New article up on Retrojunk all about my favorite Christmas movie.

Also, this. Because I'm a sick, sick person.

Tags: christmas, retrojunk, the rock meme

(hooray for lunchtime posts...)

Hey guys, in a bit of a pickle, with the Missus on bedrest, and a move in progress, I could -really- use some help this coming weekend with moving Big Things.

Gas, and food, will be provided at a minimum. (If you have a truck, or can drive a manual transmission (to drive -mine-) , that would be an Extra Bonus.)

Don't need 50 people, I already have one definite person to help, and there's nothing I own that needs more than me and one other to move. -However- having A Few People (if not on Saturday, definitely on Sunday even more importantly) is going to be very, very helpful.

(additionally, if you have experience with unhooking, and hooking up a gas dryer? that would help too.)

Also... Anyone up for fostering, or perhaps adopting outright, a cat or two? Plans have changed on one front.

So I'm sure this will draw the ire of the usual haters, but I don't really care. I finally saw Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day this weekend. It was fun; not great, but fun. I love the first film, and I rewatch it all the time. The sequel will end up in my collection, but the rewatch factor isn't going to be the same. Sure, it was a movie purely for us fans. Just about everyone, down to the minor characters, from the first movie are in the sequel (minus William Dafoe who was replaced with Julie Benz). There were in-jokes, referring to events from the first movie, and lots of allusions to the first. But it didn't work.

Why didn't it work as well? For starters, it was too stylized. Troy Duffy tried to build upon the things he did (and that worked) in the original, but some things shouldn't be overdone. Fight scenes went for way too long, and the FBI-agent-inserted-into-the-murder-scene-recreation sequences were unnecessary. Another reason is that some of the humor seemed too forced. In the original, the humor felt natural, and I felt as if I was listening to a conversation between people I knew. The sequel tried too hard for laughs.

But the main reason it didn't work was that it was missing the crucial theme that made the original a good movie. In the original, the boys are called to the life of vigilantism; it's a holy crusade of sorts. It justified their actions. The sequel was missing that. It just became a revenge flick, with action for the sake of action. The heart of the story was missing.

But like I said, it was a fun movie, and I'm glad I got to see it. And man, the ending was awesome! If you've seen it, don't spoil it (don't even give MINOR details about it), because the revelation is totally worth the wait.

Movie reviews aside, here was the rest of the weekend. Friday night Chris and I got loopy and had brother-to-brother talk until about 4:30 in the morning. Saturday was "chore day", although we didn't quite get everything done because we were wrestling with the Christmas tree (long story...). And Sunday was a typical art day. Nothing overly exciting, but we were productive.

Tonight we'll be having beef stew (which is slow cooking in the crock pot at the moment) and then decorating the tree and the house finally. And maybe we'll top it all off with some Bailey's. Sounds good to me.

Tags: boondock saints 2, christmas, movie review, weekend
Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Lo Fidelity Allstars

My second article is up at Retrojunk.com.

Memorable Christmas Gifts

Tags: retrojunk
Current Mood: cold

Huh... So I thought that I had listed what I wanted to accomplish in 2009 back at the beginning of the year, but I can't seem to find the list in my LJ archives. Maybe I'm thinking about the previous year's. Oh well, either way, I'm putting a list of my goals (not resolutions, because those never get achieved) down here to check back on in a year.

• Improve my artwork. It's a basic one, but I need to keep plugging away so I can look back on my work in a year and see a difference.


• Finish my current untitled work in progress. This thing needs to be done. I don't care if I finish it and it's not great; that's what rewrites are for, and finishing it is 70% of the battle. Oh, it'd be nice to finally come up with a name for it, too.


• Get my untitled short story published. Speaking of untitled works... yes, I need to shop this around and get it published somewhere. There's no reason for it not to be. I have that much confidence in it.


• Do a couple more paintings. The itch has been strong, and I need to scratch it with some brushes and paints. I've been holding off on a wonderful fairy design because I want to do it in paint, and the wait is killing me.


• Get Bardsworth back up to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule. This is super-important to me. I hate doing two-day-a-week updates, but I'm still not prepared to make the jump to three. But I need to work double-time on preparing so I can make that jump and land comfortably.


• Up my Bardsworth readership to 5,000 per day. It's a long shot, but I think if I can get back to a three-day-a-week update schedule, update consistently, and do some targeted advertising, I can do this.


• The obligatory lose weight goal. Not just lose weight, but be healthier. I've made small steps, but I need take longer strides - less junk food, more healthy foods, smaller portions, getting back into yoga, and - if I have my druthers - getting back into weight-lifting.


• Pay off my credit card debt. The REAL long shot. Katie and I are pretty confident we can do this, though. And I want the satisfaction of making that final payment, calling to cancel the card, and chopping the hell out of it. That will make 2010 a wonderful year.

Tags: 2010, goals, new year's
Current Mood: determined

They said after a while I wouldn't miss it. "They" being people in California, and "it" being the snow. They were wrong, as I told them at the time they were.

The snow has been with us for a couple of days, but I didn't officially acknowledge it until about 10 minutes ago. I was walking back to work from the Winter Garden and took a look around me. The wind was in full force and snow flakes were descending, riding the currents. It felt like being in the middle of a snow globe that had just been shaken up. And in that moment I realized how beautiful winter is and how much I missed it.

Say what you want about it. Bitch and moan about shoveling and being cold and slippery roads. Winter is beautiful, it's pure, and I'm happy to be able to experience it again.

I'm home.

Tags: snow, winter
Current Mood: indescribable

I am currently sitting in my new area at work. I can't remember if I mentioned, but my position was recently transferred from IT to marketing, so I'm at a completely different desk on a completely different floor which houses a completely different department. They're lucky I adapt easily. It should turn out to be good, though, considering my background and skills.

Oh, and I have a window now! Granted, it's behind me and it faces a busy street and I can hear the traffic clearly (well, not at the moment; death metal drowns anything out), but it's still a window.

I'm in that post-con mood right now (if you missed it, my con report is over at Bardic Musings). It's hard to come back from an environment like that, even when it was a financially bad weekend, and have to slide back into the role of "normal job". I would give anything to be able to travel around and make money off of my artwork. Yeah, that would be a hassle in itself, but I would much rather be doing it than sitting at a desk for 8 hours.

Someday, Pete... someday...

Crap, I just realized there's no bathroom on this floor... I'm gonna have to run upstairs every time I have to go! Blarg.

Tags: post-con, work
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Lamb of God