If the world is round, why is a frozen pond flat?

Wow, "Don't Look Now" was -- not at all what I expected. I'd heard of it as a super-scary horror classic and guess I was expecting something on the order of "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Innocents" in Venice. But wow, WOW. It's just like nothing else.

Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, of course, play a married couple whose daughter drowns in a pond on their property. Grieving and racked by guilt, they try to move on with a working vacation in Venice, where Donald restores old churches. There they run into a psychic who claims she can communicate with their daughter, and from there things get weird.

But things were pretty weird from the get-go. The opening sequence introduces the film's fragmented editing, full of quick cuts across space and time: from indoors to out, from the immediate past to the future. "Nothing is as it seems," murmurs Donald as he looks over some slides of churches. (It's so cute to see slides. And it's so funny that it's cute to see slides. While on the subject of cuteness, Donald and Julie have these great identical wavy perms that are almost hypnotic.) I watched the opening and then *immediately* skipped back to watch it again. It's gorgeous how the tension builds, and how you get a sense of Donald and Julie's closeness right off the bat; and how their daughter already looks like an otherworldly harbinger of doom.

What surprised me the most thought is just how unbearably sad this movie was. Not sad because a little girl dies; but because it shows you in the most visceral way that everything you love and believe in is just hopelessly fragile and transient. This movie's sex scene is famous for being graphic, but also for the way it flashes forward throughout to shots of Donald and Julie dressing afterward for dinner. The gimmick's been read as a joke or as an illustration of Donald's second sight, but I took it to mean that everything ends, even the most blissful feeling of connection. One minute one is rolling around in shared ecstasy, the next minute one is sitting on the same bed dressed in an uncomfortable suit, pouring some scotch and staring off into space. In the context of the end of the movie, the contrast becomes absolutely, unutterably heartbreaking.

As for the end -- the big reveal -- what's crazy about it is that you can't possibly prepare for it (I screamed out loud), but somehow, on some level, you *know* what he's going to see. You want to stop him and you can't. You're as helpless as Julie behind the iron gate. One day your story will end too, and your own finale will turn around and look you in the eye; and that's scary as hell.

Final Girl has a fab review, which I was excited to finally read after watching the movie! I also went and looked up the NYT's review and read Pauline Kael's review in one of my books; neither of those two enjoyed it much. (Pauline really hates it when she thinks filmmakers are just trying to be arty.)

Sigh

This week I joined Facebook and started watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on DVD. In other news, I am 13.

The vampire is angry now!

For years I was warned off the old TV movie version of "Salem's Lot" by Betsy: "The vampire is made out of, like, blue Play-Doh, and his mask is so stiff that he can't actually talk, so the other characters have to supply his emotions by saying things like 'The vampire is angry now!'" Still, about eight years after I borrowed the book from her and was rendered sleepless for a week, it was time to check the movie out for myself. And she's right, it is pretty goofy (although to my disappointment, "The vampire is angry now" is not an actual line of dialogue) and the monster really is blue. You know he's coming, in fact, every time you see the color blue. This spells trouble for our hero Ben Mears, who likes to wear lots of denim, most troublingly a close-fitting short-sleeved denim blouse. On the whole, though... it's really not that bad.

OK, it's not great. The pace is slow and it crawls and crawls... you could argue that this is building up a sense of dread, but come on, when you immediately introduce a black-suit-clad weirdo living in a haunted house and driving a big black car, there's really no dread to build. I spent a lot of time thinking about horror movie tropes and wondering how anyone would not immediately suspect the black-suit-clad weirdo when bad things start happening. It's like in the Harry Potter books where they're like "The Death Eaters are back! It's probably Harry Potter's fault! It's certainly not Draco Malfoy's!" and you can't figure out if JKR is being sarcastic.

But then the vampire noshes on a little kid, and things just pick up from there. The movie becomes a series of really fantastic vampire set pieces. The wise old professor reading books labeled "Vampire Lore" in his library, and then hearing a noise upstairs.... the vigil over a sheeted figure at the morgue ... the movie fog outside the window parting to reveal a genuinely creepy floating child. And Barlow's first appearance, in extreme closeup (above), gave me the supreme willies.

It doesn't really go anywhere, and it's nowhere near as scary as the book. Scenes in the book that turned my hair white -- the boys walking alone in the woods, not knowing they're being stalked until it's too late; and everything involving the priest -- are pretty much ignored here.

Still, it's a hell of a lot scarier than the more recent TV movie starring poor Rob Lowe as Ben. My favorite scene in that had poor Samantha Mathis, starring as the vampire-turned Susan, appearing in Rob's window and delivering a crucial bit of exposition, talking like Susan even though she's supposed to be a vampire. "I could love you, Ben Mears," she concludes. Rob replies, reasonably: "Susan, you're a vampire."

Anyway, it was interesting to see Tobe Hooper's other good movie, having become besotted with him last year. I don't guess I will be checking out "Eaten Alive" or any of his other opi. This one doesn't have the sort of gorgeous and uniform look of TCSM.... the lighting is this sort of milky wintry light, and isn't really noticeable anyway since most of the scenes are indoors. Ah well.

Well, heck

It appears to be a bittersweet morning in California, with a rather mean-spirited little constitutional amendment appearing poised to pass. Here's hoping for a last-minute counting miracle. In the meantime:

The world is quiet here

I'm not dead, I promise. I'm doing that thing where I feel helplessly glued to the computer all day and don't want to sit in front of it when I come home. But everything's fine -- working, walking, reading, gardening, watching fall settle over Los Angeles. And watching horror movies, most recently the delightful "Jaws" parody "Trees," about a small forest town being terrorized by a great white pine: "This was no lawn mower accident. This was -- a tree." Fantastic.

My daily routine has been through a series of changes and should settle into a new normal in a couple of weeks. I should be a bit less helplessly glued at work and more able to blog. Until then, enjoy Art Boy's pictures, Big Country's home-cured bacon, Eileen's musical notes, the adventures of Mark Trail & Mary Worth (not, sadly, together) and the various other delights available via my blogroll at right.

Avast

So a few weeks ago my friend Tricia and I took a whale watching cruise out of Long Beach Harbor. She had seen on the LA Times website that multiple blue whales were being sighted in the area daily due to an unusually high concentration of krill, and indeed, we saw four. It was hard to make out more than is visible in the photo above, but no photo can convey how impressive it is to be within sight of something so huge. They would roll across the water, their bodies just going on and on and on, then dive, then resurface with a spout. Just as our boat was getting to them they'd take a long dive (they were either playing with us or annoyed by us), and the boat would drift over the massive imprint each had left on the water's surface.

We didn't go far out to sea at all; we were right off Palos Verdes the whole time. On the way back the boat was mobbed by a pod of common dolphins. Quite exhilarating.

The real surprise for me was how much fun it was just to be on the water, especially once we left the harbor and hit the open sea with some real waves. I like having my feet on the ground: I don't even like riding a bike, and I definitely do not like flying, and I'm not even all that crazy about driving; I like to walk. So I wasn't sure how the boat would be, but it was fantastic. Tricia said it felt like we were riding on Santa's sleigh, and she was absolutely right. Another boat ride, please.

I have not also died

OK, it's time to quit sitting shiva for Estelle Getty. But I have to go to bed so just a quick hello.

All's well here. Upcoming posts will include photos from whale watching and my trip to Denver. Work has decided to turn my schedule upside down for a couple of months. It's testing my fortitude. I'm working for a very cheerful gentleman and am snarling at him a lot.

I did however just restore the tissues with my annual viewing of "Last of the Mohicans." I now think the original theatrical release is better. It's not about the Clannad or lack thereof -- it's really the edited-out wisecracks that bug me on the U.S. DVD. When Duncan roars "I'll have you beaten from this fort!" it really doesn't make sense for Nathaniel to just stand there and gaze at him. Still, the sound/image quality are magnificent, and Chingachgook (pronounced "Chicago")'s bonus monologue leaves me completely verklempt every time. "Once we were here." I may watch it again tomorrow. I still can't fucking find Colm Meaney. I'm upping the reward to a beer and a shot of whisky.

On top of everything else...

Buy the T-shirt at the lovely Bust Boobtique

Estelle Getty goes and dies on us. She was 84 and had been ill for some time.

The kinds of nostalgic family associations that most people have for old TV shows -- I pretty much only have that for "The Golden Girls." I don't watch much TV but I will always watch that if it's on. And all the actresses have done such noble work elsewhere -- Betty White in "Lake Placid," Rue McClanahan in "Starship Troopers," and of course, Bea Arthur in the Star Wars Holiday Special. As for Ms. Getty, you will of course remember her as the owner of the crucial department store in "Mannequin."

I didn't want to wear your tacky green dress anyhow, stingy!

Will Benteen is a widower: Actress Evelyn Keyes, who did many interesting things but was best known for playing Scarlett O'Hara's bitchy sister Suellen in "Gone with the Wind," has died at 91. I think this leaves us with Cammie King and Olivia de Havilland as surviving cast members. Keyes was otherwise notable for having been married to Artie Shaw and John Huston; she acted and starred in many films -- including, apparently, a lot of noir B pictures -- but left Hollywood in 1955. She wrote a column for several years for the Los Angeles Times, which, I note with slightly clenched teeth, has yet to post her obituary.

RIP, dear.

Happy Fourth of July, Daddy!

That would be then-child star Mae Whitman's big closing line from Independence Day.

Art Boy and I didn't recognize her while re-watching the film tonight, but I saw her name in the closing credits and blurted "It's Mayonnegg! It's Egg!"

Art Boy said, "Her?"

I tell you, I find something new to love about that movie every July 4.

This had better not be about your cat, Ralph

Yeah, I know. But they are naperrific this morning. Check them out:

Anastasia guards the window in my room

Isis is watching for stray cats so she can growl at them through the screen door

The boy's job is to lie around looking pretty

She's back, and with a warning

We know how they feel

I return from my long silence to just make sure and warn off any of you who might have been thinking of seeing The Happening. Yeah, I know; the only two people who saw Lady in the Water should really know better. I thought it might at least be an interesting genre exercise, but unfortunately it's just too heavyhanded to be enjoyable. It's not even tense; the "shocking" moments fail to shock. If you go, bring a book. (Or, as Art Boy learned from the Guardian this morning, we could just be screaming racists.)

I can, however, vigorously recommend Scott Smith's The Ruins if anyone is looking for a summer thriller. Outstanding character-based horror. I didn't see the movie, but critics uniformly recommended the book (as did Stephen King), and by gum they were right.

Update: Had a lovely email from Jamie this evening to say she's been drinking the Blogger Kool-Aid. Check out her lovely new site, Spare Candy. Jamie's a fab writer so I'm very glad to have her out from behind the MySpace curtain. Not that there's anything wrong with MySpace... please, kids, don't all come and beat me up. I'm old and tired.

Orange

Thanks to the Democrats (who need to just quit arguing and kiss already), I had one day off this week, so I spent it at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. It's peak bloom season! Check it out!

Here's how it looks from far away:


Here is how it looks closer up:


And here is how it looks very close up:


Yes, kiss me, you foolish poppies!!!

Such a gorgeous and needed getaway. The colors were amazing. I should have a decent Flickr set up in the next day or two (Flickr's being bitchy right now).

Another reason to love Rex Morgan, M.D.

(Besides that he has the prescription for the daily blues): He pops up in the most delightfully unexpected places. Such as the bunch of lilac I got at the farmers market today. See?





Sure gives me pause as I inhale the lovely fragrance of my lilac. Could I have staph bacteria growing in my nose? Thanks, Rex!

Kitten?

I just emailed Art Boy and asked if we can get a kitten. (The actual threat level of this is low; some colleagues rescued a litter of kittens from an abandoned car in the garage at work, and they're cute enough I imagine they will all get homes.) This is mainly an experiment to see what he says. I'll let you guys know.

UPDATE, ART BOY RESPONSE, 5:15 p.m.:

"Oh, lordy."

(I think someone wants a kitten!!!)

UPDATE 2:

I admitted to Art Boy that there were probably plenty of potential homes for these particular kittens. He replied:

"if they get no takers then we should step in. If they have plenty of admirers we can pass and save that spot for a kitty that needs our help. Like the boy! (please God not like the boy!)"

He so so so wants a kitten.

At the zoo

Art Boy and I went to the LA Zoo on Tuesday. It was a hot afternoon and most of the animals were napping:



The sea lions, however, seemed comfortable:


By the time we got to the tigers, it was practically evening and they were feeling mildly frisky:

In the meerkat exhibit, only one deigned to come out of the nap pile in the shade; it just sat with its back to everyone. Meerkat divas.

I went through frowning at inappropriate signage. Couldn't they have tailored a "Do not feed" sign for the reptile area? Sigh. Copy editors belong in zoos.

Art Boy has more photos.

Variety is the staff of -- ouch! no hitting!

Well, tonight I decided it had been altogether too long since my last dance outing -- that was Feb. 14, which was an utterly delightful night to spend at Perversion at the Ruby -- so I layered my dancing shoes and dress under my work clothes and set out after hours to Hollywood. Traffic along Hollywood Blvd was just zany tonight. The weather's really warmed up in the last month, so lots of scenesters were out walking around and lining up outside clubs. Apparently the hot new thing to wear is a flimsy little dress that's sort of like a cross between a baby-doll dress and a bubble dress -- it essentially resembles a slip, but the hem is tucked under so it balloons out very slightly. It doesn't look like much of anything, but everyone was wearing one of those with platform shoes. Outside the El Capitan, there appeared to have been some kind of opening for the film "College Road Trip" -- lots of signs and lights were set up, and some platinum-blond fellow was having his picture taken by professionals with a young platinum-blonde lady on each arm. Perhaps they were the Hiltons. I don't know. I made it through all the kerfuffle and got a very nice parking spot directly across from the Ruby. But when I got to the door, the bouncer, who knows me, paused and said "You're here for Perversion, right? It's moved. It's at Boardners now." He very kindly gave me directions ("three blocks") and shortly thereafter I was off on foot, heading back toward the center of Hollywood and into all the traffic. Damn. I hate that it's moved, although it's been at the Ruby for at least a year now and that's a good long while as these things go. Still, I will miss the bartender who resembled Gaius Baltar, and who poured me the most sublimely ridiculous gin and tonics with, like, a teaspoon of tonic apiece. And I will miss Consuela the housekeeper, who always walked through collecting used cups with her stoically set face indicating that her mind was safely elsewhere. And the bouncers were friendly. Farewell, The Ruby.

Anyway, I walked to Boardners on foot, which took about ten minutes, which was ten minutes along a street I did not want to have to walk alone in a couple of hours; so after making sure of the club's location I walked back. It was pretty fun to walk along Hollywood Blvd. alone late at night, watching the skateboarders and the crowds and the dissipating El Capitan paparazzi (the Hiltons having left). I walked back along the north end and happened to glance down just as I was stepping across Ritchie Valens' star. Hee hee. It felt like a little benediction, a feeling that stuck with me as I retrieved the car and circled the block a couple of times until a street spot opened up around the corner. Unlike the Ruby, this place is very in the middle of things, which in Hollywood can be a little ridiculous. I was very lucky to find a spot. That's unlikely to happen every Thursday; Boardners is the longtime home of Bar Sinister, a Saturday goth night that I've been avoiding on the grounds that it looks way too crowded. It felt pretty damn crowded tonight, and I realize it was nowhere near full.

The club itself is lovely, though. It's a two-story complex, semi-outdoors: you walk in through this sort of alley and the first dance room is in a covered courtyard, with a fountain at the center. There was a bar at one end and a raised dance floor at the other, but the only dancers were writhing on the flagstones next to the fountain; the floor itself was empty. I realized with tremendous regret that this was my usual room at the Ruby, the 80s room. Inside is a longer, narrow space with a bar along one side, running parallel to a very narrow dance floor; this space was full of people dancing. I approached the bar and got a gin and tonic from a female bartender. I hate to perpetuate stereotypes, but the pour was terrible. Grumpily sipping my glass of tonic, I wandered up a flight of stairs and was mildly startled to find myself in an S&M play area. There was a bar up here too, specializing in absinthe drinks, with its own menu (most drinks are $20 apiece, a fact they're kind enough to note on the menu for you). I watched a ringmaster type in striped trousers flog a blonde lady against a wheel-type setup, and watched a couple of bosomy brunettes go at each other with paddles. The vibe in the upstairs room was hard to get a handle on. Some people were blase, some people were total frat boys ("Woo! Turn her around!"), and some people were very participatory and into it; one frat-boy type in camouflage shorts was smiling as a girl in platform shoes bound his wrists with pink tape. I watched for a bit, hoping to see someone cross some sort of line and be asked to leave, but it was difficult to determine where the line was.

Back downstairs, I returned to the 80s area and got a second drink from a male bartender, who poured me an outlandishly generous gin and tonic. I was so pathetically grateful I left him a ridiculous tip. The DJ played Kathy's Song, Destroy Everything You Touch, Wreath of Barbs and (randomly) Carolyn's Fingers, all in a lovely long set. I danced on the stage with a delightful young man who resembled Jesse Eisenberg, then took one more long, slow walk through the club before heading out to my car. Short visit, and I don't know that I'll be back. A nice place to go once, but not really large enough for me to feel really comfortable, and a lot of bubble-dressed tourists wandering in from other clubs. It might be time to find a new place to dance.

I make a very dry martini....

I make a very wet souffle
Don't be so mean, you mean old meanie....
(Come, my dear!)

In honor of National Grammar Day (albeit a few minutes into National Grammar Boxing Day), I am hoisting a nice dry Grammartini, as intelligently suggested by You Don't Say. After tonight's election tedium, it is hitting the spot. I miss drinking with my fellow ink-stained wretches, although martinis taste equally good in front of the computer, I am pleased to note.

Anyway, to grammar! And to our lovely messy always-evolving language -- in my case, the founder of the feast. And, just for the hell of it, to Miss Hannigan.

Desert trip

Art Boy and I took advantage of a rare overlapping day off to drive into the desert together. (More accurately, Art Boy drove, which proved to be an adventure in itself due to the high wind advisory in effect over much of our drive.) We headed to the town of Mojave, looked at the map, and decided to make for Red Rock Canyon State Park a few miles north. Oh my, it was lovely. Very dry and very windy, but dramatically beautiful.

We stopped at a visitors center and chatted with a friendly ranger, who said she drives to Ventura to surf and reminisced about the days of her youth, when it was safe to sleep on the beach. "Now you can't even afford to live anywhere near the water," she said. "It's sad, it really is. But I've got the desert." She directed us to nearby Nightmare Gulch, where "The Mummy" was filmed, and to a nearby spot where, she said happily, "Waterhole 3" was filmed. "You know, James Coburn," she said. We nodded; we knew James Coburn. We were unable to find the exact "Waterhole 3" site but walked around near there, and also near the entrance to Nightmare Gulch, before the howling, chilly wind drove us back to the car.

I was disappointed, upon our return, to find that the film is actually called "Waterhole #3" and is not the third in a sequence of "Waterhole" films. It does, however, apparently feature a joke in which rape is described as "assault with a friendly weapon." Yes, it was an educational day.

Anyway, you can see Art Boy's pictures here. He was gentlemanly enough not to include the photo he took of me in the high wind, in which I appear to have spent three weeks in the desert smoking peyote (or eating it or whatever one does with peyote... we'll learn that on the next trip I guess).

Jane, Jane, Jane

Art Boy is out of town, leaving me all alone (come and get me, brigands!), so last night I kicked back with an enormous [vice redacted] and watched "Northanger Abbey" on Masterpiece Theatre -- or "Masterpiece," as it is now apparently called. Once Gillian Anderson's unbearably awkward introduction was out of the way, I rather enjoyed it. It's short (2 hours) and so necessarily a bit broad in its insights, but that's appropriate for Jane Austen's most melodramatic book. And I found it charmingly modern -- lots of sexual overtones and gothic-fantasy sequences.

This morning I dropped by the applicable Republic of Pemberley discussion board to see what people thought and found largely positive responses, although there are some detours to discuss grammatical issues raised by the dialogue and share a link to the somewhat inevitable Very Secret Diary of Henry Tilney. I am torn between being annoyed at the ongoing trendiness of Jane Austen, and charmed at the ongoing geekiness of the Internet.

Sebastian has interrupted me with a series of hideous sounds before I am able to bring this post to any kind of conclusion. Sorry, gang.