases went from this:

to this ...

I really need to soften those sharp angles that showed up in the fronts of the two right vases.

After adding the yellow, which took five minutes, I switched to another canvas and tried to do something opaque of the same subject. It was so, so bad that it is in the trash. It is beige-shadow-on-top-of-a-black-background bad. So bad I don’t know why I am telling you about it. 

Really bad.

(pauses, roots through trash)

Isn’t that just unspeakable? It’s crazy. Crazy-pink-cast-shadow-on-black-background crazy. Irredeemable. All I can think is that I am subconsciously purging all my mistakes in the opaque version. 

So, that was a peek at the 25% of my painting that is truly awful.

The Novel: Chapter 14

“The Number 1 Blaylock oil rig, drilling in the south extension of the Five Trees field, blew out at 2:30 P.M. on November 15, 1930.”

Jerry is channeling his inner journalist with this lead for chapter 14. Did you say, as I did, “Wait, what? This takes place in 1930?” The date was mentioned once on the first page, but it’s been a while since I read that. I suppose all those references to antiquated oil drilling technology should have tipped me off.

These last few chapters on “the DTs and Why We Drink: The Evils of Liquor” could have been written for a 1930’s temperance group, while chapter 14 is written for my 1980’s dorm mates who liked to play “I Was So Drunk That ...” 

So we interrupt what little plot there is to have a blowout of an oil well and then a bonus-funded blowout of a bachelor party.

It has a troubling number of typos. Here I give you text verbatim, from a scene when the elder oilman, Preacher, presides over a mock trial of the groom-to-be:

“Silence!” Preacher boomed, “or I’ll ahve y’all shot.”  That was met by Christ [sic] of “shame,” “hang the bastard,” and “naw, hagnings too good for him.” “What od you wnat,” Preacher Demanded.

(You can’t even blame autocorrect for the “Christ” above. He typed that on a manual typewriter, and had he not written “Cries” in pen above it I would have been confused. He didn’t correct anything else.)

Our Hero Joe appears at the end when the groom-to-be urges him to propose to Plucky Girlfriend Mary. 

I can only guess Jerry wrote this novel while drying out, reached the stage of sobriety when he notices he had a lot more fun when drunk, and decided to get drunk and do some typing.

Review: Don’t F**k With Cats (no Spoilers, at the Expense of Clarity)

Netflix decided that since I binge-watched Mindhunter, I had stomach enough to watch (don’t click this link: spoilers) Don’t F**k With Cats. 

I knew nothing about the topic, which was essential. I came close to checking out during the titular scenes in the first episode, but I fast-forwarded instead. I made it well into the second episode, with more fast-forwarding, and then they referenced the events that colored my first visit to Toronto in 1995. 

”That’s it,” I said. “I’m out.” I woke Gary up and told him to avoid it. Then I came back and fast forwarded through that unpleasant bit and got hooked again, especially at the end of the second episode. I woke Gary up again and said I was wrong, he needed to watch this, and that I knew where to fast forward. I actually watched the first two episodes with Gary all over again, because more than once Gary said, “These people are stupid,” and I had to say, “Wait.”

Then the third episode was very satisfying and remarkable, and then it was over. I’m sure someone at Netflix wanted them to bulk it up to an eight-episode series, but it was just right.

Just right, if you are the type of person nastily fascinated by the worst actions of the worst people on earth, which I am: I own it. If you are too, and you don’t mind having your limits tested, you should watch it. Do a shot every time the narrators say “Holy shit” or “What the fuck,” that might make it better.

Toilet Santa Is Famous

Check out my Facebook friend’s Ugliest Ornament Contest:

I know Toilet Santa’s mass-produced, but what are the odds?

Santa won’t win ugliest ornament, though. Based on early voting, that set of pink-gummed yellow-green teeth in the bottom right has it going away. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/26

This week the vase painting went from this:

to this:

And man, this glazing is going to be slow, because every layer has to dry for a week. I am going to hate these vases so so much.

Merry Christmas

Toilet Santa says Merry Christmas!

Time to eat some Christmas waffles! Enjoy your holidays.

No Review: Cats

We had no plans to see Cats because - I am sure you agree - we have seen enough movies lately, and also because what could be more plotless than a movie based on a book of poetry? However, after reading this article about the flaws in the digitized Cats, I deeply regret not having seen the Beta version of Cats.

I hope someone keeps the early release and turns it into a cult film where everyone throws rice when they see Dame Judi Dench’s wedding ring.

Here’s what I don’t get: everyone seems put off by the celebrities digitized into cats. If they were going for realism, why didn’t they just use real cats? They’ve got a version of Lady and the Tramp with dogs. Get video of cats howling and mewling, then tweak the lips a little digitally to make one of them sing Memory. Make that a trailer and see if it goes over better than Cats 2019. 

Review: Knives Out

There are two things you need to get past to enjoy this movie:

1. One fairly bad accent
2. One fairly unbelievable medical condition 

If you can get past those two things, you will enjoy this movie. I certainly did. There were at least four belly laughs and a chuckle every five minutes. I think I enjoyed this more than any recent movie except for the venerable JoJo Rabbit. 

 

The Novel: Chapter 13

Well ... okay, I guess this did advance the plot. Hero Joe is being set up for murder, but he has no weapon, so this chapter gets a gun in his hands. 

The only thing is, I don’t buy it. The sheriff has the DTs and doesn’t trust himself with his gun, so he gives the gun to Hero Joe. I’d say a better solution would be to take the bullets out of the gun until the DTs pass, or go on sick leave, or just don’t hand over your gun to a random citizen who’s been getting in bar fights.

There are only about four more chapters. This Gun Ex Machina needs to be employed in the next chapter or we are going to run out of novel.

First Christmas Propaganda For Children

I was with friends, and we were talking about Christmas Songs of Our Youth, and I mentioned "the one with Santa running into the Iron Curtain."

No one else remembered it, but I certainly did. I set off to do some research.

First, it wasn't a song, it was a spoken word performance by Red Skelton called the Little Christmas Tree.

Second, it was only distributed on the record album First Christmas Record for Children, specifically the initial release, because it was later removed. No doubt other kids were alarmed that there was literally a giant curtain of iron impeding the path of Santa's flying reindeer. I was concerned enough to ask my Dad.

The Iron Curtain part is about five and a half minutes in. If you have the stomach, skip over the ads but listen to some blatant religious propaganda and heavy moralizing before you get to the anti-communism message.

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/19

I am cheating on this one.

I’ve taken a photo of the still life:

... and used Photoshop to slice it up by primary colors to guide what color I glaze, and how much. (Of course, I’m not making the vase on the right that dull color that blends in to the background.)

Since I’m cheating anyway, I flat out printed the photo and traced it on to the canvas. Judge me if you will. 

And even with cheating, the top right where the arm of the right vase meets the lid is wonky already. Remarkable. Can't even cheat right.

The Return of GlamourSkunk

Remember GlamourSkunk? She visited the raccoon feeding station last year (when we had the color cameras that routinely died three times a year).

Well, perhaps she felt the new stable black and white infrared cameras didn’t do her justice, because we never saw her again after her one visit.

Last week she returned. The image below doesn’t show her spectacular tail, but trust me, this is GlamourSkunk, banded legs and all.

I noticed that Hippopossum returned last week too, after a long absence.

I suppose those two spectacular specimens are can usually rely on their wits or their looks, but when winter comes they like to be by their sugar daddy Gary.

The Novel: Chapter 12

Oh, hallelujah, at long last something happens in Chapter 12.

Chapter 1 established that Our Hero Joe is looking to save Aggie Lawless. And now in chapter 12, the two actually have a conversation, and then there's a riveting bar fight between Joe, Aggie, and the villain Silvertop. On top of all that, at the end the villian plans to murder Aggie and frame Joe for the crime.

It was a really good chapter, a real page-turner. You get a glimpse into Aggie's messed-up head. Kind of fun to be able to page-turn through the actual typewritten, hand-edited pages, too.

I truly had no idea which way things would go in the fight, and I was caught up in it. Very exciting. Perhaps it was a result of being lulled into a stupor by the eleven chapters I had to read to get there.

The plot thickens. Whew.

Egg Foo Young

We were ordering Chinese food when Friend 3 said, "I like Egg Foo Young."

"Good God," I thought, "I love Egg Foo Young. I haven't had it in twenty years. How is this possible?"

For the last twenty years I have gone to Chinese restaurants, scanned every single menu item (except for chop suey and chow mein), and ordered Moo Shu Pork, which is essentially Egg Foo Young only with less egg and more vegetation.

I suppose it's possible that I haven't seen Egg Foo Young on the menu, because truly -- and I say that because I know you won't believe me -- many Saint Louis restaurants serve up our regional variation: the execrable St. Paul sandwich. This is an innocent Egg Foo Young patty served between two slices of bread with dill pickles, mayonnaise, onion, lettuce, and tomato. I don't even like that stuff on a hamburger.

Of course I had some Egg Foo Young immediately, and now even the next day I want some more. Wikipedia describes it as an omelette dish, so I could grab some for breakfast.

The Novel: Chapter 11

This chapter was actually pretty sweet, given it was just about two drunks sitting around drinking and talking about drinking.

It really could stand on its own as a short story. 

I read it, of course, as Jerry’s explanation for why he drank. Fear, it seems, fear that becomes overwhelming when one is sober. (I suppose he must have had anxiety or panic attacks.) Guilt is given as the other reason. I am familiar with excessive guilt, as you know.

Probably the best chapter so far. It would be a nice restful interlude in the plot, if (say it with me) there were a plot.

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/12

This week the dog painting went from this:

to this:

This is the reality, which I have been trying to ignore:

I think I undid everything I liked about last week's version. Still, now there's a cast shadow behind the dog that I don't hate.

I have to say, I have had enough with sitting in front of the canvas and slapping on the paint wherever I guess it should go. Next time I'm going back to glazing, and I am going to make a plan first. I'll take each color, determine where it should be, make a chart, and then paint. I'm going with simple: the pink pitcher and the green pitcher and maybe a plain mug.

The Novel: Chapter 10

Well, I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly the hero is dating plucky waitress Mary. They appear to have been dating a while. Their relationship may have blossomed in Chapter 9, which has been lost to the ages.

Chapter 10 opens with a rodeo and a ballgame, which is refreshing because So far the only recreation has been eating flapjacks and snorting coke. But now there’s bear-wrestling and a freak show and a new woman who rides horses. A bronco-busting wumman with a personality. 

I think he’s leading up to an obligatory sex scene. He’s got enough characters for an orgy, and it would be so well-described you feel like you’re there, but it would not advance the plot even if we had one.

Review: The Winter’s Tale

Othello / Tempest mashup: Winter’s Tale.

Like Shakespeare must have used up lines he cut.

The end’s a lot to swallow. Not a fan.

It’s famed for bear pursuits, yet no bears shown!

Still Judi Dench is worth admission price.

.. and I have to give up on the iambic pentameter to talk about a new word I learned: “bed-swerver.” How do you fit “bed-swerver” into iambic pentameter? He has:

But with her most vile principal, that she's
A bed-swerver, even as bad as those
That vulgars give bold'st titles, ay, and privy
To this their late escape.

So that must be “a BED swerVER.” I don’t know. If I were Shakespeare I would bend the rules for “bed-swerver.”

(And technically, they waved a sheet with an image of a bear on it, but I was looking forward to a full-on bear costume for the “exit, pursued by a bear.”)

Review: Last Christmas

I think I started seeing the trailer for this movie back in September. If you’ve seen the trailer for this movie, you’ve seen all the high points.

I spent most of the movie waiting for the Scenes I Saw in the Trailer When Emma Thompson says X or when Emilia Clarke does Y. 

It was just what you’d expect: a sweet little rom-com. No surprises. Lots of George Michael music. Sweet.

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/5

This week the dog went from this:

to this:

I didn't look at the actual dog and pitcher one time, I just focused on the painting. I don't know. I don't think I'm making any progress with this one. I might just ignore the cast shadow behind the dog, slap some highlights on it and call it a day.

The Novel: Chapter 7 and 8 and 9, Kind Of

(There is no chapter 9, technically. Chapter 8 is extra long, though.)

In Chapter 7, the villain goes on errands to further his villainy. This chapter could have been dispatched with a paragraph. (“Silvertop bought off what passed for the law in town and placed a call to an old friend.”) Oh, and the love interest is further intimidated.

If I were an editor I would have written PLOT? in large red letters at the end of Chapter 7.

At the end of chapter 7 I thought, ”I KNOW I must have met all the characters by now. I have met them, they have all met each other, and if there are any more I will need an insert like I had for War and Peace.”

In Chapter 8, there is a massive flashback to how the main characters met, and then there’s a flash-forward to present day. I would have spilt the chapter and put the present day narrative in Chapter 9.  (I’ve found that it’s important to keep track of if they are in Arkansas or Oklahoma, that seems to mark the time period.)

Strangely, Jerry the journalist is best at writing descriptions of the technicalities of drilling for oil. There is also a page devoted to how to snort coke, clearly written in the eighties before the movies taught us all how to snort coke. 

In the last two pages of Chapter 8, we meet ... a new character. A sympathetic plucky character. Thank God for her. I’m calling those two pages Chapter 9.5.

 

Review: Doctor Sleep

Well, it was creepy.

Not as creepy as the Shining, at all, even remotely.

I preferred the subtly creepy way that in The Shining they made the antagonist be the hotel, as opposed to the heavy-handed creepy way in Doctor Sleep that they made the antagonist be ... be ... be ... well, it’s revealed in the opening scene, so I don’t suppose it would count as a spoiler, but still I won’t share. It isn’t subtle. 

Personally, I didn’t like it. There were some nice callbacks to the old movie, and while most were pleasant, some just took iconic images and cheapened them by overuse. 

 

Review: The Irishman (Cryptic Spoilers)

I really enjoyed Goodfellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Age of Innocence. 

Some of Scorsese’s other movies I only enjoyed because I watched them on devices where there was a fast-forward button to use when the violence slowed down the plot. If you ask me, not much happened during the shootout in Taxi Driver, and that was a good chunk of that movie.  When I watched Gangs of New York I was so impatient with the boring violence and — endless — pauses — that I fast forwarded through the entire last quarter of the movie. 

The Irishman was the longest movie I have seen in my life, short of Gone With the Wind, and it was very interesting until I realized what it was about, and then it hit the wall. I wasn’t familiar with the real plots of Goodfellas and Casino, so those endings were interesting. An hour into this new movie they introduced a familiar name, and when I saw the sign, and then the house, even, from an article in People a decade ago, I was just waiting for a climax that was no longer a surprise.

When you know the ending, that’s not good, and then when you’ve waited three and a half hours for an ending you know, that’s not an improvement.

I think it will be a good movie for people in about fifty years, when everyone has forgotten about the sign and the house and the characters.

A Return to An Outstanding Question From 2006

You know, if you just hang on, all the nagging questions (Deep Throat, Kenneth and his frequency) will be answered. 

Well, thirteen years after 2006, an answer has arrived for the question posed in this post: why is there a reference to "Scary Ghost Stories" in The Christmas Song?

There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago

I was so obsessed with finding the answer that I even contacted the composer's grandson via his blog, but he could only say that his grandfather was the composer, not the lyricist.

Facebook's algorithm must have looking in the blog archives, because FB posted Smithsonian Magazine's  Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories, which led to Smithsonian’s Why Do People Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas (which even references the song) and evidently the real question is, "Why Don't Middle Class Americans (Like Ellen) Tell Ghost Stories at Christmas,” because evidently Christmas ghost stories are a real thing people do. Or did. Or at least they did it for "much of the 19th century."

Long, long ago indeed.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/28

This week the dog and pitcher went from this:

to this:

I knew there would be contrast problems with this.  I like the pitcher even less now, if that's possible.  The dog bank's still okay, though. What's left is the background-- all cast shadows, my least favorite thing.

and, happy Thanksgiving!

Review: The Good Liar

We didn’t expect to see this one — Dr. Sleep was on the docket, but it didn’t start until 9 at night.

If you haven’t seen any of the commercials for The Good Liar, you are better off, and if you intend to see it, avoid the commercials. 

I feel I will appreciate Helen Mirren as an actress when she begins to show her age, but right now I find myself distracted by how gorgeous she is. Her jawline at 74 is tighter than mine was in junior high.

Ian McClellan looks his age, however. Both put in fine performances.

Generally, I think the word I would use to describe this movie is satisfying.

The Novel: Chapter 25

I know. Chapter 25. The first chapters are numbered 1, 2, 25, 7. 

Chronologically, chapter 25 occurs before chapter 1. It’s out of place in the narrative. 

Most of it is a lesson on how an oil rig works. Five solid pages are devoted to a description of a 90-second oil strike. 

The main character doesn’t appear at all. Two new characters appear, one is an ass and the other ... is an ass, but he contributes to the only pleasant scene in the chapter. 

Problematic. It needs some dreamy harp music, or narration. “Y’all remember when we struck oil?”

Review: Ford vs Ferrari

Ford vs Ferrari is a mildly entertaining bromance. I’d watch it if it came on TV and I had nothing else to do. In addition, Matt Damon has a very cute nose. Those are the pros. There are no particular cons.

It taught me a lot about endurance sportscar races. (I would not advise studying up on the Le Mans race before you go, because the Wikipedia page has spoilers.)

It was okay, but if Jojo Rabbit was a ten, this was a four. I laughed at FvF three times, and I almost produced a tiny tear once, whereas with JoJo I laughed, I cried, I soiled myself.

All further movies this year shall be judged on the Jojo scale. FvF gets four Jojos. (Four rabbits? Four Heils up?)