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Category: Movies and TV

I got a-hold of some bad food Friday, and spent the weekend with a fever and other symptoms best left unsaid. I don't get that kind of sick often, so I'm never prepared. I learned about the BRATT diet years ago and turn to that in times like these, but of the Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Tea and Toast, I only had tea. Saltine crackers stood in for toast. I made some tea early on, and I do believe it made a difference. Late in the day Saturday, I fought through the fever and went to the hippie store for some bananas and applesauce.

I've gotten so used to not taking medicine when I have a cold or allergies (don't like that kind of medicine!) that I wasn't thinking well enough to realize I should have been taking pepto and aspirin. I figured the aspirin part out Saturday night, and it knocked out the fever. I didn't figure the pepto out until Sunday night/Monday morning at about 2:30. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. I chewed two pepto tablets every hour for several hours. It knocked the other symptoms right out.

I stayed home from work on Monday since I got no sleep Sunday night and I was just plain weak.

All that to say... I watched a lot of movies while I was down.

The ones I didn't like:

• Sphere - The mystery of the sphere remains.
• A Little Trip to Heaven - Mean people suck.
• Wag the Dog - Liars. I hate liars. Even funny liars suck.

The ones I liked:

• Grace is Gone
• America's Sweethearts
• Go
• Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas
• Heat

Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas is probably my favorite of the bunch. It was funny, and it had nerdy dungeon and dragon kids in it. And that guy from Almost Famous. And Topher from Dollhouse!! The tagline on the DVD cover says "Solving the mysteries of the Universe, one girl at a time" has NOTHING to do with the movie. Augh! I hate when they do that. Luckily, I didn't read the cover of the DVD until after I watched the movie.

Heat was good, but sheesh... it was over 3 hours long!!

As for the sickness, I'm feeling much better now.

• I got a tiny tree a couple of weeks ago. It started as a stick with roots, but shortly after I planted it in a pot on my back porch, the leaves started sprouting. It was a real joy to see the progress every day. One evening this week, I watered the little tree and marveled out how much growth it had. The next morning, all the leaves were gone. My best guess is that something ate them. It really took the wind out of my sails that day, and I'm not sure that I've recovered. I don't know why it affected me so much.
• My out of the house adventure today will include Waterloo Ice House for chicken fried steak and eggs, and Target for toilet paper and Lipton onion soup mix.
• I watched the pilot of The Unusuals. Amber Tamblyn and Adam Goldberg attracted me to it. It's quirky and looks like it has a lot of potential.
• I wish networks would stagger the television season. There are months when there's nothing new on. And then months when I can't keep up.
• It wouldn't be April in America without taxes and my song Tax Lady Blues.

There's a new show coming in March to ABC called "In The Motherhood." It's inspired by real stories from real mothers. The commercial for it has a man's voice that says, "Cheryl Hines, Jessica St. Clair and Megan Mullaly in a comedy we can all relate to."

Uh... The man speaking that phrase can relate to being a mother? I can relate to being a mother? I think not.

• First day of winter. That means the days start getting longer, right? So in six months, I can get up when it's light and leave work when it's still light? I can't wait.
• I'm eating bread and butter pickles and drinking spiced tea for supper. Buckeyes and white-chocolate peppermint snowmen for dessert. Maybe some dobosh torte later, too. Ah, Christmastime.
• I watched some movies this weekend and aborted some, too. I aborted Just Friends which I had forgotten I'd aborted before. I also aborted Dream Girls. As much as I love Jennifer Hudson, I can't stand people bursting into song in lieu of a spoken conversation. The movies I got through were The Human Stain and Knocked Up. The former was one of those indie movies I'm glad I watched but don't care to see again. The latter was one I probably could have lived without, but seeing three freaks from "Freaks and Geeks" in the same movie was fun. I sure like Seth Rogan.
• The spiced tea I'm drinking was concocted by a coworker. I think I know which coworker, but I'm not totally sure. We put stockings up on our cubicles Dec. 1, and the coworkers have been sneaking things into them. The spiced tea was a small tupperware-like container containing sugar and spice and lotsa of stuff nice that dissolves in water to make a tasty warm beverage.
• I only have a day and a half left of work before Christmas. I hope it's quiet, and I can catch up on some things. Like organizing my e-mail. It's a disaster. I need to write some procedures, too. Normally, that would be a yucky job, but finding some quiet time to sit and think and write procedures sounds like a dream.

Here's a glimpse into how songwriting works for me sometimes.

Last night, I recorded a new guitar track. It's just some chord progressions that came out of my fingers when I picked up my guitar the other day. I put that guitar track in my iPod.

On the way to lunch today, I played it on repeat. I tried to sing along with it with nonsense words. Sometimes I have to just hum. Sometimes I sing the same lame words I sing every time I do this. (I can't remember them right now, but they come out when I'm trying to write). Sometimes, something unexpected comes out.

The unexpected came out out of my mouth today in the form of "the look on his face." At first, I dismissed it, but then I thought it came out for a reason, so I'd better go with it.

I started thinking of events or movies where a look on someone's face was meaningful. I wanted to think of something in real life. I even switched it to "the look on her face" to see if something would come to me. That seemed even harder.

Eventually, Kevin Costner's face came to me. It was that look on his face at the end of Fandango when he sees the girl dancing. Oh, how I love that movie.

At lunch, I continued listening and tried to come up with the verses and chorus. I remembered a few things from memory from that movie, but decided I really need to watch it again.

I came home thinking I had it on DVD. No. I looked on my old VHS tapes. No. I looked to see if TiVo had it on radar soon. No. I looked at Amazon to see if they had an Unbox download of it. No. I've never figured out bittorrent, and the last I tried, it made me cuss, so... No. I ended up ordering the DVD from Amazon, and even payed more to have it shipped to me by tomorrow than the movie itself cost. That was probably stupid, but I only have a few more days of staycation left, and I'd like to finish the song before I go back to work. So there's how songwriting works sometimes.

• I saw the new X-Files movie this past weekend. It's getting a bad rap from so-called "loyal" fans. I loved it. I haven't seen Mulder and Scully in years, and it was awesome to see them and how their lives have developed over the years. It just occurred to me, though... I wonder how Mulder makes money. Maybe I missed that.
• What of these "loyal" fans who were disappointed? They said things like, "I've been a loyal fan since the beginning, and this is what they came up with?" If they don't write and produce the movie YOU want, your loyalty suddenly evaporates? Sounds more like you expect them to be loyal to you. Ahem.
• I watched my coworker's son-in-law compete in American Gladiators Monday night. Unfortunately, he didn't advance, but he put forth a huge effort, even suffering a concussion on the Eliminator. Tiffany beat Ally's time in the Eliminator and will be in the finale. But I can't find out anywhere if Ally still has a chance if no one else beats her time. The Web site isn't clear, plus it's mostly graphics and Flash, and I'm put off by that. I just want the information.
• I was listening to a podcast (I think Hometown Tales), and one of the guys was talking about American Gladiators. Someone else asked who the person liked on there, and it surprised me that his response was the name of a gladiator. I don't even pay attention to who the gladiators are... I watch the contestants. It surprised me that other people pay attention to the gladiators. The only one I really notice is Helga because she's a stupid caricature of someone from the Netherlands, I think. I'm not impressed with caricatures.

Amazon has a service called Unbox. You can use it to rent videos that download to your DVR. TiVo talked about it in a newsletter a few months ago, and offered a $15 credit to sign up. I love the idea. There's one drawback, though, that will cause me to never pay real money to do it. The video downloads, and you have 30 days to watch it. The dealbreaker is that once you start watching it, you have 24 hours to finish it. I hardly ever watch a movie from beginning to end in a 24 hours period.

I downloaded "World Trade Center" a while back, and was luckily able to watch it all. Right now, I have "The Departed" and "Blood Diamond" sitting on TiVo. They're both about 2.5 hours long. I'm afraid to start either one because I don't have 2.5 solid hours that I want to spend sitting in front of the TV. If not for that one annoyance, I'd be praising the program.

Conclusion: A very tentative Yay! for Unbox.

Just some stuff:

• I went to Mandola's Italian Kitchen for lunch (first time). I was reading the menu and thought some pesto pasta sounded delicious. Then I thought, "I'd rather get something with meat." I continued to read the menu and finally settled on Eggplant Parmesan. I'm glad no one was holding me accountable for that previous thought about meat. I forgot it about two seconds after I thought it.
• I recommend the Denver Post's "Lyrics Undercover" podcast. Each one is short (less than 10 minutes), and as the site says, "each week Brian gives us ... a podcast that looks behind the words of well-known songs." You don't have to have an iPod to listen. Just download the MP3 file and listen on your computer if you want.
• I also recommend the FX series "30 Days." It's from the guy who did Super Size Me. Each show, Morgan Spurlock or someone else spends 30 Days experiencing something new to them. The one I watched last night had a guy who was laid off from his job due to outsourcing to India go to India and get a job. He got to see how the "new" jobs there are affecting the people of India.

About four years ago, I wrote Shadow of a Girl based on a script for a movie called Two Days. The movie was written by Paige Carl Griggs. He stars in it and used that song and at least one other in the movie. It's being screened in April at the Philadelphia Film Festival.

You can hear my music in the trailer on the Two Days Website. You can hear the acoustic guitar intro to Space Needle in the beginning, and then you can hear me singing Shadow of a Girl in the background of the bar scenes. How cool is that?