Now I'm taping To Kill A Mockingbird and whatever movie it is that comes after it.

Last night I picked up the tapes Tim did for me while I was away. For me he got Age of Innocence, Remains of the Day, and a bundle of Akira Kurosawa movies.

I'm strangely not hungry right now. Maybe it's because I don't feel like there's anything good to eat within reach. I'd eat the waffles if there was orange juice.

That was one great thing about Lake Arrowhead; always there were good beverages at the ready. Be it hot chocolate, coffee, orange juice, or water, it was all right there. All I've got here are three cans of coke. That's it. And don't get me wrong, I do like coke . . . It's just not the time.

I failed to mention that I worked on my novel yesterday. In Lake Arrowhead I began chapter 80, the first chapter of part 9. I finished that chapter yesterday. I think. Actually, I think I'll make it longer . . .

Er . . . Maybe this novel's too big. I'm gonna take a hard look at it when I finish the first draft.

I'm tired.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--I wish I could've gotten more sleep this morning.

But I couldn't--The maid unexpectedly turned up.

So I was unexpectedly turned out and found myself at the beginning of an adventure on the trolley through San Diego! to include a smoothie, a phone call to and a recommendation from Trisa, a new book by Caitlin R. Kiernan, a taking up Trisa on her recommendation, and an inept trolley operator who took me in the direction opposite from which her sign proclaimed.

Now here I go 'gain.

Oh, lazy, fat-cat Americans like me, spoiled yet again by paradise--er, and by paradise, I mean the free post-apocalyptic environment of blackish brown smooth hills dotted with the construction paper black skeletons of trees. From here to Lake Arrowhead (almost a hundred miles), this is the genuinely glorious sight on either side of the 15 freeway, not to mention the crusty black scalps of land hugging the winding road leading up to the mountain that Lake Arrowhead calls home.

Lake Arrowhead--cold. Quite cold. Especially in the hotel room where my mother laughed at our craziness with the heater and sagely turned the device down to a perfectly sane 60 degrees (my mother tends to be too warm).

It's easy to kill an hour or two in the cute little "village" (read "mall") within walking distance of the hotel. It was there that I ate at a restaurant that had--judging from autographed photos about the place--previously served David Prowse, William Shatner, and, most incredibally, Lani "Captain Crais" Tupu! Someone at the Casa Coyote had proudly presented Tupu with a Farscape production photo for him to put his John Hancock on! This thrilled me lots. And it's fun to say Lani Tupu.

The drives sucked because I largely had to put up with my mother's insistence on playing a live Eagles CD over and over (I do sort of like "Desperado" and "Hotel California," but if a band's live performance tends to be a collection of their greatest hits, to me that says something). During "The Girl From Yester-day", by mother and sister agreed that it was silly to cry over a lost love and that anyone who did it was a loser. After all, there was always someone else at the party.

With triumphant laughter, my mother informed us that breaking up was a time when one essentially announced, "Next!"

Echoing her laughter, I rejoined with my oft-undetected sarcasm, "Yeah, totally! The idea of someone being irreplacable is preposterous as it is of course predicated upon the idea that people are unique! Ha ha, what a tired fallacy!"

What reply any member of my family may've had to my comment shall never be known because at that time we rounded a corner and saw the aftermath of a rather severe car accident featuring an expensive black sports car with a hood crumpled like a soda can. We were forced to park in another shopping centre so let's shop more, hurrah!

The bulk of my time was spent in the hotel room reading, mostly Caitlin R. Kiernan stuff. I finished the brilliant Threshold which combined interesting, tormented characters who exchanged dialogue that got me in a way somehow similer to the way dialogue got me in Citizen Kane, with a great, slimy dark, dark something underneath it all that was mysterious and mythos-ish. Especially mythos-ish as I spent a lot of time in the hotel room also reading stories from Caitlin's Tales of Pain and Wonder relating to Threshold's characters and something.

Speaking of Caitlin, that lovely woman has put a bunch of my manga and stuff on her Nebari.net in my absence, and oy, was it ever a nice thing to come home to.

I think I'll go out and buy Low Read Moon now . . . Or at least, as soon as I catch up with correspondences and things.

Oh! And happy Thanksgiving (it's occured to me that poultry is the worst smelling thing in the world. Why do people wanna eat something that smells like raw sewage? Maybe my vegetarian olfactory is biased . . .).

Woke up feeling something terrible. Was it the tap water? Was it the Taco Bell burritos I wolfed down on the way home last night? Was it the walk? Was it something else?

It only figures as I now have gotta scramble to get my shit together for departure. Yes, I am gonna be dissapearing for a few days . . . I think I'm getting back on Friday. I'm going with parents and sister to Lake Arrowhead, where I suspect I shall end up eating too much.

What really kills me is that I'm gonna miss taping Only Angels Have Wings on TCM at midnight to-night. You know, if someone out there has a desire to be really, really sweet to me, they might wanna consider nabbing that motion picture for me to-night *puppy dog eyes*.

I shall now try to gather stuff and strength to the soundtrack of Velvet Underground songs. Until days from now, bye!

Oy . . . Not feeling so great this mornin'. Little kids screaming and bumping elsewhere in the house . . . Ug. Can't they just get swallowed by the ground?

I gots some walking for doing to-day. To and from school. It'll be fine. But all I want to do to-day is lay around watching movies.

Blah.

At least I've got money. Maybe I'll stop at Einstein bagels on the way . . .

Right. Off I go.

Taped Touch of Evil, or I think I did, anyway. My cousin was fucking with the TV so, although I think it still worked, I'm not altogether sure.

During lunch, I watched the opening shot and it really was extraordinary. We go from a close-up of a ticking bomb, to the car it was planted in, to lovers strolling casually a few blocks away . . . All it one, single crane shot. Remarkable.

Last night I did four more pages of The Adventures of Nar'eth. Caitlin's requested more, so I think I shall give her more.

This morning I did a new page of Doll Merchant--I think my clear influences for that series are beginning to be less Raymond Chandler and more Arthur Conan Doyle.

So I have been a busy bee. At this rate, I may have to stop insisting to people that I'm not a comic book artist.

No matter what happens to-day . . . I don't think I'm ever gonna get the theme from Pokemon out of my head.

sigh.

I did see a good episode of that series yesterday . . .

"Gotta catch 'em all . . ."

I feel like I'm in a submarine.

But fortune strike in the midst of malaise as I unexpectedly bagged a video of Billie Holiday after taping Johnny Belinda. Nice.

A sort of victory: In a recent answering of reader's questions by Roger Ebert, Ebert said;

"Apparently moviegoers now prefer wide-screen to 'full screen' (i.e., cropped pan-and-scan) by such a wide margin that stores are routinely left with piles of unsold full screens."

I do like the sound of that. And to think, a couple years ago people thought I was crazy for my preference. Huh! Who's crazy now, huh? Huh!? I'm--I'm not craz . . . The door made me do it, I tell you! The door!

...

Six guesses for what I did this morning.

No.

No.

Heh, no.

No.

Well, yes, but everyone does that routinely. Right?

No.

Okay. I did something kind of wrong, I guess . . . I watched the Paris Hilton sex video. Morbid curiosity, I suppose. I'm not really sure why I wanted to watch it but if it was for sexual arousal, my libido was quite disappointed. It's kind of depressing that someone can seem so artificial and superficial in such a situation. Here she is, having sex with her supposed boyfriend, and she can't even sound genuine. Isn't 19 awfully young to be so emotionally jaded? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.

Do I feel sorry for her that this video is circulating? Vaguely.

The door! The door made me do it, I tell you!

Turns out a guy can indeed get around without a car.

Yesterday I went to La Mesa, came back, then went to Parkway Plaza. I figured it'd be silly to waste the Trolley Day Tripper I'd gotten for going to La Mesa.

It was at Parkway Plaza that I finally bought The Apartment, and it was shortly thereafter that I finally saw the end of that movie. It's all good, it turns out.

Last night, Lucky the cat made a break for the outdoors well after sundown, a time he's not typically allowed outside. While looking for him in the backyard, I saw in the darkness the small, pale, round face of a opossum, looking about with tiny black eyes from atop the fench.

I was reminded of dream I'd had the night before about Victoria the cat escaping because she'd lain thousands of black and white kittens all over the house. These strange little kittens were of varying sizes, some smaller than a fingernail, lost between carpet fibres. One had to walk very carefully around the house.

...

It occurs to me that some of the decisions we make in life are extremely difficult to deal with, even if it was probably the right decision. You wonder when on earth you'll stop thinking about it, as it keeps popping into the brain.

Good advice.

To bed, for bread.

I must go to sleep early so that I may travel to La Mesa to-morrow and retrieve bread from my Aunt.

I don't wanna. Why did I agree to this? I have plenty of food . . . Oh well . . .

Anyway, I must get up early--Hullo! It's already 3am. So much for that! Then again, 3am is early for me . . . but not early enough to make waking up at 9am very comfortable. Maybe I can do it from 10am?

Halloa, my neglected blog!

Eh, I didn't type anything into you on Tuesday because I gave the whole day over to watching The Two Towers extended edition. And I'm not sorry. Nope.

It's like all better with the characters and what not. Blah. No word things in my brainmouth to-now. I'm tired. Shall I watch more? I haven't even begun on the special features of which there are . . . heh . . . a lot.

Suffice to say, like Fellowship of the Ring before it, The Two Towers is now a far better, less frenetic feeling film.

So it's single-handedly responsible for me being in quite a good mood. Otherwise, I'd be miserable and crazy, maybe, from isolation and lack of a proper desk to draw on which is really starting to get to me. I'm tired of drawing on the floor. It's just not comfortable.

Oh, yes, I used to have desk space for drawing on. But what happened? The big, beautful, frelling desk got cut in half is what happened!

Ah . . . but that's an old wound. No sense pestering it now.

Sean Bean is an excellent Boromir.

Dreamt ants were taking over the world. Not a good feeling, especially as they started with my glass of apple juice.

I'm busy to-day again.

Feeling out of sorts for an altercation with Trisa.

And to-day's the last day of car insurance. I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks are gonna be composed of long, slow days. But that's fine, as I'm in a slow mood these days.

But whatever happens, I do know that the Two Towers extended edition comes out to-morrow. That's the kind of thing that keeps me alive.

Found this on Mel's journal. It's cute . . . if the graphic ever loads, huh?


Sometimes your creative solutions land you in
sticky situations but you remain adventurous
and undaunted by failure. You posess an
infectious confidence and deep thinking comes
naturally to you.
Always on the go with many paws in many pies,
Rabbits can appear slightly manic to others.
But not to worry, you have everything under
control... most of the time.


Which Pooh character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

To-morrow's my last day of car insurance. The Company sent me a form in the mail for me to fill out in order to get my own insurance, but said form has not yet arrived. Fortunately, I won't actually need my car for a while after Monday. And on either Wednesday or Thursday, I'm going to Lake Arrowhead with my parents and sister.

Lake Arrowhead was caught in the fire and I'm looking forward to seeing majesticly burnt trees and shrubs.

To-day . . . There're a couple projects I wanna work on, I wanna do laundry, and . . . Oh yes! Eat breakfast. I think I'll start out by going for coffee.

To-night I plan to tape Cleopatra from 1913. I also want to tape Adult Swim for Marty who, not having cable, has never seen Adult Swim.

So, tapie, tapie.

...

Last night, I managed to watch all of They Drive by Night, a movie I'd taped because it's got Humphrey Bogart in it. As it turned out, this movie was made before Bogart was a big star, and he's forced to play second fiddle to a far inferior actor. And the story was ludicrous mid-century Hollywood shlock, beginning at point A, going to point L, coming back for point G, spinning out to N, taper spiraling round to C, and, at last, ending up at K. Bogart and some other guy are brothers who drive a truck delivering produce, dreaming of one day actually owning their truck or even their own trucking business. But things go awry when Bogart falls asleep at the wheel and looses his right arm. The Other Guy goes to work in the garage of a big trucking company where the boss's wife (Ida Lupino) has a deep crush on him. Lupino kills her dopey husband, makes The Other Guy a partner in owning the company, but goes wacky when she learns that Other Guy is marrying a sweet, plain little redhead played by Ann Sheridan.

It ended up that Ida Lupino was the person who made this film worth watching. She'd killed her husband by allowing an automatic garage door to close on him while the gas was on in his car and, later, which she was on the stand, her mad laughter and cries of, "Yes! That's it! The door made me do it! The door, I tell you!" were just delicious. What a plucky dame. I understand there's another movie she costars with Bogart in. I just might hunt it down . . .

The last two movies I saw at the cinema were Kill Bill and Lost in Translation. Two movies having a lot to do with two different perspective on Tokyo. Kill Bill being the more stylised, Lost in Translation being the more raw. They're both incredibally good movies.

This morning, for some reason, I also remembered that both films have a Charlie Brown gag, wherein a group of people decide that an individual resembles Charlie Brown and so they take to refering to him by that name. Strange, no?

I woke up to-day at around 10:10am, watched a bit of a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode I'd never seen, and then went back to bed. I really must stop doing that.

I think I'm catching a cold . . .

Hoy.

Got up at 2pm to-day. Well, technically I woke up at 11am, read the last chapters of The Valley of Fear, and then went back to bed.

Again, I stayed up looking for Sarah Bernhardt, only this time the hunt yielded my quarry. Here.

If I can find a large enough photo of Benhardt, I might make a Sarah Bernhardt desktop scheme. I don't know where this sudden interest in Sarah Bernhardt comes from. Maybe I just feel nlike I wanna possess her in some voyueristic fashion before I see Nicole Kidman's rendition of the legendary actress in Steven Spielburg's new film.

I got Elvis Costello's new album yesterday and, thanks to a breathtaking traffic jam on 15 north, I managed to listen to it twice in a row. It comes with a smashing good DVD and a PIN code for a bonus track on the website which doesn't work.

. . . Gods it's weird having Sarah Bernhardt yelling at me so passionately . . . This is exactly why I wanted these mp3s . . .

Er, so anyway, the new Costello album is great light, somewhat gloomy jazz. I think I'd enjoy it more if I was more in touch with my emotions.

Hmm. I'm going real creepy . . . The girls in my life are Sarah Bernhardt, Rita Hayworth, and Sophitia.

Help.

Even I think it's obscene that I'm this tired at 1pm.

I was driven last night, though, for no apparent reason, to find mp3s of Sarah Bernhardt. Apparently recordings do exist, some even from before 1900. But alas, my search was in vain.

If any of you know where I can get my hands on some Sarah Bernhardt recordings, let me know. And mind you that's Sarah Bernhardt, not Sandra Bernhardt.

...

Don't know what I'm gonna do to-day. Maybe just read.

Victoria the cat returns!!

After weeks of avoiding me, she suddenly seems very happy to hang out in my room.

Not really any other developments besides that around here . . . Looks like it may be easier to get car insurance than I thought . . .

Victoria seemed overtaken by horrid fascination when I did thirty crunches in front of her. The look on her face told me she'd never seen anything so inexplicable and bizzare.

I wonder if 1602 number 4 is out yet?

(jumping to another topic) I taped Clash By Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, and Marilyn Monroe. It's good--not spectacular, but good. Seeing Stanwyck reminded me of how much I wanna get a copy of Double Indemnity.