I hope that whatever your plans are for tonight, they at least slightly resemble this video.
See you all in 2K11.
ps: Don’t drink and drive! Like for real.
In September, I was sitting in one of my least favorite restaurants in Providence–the one that recently filmed an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares–and someone said something very important to me. It was someone I hadn’t seen in a few months, and he asked me what I’d been doing with myself. As usual when people ask me this question, I responded with a mumbled “oh, not much.”
“Well,” he said. “Just because you’re not making any money doesn’t mean you’re not actually doing anything.”
And it’s true, Reader! Very, very true. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure that out.
Filed under: movies | Tags: bad movies, cry of the owl, julia stiles, patricia highsmith
Yesterday morning I finally watched The Cry Of The Owl, the film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s wonderful, wonderful thriller, which I read back in January and which ended up being my favorite thing I read all year. As I feared, the movie’s pretty terrible; it remains pretty faithful to the plot of the novel, but goes out of its way to confuse every character’s motivations, and not in a good way. Also, Julia Stiles portrays the depressed, romantic Jenny with such vocal and facial blankness that the viewer need never wonder what it would be like to see Taylor Swift cast as the Log Lady. It’s impossible for the audience to believe that peeping tom Robert Forrester–played by Paddy Considine as some sort of B-grade Steve Carrell character–would ever be attracted to Jenny’s happy smile; that would require her to actually move her facial muscles.
The film also has some pacing issues. When the Highsmith reader meets Forrester, he’s turning down a dinner offer from a possibly swinger-y co-worker to spy on a girl living alone in a secluded house in the woods. While the readers sympathies eventually align Robert, it’s not at all taken for granted that he’s not a total creep. In the movie, the first scene is the same. The co-worker is inexplicably a lot more annoying–jokingly telling Robert he wants to fuck him (but not in a gay way!) for no reason related to the rest of the film–but Forrester’s creepy shenanigans are presented as a pretty run-of-the-mill quirk, like it’s not really that unusual for a grown man to hide in the woods watching a vacantly pretty blonde do dishes.
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Pretty much every year I made some kind of New Year’s resolution to read more, and pretty much every year I’m disappointed with the number of books I actually finish. This year, I only finished thirteen books, most of which were also very short. Well, not counting the book I edited and the book I have a story in. (But for pleasure reading purposes those probably wouldn’t count, actually.)
From my favorite to my least favorite, here they all are, along with my original Goodreads reviews. It’s very sad to me that the only two five-star-worthy books I read were both also in January.
1. Patricia Highsmith, The Cry Of The Owl (January)
I seriously couldn’t put this down, it’s so tense and creepy and ominous and wonderful. I picked it up more or less out of the blue, because I hadn’t actually read any Highsmith before and because she keeps coming up in conversation. Little did I know that it was currently being turned into a movie starring Julia freaking Stiles.
2. EM Forster, A Room With A View (January)
This was so much more amazing and hilarious than I ever dreamed it would be. Forster’s authorial asides are a hoot.
3. Patricia Highsmith, Those Who Walk Away (August)
Not quite as hard to put down as The Cry Of The Owl, but still quite ripping, particularly if you’re the sort of person who likes to know what every character drank with every meal.
It’s midnight, and for once I’m actually home. Home and alone. And sober. This never happens.
But there’s a blizzard happening right now, and even if I wanted to go out the terrifying sounds of the wind would surely convince me otherwise. Plus my boyfriend is a third of the way across the country with his family, and my roommate is also several states away, and I like the quiet. Why I’m completely sober, though, I’m actually not sure.
I had all sorts of grandiose plans for how I was going to spend this evening: watching Netflix and doing the loads of undone dishes on my counter, maybe, or putting away all the clean laundry that I did yesterday, or washing the kitchen floor and maybe making a list of books that I’d like to read next year.
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Filed under: Uncategorized
[Nino Benvenuti and Carlos Monzon, via]
Filed under: Uncategorized
Name some things that I should be reading. Or looking at.
Tuesday:
melissa traynor nude
fresh & onlys vanishing cream
“i have never been to sumatra.” clue
pictures of porny naked girls
pörn
Monday:
jincey/lumpkin/nude
alexa dicarlo is
any thing about the applejacks
visible penis line trousers
cat riding a unicorn
very large boner
The Razormaid remix (V2) of New Order’s “Subculture” is one of my favorite remixes ever, because of the surprise appearance of Patti Smith and Gordon Gano’s vocal lovechild that shows up five minutes through. Also, “Subculture” is a great song generally, and also the one I happen to be listening to right now, which is why I bring it up.
Anyway. The party was a success! And now I’m beat. Today was dedicated to cleaning up, napping, and gorging myself on cheese. Seriously, I went out for dinner and had a gorgonzola salad with blue cheese dressing and then cheese tortellini with gorgonzola sauce. I’m going to turn into a big wheel of gorgonzola.
There’s some changes that will be happening around here soon, by the way, although I’m too brain-dead right now to articulate any of them. But stay tuned!
