Am getting ready to leave the house, and my book was in the post box yesterday afternoon. They are so prompt, I could hug them.
So yeah, am going back down to Gamlitz today. And I know I am going to have fun with this latest novel by Joe Keenan. I swore I was gonna crack it open on the train this morning, but last night I wanted to make sure it would be as good as the two previous ones. Always the same characters, and wildly funny.
It began with the I narrator lamenting about reaching a certain age, and how la vie bohème can be colorful, but despair sets in when you get the feeling you aren't going to reach the goal you set for yourself, which in his case means becoming famous.
And although I appreciated the depiction, been there, felt that.... was thinking: 'ummm... this doesn't sound like it will be fun...' The beginning ends thusly, however:
"For the first time, he allows himself to wonder if his life twenty years hence will be any different than his present existence. 'Of course it will be different,' coos the voice in his head. 'You'll be old.'
From this icy thought, a short road leads to panic, and from panic to despair, self-pity, desperation, and finally, Los Angeles."
And THAT made me laugh out loud, and heartily. It was unexpected, and that is why I like his novels. And goodness knows I haven't laughed all too much in a very long while.
I love that sort of dead-pan throwaway humour, and I know that everyone's sense of humour is different, and what I may find funny other people do not. One thing I learned working in a cinema was never recommend a comedy... ever.
You can bore me to death with slap-stick, for instance, never really get it. Most of Monty Python escapes me. Dumb and Dumber put me to sleep. Mel Brooks is so outrageous on the other hand, he can knock me dead for laughing.
Whatever, have to mosey on up to the train station. I didn't look at anything more than the first page and a half of 'My Lucky Star', but I'm gonna savor this one.... And know it will make me smile, and probably even laugh out loud again. And that is a good thing.
Stopping to see friends in Leibnitz on my way back this evening, so it will be a long day.
W. came by this morning. He's going away to some uncle near Vienna. Who will give him a job, or something. He is still freaked by his ex, who is still maintaining he stabbed her. I have told him a thousand times.... he was in my apt. the night it happened, and listen.... that guy would never do that anyway.
Let's see, he hates gay people, he hates Americans, he spent three and a half months sleeping on my floor till he could find an appartment, and never once did anything near threatening me, or being violent.
That woman is a sociopath. His problem.
Ok, off to Gamlitz. It's a beautiful day.... so far. My tabocconist lady told me it was going to rain later, and I said, 'Oh jeez, just thanks for that one, I need it at seven a.m....' She looked so stricken, I broke the sternness, and we laughed. Another nice person, y'know???
Hope everyone's day is nice.
Amazon rocks... it really does
Was revisiting old books.... And want to go to San Francisco in the Seventies...
Taking them on the train to read, and in train station waiting rooms...
It had been a long while since I read the 'Tales of the City' series by Armistead Maupin. They are very funny, and wonderful, and the last has a very bittersweet ending.
The first two books were filmed for television I believe, and Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis were especially good, but it was wonderful to watch.
At the time I read each of the six whenever they got published. Now, reading them in sequence, (there are six), I realise what a kaleidoscope and mirror they were, reflecting the changes in US society from the Seventies to the late Eighties. Also bittersweet.
Today I read, it is going to become a musical and will be debuted in San Francisco, where it all takes place. Sounds like a certain success. If you have never read the series.... well, nowadays it is like taking a time machine. And some of it is wildly funny, and lots of it touching, and you fall in love with all the characters... well most of them, at any rate. Well worth the time.
Before I go completely blind...
I picked up my DVD of he sixth Harry Potter film, so this is gonna be trivial.
There was so MUCH in there... that was never in the book.
It took about fifteen minutes for them to get to the real introduction of the book, and Snape, superbly acted by Alan Rickman sort of cut cut from what went before.
Big, very big mistake.
His figure is the motivating factor in the entire series. The guy is so malicious, you would believe he would do very bad things.
In the films so far, he has been a delight to me. He can put more acid into his voice than any one I have ever seen. I wouldn't want to be around him, personally... Just brilliant...
He is so fucking skeery, you want to call 9-11... just to get out of his way.
And of course, everything gets built up to be that he is the villain you always thought he was.
EXCEPT.. it will not be so in the end.
I have loved the series for years... because it is so wonderful, and the message is terrific.
I have followed this series for years.
And I did not like most of this movie version. I did NOT like the beginning, they should have stayed with the novel. I found it offensive that a gratuitous scene was put in with the bad guys attacking the 'Weasley house. It served nothing to the narrative.
I found that stretching out the 'romantic' themes to fucking eternity were not valuale.
I DID find... the last thirty minues were breathtakingly good.
So dark, and frightening... when Snape kills the prinicpal Dumbledore because that little shit Draco can't do as told.... well, that was wonderful...
As I imagined it some years ago, when I read it.
Thirty minutes of good stuff, and two and a half hours of 'just get me out of here', it was never in the book.' The books never needed emellishment. They were perfect.
I have read that they are going to split the last book into two films. Some people grumble that that is a ploy to make it more priofitable.
It has about one thousand pages, and why that does that remind me of the fucking health care billl???
You can't DO that in two hours...
Am really interested in how they wind the project up.
Aa muxh as I like the films... reading it is a trip.
Don't yell or hit...
The Ash Wednesday after (Ha) Tsunami Tuesday
Really, you just have to give a Pulitzer Prize to some so-called journalists who come up with something that assinine. Oh, I know they have done worse..... Why don't they have a sort of Raspberry award for the ones who dumb-down a world audience so that they might get a clue, huh?
Yes, you guessed correctly, I did my rounds on the blogosphere this morning, curious as to what the peeps 'decided'. The MSM is pushing the sHill as winner-in.... The link above tells us why the results might be something else altogether, although the tone is sort of cheerleading....
I have this very uncomfortable mental connection when I hear the term 'Ash Wednesday'. At first, it didn't mean much to me, and yes, was brought up in the RCC faith, but it was just the day you were forced to go to Church, and some creep dirtied up your forehead with a thumb-print.... probably from the cigarettes they smoked out of the ash-tray from the night before, after having had a hell of a time on Maundy Tuesday with a bunch of cabana boys, looking back at it now, but what do I know?
But when I was about seventeen or so, and a very verklemmt and inhibited young person, I read a novel, you see. (Nothing new, I read seven to ten books a week for over thirty years of my life, hey...) That one totally shocked me. The novel was in four (or five?) sections, and was extremely well-written. It was about a young man, who sells himself sexually. (There is a point to this, btw.) It was brilliantly written, not pornographic, but way out there for telling some truths absolutely no one ever wanted to hear.
It ends in New Orleans, on Ash Wednesday, and is so depressing. The I-narrator has been offered love the evening before and rejected it, and is in a world of pain. And that is what Ash Wednesday became to me. I knew I had 'feelings', and they frightened me to death. Almost... And that novel opened up a world I had no idea existed. It shook the foundation of the world as I knew it. I had felt like the most alone person on the face of this planet.
But that was in the Sixties, and in the whole book, just about every figure was a sort of a freak, someone you so NOT to want to emulate. And then the main character rejects the only person who seemed 'normal', and reached out. I believe I read it later, but it shook me then, as well. It left me with absolutely no hope, probably retarded my personal development by years. I so did NOT want to go there, not if there were people like that around.... Like most people, I just wanted to be loved..... What a crime.....
So why am I telling you all this? Easy. I look around me, as a person open to the world, and in the election race, looked for someone to believe in and who would give you hope. Someone who would give everyone a sense of anticipation, and participating, and being a part of a community. (Yeah, am so old I saw John Kennedy speak, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how he electrified the public.)
I wish I could be as enthusiastic as the diarist up in the link, but I am not. One needs leaders one can look UP to. Where did he suddenly get thirty MILLION dollars, huh? Something fishy there. And the sHill is suddenly short on funds? Uh-uh....
Tja. Ash Wednesday, hey. You were expecting Herring salad, maybe? (I have done it---out of lurrv... that and eel.... just don't get me started, ok?)
Oh yes, the novel. 'City of Night' by John Rechy. I later read he got a professorship in English, but didn't give up selling himself. And don't we all, in one way or the other.....
