Finding the words

Trying to write on here is a bit of a struggle as late. I could blame a sick dog or work or a general busy-ness of life that’s stopping me, but that would be a cheat. 

Truth is am a huge procrastinator and this past week offered me a ton of great distractions. Plus, I just have had a bit of a difficult time getting back into the writing groove. I feel ideas percolating in my head but when it comes to putting the words down on paper they come out stiff and wooden. No life to them. 

So I will be taking things slowly on here. Finding the words takes time. 

In the meantime some quick hits:

FUN FILM I SAW: I watched PITCH PERFECT on dvd this past week. It’s not normally the type of film I would watch but the word of mouth was so great, I had to check it out. I was so glad I did. Sure the story of the all girl acapella group versus the all boy acapella group was predictable, but it had so much energy and humor to it that you can’t help but get sucked in. Anna Kendrick is really charming in the lead. If you don’t start singing along in the final performance, you have no soul.

FUN BOOK I AM READING: If you ever told me I would be reading a book that featured a chapter about Scritti Politti, I would probably tell you to get out of here with some swearing in the middle. But that is just what I am reading in RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN, a history of post punk music. Author Simon Reynolds is one of the best natural writers of music I have ever read and his way of describing a band’s music is vibrant and engrossing. My list of music to download has grown thanks to him. 

Bye bye Zombies, Hello Dragons

So The Walking Dead finished its third season last night and Game of Thrones started theirs. Has there ever been a better television time for geeks than now?


A few random thoughts on both (spoilers ahead):

So the Governor survived and Andrea died. The Walking Dead has now entered Dexter territory, deviating widely from the source material and creating a new story. I like that even as a fan of the comic series, I can no longer predict who will come and go and what stories they will tell.

In fact, it feels a bit like they are going to try and change the core idea of the book and series. The series has always been about this group of survivors that travels to a place, joins a society, and things tend to go to hell. But here, with the remnants of Woodbury joining them at the prison, the show looks like it will spend some time actually building a society. I’m fascinated to see where this is going to go.

How odd that if they took the opposite tack with Game of Thrones I would be horrified! I’m not even that obsessive a fan of the books, as I only started reading them because I knew the show was coming. But I was immediately engrossed by George R.R. Martin’s worldbuilding. To see it come to life each week in such a rich, layered way is just….WOW.

Of course I have always wondered what’s going to happen down the road when the series catches up to the books. At the rate Martin’s is putting them out, it would be incredibly lucky if book six was out in time for it to be adapted. But what will happen for the last book? Will they have to create their own ending or will Martin want the book’s ending spoiled?

Andrea’s death seemed like the only way out of the corner they had written her into. Her weird siding with the Governor and Woodbury over Michonne and her old comrades just became alienating. There wasn’t any way for them to come back from it that would have felt real.

Did anyone else notice how the two major deaths this season was about half the female cast? Those boys are going to get very lonely at the prison…..

Meanwhile, Peter Dinklage shows in every episode just how you steal an ensemble TV show. Tyron has always been my favorite character in the series and the way Dinklage brings him to life has made him my favorite character on the TV series as well.

I want a pet dragon.

The Doctor is in!

Last night I, like many other geeks, tuned into the return of Doctor Who. It was a big episode, with a new companion, a new Big Bad, and a new Tardis. Rather than review the episode (I enjoyed it immensely), here are just some random thoughts on the episode:

• ROCKET CYCLE!!!

• Jenna Louise Coleman has really made an impression on me as the new companion. First off I think she’s got a certain energy to her performance that can match Matt Smith’s manic doctor. Plus their chemistry is palpable. I’ve never been one to want the Doctor and his companions to hook up, but in this case, I would be willing to make an exception. 

• Something about the opening and the London setting reminded me a bit of Steven Moffat’s other great series Sherlock. England has always been in the Doctor’s DNA and last night’s episode really had that on display (it reminded me as well of Skyfall, where London was practically a character of the story). 

• The reveal at the end of the Big Bad (I won’t spoil it) was a nice surprise. Is this the set up for the 50th anniversary? I have to admit his previous appearance hadn’t really struck me as memorable, but I will be interested in seeing where they go with it. 

• ROCKET CYCLE!!!!!

• Is it just me or does anyone else look forward to what I anticipate to be a catty first meeting between Clara and River Song?

I haven’t written anything for a while. Years in fact. I am hoping to change that. 

I used to write all the time. I mean in 5th Grade I wrote a whole play! A mystery, to be precise, set on an English estate. Reading it back, it’s hilariously bad, but I remember being so proud of it. The teacher had it bound up and it was on display for parent night. I still have it, sitting on top of my bookshelf. 

I used to write stories and scripts. I studied English in college. I wrote for my college newspaper. Then I moved to New York and soon my passion for writing began to disappear. 

I always thought that it just faded away, that it was a childhood pursuit that I lost interest in as I grew older. But lately I have begun to question this. I wonder now if the reason is because I was drinking my passion away. 

A year and a half ago I was forced to face the reality that I was an alcoholic. When I did, I had to accept responsibility and shame for many actions in my life that I am not proud of. I had to deal with repairing damage to friendships. I had to focus on becoming a sober person. That’s not as easy as you may think. 

But it hasn’t been all pain and revelations. I spent a lot of time relearning to enjoy life and all the entertainment New York City has to offer. I drove across the country and back, seeing America like I had always dreamed of doing. I recently became the proud owner of a young puppy that has taught me how to love something unconditionally. 

It’s in this that I have started to wonder if writing was something that didn’t disappear, but was submerged. If now that I am sober, that passion can be rekindled. I am unsure yet. This is the first thing I have written and I have mixed feelings about it. Its a start, anyway. That’s the important thing. 

So I will be trying to get back on here more, and working on writing some more for myself. Maybe it will come back, maybe its gone forever. I hope it is still there within me, just waiting to come back. I will be very curious to see what comes of all of this. 

The first post of the year

Hello 2010.
So far, you look a lot like 2009. Yay.
I haven’t had much of a chance to write lately. I could make excuses about being busy, but the truth is that I just hadn’t wanted to. I was trying to hide a little bit. My head has paid a little bit of the price for it. Cluttered thoughts, bad dreams, feeling alone. So if this seems rambling, my apologies. But right now I just need to clear out the clutter. I promise, more geeky things will come soon. Just not tonight.
I started off the New Year with a bang. My best friend in town, enjoying the city and spending time with friends for the first time in a while. It was fantastic. Just what the doctor ordered. Good friends, good food, good times.
But of course all good times must end. She went home (I miss you, Caz). I went back to work. Reality creeped back in and in the end, the world felt a little sadder.
I think we all look forward to New Year’s because it promises renewal. A break from a bad year or a continuation of a good one. A chance to fix parts of us that we are unhappy about. A chance to start again.
It’s about hope. And I have hopes. I have many of them. Hopes to change so much of my life.
But hope is always a tricky thing. You can’t just hope for things. Life doesn’t work that way. You have to work to get what you hope for. They just never get handed to you, no matter how hard you wish them to. Because hopes and dreams are not the engine of change, they’re just the fuel.
I guess I am still struggling in finding the methods of change. Sometimes I think I have it, but it slips away like an already forgotten dream. But I am still trying.
I still have hopes. The year has only just begun. It’s time to begin.

He ran off and left us...

I can’t remember how old I was when I bought my first Vic Chesnutt album. 17? 18? It was Little, his first record, on vinyl. That was my vinyl phase.
All I remember is getting swept away by the first strum of “Isadora Duncan.” With that, a life long fan was born.
So it broke my heart to hear of his passing away over Christmas. On a day full of love and friendship, it cast a shadow.
There was just so much to love in his music. The craft of his songwriting. The dark humor and poetry of his lyrics. The nasal twang that could seem full of hope or longing or both. His songs were full of pain and love, tragedy and adventure, the past, the present and the future.
In short, they were full of life. And they enriched my own.
I could go on forever about the songs I love. But I want to keep this short, because I don’t want to spend forever mourning the man and the tragic circumstances of his passing. Instead I would rather just sit here and listen to the music; because that ultimately is the treasure he left us all with.
So I will sit here and sing "Isadora Duncan" to myself, as I have done before and I will do again and again. His life is over, but in his songs are eternal.

Sherlock Moans (thanks for the title Caz)

The holidays have been a busy time for me, so apologies for not posting on the blog the last couple of days. That said, it still wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t head into the theater to see the latest film version / interpretation of SHERLOCK HOLMES.
My hopes weren’t very high, to be honest. The trailer, while full of action and quick one liners, was enjoyable, but didn’t really scream Sherlock Holmes to me. It wasn’t the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, or the Basil Rathbone movies of the 30’s and 40’s, or the Jeremy Brett interpretation of the 80’s. No, this was Holmes for a new generation, one that can’t sit still for the detective that is more talk than action. Sad isn’t it that audiences today can’t handle a detective that was all about the power of the mind. Instead, we need a Holmes that is as quick with his fists as he is with his wits.
The movie itself is sort of enjoyable for what it is. It’s not the most difficult mystery in the world to solve, but its fun to watch the pieces fall into place. Jude Law does probably one of the most appealing performances I have seen from him. The action sequences are appropriately exciting. The jokes are funny (most of the time).So why was it ultimately so flat and disappointing?
Most people will probably throw the blame at director Guy Ritchie’s feet. And truthfully some of the faults are on his shoulders. His choice to show how Holmes mentally prepares to take down his opponents, followed by a faster repetition of the same scene, doesn’t really work cinematically. The central idea that there is something more than brotherly love between Holmes and Watson is a bit ham handed.
But the real fault is in Robert Downey Jr’s performance and in how the character Holmes is written. Classically Holmes is arrogant and intelligent, the guy who walks in the room knowing he is smarter than everyone in it and can prove it easily. He is confident and assured. Yet Holmes is played as a neurotic, torn apart by his friend’s decision to marry and leave him. His arrogance is played as almost a defense mechanism from his own insecurities. He is a sloppy self destructive, burying his pain in bouts of drunkenness and bare knuckle boxing matches.
In short, he isn’t Holmes.
It makes me think that this movie would have been better served by just jettisoning the whole Sherlock Holmes aspect of it. Why not just have created a different kind of detective and place him in the same story? With only minor tweaks, it would work much better.
I guess the studios hoped that the recognizable Sherlock Holmes name would peak people’s interest, yet they showed absolutely no faith in any of the core elements that make Sherlock Sherlock. It’s a strange piece of logic and the movie suffers for it.
In short, better than I thought, but no where near as good as it could have been.