There's 6 quid I won't soon see again

Ok. Message to everyone.

Do not, under any circumstances, do NOT see the movie Dark Water. it is an hour and fourty five minutes of pure crap. It drags on. And on. And on. Minor plot elements and cliched family problems are used to obfuscate the fact that the movie's plot could be resolved in the first 30 minutes of an episode of CSI.

Yeah...the movie is a shitty mix between ghost story and CSI. Actually, its not even worth 30 minutes. The movie compresses down into the opening 3 minute teaser to the episode where they find the body and Grissam, Sarah, or Stokes gets a witty remark over the corpse.

So how is this simple plot drawn out for 105 minutes? Simple. Add in as much cliched family divorce drama as possible, give very vague suggestions that the main character was abused as a child, and add in a host of useless characters in scenes that make absolutly no sense and don't seem to add anything to the plot.

This movie was a waste of my money and encompassed a total of two hours of my life that I won't see again.

Don't see it, for the love of god.

The only way to redeem this movie would be for the Orpheus Group to kick down the door halfway through and chase the horrible spectre monster around the building. The fact that the main character is killed by said creature at the end of the movie for NO reason...I mean literally its out of the blue and serves no purpose in the plot, just made things more confusing and made me pray more for Orpheus.

Kill it, killit now.

Mage: The Awakening delayed till end of August

Bastards.

Now I won't have it to read on the plane.

80 pages is not worth a 6 hour flight of boredom.

"Where are its buxom maidens and buck-toothed solicitors?"

I now recall my first day in England, which was a total dive. My aunt Maureen insisted on cooking a "proper Englsih pot roast", which apparently requires that it be cooked for some 6 to 8 hours in advance of dinner, until "medium rare" becomes defined as "possible to cut with a knife", and "medium well" becomes "chainsaw required". Furthermore, this meal was complimented by liquidy Yorkshire pudding, and vegeetables cooked to a standard grey. The Johnstons cannot cook. The meal, needless to say, was a wash. Thankfully my jet lag gave me excuse to excuse myself.

The second letdown came when it turned out that my laptop's AC adaptor was not sufficient, power wise, to handle the English system...and thus blew the fuse in the plug adaptor it was using. So...I couldn't use my adaptor. I was quite distraught till we figured out that I'd need to get a voltage convereter. That was OK, but still a major let down.

Now...compare that with today. My aunt Kath made a PHENOMENAL steak pie with beautifully fluffy Yorkshires, and a wonderful blueberry pie for dessert. We went to another member of the Burrow family's place for a big family BBQ, and that was a delight. my relatives were quite fun to hang about with. ANd now I'm at the computer, online.

Now, if I can just get to this Camarilla regional event in Reading this coming weekend, I will have found my buxom maidens, and probably more than a few buck-toothed solicitors.

Rule Britannia.

Funny sign on the farm

Funny story: That lightning bolt is the same symbol that my digital camera uses for the flash.

The flash on my camera is out to kill me. It makes so much sense now.

Bound for Europa (11:24pm EST, in the air for 1 hour, 10 minutes, ETA 6 hours)

JULY 18, 2005
Written on BARD'S PalmPilot

Well, I'm in the air. Finally. Today was hellish, as I rushed from chore to chore to finish up the last few services nessecary to make this trip feasible. But I got it done, though sadly without a farewell blog post. Hopefully I'll be able to shoot this off from a pub or an internet cafe or something.

My headset for the plane doesn't work, nor does my reading light. Hell, the entire right-hand console that controls my entertainment for this flight has conked out on me. The flight attendants go back and forth explaing that an ever ambiguous "she" is working on the problem. Then again, they might have meant that a Sidhe was working on it, which never bodes well. The bloody elves were never good with anything more hightech than a blacksmith's forge.

Currently having thoughts about a book about an assasin with a prosthetic arm that he hides his weapons in. Sounds like an anime concept, really. Not a cyborg, but damn close.

I've finished Jill Thompson's "The Dead Boy Detectives", another one of her Sandman-inspired manga pieces. Thompson never ceases to amaze me, I gotta say. Its nice stuff, and its light, and funny, and it gives me ideas for manga scripts, though Tannis over at the Hairy Trantula assures me that manga scripts have no real panel design. I may turn that into an argument between Excelsior and his colleague, the Paper Princess, at some point.

No brilliant ideas so far. Reading "A Clash of Kings", though I have a feeling that I'll probably switch over to Bendis' "Jinx" once I've eaten whatever vile trans-Atlantic swill is to be shoved before my face today. I see a lot of Indian and Arabic people getting special meals, presumably vegetarian or halal...and damn, do they ever smell good,. Sometimes I've pondered creating bizarre dietary restrictions for myself just to fuck with the airlines and get better food.

BEGIN!

JULY 20

So I went out and saw Batman Begins tonight. Yeah...I know. Its been a month or so since it came out, but really this was the first time I had a chance to get to a movie since I saw Fantastic Four last week.

Actually, I was supposed to meet up with RyanW, one of the White Wolf Moderated Chat STs, tonight. But then the goddamned terrorists felt that they wanted to remind London that they still had the power to make loud noises, so that sort of killed that plan.

But...yes. The movie. It was good. Miles and miles above the shit that Shumacher has produced, not to mention the oddities of Batman: Returns. It lagged a bit at times, but it built a very interesting portrayel of the Batman...one rather like my own "Vengeance in All Things", which was actually a concept piece that I came up with over a year ago for a rather odd cult in a rather odd RPG I've been developing with AlexanderLambert's assistance. So I'm very happy to see that someone sees the Batman the same way I do. Well...or can see him. I prefer the Batman that appears occasionally in the pages of "Birds of Prey" and "Gotham Central"...but this cinematic version was A-OK by me.

The building of the mythos was nice. It was a real step-by-step process to Bruce Wayne literally becoming something else. I loved the shift of Gotham from this Metropolis-style miracle into the Gotham we know today. Ok, Arkham wasn't quite where it should have been (but then again it worked here as a maximum security prison rather than that creepy Lovecraftian asylum up on the hill [which it was originally named after IIRC]). The cityscape was...nice. It didn't have massive statues everywhere for no good reason, it didn't have every building lined with neon, and it didn't have legions of wacky street gangs. And it relied mostly on comic book characters...with the exception of the female lead, who continues to vex me to no end.

Ra's, pronounced "Raws" here rather than "R-ae-sh" (as it was on the animated series), was nicely done. He didn't talk about the Lazarus Pit, but he gave the slight suggestions that he was very, very, very old. The League of Shadows made more sense here than it did as a group of super-ecoterrorists bent on world domination. A secret society dedicated to the preservation of mankind through the destruction of its excesses. Nice idea. Plus...y'know...they never said at the end whether or not they found a body.

The Scarecrow was quite neat. Crane looked very unassuming, and incorporating the gas mask AND voice synthesizer into his hood (not to mention the line "we all wear masks, Mister Falcone...let me show you mine" which gave him quite a high creep factor) was quite a neat idea. Plus he didn't spend the movie babbling on about people's phobias...they switched him from a psychopharmacologist specializing in phobias into a plain old psychopharmacologist.

There were a nice couple of cameos. The most obvious was the playing card at the end, but another one was that of Victor Zasz, a rather merciless psychopath who made a habit of cutting his own skin whenever he killed someone, and who was notable in No Man's Land for his brutal rampage. Nice little cameo there, and a nice show of his scars.

I honestly think they're setting up for the return of Ra's in a future film, and I'm betting that's when Talia is going to make her appearence. I could just feel the plot hole left open for her existance, and the romantic dead end that killed Bruce and Rachel's relationship. Hurrah.

The camera work in the Batman-fight scenes was superb. He vanished and was just shown at the edges, like a monster in a good horror movie. He took people out with the classic ease of the Bat, and whats more he made it look GOOD, and he made it look terrifying. The lights would go out, and suddenly someone would get yanked off to the side. Then there'd be a flash of black and someone would go flying. You can see how THIS Batman would easily evoke terror.

So...yeah. Its going on the list of movies I'm going to grab on DVD. Already got Constantine and Sin City on order, those should arrive at home about mid-August...over half a month before I get back. My father will probably end up breaking in SC for me, since he wanted to see it but couldn't.

That is all for now.

Rule Britannia (second try)

I just lost a 1000+ word post.

This is the third time this has happened to me since I started this blog.

Summary:

I am on a computer at the farm. It will not open my webmail. There is some small hope that the dialup modem on my laptop is still functional after the events of the power surge that occured during AlexanderLambert's visit in February. If so, I may be able to cable my laptop into the internet, and thus have sanity restored.

Ed, Bryan, RyanW, Jenn, TPO Emma, Gabe, Amanda, and anyone else on the White Wolf chats that reads my blog, please advise everyone else that I may not be able to access my email until Friday. I will notify once I know for sure.

I will arrive in Oxford on Friday, and will have some internet access then. Hopefully full, and I WILL find an internet cafe if all else fails, by hook or by crook, my hand to God.

I have a number of witty blog posts archived on my laptop from the last week or so. I shall try to ensure that they are posted soon.

That is all.

One Last Night

Done with Il Posto for 6 weeks. Thank fucking god. Tonight was...hectic. To say the least. Big table with fucked up orders, Frank going off his nut, and...yeah. I dunno, but for some reason, no matter how well I prepare my station, no matter how good the food looks, SOMEONE finds something to complain about, even if its only me not having time to refill the balsamic vinagrette. Which one of the assholes at work...honestly, the guy's an asshole, a nice asshole, but he's still a pigfucking asshole...was kind enough to point out to Frank when he was at his highest freakout point.

Ah well. Frank's quick to forgive, and he wished me well when I left.

Saturday is my last day at Sharkey's. Gone to England by Monday. Got books, now just need to pack.

The Grammaton Clerics won't get me at my job!

I have lost all ability to give a damn about my job at Sharkey's. I have two shifts left, and I cannot find it in myself to care about my job performance, my uniform quality, or 99% of my co-workers. The only things actually causing me to come to my shceduled shifts are a sense of responsibility, and professional pride. That is why I will put out food of good quality, and of good appearence. Because I have pride in my work. I have no pride in my job, nor do I give a rats ass what happens there

This fact suddenly struck me tonight when I realized that I could do whatever I wanted, get fired, and because I'm a full time employee they'd still have to give me two weeks notice...but since I only have two shifts left that's pointless. I mean...I won't. But I could.

Meh. I just don't care. Which is good, because it means that the Grammaton battle clerics won't come and kill me with their gun katas. Every cloud has a silver lining!

FANTASTIC!

Ok, remember a few months back when I griped about the Fantastic Four trailers?

Well, they got me. I went to see it. And I was happy.

To be honest, its a solid superhero movie. Not as solid as, say, Spider-Man or X-Men, but still solid. The opening stuff leading up to the bridge scene had a very fast paced Ultimate feel to it, with a lost of cool shots and the like. But the pacing was good. I was really happy with the pacing, in fact. Doom honestly took his time getting his scheme together, and it WAS a classic Doctor Doom scheme.

I think this Doom worked a little better than Ellis' Ultimate Doom, but that was only because we got to see his hatred of the Four grow as his appearence degenerated. The electrokinetic take on him was neat, as it was directly related to his armor, just as Sue's invisibility was directly related to her forcefields.

Finally...I think they captured the dynamics of the Fantastic Four quite well. Reed comes off like he does in the books, especially the Marvel Knights 4 stuff. He's contemplative to the point of annoyance, becuase he's too busy checking every little detail to get off his ass and DO something. Ben was abrasive, but sensitive, and always on edge about his appearence. Johnny was...well...Johnny. And Sue was Sue, albeit I saw Jessica Alba slip a little bit of Max (from Dark Angel) in here and there. She didn't have the same body language, but her previous superhero experience slipped in here and there.

Overall, it was quite good.

Current thoughts on casting for an Authority movie:
Angela "The Engineer" Spica --> Jessica Alba
Jack Hawkesmoore --> Ben Browder

And now for something completly different...

It figures. I can't do just one project at a time. Excelsior has stalled out till I can figure out the pacing for the first issue. Doing some on again-off again work on a Western script in manga style, which is also stalling out every few pages as I try to grip my mind around typical manga panel structure. Also doing some work on a new PB story that I've had in my head since Thursday. I'd been playing around with the idea of doing a Beowulf story that was solid counter-terrorism, which was always designed to be the group's secondary objective, but I didn't want to set it in America with Kane, Sanderson, and Whitaker. And I disliked my Russian idea because using Kane as a POV character for it just seemed...I dunno. Forced.

Yeah, its kind've tasteless. But it's provided some good idea fodder, and an interesting way of looking at PB calling up a group of agents who are on the inactive roster list because their powers aren't suited to fighting RNIs wherever they may rear their ugly heads.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!!!

Jesus College has decided that they will not be offering internet access to the Study Abroad program students this summer.

I could fucking cry, swear to god. Now I'm going to have to fight off 60 other students for the right to use one of four computer terminals to check my email, or pay some cafe in town to use THEIR terminals.

Thank god my father thought to get me a USB stick. Its going to be my only contact with the outside world.

Welcome to the summer from hell.

"Who's the Certified Circumsized Private Dick Who's a Sex Machine For The Chicks?"

"Hammer!"

Dear god. I watched The Hebrew Hammer on Friday. This has to be the only Jewsploitation movie in existance.

It's...well...I'm not sure how to describe it. Between an evil Santa wearing a Santa hat and a red suit, the Jewish Justice League, and the Kwanza Liberation Front, I'm not 100% sure just what to make of this movie.

It's too silly to be offensive. I mean, its equally offensive of EVERYTHING.

Food Lady: "Would you like a free bacon double cheeseburger?"
Hammer: "Sorry...madam. We good, white, Christian folk must...reluctantly...decline your completly unkosher, but no doubt quite delicious, snack, for we have already gorged ourselves on many items involving milk...and meat...and are sadly full."

Esther: "It says on the door that you're a certified circumsized private dick. I'd like to see your credentials."

And on. And on.

Listen, just rent it. It's probably funnier if you understand Yiddish, and my Jewish friends say that its hilarious...I'm assuming there's a level of it that you miss if you're not Jewish, as there's a lot of extreme cultural parody going on.

Yeah, its offensive. Yeah, its bizzare. But damn...is it ever funny.