Haggis is a curmudgeon about 85% of the time. He has his baggage and his reasons and I love him anyway, but I can't help poking fun at him. Last night he was crankily letting me pet him, grumpily saying Mehhhh! every single time I asked a question. So we had a great conversation.
Me: Can I call you Roast Beefyweefs?
Haggis: Mehhhh!
Me: How about Skeletor?
Haggis: Mehhhh!
Me: Would you like a Cheeto?
Haggis: Mehhhh!
Me: Want to go to the Morrissey concert?
Haggis: Mehhhh!
Me: Do you mind if I call you Chubbio?
Haggis: Mehhhh!
Me: Is your name MEHHHH?
Haggis: [stony silence]
I think "Is your name MEHHHH?" is my new catchphrase.
What do you think about Ryan Seacrest being chosen to host tonight's Primetime Emmy Awards?
I think that I couldn't care less. And this from someone who actually snuggles up on the sofa to watch the Emmy Awards.
Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.
Let's see.... U2 and the Beatles are the clear winners, especially U2, since I have a heap of singles and rarities and bootlegs and whatnot. The easier ones, the ones that seem like it's cheating to call myself a completist, since they just don't have that many albums anyway, would be Crowded House, Gavin Friday, the Decemberists, Loreena McKennitt, and The Pixies. I'm not really sure how all the Pixies stuff got in there. Hmm.
And darn spookily, I might add.
One of my favorite parts of being at the movies is the previews. Sometimes the trailers are better than the movie I'm there to see. Today I was so freaked out by a few of them that I could have left before the movie and still had plenty of bang for my five bucks.
The Golden Compass. You had me at Mars, really, and then blew me away anyway. Everything is exactly as I imagine in the book -- from the casting to the steampunk aesthetic. I can tell that the plot has been tweaked and condensed a little, but as we've seen with the Potter movies -- a necessary strategy in the evolution from book to screen. It gives me hope for Strange and Norrell.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Stunning, stunning, stunning. The first Elizabeth stands on its own, and they certainly didn't tell ME they were planning a sequel, but I've been squealing giddily since I first heard about it. And by the looks of the trailer, they did it right.
Stardust. I'm a little shaky on this one. I love the book. LOVE the book. Love anything Neil Gaiman deigns to fart on, let alone write. The casting is incredible. I've heard griping about Claire Danes but I think she looks shiny and adorable. Also: again with the steampunkiness. But something feels off about everything, and I can't quite pin it down. Please don't let this movie suck. But, if it does, it will be less of a tragedy than if they decided to make, and screw up, a film version of American Gods, which is my favorite.
On a whim, I went to the theater and saw Hairspray today. Such negative expectations, you have no idea. The original movie is one of my top 20 favorite movies ever, and I was all curmudgeonly resistant to any sort of messing with that. Oh my God. I laughed so hard I made an ass of myself, from about two-and-a-half minutes in -- best John Waters cameo ever -- until the very end. Weeping with glee, afraid that I'd choke on my popcorn.
It has all the controlled hyper-energy of the best old pop music, with a healthy dash of the subversiveness that made the original so very awesome. There were moments so surreal -- Christopher Walken in mariachi finery, twirling around John Travolta in 300-pound-drag -- that I'm still a little boggled.
I feared Travolta most, and maybe I've been brainwashed, but he was... great. Great. I'm not sure what that accent was, since he sounded more like Dr. Evil than any Baltimorean I've ever heard, but I'll give it a pass. He was a creature entirely separate from Divine, as he should have been. Everyone else in the cast is pitch-perfect, and, as it was in 1988, it was fantastic to see the chubby girl get the guy.
Charmed against my will! What a great way to end the weekend.
A thousand miles away, and I've been trying to explain the magnitude of the bridge collapse to my coworkers. It's actually the interstate, I said, not really the bridge-bridge you're picturing. Eventually, the published photos caught up with what I knew of the magnitude of it and they were able to mostly understand.
In typical geekish fashion, I found out about it not soon after it happened, on Metafilter. Ran around in circles for a moment before frantically calling my sister, who is fine, although a coworker is among the missing.
I work tangentially with the civil engineering industry as part of my job, and I've been reading for years about crumbling infrastructure, about reports unheeded or willfully misinterpreted, about where the blame falls when structures fail. If this isn't a wakeup call, I don't know what is.
Jay and I didn't have overly high expectations, but neither did we plan to be so underwhelmed by the Barnes and Noble midnight release. Surly, dispirited, uncostumed store employees in a stuffy store with no activities beyond browsing in crowded aisles? No thanks. We ran away to a nearby diner for sugar -- a chocolate malt instead of butterbeer, an eclair standing in for a pumpkin pastie -- and waited until the hour was closer at hand. Once midnight hit, the lines moved really quickly. I was home by 12:30, and skimmed the final few chapters of my Half-Blood Prince reread before chomping into the seventh installment.
Don't read on if you don't want to know more.
Let's get the elephant out of the room first. I know that nobody has ever claimed these books to be fantastically perfect works of literature. The guys on the John Gardner list I read work themselves into a sour froth whenever the Potter books get a glance, and while I cringe (and lurk) when they get going, since really I am one of the unwashed heathens to whom they are directing their bile, I have to admit that they're not wrong: lazy plot devices and gaping holes abound. I love these books, don't get me wrong, but come on: they could be even better. That rankles at me. I feel bad for saying it, like I'm pointing out that a good friend has horrifying body odor, but I can't help it.
I put that pickiness aside and enjoy the books anyway, more for the world created within them than anything else -- it's such a fun, submersive act, falling into the wizarding world with these books. I still feel a little like I'm breaking the rules, staying up all night reading, with a pile of snacks and snuggly cats beside me. I started at around 1:00 in the morning, took some time off for sleeping and errands and leisurely breaks here and there, and finished at around 9:30 tonight.
Loved:
Dudley. They say that Dudley's personality grew three sizes that day!
The triumphant and helpful return of the house elves. All that SPEWing wasn't for nothin' after all!
The fall of the house of Malfoy. Good riddance, suckers. Nyah!!
Neville. Battered leader of the resistance, Horcrux-destroyer, Herbology genius. Rock on, Neville.
Luna's bedroom. Yeah, yeah, I love Luna. I thought this was just such a nice touch. "Friends"! Sob!
Snape. I wasn't overly surprised by his redemptive storyline, but it was really well done. Bringing Petunia into it and fleshing out her bitterness was a satisfying touch as well. The "Look at me!" moment -- just a couple of sentences, really -- was one of my favorites in the whole book.
Harry's Death. Okay, so he sort of passed on into an exposition clearinghouse, but once he started up with the "I must die!" business, I had the sneaking suspicion he was going to make it after all, and I was so glad to see it happen. I'm a sucker for a happy ending.
Was Grumpified By:
Hedwig. I guess she wouldn't have had much to do for the rest of the book, but killing her off in the first few pages seemed like a cheap shot. Let her hang out with the other owls or something. Don't blast her. Sheesh.
Tonks and Remus. Come on. Ouch.
Nineteen Years Later. Yes, as I said, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, but as soon as I saw that title page I knew I shouldn't have gone there. I actually stopped reading and took a break for a little while. Ending it with a little ambiguity, letting the reader imagine the happy ending, would have been so much more satisfying for me. I understand why she did it. Putting that final cap on the story, giving her heroes the send-off she wanted, was absolutely her right, and I get it. But this epilogue clearly dipped more than toe into fan-fiction-land, and I could hear all those 'shippers around the world squealing with glee at all the domestic bliss. Naming a son for Snape was a nice touch, but come on -- answer my questions if you're going to put this ending on it. Did Harry become an Auror? Do they even need Aurors anymore? What about my pal Luna? Did she marry hottie Viktor Krum or what? Is Teddy Lupin going to star in Hogwarts: The Next Generation? If so, what incantation should we invoke to prevent it?
So yeah, I overwhelmingly loved it. Now I can return to my regularly scheduled sleeping-type activities. And I probably will not eat a bag of wasabi peas for dinner tomorrow.
Show us your favorite character in the Harry Potter series.
Neville Longbottom for the win, my friends. For the win.
Video: Show us a movie clip that always brings a lump to your throat.
Submitted by Rev Stan.
