Station

Apparently the International Space Station (ISS) is going to be very visible lately, is going to be the brightest object in the sky short of Venus. That's kinda nifty. I'll have to check when it'll be flying over and try to spot it with B1; he'll love that, assuming we'll even be able to see it.

The weather's been pretty dismal the past few days -- we actually had snow mixed with rain the other day, although, as ever, I roll with it.

I'm going to sling out my SF novel to another publisher, see how that goes. I need to gear up for another round of querying my books to agents and publishers; never something I particularly enjoy, but most definitely part of the dance.

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, which is why I've been fairly blog-quiet, too, I suppose. It's the combination of lots of big, bad news in the world and relative quiet at home, I guess.

Saw "Dead Snow" the other day -- I was less than impressed by it; it wasn't scary so much as it was gruesomely amusing. The stark white Scandinavian countryside was a great backdrop for horror, and those very Nordic-looking characters in it were amusing, too, but the movie was an exercise in excessive gore (so many disembowelings -- is that a preoccupation of the director?) And, sure, all that blood works wonderfully against the white snow, but the movie was pretty empty, even as escapist fare. The opening sequence was probably the best thing about it. I didn't like the way they had the Nazi zombies kind of roar -- they sounded like orcs doing lion impressions. That was distracting and off-putting. They already look monstrous, so making them roar monstrously was too much for human-scaled monsters. One of the grossest scenes has the floozie babe putting the moves on the portly film geek in an outhouse -- a sex scene in a frickin' outhouse?? Paging Dr. Freud! It was clumsily constructed -- the floozie takes an unlikely interest in the geek, joins him while he's quite literally taking a dump in the outhouse, rides him on the commode (?!?!) and the next thing we see, the geek is returning to the cabin by himself. Now, honestly, people -- this Scandinavian Poindexter (who looked more like the kind of guy who'd be giving swirlies to nerds) gets laid by the hot girl -- he just walks away from that, turns up in the cabin to swill some more brewskies nonchalantly, leaving her back in the outhouse to get rather gruesomely killed by one of the Nazi zombies?? Terribly constructed scene, clunkily rendered (and gross -- maybe putting the moves on a guy while he's taking a dump in an outhouse is a time-honored Scandinavian courtship ritual? Shudder.) The alpha guy stumbles across a cave that appears to be a kind of lair for the zombies, and actually leaves a couple of perfectly maintained MP40 submachine guns alone, even as he discovers the severed head of his missing girlfriend. Later, he picks up a German machine gun (from somewhere) that he mounts on his "snow scooter" (aka, snowmobile), and briefly uses. But seeing the guy see those submachine guns in this cave, seeing actual horror and carnage, and the guy's military service background is referenced in his first scene -- I was thinking "Helloooo? Pick up the fucking guns, Sven; there's zombies in them thar hills." Instead, he gets to engage in some sloppy disembowelment (see?) knife fights with the zombies. Anyway, these zombies are very fixated not on eating brains, but on eating guts. They do it every time they get after somebody -- you see them gobbling guts. So, either the writer had some kind of fixation on bowels, or the director did, or they both did, because it flows through the whole movie (haha -- "flows"). There are some darkly amusing moments in the movie, here and there (I won't spoil them, if you're inclined to see this movie), and a couple of reasonable scares that are mostly a product of a spliced zombie bushwhack coupled with a BLAST of sound, but this movie didn't rise above the promise of its premise, in my view. You can tell the director is a fan of Sam Raimi -- he opts for that kind of kinetic gore approach to horror, that over the top, so bad it's good kind of aesthetic, but the characters aren't strong enough to carry the narrative.

High and Dry

American Apparel has been fairly steadily pimping its high-waisted jeans, which is irksome -- high-waisted jeans just don't look good! So much so that they have to disguise it by having their callipygian models sit, breaking up the silhouette that high-waisted jeans inflict on a woman's body...

To make these jeans work, the model had to be hot AND topless.

Poole Emptied from ANTM

Dammit! Jaclyn Poole, my favorite surviving contestant on ANTM, got axed the last episode. I hate that. She was cute as a button, had a distinctive look, and was so sweet and charming. Her high-pitched, lil' ole' Southern Belle way was so nice, relative to the emaciated neurotic harridans that tend to dominate the show. Speaking of that, Alexandria, the villain's villain for this season, continues to skate on through.

Sigh. With Jaclyn gone, I guess I'll have to root for Kasia. And then, Anybody But Alexandria.

Snow Way!

It snowed a bit last night! Lordy! I'm not surprised, truly; it's the classic Chicago Seasonal Shim-Sham -- you get a taste of unseasonable warmth, before the cold comes hammering back. May is always pretty cool in Chicago, and I imagine this May won't be much different.

I sorted out the last logistical stuff for B2, so he's squared away for school. I just need to get the paperwork filed, and he's all set.

Scre4m

I saw "Scre4m" (Scream 4) today, and enjoyed it. Funny moments in it, and it's crazy postmodern, meta to the bone. Wes Craven still has the right touch with his slasher movies, although it's surreal, given his long history with the genre, making movies that refer to that genre (and themselves refer to the referrals -- I can imagine college students getting high and writing dissertations on this movie, because you really could). I especially liked the rather juicy (and difficultly-named) Hayden Panettiere in it. She was stealing scenes left and right...

She wasn't dressed like this in the movie, alas.

41

I turn 41 tomorrow, figured I'd squeak one last post while I'm 40 years old, still. Ha! I vividly remember turning 30, being amused at being equidistant from 20 and 40. At the time, 40 seemed a world away. Now I'm about to turn 41. I've gotten a lot accomplished in the past ten years -- a couple of kids, home ownership (and sellership -- hahah), a shitload of writing, a decade of quality work for a prestigious employer -- none of that was there when I was 30.

It makes me optimistic for the rest of my 40s, coming into my prime, getting done what I need done, and doing it with style. At the same time, it's staggering how short life is. Even though 10-year-old Dave (1980), 20-year-old Dave (1990), 30-year-old Dave (2000) and 40-year-old Dave (2010) confront each other in a kind of quantum face-off, and I can distinctly remember things from those various decades, it's still amazing and humbling just how fleeting that time is.

Each moment is so precious, but as you get older, it's hard to appreciate the moments the way you do when you're younger, when everything seems new. The "been there, done that" mentality of age can erode the gloss off of living, if you're not careful. I live very much in the moment, and find peace in it. I know I brooded far more about time and age when I was about 25 than I do, now. I still find the magic in the moments, even though I may have to be a little more conscious of them than I used to be.

So, I face 41 with a surprising amount of peacefulness. Another step into my fourth decade of life.

Grant Hart, "2541"

Marathon, Man

This NPR headline cracked me up...

Marathons, Once Special, Are Now Crowded

And this SLATE article also amused me...

Living In the Midwest

Telekinesis

This band, Telekinesis (kind of amused nobody has ever named their band that by this time), is really mining the Cure's sound in this song "Please Ask for Help." Kinda funny to hear that signature sound adopted in someone else's tune, but it makes sense -- for the kids today, the Cure qualify as "classic rock." The video is mildly amusing -- packed to the gills with hipsters, and there's even a Limoncello cameo around 1:01, one of the partygoers dancing.

Later

I'm up late. Was watching some movies on DVD. I'm semi-sleepy, now, and, unfortunately, a little hungry. It's been mild enough that I've been able to keep the windows open during the night, which is nice. Not sure how long it'll last, though.

Shuttle Diplomacy

I'm getting B2 enrolled in kindergarten this week. Not that it takes a week to do so, but one kinda needs to, to ensure all the bureaucratic stuff is sorted out. My younger boy, kindergarten-bound. He's ready for it.

B1 was so miffed that Chicago didn't get one of the retired shuttles. He was particularly irked that New York got Enterprise. Never mind that it never flew in space, he wanted it! We'd already talked about the shuttles, and I figured Endeavour would go to LA, and was sure the Smithsonian would take Discovery. The other two were open questions -- I thought Houston might get one, or Canaveral. Turns out Canaveral got Atlantis, and New York got Enterprise.

So, three on the East Coast, one on the West. The rest of us flyover folks can stuff it, I guess. Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton would've been a great location for Enterprise. Chicago or Houston would've been nice, too.

Why does New York rate a shuttle, tell me? With all there is to see in New York, it hardly seems like a shuttle would be that much of a draw. Way to blow off the Midwest, NASA (or whoever made the final decision on allocating the shuttles).

B1 was grumbling about it all day. He said "New York is spoiled. They get everything they want."

I would have allocated a shuttle to each region of the nation -- Discovery for Smithsonian, Endeavour for LA, Atlantis for Houston (or Canaveral), Enterprise for Chicago (or, failing that, Dayton). It's why it's called NASA, not ECASA (East Coast Aeronautics and Space Administration).

Butter Maid

I was pleased to see Butter Maid Bakery redid their web page. That's a bakery from my hometown. They're really good. Give'em some business, if you're so inclined. They're really good. Their kolachi is fab, and their cookies are amazing. They're really a local treasure, so I'm always talking them up.

Balloon Man

Beautiful light today, and the day got milder, which was nice. A couple of amusing things happened on the way back home with the boys -- one had a tall, attractive, well-dressed woman clacking behind us in knee boots, brandishing some balloons (one was a red, white, and blue braid, the other was a pink and purple hat), and she caught up with the boys and me and said "Can I interest you guys in some balloons?" and, of course, for a moment, my city radar is in place, and I'm thinking "What's the catch?" but there was none apparent, so I said "Sure." and she gave us the balloons, and I thanked her, and then she strutted off on her merry way. The boys loved getting some free balloons out of the blue like that.

Then, a few minutes later, I stopped by a store to get some orange juice for the boys, and one of the mothers from B1's school came in with her own boys and said "You know, I see you every day, walking with your boys, wearing that scarf of yours, and you always get it to hang perfectly, and I ask myself 'How can this guy get that scarf to hang like that?' It's always just perfect." and I said "What can I say? It's a gift." and said my farewells a moment later. I hadn't seen that mom before, although I recognized her kids. What CAN I say? Scarves are a necessity in the city, during the cold months.

Chilly, of course

As predicted, it got cold again over here; or cooler, anyway. Gusty winds, too.

I know I've mentioned the "No problem" response a lot of the younglings offer as an answer to a "Thank You." Well, this morning I got a new one from a young woman who held the door for me while I trucked the boys through it. I said "Thank you" and she said "Of course!" That's a new one for me! Obviously, it was because I was seemingly encumbered getting the boys through, so she held the door to help me out, but it was still a curious response.