Favorite Group: Scissor Sisters

Dumbledore is gay? SWEET!!!! http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more

Another (Graphic) Novel Adaptation

Steve Nile's 30 Days Of Night is one of my favorite graphic novels. I believe it was Todd who introduced me to it. I can't believe no one had thought up the idea of vampires attacking a town in northern Alaska during the time of the year when the sun essentially disappears for a month. How brilliant is that?! When I heard that Sam Rami (Evil Dead flicks, Spider Man) was going to produce the movie version, I got very excited. When I heard that Steve himself would be writing the screenplay, I was happier still.

Then I heard Josh Hartnett was going to play the lead.

Thankfully, I moved past that and went to check out the film this weekend. Directed by Hard Candy's David Slade, the film has just the right look. Not as hard core dedicated to the graphic novel as say Sin City or 300, but the grays and blacks and whites in contrast to the shock of the blood red made me think of the work of Ben Templesmith, the illustrator. Some of the vampires looked as though they walked directly from the page to the screen.

Unlike a lot of today's horror flicks, Slade spends time with the characters. This sort of investment actually goes a bit against the graphic novel itself, which was quick and sharp, only giving you time to get to know Eben, his wife Stella and a bit of back story on the vamps. Still, this is a movie version, so you knew some things were going to have to be fleshed out from the original story.

The characters have changed and multiplied. Again, this is probably due to needing to expand the story and the fact that there ended up being 3 screenwriters. While I expected the movie to have some slow spots (we are covering 30 days after all), I was a bit disappointed that it seemed to slow down almost too much now and again. Still, some of the fleshing out bits (no pun intended, but enjoy it if you want!) made the film darker on an emotional level. This is not a happy movie, but neither was the source material.

I ended up enjoying the film, and being pleasantly surprised by Josh Hartnett. I've only seen him in Virgin Suicides, Sin City and Black Hawk Down. All great movies to be sure. I don't really have anything against him, but most of his projects hold no interest for me. I thought he did a good job in this, especially with the angsty stuff. And, he is nice to look at which doesn't hurt things.

Speaking of nice looking, one complaint would be that our survivors didn't look like they'd been trapped in various places for 30 days. Sure, some of the minor characters looked like shit towards the end of the flick, but Melissa George held up pretty damn well, as did Hartnett. Sorta picky I know, but the only way you knew time had passed would be when a graphic popped up letting you know what day it was. I also thought a bit of foreshadowing at the very beginning was a bit cheesy. I mean, the sherriff has been around the town for awhile and you're telling me he had to have a large bit of equipment in the towns water processing plant explained to him. As soon as I saw those big, metal "teeth," I knew what was going to happen.

I really liked the overhead shot of the town being attacked by the vampires. Several vamps were nicely creepy too. You can never go wrong with a kid vampire in my book. The vampire attacks were definitely bloody, as were some of the human retaliations. I particularly enjoyed a moment involving a head and an ax. I also appreciated the fact that they kept the ending the same as the comic. I would have been really horked if they had changed it into a happy, Hollywood moment.

It may not be for everyone, but if you'd like to try a different sort of vampire flick and don't mind a slight snooze part way through, it's worth checking out 30 Days Of Night.

The Hits Just Keep Coming

Dorky things I did the other day:

Ran into someone that worked at the store a while back. I chatted with her for several minutes, asking a couple of questions about another employee who was a friend of hers and about the job I thought she had left us for. When I ran into her, I was talking to a friend/fellow employee. I thought I was being impolite not introducing them so I proceeded to say, "I'm sorry...I'm being rude. Abby, this is Bill. Bill, this is Abby."

To which she replies, "Actually it's Cassie."

Yeah.

Okay, in my defense, I haven't seen Abby or Cassie for a couple of years and they do look a lot alike. They could probably pass for cousins at the very least. Thankfully, Cassie was very cool about it and I apologized about a million times because I felt terrible. But seriously, I haven't seen her in forever and I have trouble remembering current employee names sometimes.

Second dorky thing happened in the breakroom. Thankfully, only two people were in there at the time. I was reaching into the fridge to pull out my bag of veggies (long story) and I tipped over an open can of soda. First off, leaving a soda open in the fridge is just wrong. Secondly, well, there is no secondly, but you can't really write "first off" without there being a second.

I grabbed some paper towels to wipe up what I had spilled. I'm crouched down in front of the fridge on my toes. I need more paper towels and I start to stand up to go get them. Bad thing is I'm leaning pretty far forward since I was reaching sort of deep into the fridge and when I start to stand I hit my head on the freezer door.

I didn't hit it too hard, but I wasn't expecting to make contact with anything so the surprise and that whole equal and opposite reaction thing has me losing my balance and falling backward onto my ass. I rolled and ended up laying on the floor. I had to laugh because it was just so damn funny and stupid. Jillian asked if I was okay and I told her I was fine, more embarrassed than anything else.

Thanks. I'm here all week. Tip your waitresses.

Here's another goof that I had nothing to do with. One of the managers took a phone call one night and told a customer that we would have the gift certificates she wanted waiting for her by noon the following day. (Side note: I'm surprised customers haven't demanded a drive thru window. It's amazing how demanding they can get. I've had people virtually ask me to bring the bag out to them in the parking lot as they pull up outside.) One problem though, you can't ring up the gift certificates without paying for them. The chick needed to leave her credit card number in order for us to process them and have them ready for her to pick up. This did not happen which means they got rung up when she walked in the door. Here's the best part. She wanted 125 cards for $20 a piece. Guess that sorta backfired. Oops.

Duh

I'm a dork. The correct title of the Radiohead song I referred to a couple of posts ago is Reckoner, not Reckoning. This is why I should not do entries after 10pm.

On a side note, I finally got around to renting Crash. This would be the Oscar winner from a couple of years ago, not the David Cronenberg (sp) flick. Though, I have seen that one too. Anyway, here's what I got from Crash. We all suck and we are all racists...until we fall down the stairs after realizing we wake up angry all the time and the only person who will help us is our foreign housekeeper who we bitched at the day before. Oh, and there are a couple of crashes in there too.

Art, climbing and other stuff

Thanks to Teresa, I have some pictures from my rock wall climbing adventure in AR over the summer. If you look up and to the right you'll see a metal bar sticking out, that's the top of where I was going towards. You can also see where the "rock" begins to curve, that's about where I lost my footing/grip and went on the downward part of my journey. I think you can get a decent idea of how far up we were by looking at the trees around us. You can also notice Teresa's daughter doesn't have enough weight on her to actually have to touch the wall. She could have hung there all day. I did not suffer this same problem.

I keep forgetting to mention that I purchased an actual piece of art during the Fine Art Fair that was held about 3 weeks ago. I've only gone to it one other time. The piece I bought is called "Reder." It was done by Chris Vance, an artist from Iowa. Yes, they have artists there...who knew? Anyway, it is technically a painting I suppose, but it wasn't done on canvas, it's on some sort of wood instead. It's abstract, which normally isn't my thing, but I was instantly drawn to his work as we walked by his section of the show. His style reminds me of Radiohead album art and the work of Ben Templesmith, who is an illustrator for the 30 Days Of Night comic...among other things. You can take a peak at the sort of thing I got by going to www.moberggallery.com/vance_portfolio.shtml.

Couple of quick weird-ish things:

At work: Because one of the managers left out a sheet of paper that has all of the employee log in numbers listed on it, we all have to come up with new numbers for ourselves. These are the numbers we use not only for the computer system, but also for the cash registers.

The most annoying person at work, who doesn't really ever seem to work, is being shifted to a position I didn't even know existed. I still think we made it up to tell the truth. This person is going to be the main person responsible for helping customers and training other employees in this area. This is the same person who still calls back to my department with questions on how to do orders. I'm very afraid.

One of our employees tried to sign on to a PDT (we use them to scan bar codes...you've seen similar things at the grocery store, Wally World, etc.) but was having trouble. I asked her if I could help and told her she needed to log in just like she did up at the cash registers or the computers at info. I told her to enter her ID and then her password. I noticed she was hitting the letters buttons for her ID. Now, our ID and password are numerical. I said, "you know, the numbers you use to log in with...?" She said, "OH, I thought 'user name' meant I needed to put in my name." Errr...not so much. And I thought I knew nothing about computers.

Beauty In My Ears

It took me awhile to download, but it was worth it. I'm thinking I will be listening to In Rainbows atleast once a day.

Current faves:

Bodysnatchers

Nude

Reckoning

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Videotape

Actually, I'm in love with the whole cd. I'll gush when I'm not so sleepy. Thom sings sweetly in my ears...all is well in the world.

As far as I know, Ween has nothing to do with this...

The new tv season is upon us and I have to admit that there weren't too many shows that grabbed my attention. Luckily, the few I have checked out have been either great or worth giving a shot.

Of all that I've seen, Pushing Daisies right now has to be my favorite. Created by one of the guys behind the short lived Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies has a similar sense of whimsy about it. Lee Pace plays Ned, who discovers as a child that he has the ability to bring the recently deceased back from the dead. Like all "gifts" this one comes with the usual karmic balances. He can only keep the person/animal alive for one minute or else someone else has to die. If he touches the person/animal again, they die...again.

It's this last bit that is causing a bit of a problem for Ned. In the first episode, his childhood love was killed and he brought her back to find out what happened and to admit something to her that he'd been keeping secret his whole life. One look at her and he realizes he can't let her die again. Well, there goes the funeral home director then...

The series is just this side of real. It's like watching a combo between Tim Burton, The Wizard of Oz and Twin Peaks. The writing is smart, with a good sense of dark humor. There is just the right balance between the weirder and more whimsical aspects of the story and the realism needed for the relationship between Ned and Chuck (his childhood crush, the girl next door) to be endearing rather than cloying. Lee Pace and Anna Friel, a great British actress, work extremely well together, keeping cutesy-ness at bay while maintaining a real sense of sweetness.

I just recently rented Soldier's Girl that starred Pace and he was freakin' amazing in it. He definitely has no fear as an actor, which should make watching him in this show a real treat. You can catch Pushing Daisies on ABC, Wed. at 7pm.

Second fave new show would have to be Chuck. Since it's on Mon. at 7pm on NBC, I have to tape it (hello...Prison Break also on at 7). The two episodes I've seen have been really funny and even though the action can get a bit over the top, the show is still a riot. Maybe it's because I've worked for Best Buy, but I enjoy all the bits inside of the Buy More where Chuck works for the Nerd Herd (Geek Squad). Chuck inadvertently became the receiver of all of the secret intel gathered by both the NSA and the CIA. He's essentially a living computer and will have weird moments when the info will coalesce and he has to let his secret agent handlers know something is up. Zachary Levi plays Chuck and currently shares Crush Land with Lee Pace in my head. Levi plays confused nice guy very well. Chuck is very much the guy you'd like to date and take home to mom. He is surrounded by a funny sister with an "awesome" boyfriend and the slightly strange best friend, Morgan. This is another well written show full of great actors.

Also worth checking out, Bionic Woman and Reaper. Bionic Woman is being done by one of the guys responsible for bringing back Battlestar Galactica and thus far I'm enjoying it. Reaper is similar to Chuck, in that it's a sort of geeky guy with a slightly strange best friend finding out he has some sort of new power. In Reaper's case, our hero finds out his parents sold his soul to the devil and he has to work for Satan wrangling up escaped naughty souls and returning them to Hell. Actually, a rather clever and twisted idea. The production value on the first episode was a little lax, but I enjoyed the dark humor so I'm going to watch this one to see how it progresses.

Finally, I completely missed Banned Books week. How sad is that considering I work at a bookstore. We used to make a big deal about the week. When we were first open, we had a major table set up with a fake bonfire featuring the titles on the ALA list. Now, I think we might have had a display up on the end of one of the shelving rows. Anyway, I thought I would recommend The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky that was one of the 10 most challenged books in '06.

Freedom Rock

Radiohead.

Greatest. Band. Ever.

Who needs a record label? Certainly not these guys. Don't feel like mucking about with contracts, etc.? Release it your own damn self.

Go to www.inrainbows.com and you can choose to get a download of the new album or you can get the discbox version which is the download along with a cd, an album, a bonus cd with extra tracks and some other pretty things.

Guess which I picked?

Let's just say I had to check a currancy exchange website.

Oh, did I mention if you choose the download only option you can pay whatever you like?

Bite me record industry.

***************

Sorry I've been a bad blogger this week. I'll try to get to a review of some of the shows that have debuted over the last couple of weeks. Probably tomorrow. Thanks for your patience and patronage. Now, go to www.inrainbows.com.