How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

1. This weekend, I went to see Burlesque with Cher and Christina Aguilera. It was AWESOME. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good movie, but it was hilarious, and campy, and had snappy dialogue, and Cher sang twice and Christina sang about a hundred times and the amazing thing that saved the tiny burlesque club from destruction is totally not the amazing thing you think it's going to be, and yeah...AWESOME. If you like Cher and/or Christina Aguilera, you should totally go see it. 2. When I am 69 years old, I want to look like Cher. In fact, I'm willing to look like Cher now. 3. Lately, I've been watching Law & Order UK , and it's fascinating to see the familiar cases from the original Law & Order remade from an English point of view.* The English legal system fascinates me, and the stories are just as good as ever. The original was on television for 20 years for a reason. ~~~ * And the barristers wear wigs! Really ill-fitting old fashioned ones ...

Recently, several of the blogs that I've been reading have been talking about avoiding things. For example, Gretchen, over at The Happiness Project, wrote recently about her aversion to plotlines that involve unjust accusations . I don't share that aversion, but I've noticed that there are certain story lines that I don't appreciate and will avoid if a realize that a story is heading that way. For example, I avoid movies in which an animal gets killed. I can read books where that happens, depending on the book and the purpose of the animal's death, but I have actually refused to see movies where I know the animal dies.* It's a soft spot that I have, and I won't subject myself to movies (or television shows) that are going to tearjerk me by killing an animal.** And it's not exactly an aversion to a storyline, per se , but a character will lose me if he or she cheats on a spouse or significant other. It's not enough to make me avoid a whole book, ...

1. I saw Iron Man 2 this weekend. It was fine. It wasn't the first Iron Man and only Mickey Roarke was actually good in it (yes, I'm including Robert Downey, Jr. in that assessment), but it was entertaining. 2. Friday Night Lights is back! Yay! FNL is one of those shows that, when it comes on I can just relax, because whatever happens, it's going to be good.* I literally breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the theme music come on. 3. This weekend I also saw a-ha in concert. Who, you're asking? You know them as the band that made this video: But they've actually released NINE studio albums, and are huge internationally.** But you should know them for this song: Or this one: Seriously, they're a much better band than you think. ~~~ * In all honesty, there was a misstep at the beginning of season two (known as the Unfortunate Accidental Murder Incident), but hey, the misstep only serves to bring the awesome of the rest of the show into stark relief...

1. You may know Julia Stiles from the fact that she's a pretty famous actress whose been in a bunch of stuff (like Save the Last Dance , for example). What you may not know is that she has a blog, and it's pretty interesting. She doesn't post very often, but her stuff is usually worth reading and she seems really cool.* You can check her blog out here: You Know My Steez . 2. I tried last year to start a one sentence journal, where you write a single sentence a day, but it just doesn't work for me. I keep forgetting to write in it for, like, weeks at a time. I'm much better at writing my three paragraphs a day (as recommended by Bryan Garner). For some reason a bigger committment works better for me. But Leah Dieterich's blog --where she posts a thank you note a day, sometimes to things that you wouldn't normally think of as being grateful for -- is awesome. Some recent favorites of mine include: Dear Neon Yellow Highlighter Dear Future See you when...

1. I have too many pairs of shoes. I don't know why I didn't realize this before, but somehow it just occurred to me. Note to self: STOP BUYING SHOES. You already have some! 2. I think that by the time we've reached February, we have had quite enough winter already and it's time for it to be over. Some people may not agree with me (people who like skiing, for example), but they would be wrong. As a result, I'm just going to start pretending that it's no longer winter. It's spring, now. Just a very cold, snowy spring.* 3. I saw Precious this weekend, and...wow. Just...wow. There were a lot of problems on the story level with that movie, but Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'nique deserve the Oscars for that one, seriously. I've always liked Mo'nique--she's hilarious--but until now I didn't know she could act. And she can , man. And Gabourey? Talent oozing out of her pores! And if you've seen her in the movie and then seen her ...

1. I've been watching old episodes of The West Wing on Bravo lately, and have come to the conclusion that I love the character of Sam Seaborn. He's smart, he's earnest, he's a good writer, and he's played by Rob Lowe. What's not to love?* 2. I just bought the cutest jacket at Ann Taylor Loft. I know you care, but it's not every day that one can find a white denim jacket with styling reminiscent of Michael Jackson and a tailored waist. I'm just saying. 3. NaNoWriMo proceeds apace. There is no way that I'm going to be able to keep writing at this pace after this month is over, but I'm on track to finish. It's an interesting project...in some ways the speed is freeing and in other ways it's extremely limited, as to make the word count I have no time to go back and revise. 4. Alien and Aliens are amazing movies. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection ? Not so much. 5. This week's Glee characterization inconsistency watch: Rache...

Recently, there's been a bit of controversy in the blogging world* ensuing from The Rejectionist's review of Maggie Stiefvater's latest book Shiver .** The Rejectionist's primary objection to Shiver is that she feels that the protagonist doesn't do anything but live for her man.*** The Rejectionist uses Shiver as a springboard to talk about the weak nature of female characters in YA fiction. Since I haven't read Maggie's book yet, I don't have an opinion about whether The Rejectionist is right or wrong on the issue of Shiver 's protagonist.**** But I agree with her whole heartedly on being tired of what The Rejectionist calls "feeble and inept teenage-girl main characters." And that's why I didn't like 2012 . Because the women in it (no teenagers, actually, but grown women) were both feeble AND inept. One of them was more feeble and inept than a ten year old boy, in fact. For real. Normally, I love disaster movies. I love...

1. I saw 2012 this weekend. It was...not good. Not even for people like me, who love disaster movies . More on why it wasn't a good movie for me, personally, later this week, but really, save your money. All the best destruction happens in the previews. 2. Last week I failed to buy a car. Or, rather, I should say that the dealership I wanted to buy a car from failed to sell me a car. My official explanation for their failure is this: they failed to engage in a serious discussion about price. I know! A used car dealership decided that, instead of trying to talk me into buying a car I (a) really wanted (b) already had financing for and (c) had already had inspected by my mechanic, they would rather let me walk away than engage in a serious discussion about price.* I guess the economy is recovering after all. :) 3. I find that watching old episodes of The West Wing helps me with my snappy banter. 4. I went to the local Nanowrimo write-in on Thursday, which was fun. Wr...

1. Am I the only one appalled by the DirecTV commercial in which David Spade tells us we should get DirecTV while his dead friend Chris Farley cavorts in the foreground? Don't get me wrong -- the other incarnations of this commercial (Bill Pullman in a scene from Twister , Naomi Watts from King Kong , Sigourney Weaver from Aliens *) were also pandering of the cheapest sort, but dude. C'mon. Chris Farley is dead . Not cool, David Spade. NOT. COOL. 2. I went on a walk this weekend and took my camera with me. I live in a suburb of Cleveland, which was built in the early 1900s, so there's some pretty interesting architecture.** These people have a moat! 3. I watched the pilot episode of White Collar on the USA channel recently--and it was pretty entertaining. Just like FX is the cable channel for hard core, strange, gritty shows, USA seems to be carving out a niche for itself with snappy, charming, buddy comedies. 4. In case you care, the brightly colored knee s...

1. Last week, Nathan Bransford ran a first paragraph contest, where people could submit their first paragraphs and win stuff. I read all of the entries (ALL 2093485604 of them)*, and while I was doing so, there were some that really caught my eye. So I thought to myself, "Jay, you should tell these people that you liked their entries." So I did. Except that I discovered that some people, writers, who have blogs, do NOT HAVE THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES ANYWHERE ON THOSE BLOGS, which is really ridiculous, because if you have a blog, and you update it regularly, and you want to be a writer, then shouldn't you have some way for people who want to talk to you about your writing to get in touch with you? Seriously, out of 29 people I wanted to email and say "hey, I really liked your first paragraph--you RULE," 21 did not have email addresses on their blogs.** TWENTY ONE! I know. 2. Something else I learned from Nathan's contest -- Nathan and I really don't ha...

1. Apparently, Sunday is the day when all the guys who own the upholstery shops work in them with their shirts off. At least that was my experience on my morning constitutional this weekend. I don't know why, but it makes me less likely to go into these shops and inquire about having my couch redone. 2. Running Scared is a great buddy cop film. It stars Billy Crystal and the late great Gregory Hines as Chicago police officers who just need one last big bust before they move down to Florida and open a bar. If you can get past the 80s music and the hilarious technology (cell phones as big as phone books), it's a smart and funny cop movie. It's the cop movie that Lethal Weapon wanted to be when it grew up. (Yes, even the first Lethal Weapon .) 3. I mowed my lawn. I'm sure you don't care, but my neighbors are probably throwing a party. 4. I accidentally read a crappy book this weekend and now I have to wait until Monday to get started on some revisions I've pu...

1. This weekend I saw 500 Days of Summer , and even though I thought I knew exactly what the movie would be like, I was wrong and you should totally see this movie. It's funny and touching incredibly well-directed.* It's not the movie you think it is. 2. Also, who knew that the kid of Third Rock from the Sun would be the best actor of his generation? With 500 Days , Joseph Gordon Levitt's become number one on my "see everything this guy does" list. Every project he picks may not be 100 percent successful**, but they're all really interesting. 3. I don't think I've posted about this before, so here is blog The Worst Review Ever , where writers post with a sense of humor about the worst review they've gotten. 4. I am totally in love with my new sunroom, which is just my old sunroom, only clean and with plants. I even bought a watering can so that New Sunroom--Now With More Plants! doesn't turn into the Room That Jay Avoids, Now With More...

1. Public Enemies is not a good movie. I know. I was all hyped about it myself, because PotC 2 & 3* notwithstanding, I usually find Johnny Depp interesting to watch. Plus, Christian Bale, who I will watch in any piece of crap he chooses to take on (including, yes, Reign of Fire and Equilibrium ). Plus the story of John Dillinger, who had a pretty exciting life. But, despite all of this, Public Enemies was boring. BORING. There was no plot to speak of, ninety nine percent of the characters had no motivation (when you could even tell who was who, that was)**, and there were a bunch of famous or semi-famous actors in the movie (Lili Taylor, Billy Crudup, LeeLee Sobieski, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi, David Wenham***, and bunch of people from television shows) whose casting was really more of a distraction than anything, since none of them actually had any parts. Michael Mann tends to use stunt casting like this to distinguish the characters in the movie, which is distracting....

Happy New Year, and welcome to my first blog post of 2009! ... I thought I would have more to say about that, but I don't. I hope you haven't broken your resolutions just yet. My resolution this year was to give up New Year's resolutions. So far, it's going pretty well. :) I'm not a huge Stevie Wonder fan. Don't get me wrong--Stevie Wonder is great, right? He's a great singer and a great performer and, probably, a great guy.* But my clearest memory of Stevie Wonder's musical prowess is from the 80s, when he was know for two things: (1) "Stay Gold" the cheesy song at the end of the The Outsiders movie,** and (2) "We Are The World." Neither of these particular songs impressed little proto -goth, New Romantic, Brit Punk baby Jay back then.*** So while I admitted the song writing/performing genius of Stevie Wonder, I never actually felt it, you know. It was a truth universally acknowledged, but irrelevant.**** Then I saw High F...

Right now I'm watching The Star Chamber, a movie from the 80s in which Michael Douglas plays a judge who is so upset by criminals getting off scot-free that he joins a secret judges' organization that kills people who get off on legal technicalities. It's a cool idea - people get off on technicalities all the time. I specifically chose not to go into criminal law because I didn't think I could live with innocent people getting convicted or guilty people going free. But I'm not really getting into the movie because, in short, they're getting it wrong. In this particular case, what they're getting wrong are the legal technicalities that are getting the criminals off. To be fair, these technicalities were probably not wrong in 1983, when the film was made. For example, one guy who is accused of killing five women gets off because he threw his gun in the garbage can in front of his house (!) and the cops can't search the garbage can because it's the c...

Let's just get it out there - I heart Christian Bale. Seriously. He's the peanut butter to my bread, the knees of my bees, the weeble to my wobble. He's lovely. He also has the advantage of being a really interesting actor, who picks a lot of strange and unconventional roles, so when I follow his career I get to see everything from Reign of Fire - a low budget movie about dragons, to American Psycho - the adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel about a (maybe)serial killer to Batman Begins, the restart of the expensive superhero franchise, to 3:10 To Yuma, a remake of the 1957 film of the same name, and a good old-fashioned western of the best kind. In 3:10, Bale plays a struggling rancher injured in the Civil War. When he goes to town to beg a fellow rancher for more time to pay his debts, Bale takes a paid job escorting gunman and villain Russell Crowe to the train - the 3:10 to Yuma - so that he can be shipped off to jail and hung. The rest of the movie is basical...

In line with my previous post about disaster movies , I am also a huge fan of things about zombies. It started when I first saw Night of the Living Dead, the original black and white one, on television when I was a kid and it scared the living crap out of me. It was so ... real and bleak and terrifying. I immediately fell in love with it. You see, zombies are my version of Mexican food. You know how some people can't eat Mexican food because it gives them gas and heartburn and generally makes them miserable? And you know how those people still eat Mexican food anyway, because Mexican food is delicious and cannot be resisted? That's me and zombie movies (except for the gas - although that would be an interesting effect). I mean that zombie movies give me nightmares, actual terrifying nightmares, and make me scared to go into the dark basement, and, after reading World War Z , a book about the (fictional) Zombie War, I had to go out and buy a crowbar, because I didn't...

Okay, here's the thing, I have a degree in English, which means that I'm supposed to have all of the "high culture" tastes like Shakespeare and postmodernism and blah-de-blah-blah, and I do. Shakespeare's great, and postmodernism is fun, and, most of the time great literature is great for a reason, you know? But it can't be Shakespeare all the time, and some of the time when I'm not reading Shakespeare, I'm watching disaster movies. I love them. All of them, even the really bad ones, like "When Weather Attacks" (aka "The Day After Tomorrow") and "The Core" (which is super crappy). "Volcano" and its superior but lesser known competitor "Dante's Peak." "Armageddon" and its inferior and lesser known competitor "Deep Impact." "Volcano," "Twister," "Avalanche." Classics like "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure," and rema...

This last week I read Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis. I'm normally a fan of Ellis - I find him funny, and I find his protagonists incredibly sad and touching (particularly Patrick Bateman of American Psycho and Victor of Glamorama) and I don't mind the sex and violence ( more about how I seem to identify more with male protagonists in another entry ). But I'm a little disappointed in Lunar Park. I think this is because the protagonist of Lunar Park is Bret Easton Ellis himself, and that ruins the charm for me. Obviously, the protagonist isn't actually Ellis - it's Ellis in the same way that Philip Roth is the protagonist in The Plot Against America or Operation Shylock - but the thing that made Ellis's protagonist's tolerable, even sympathic to me, was that they were ever so slightly exaggerated to make his point. They were not real. Their vacuousness and blank affects were part of what made them interesting and intriguing. But when the author puts himself...