3 August 2008

Where was I?

In Destin last weekend. Left Friday morning and returned Monday morning. Relaxing, but I got burned the first day out on the beach :(. There were eight of us in a dee-luxe house, so there was a lot of stayin' in and drinkin' and eatin' and gabbin' and watchin' goofy DVDs. Minor drama when I went walking one night and came back two hours later with a rented scooter, but scooters are fun so it was a win. Until Monday morning when it ran out of gas on Lisa & I on our way to fill up and return it. Another :(.

Detox during the week whilst I finished various reads. I wanted some funcrazy cyberpunk for vacationing, so I picked up Mona Lisa Overdrive for the beach and read most of it on the drive back. I had gone to Kroger on Thursday beforehand because I'd been wanting try out its DVD rental kiosk. I flipped through the movies, saw Cloverfield was already checked out (!), and realized that that's the movie that needed to be taken. I must find it! Planning to find another Kroger, instead I just went to B&N, bought a copy, and realized I needed to pick up a beach book. They only had MLO in mass market paperback, and I'm struggling now to find the other Gibson novels I don't have in either hardback or oversized paperback. Oddly difficult. Cloverfield was a win and FEAKED EVERYONE'S SHIT OUT during the subway scene. I pass-ed out-eth so Lisa & I watched it again when we got home.

On our return to the ATL, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Eighth Season graphic novels (#s 1 and 2) and the last book of Y: The Last Man were waiting for me. Hoo. Ray. The Buffy stories were fun and it was great seeing the wild changes that have occured; probably would've been difficult with a TV budget. The artwork had two problems: body proportions and likenesses. Most of the time, people's heads were absurdly too large for their bodies. Not Peanuts-large, but large all the same. Skilled artists otherwise, so I can't explain it. Getting the likeness right is always a pitfall of adaptations. They were close-enough. The painted covers had them perfect. I powered through Y the morning before work on Tuesday. Had started the night before and got hooked while trying to avoid work. Ultimately Yorick's five year trip was the enjoyable part of the story with this final episode simply capping things off. The whole series was a way to offer riffs on sexual politics (and reversals) and sexual identity. The defining scenes at the end were when 355 lectures Yorick, worried that he alone would not be a good father-figure to a son, that mothers are more responsible for molding men than fathers. Later, an aged Yorick lectures one of his 22-year-old clones that it was Dr. Mann's asshole father that pushed her to be a great scientist. You gotta find a balance. The scene with Ampersand made me very sad.

Last night was Dark Knightus Interruptus. Ten-or-so minutes in and the Great Atlanta Storm of August 2nd 2008 hit. It directed its greatest force at the powerlines that fed to the Midtown Landmark Cinema. Specifically to the theater that was showing The Dark Knight at 7:00 PM. BLAST! Sad tweets here, here, and here. We gave it 20 minutes, then headed back to Pint and Plate where the drinks were flowing, the sliders were ... sliding, and power flowed through the tubes like Coca-Cola!

[ posted by sstrader on 3 August 2008 at 11:22:52 AM in Cinema , Language & Literature , Where was I? | tagged comic books ]