Things I didn’t expect to see in Victoria Avenue the morning after a heavy snowfall the week before Xmas: this guy.
Amusing
Christmas movies
Is Die Hard the best Christmas movie? I dunno, I’ve always leaned toward The Nightmare Before Christmas*, myself.
But this article makes a compelling point for others, too. I just re-watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in the summertime, during my writing retreat. (How is that five months ago already? Man, time flies.)
[M]ost of his films [have a] fairy-tale like sheen, similar to what makes Die Hard so successful. And making it Christmas in L.A. (which the majority of his films do), offers a different sensibility to the use of the holiday on film.
—Emily Asher-Perrin, Die Hard is Great, but Shane Black is the King of Christmas Explosions
* Oh who am I kidding? Nightmare is second; A Charlie Brown Christmas is first, even if it’s only about half an hour long.
Meta. Very meta.
Some deliciously funny writerly meta-snark from John Scalzi’s The Consuming Fire.
Well, I thought it was funny.
Down in Fraggle Rock
Today I learned that…
Dennis Lee, Canadian poet, author of childhood favourite “Alligator Pie”, was also the co-founder of the venerable Canadian press House of Anansi Press (which, even though I’m ill-versed in CanLit, I’d heard of).
And he wrote the lyrics to the theme song for Fraggle Rock.
And he co-wrote the story for the movie Labyrinth.
Whoops
I call this one “I didn’t mean to set it to 6s, f/32, ISO1600, but look how it turned out”.
Edited in GIMP: basically, stacked the same layer about 5 deep, with all but the bottom-most set to “Multiply”.
Happy Hollow Bean to one and all
“The children […] actually rule the Blue Planet of Earth. They are more intelligent than the older people and outrun them on bicycles.”
William Kotzwinkle, E.T. The Book of the Green Planet
Lego Macduff
Ten years later, this still makes me chuckle.
A checkout story
I stopped in at Co-op to get some groceries, and got in the shortest line I could find. The guy in front of me, man, he was a story.
He had a thin beard, grey eyes, and wore a basketball tank-top and a ball cap. His arms were tattooed with numbers and designs: a 12 on his left forearm, an ankh on one wrist, the word SATAN’S crawling down the inside of his right forearm.
He had a 2‑litre bottle of store-brand cream soda, violently pink, and four packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He paid his bill—$7.86—with a double fistful of dimes, and got 15¢ change back.
He’s got a story to tell. Probably quite a few of them, really. I just have no idea if I’m tough enough to hear them.
Superbeast
I discovered on the track today that this song (“Superbeast”, by Rob Zombie) perfectly matches my running* pace.
It’s extra funny when you consider that, as I was leaving the house this morning, my wife said, “Enjoy running… for your life!”
* Fine, jogging pace.
Sabotage (Memories of JJ, #8)
Dad loved cop shows from the ’70s and ’80s. He wasn’t a big fan of ’80s and ’90s music, though. So imagine my surprise, one day, when, home for a weekend, I heard the dulcet tones of the Beastie Boys coming from the TV that he was watching. It was such an odd occurrence, in fact, that it took me a moment to recognize what I was hearing.
Then it clicked: it was the breakdown in “Sabotage”.
I came out of my room just in time for the lyrics to start up again, and Dad, realizing he’d been tricked, switched the channel.
I get it, though. It sure does look like an ’80s cop show.