Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
I might not always return link love in an equal fashion, but when i am paid a true complement i honestly appreciate it and back-linking is the least i can do. In that vein, please visit Handbasket Emporium, where some sentences feature both myself and Nick Hornby (and, not just sentences saying that i want to grow up to be one of his characters, either).
by krisis
Today i was combed down and cleaned up and i looked like the greyscale version of me except for my hands and face which were unusually rosey; from bottom to top i ran black, grey, grey, black, silver, black, face, black. Someone has turned down my contrast, apparently. I might have had something to do with it… staying up until 6am to re-read Hi Fidelity (as if that last monster-post could’ve been inspired by anything other than the first chapter) and folding up clothes so i could stay hidden within my air-conditioned room rather than the threatening humid mess of my living room. But, here i am, back in the humidity and mess and trying to seriously commit to packing something tonight … i’m not sure what or where i’ll put it, but it’ll get packed. But, anyhow, i don’t think i’ll miss this apartment much… it was never comfortable enough to be homey, even if it represented the reality of home. Check back with me on September2nd to see if i have anything to add to that.
by krisis
Last night’s start stop rain versus humidity gave way to gray an drizzle today, much to my delight. So much heat all week was just piling more wear and grief onto me and onto the city with every day, and today wiped everything back down to the simple scent of cement and a breeze. With the city so cool and forgiving Hillary entertained my ambitions to get out and wander. We were on second street looking for a restaurant to preface seeing Ghost World, and somehow we wound up in Pagoda.
Pagoda occupies a place in so many simultaneous sentences in my head that i can hardly discern what order i’m supposed to write them in, so please excuse the tangle.
Pagoda is nestled in a restaurant-and-Ritz-theatre district that is Old City, so there are a lot of cobbly streets and things with “independence” in their name. In front of it there is some kind of tiny square about Ben Franklin (though it is not the Ben Franklin House, which is nearby), and in it is a tiny metal model of a historic house on a tiny podium. I saw the house all of the time, because Pagoda has just recently become Pagoda… it’s claustrophic bamboo-strewn space has experienced several incarnations in my lifetime. The restaurant to occupy the building for the longest time was Waldo’s… the same upstairs balcony with a low-flying view out the two-story front face of the building but with a marbly bar extending the entire length of the restaurant from front to back with the swingy doors to the kitchen at the end and a pinball machine tucked into the back corner.
I would sit tiny in those high chairs at the bar with a can of pineapple juice over ice and a bowl of chunky round bar pretzels watching football, because i was nearly always there on a Sunday. The surroundings and everything have melted away now so much that i believe that i really didn’t know anything about the place other than the doors and the balcony and the chair and the top of the bar and the teevee. And my father behind the bar; but, he’s not something i know all that well.
Any story i could tell you about Waldo’s would just be an iteration of “and then the Eagles scored” or “and then we played pinball,” but looking back i think it was the only place i’ve ever been where i have been unequivocally happy; time has wiped away all of the pouty bored pieces of it so they are just smudged pictures around me at the bar trying to teach my dad how to play football on gameboy (“What do you mean there’s not penalties?”) or making my typical assertions (“If the Eagles lose the the Cowboys on my birthday i’m never watching a game here again, okay dad?”) or something. My last memory was from down at the end of the bar at one of those Superbowls that Denver lost, but by then we were me and my dad and his wife and i only remember it was strange being there at night on a Sunday because visitation always was over by 7pm on a Sunday so my life could get orderly again for school the next day.
Splitting time between parents was a funny thing, because weekends with my father never got very much accomplished except for stealing me away from what i was used to, and we never went anywhere because i always was back at home by sundown on a Sunday with a kiss goodbye from his rough stubble. But, i did it nonetheless, from when he lived in a tiny apartment with fish and one of the other bartenders to the wife’s adorable splitlevel house in Andora to their home in BlueBell that is anything but that to me. And, now i don’t even really call him for father’s day, because i don’t have a strong enough association with the world, but i think of him whenever i hear doo-wop on the radio because of his silly high voice that i cannot really match, or when i am distractedly ignoring the Eagles lose. Or when i see where Waldo’s used to be.
So, Hillary entertained my buried sense-associations and we ate at Pagoda and i choked back some tears. It was raining, anyhow.
by krisis
Actually, i think that might make you the internet’s Grace Under Fire, because on Suddenly Susan i think you’d probably play the man-hopping red-head who they ripped off from the secretary on NewsRadio rather than the clumsy dumb-luck lead of Susan. Not that you man-hop or anything, but Vicky was definitely the most sarcastic cast member and as a bonus she has that great propensity for incredibly loud clothing. I was thinking that CK might be Seinfeld because it’s not really about anything and i was trying to explain what it was about to a random friend this weekend and failed miserably. However, based on my general aura of banality and my relentless guest-appearances on other blogs, i think i’m much closer to The Weber Show. Blech. But, better than Charles in Charge, i suppose.
by krisis
So, last night i saw Final Fantasy with some friends. Actually, with three couples. Have you ever been to a totally full movie theatre with three couples and you all by your lonesome? It’s fun, you ought to try it some time, especially if you’re emotionally masochistic. But, anyway, i’ve known all about the FF movie since it first went into production, and i suppose the whole time i was assuming it would be glossy and plastic-coated like a Pixar movie from Disney, with a few scattered long shots of spectacular views mixed in. However, i was wrong.
Visually Final Fantasy was as stunning and vivid as any science fiction movie i’ve ever seen, and everything looked real. The characters were slightly glossy at mid-distances, but tight shots revealed stray strands of hair, beads of sweat, and even pores. I lost track somewhere along the way of how long the film was in production, but i am of the opinion that it’s the most important achievement in film computer graphics to this date in it’s cohesive integration of realistic graphics, digital camera work, and amazing shots that could never be achieved with real actors.
The Spirits Within didn’t have a darn thing to do with any of the FF games and it really didn’t bother me all that much; sci-fi sells at theatres right now but magic is still dicey business (although, after the response i saw the the LotR trailer that could be due for a change). While i’m of the opinion that the movie was just banking on Square’s big franchise just for the name (and, did anyone else notice that the “Square Pictures” logo was cast again a rectangle?), i think that the post-apocalyptic setting, the spirits set adrift, and the skepticism of the human government tied it to the theme of games. However, there was a definite lack of toe to toe fighting the yielded any kind of results, and there really wasn’t much of a “party” of characters so much as there was a group of extras like those who usually die at the beginning of games (as in FF6).
The amazing thing about the movie was that it was sci-fi for an attentive audience… slow in development but engaging in every scene – with a little science but not so much that your suspense of disbelief was challenged. On the downside, the plot of the movie tried to explain more than it had to as it neared its end and as a result it could have used some tightening (just like all of the American games to date, ). However, it wasn’t so horrible that i would single out any one aspect of it that wasn’t effective. Small challenges in the plot did undermine later aspects of the story, including: a lack of explanation of Aki & Grey’s relationship prior to the film, a very generalized look at “spirits” that seem contrived only because Aki was the first one, and an ending that couldn’t decide when to stop killing off options for the characters so that it could resolve. However, the movie successfully avoided the worst and most trite sci-fi gimmicks, which left the audience with some unpredictable results.
Despite my mostly glowing review, and the fact that i am definitely seeing the movie a second time, i got the sense that the vast majority of the audience was wholly underwhelmed by the film. Action flick fans will be sorely disappointed by this plot-heavy flick, and too many fans were expecting eye candy in the vein of giant explosions and characters with multiple heads and arms – but this wasn’t a George Lucas film so we were treated to some quality visuals that weren’t all money shots. However, while exiting the theate i heard the following: “Yeah, The Spirits Within. Cause, The Phantom Menace was already taken. Didn’t some of those phantoms sorta look like Jar Jar?” To each his own, i suppose… i’d take this film over Episode 1 any day. Twice.