Master of Doom

Pretty damned tired to-day, but I'm sticking to getting up at least by 1pm.

Last night was devoted almost entirely to colouring except for a really quick bunch of errands--first to my parents' house to pick up some packages (my new DVD-ROM and a book for research involved with my web comic), then to Trader Joes to buy some wine, to Target to buy some blank DVDs (where two girls sitting on the curb giggled when I had to stop and wait for the doors to slide open) and a corkscrew, to Vons to buy some bread and apples, and finally to Henry's to buy more honey and soup. And I hadn't even planned on going out yesterday.

I finished listening to Christopher Lee reading The Children of Hurin last night. I still can't tell what was missing from The Silmarillion. But what a wonderfully fucked up story. That Turin fellow just can't win. I mean, let's tally this (spoilers ahead); his father's captured by Morgoth when he's a kid, his little sister dies, he's forced to leave his mother, he gets to grow up in Doriath, which is nice, but he gets unjustly accused of the murder of one of the King's councillors, he gets exiled again, he has to live in poverty with thieves, he accidentally murders his best friend, he accidentally brings the elven kingdom of Nargothrond to destruction through his efforts to save it, and by those same efforts the woman he loves is slain by orcs. Then he accidentally marries his amnesiac sister, who kills herself when she learns the truth, and, under a misapprehension, he unjustly slays the leader of the House of Haleth. But on the other hand, Turin did kill Glaurung the dragon. Yay.

What a gloomy fucking story. It's great. And it kind of makes everything else Tolkien did seem even better--'cause you know Tolkien's capable of this sadism, so all bets are off.

Speaking of great things, did Clint Eastwood just make a movie about how a bunch of no good kids need to get off his lawn? I can just imagine the sentimental piece of schlock the movie actually is, something the Academy will feel good about stroking. But there's something so great about seeing such unabashed curmudgeonry.

One of the critic quotes in the TV trailers for Gran Torino is something like, "This is vintage Eastwood!" Has anyone actually seen The Outlaw Josey Wales? You know, the movie where Eastwood kills a bunch of union soldiers with a gatling gun and befriends a stiffly played, saintly old Native American caricature, and takes a young "squaw" for a slave before an annoying blond woman with fluffy, 1970s hair falls in love with him? I think there are about 30 seconds in that movie where Eastwood's not stroking his own ego and refraining from showing any emotion.

But at least his son wrote the score for this new movie. I'm sure that was in no way a bad idea.