Category: Media

More movies, more paint, more O’Brian

Yesterday, I was cleaning the back deck and stairs (almost three hours of backbreaking work), policing up the upstairs fireplace (it is shiny now!), priming cupboards in the upstairs kitchen, and policing up the fridge and stove (the new used stove has some really weird plastic bits on it that are nasty to clean) and now I just finished scraping paint where I could off the back deck and finishing/detailing the upstairs bathroom, all but the floor and toilet. I must have cleaned the shower doors 5 times before all the smears came off. Now to the dungeon to finish cleaning out the storage cupboard so I can do the downstairs ‘dungeon’ rug, or maybe I’ll detail the last item in Keith’s room (louver doors) and then go eat something. I sure wish Paul hadn’t cut the hose on the central vac (it was awkwardly but usefully long), there’s parts of the house that are not reachable as a result; I may have to bring my new vacuum cleaner down here, which I emphatically don’t want to do without a car.

Last night I watched District 13. I heartily and without reservation recommend it if you want to watch a pure, adrenaline soaked, heart’s in the right place action flick (watch it in French with the subtitles. This may be one movie where the subtitles are better than the original….). The reviews I read of it led me to believe that the script was crap and the acting worse, but that the action sequences were worth the price of admission.

BS! It’s a good movie. It ain’t a film, but it’s a movie, and movies, by Gar, are supposed to MOVE. I liked all the actors and the violence was cartoony and the script was snappy and the basic premise was nasty and believable, at least to an old conspiracy theorist like me. I have every intention of sitting down and watching it again when I get home.

I was talking to Keith (who else would I watch a parkour movie with??) and he said that he has no intention of moving in with me. I was relieved by this. I want him to come see me when he feels like it, but I think he’d be better off with his dad. I also straightened a couple of other things out which I had been somewhat concerned about, and while the truth may hurt, I feel much better. I will say one thing, which I am finding amusing. As I badmouth Paul less and less – because 25 years of bottled (and alas, not so bottled) rage, frustration and disappointment are now turning to “Thank Goodness that phase of my life is drawing to a close”, I learn from Keith that Paul is badmouthing me more and more. Anyway, considering the sh*tpile of nasty things I’ve said about Paul it’s only fair that some of my chickens come back to their guano-coated abode. In the end, I hope I can always boil it down to, “Nice guy; can’t live with him though.”

But life is beautiful these days; I have another 17 Aubrey/Maturin books to read, as Keith has borrowed HMS Surprise for me. I read the durned thing, which candidly explains my grogginess today! Back at home, I keep hearing the SFU pipe band off in the distance (where it belongs, as Keith drily remarks). And with any goddamned luck, my internet will be running again tomorrow. Here’s hopin’.

I’m smiling a lot these days.

Keith gets mugged, but it all works out OK

Yeah, there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever type.  Keith opened the door for me this morning and there he was with a picturesque and bloody bandage on his chin.  I said, what happened, and he said, with a big smile, I got mugged.

He got off work and three guys jumped him.  I asked him if he gave a good account of himself and he said no, and I scolded him.  All those bloody years of karate…

Anyway, they stole his lime green shirt, the one that was so ugly it caused a mutiny, his work ID, and his extremely expensive dress shoes that I got him for work.

He got two blows to the chin and his glasses fell off (but were recovered), but he didn’t fall over or lose any teeth. He seemed to find it quite bracing.  Honest to god.

So he went in to work and found out that his muggers, on opening up the bag and finding nothing in there but evidence that Keith, unlike them, had the wherewithal to get a job, had tossed his packsack in a dumpster, where it was recovered by an angel in human form named Mike, who promptly walked it back to Metrotown and had the pleasure of reuniting Keith with it in person.  Keith lost nothing in the encounter, to hear him tell the story.

Today I cleaned and went to Metrotown and bought myself shoes and then met up with Katie.  Not a single effing thing that I was looking for in HMV was there, berloody useless store, but Katie spent 100 bucks on herself, and then we went to Spiderman 3, and then we all went our separate ways home but we’re going to get together later this week to see Hot Fuzz.  

 

The end.  Kids, I tellink you.

Movies r us

Paul called to say he was safely on the ground in SF, which is prob’ly the last I’ll hear of him until Tuesday evening.

We WATCHED MOVIES.  Highly recommended, although violent and weird in spots, is Tsotsi

Even more highly recommended is Broken Trail – If you have ANY interest in Westerns this is a TV production you cannot afford to miss.  ALSO if you are a Firefly fan, it’s like the guys who wrote the soundtrack sat at Greg Edmundson’s feet to get the Chinese/Western crossover thing pitch perfect – that was an unexpected bonus.  The scenery is so gorgeous, and the script and acting so good, and the details…. And Robert Duvall is just plain AMAZING.  Gun enthusiasts will be pleased by the accurate use of period guns.  Horse enthusiasts will be interested…. Persons interested in history will be interested… and the bad guys GET THEIRS yeehaw. I have every intention of watching this again, but seeing as how Jeff brought 20 movies with him, it won’t be on this pass.

Now, off to the Big 6 for brekkie.

Dungeon Siege prop

It’s been bally ages since I posted a pic of a prop of a movie which got made down the street and has never been released.  Uwe Boll, please stop making bad movies!  This cheesy hunk of foam was sitting in the woods in Robert Burnaby Park and I really wanted to take it home (gee Mom can I keep it?), but sanity prevailed.  But doesn’t every house need a cheesy fake megalithic structure?  Pic is about 18 months old.

The internet is still weird here….

I have gotten approval for my rental application and will be moving May 1st.  Since I hate commuting, it is up the hill from my work.  Keith, I think, was a little annoyed with me for my choice of location since he was hoping to stay in the neighbourhood, but since he did not respond positively to any discussions about moving in with me I was obliged to not include him in my plans.

It turns out that Katie’s in laws DO have bedbugs.  Paul and I bought poly wrapping and tape so they can keep their bedding clean after they wash it and Katie delivered it.  Apparently 15 of the little buggers came out of a pillow when it was put on the balcony to ‘chill’.   They don’t do so good in the cold.

I had bedbugs when I was a kid, and I remember the smell of the insecticide.  Brr.  When I saw the bitemarks on Katie – she always was the tenderest morsel of us lot – I just shook my head and made my pronouncement.  Then we went to the internet and found out that the line of bites they make is macabrely termed “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner”. Pic is from a Creative Commons licensed site and taken by the site owner. Site here.
As far as we can tell, none of  them made it here, and if they did, oh well.  It’s a lot easier to spray in here now with all the crap in the garage, and there’s not a sausage in Katie’s room anymore, she’s long since hauled it all out to the garage.  I would have been bitten by now anyway, as it’s only about a ten foot crawl from her room to mine.

Sarah Michelle Gellar may play Harley Quinn in the new Batman.  I could more or less get next to that.

m0m will be turning up shortly.  Well, longly – she’s doing the harbour to harbour flight, which is awesome when the weather’s good and a bit urpy when not.  Keith’s out the door for Comicon (Paul will be leaving for Seattle with him straight from work).

Heather detailed the bathroom yesterday, so things are pretty shiny clean in there.  My various excesses with respect to lack of sleep (and sleep interruptions, details of which I will politely not enumerate ;P) caught up with me and I slept about 12 hours yesterday.  Now it’s 6:23 and I’m ready for further punishment.

Early to rise

I’m up at 8 am this morning – and no one else is stirring.  Very peaceful……

I note that Conrad Black’s emails are being blown up to “size large” in a Chicago courtroom.  The only thing missing, that I can see, is that Orson Welles isn’t alive to read the damning phrases to the jury in his snide and orotund way.

New Song

She came to grief in a hotel room
Like famous people do
The way the media carried on
You’d think she died for me and you
They say speak gently of the dead
Don’t bandy with her name
But her life was sure instructive
on the vagaries of fame

Chorus:

Slimfast and Methadone
Girl I’m in your debt
I got a great line for a chorus
and the story isn’t over yet.

Leave ’em while you’re looking good
Advice she took to heart
She was born to play the blonde bimbo
and she really nailed the part
She married her attorney but
I don’t think it turned out
The paternity, the autopsy
and the estate are all in doubt

Chorus

Slimfast and Methadone
was all you had
in your fridge
I still can’t believe it
It’s a perfect rhyme for bri–i-i-i-dge

Humans love their beauty
it’s a curse upon our race
the powerful are using it
to hide what’s really taking place
Zombies stalk the headlines
while all the peace talks stall
If celebrities don’t quit dying
We’ll never fix the world at all.

Chorus x 2.