Tag: CGI

Goin’ Down

Monday and back to the office this morning, woo-hoo! Yesterday was an interesting one. I got up later than expected, did some chores, got cleaned up, and had a book breakthrough, so huzzah for all that. It rained most of the day, heavy downpours around thunder and lightning. The power even flickered once. Sparky and I spent most of the day cleaning and doing bits and pieces and odds and ends while I was thinking about the book and coming up with some answers. I love rainy days when I can stay in the house, you know? Paul went to get a tattoo, and that was when I worked on some essays and picked apart my book, and then he brought a pizza home from Midway on Freret (they are most excellent) before we started watching Those About to Die, which is interesting but…a bit disappointing at the same time. But there’s queer rep, and we’ve already seen some male nudity. The CGI isn’t terribly good and is kind of obvious, which pulls me out of it when it happens, but overall, not bad at all.

Yesterday the mega donors and the news media, along with rich old white men like George Clooney, David Axelrod, and Rob Reiner got their wish (along with the party donors and the news media) and President Biden announced he would not seek the nomination of his party at the convention. My spirits sank immediately, particularly since the racist old fucks never said “step aside for KAMALA HARRIS the vice president” but made it plain that not only did they want the President gone, they wanted to pass her over. Within an hour, though, the endorsements started coming in as the rank-and-file of the party (you know, the voters) started getting inspired and money started flowing and by the time Paul got home, I was excited again1 and ready to get out the vote and donated…to her campaign, not the DNC. From now on, only the candidates I am supporting will get a donation from me directly, no more party donations or PAC donations or anything like that for me. Y’all blew it, as far as I am concerned.2 I also love that Beyoncé has already endorsed the Vice President, and can Taylor Swift be far behind? There’s going to be a lot of racism and misogynistic bullshit being flung from the right for the next three months, and the conduct of the news media during that time will have to be monitored to see if they are on a redemptive path. If not, I never have to watch or read them again and will go with either the Philly paper or the Los Angeles Times.

I feel inspired now, and hopeful. We can do this and save the country, expand the Supreme Court to mitigate the Trumpian/Heritage Foundation damage to the judicial branch, and pass some goddamned laws. We also need both chambers–and there will be, undoubtedly, Manchin 2.0 and Sinema 2.0, and the Pass the Torchers certainly cannot be trusted to act like Democrats. And I will say, as much as I have always liked Joe Biden, I love Kamala Harris. She was my candidate in 2020, and was bummed when she dropped out, and thrilled again when President Biden selected her. I love that we now have the dichotomy of a convicted felon running against a former prosecutor. The right is scrambling now–all of their anti-Biden plans and ads and everything now have to be scrapped while they try to come up with attacks on her. It’ll start with her not being a citizen, of course–alas, we still have birthright citizenship in this country regardless of Project 2025 (which is already being test-driven in Louisiana)–and then the law and order party will no doubt attack her as a cop, which is far too easy to counter–so it’s all going to boil down to her being a biracial woman. You know who else’s parents weren’t citizens? The first nine presidents. There will be all kinds of legal fuckery coming, too–since they can be certain of a favorable rubber stamp from their operatives on SCOTUS, but for some reason I feel much better this morning. I still don’t trust the media at all, but…there are other and better sources that didn’t spend the last four years dragging down the man who saved the country.

As for the book, as you may have noticed, I’ve been having trouble moving on with the fourth chapter because I am at a stopping place for the chapter but it’s not nearly long enough as it is, which means restructuring the first four chapters again. This chapter, for example, can begin in the previous one–where the chapter ran further than I should have allowed it–and it won’t kill me to pull these first chapters apart and put them back together in a better order than I already had them in and perhaps then I can move on. This is a good idea, and it’s been so long since I’ve written a book where I had the time to sit and think and realize I have to go back now in order to move forward–usually I just have to bulldoze through it and hope it all plays out in the wash–which is probably another reason I feel like my work could be better. More time doesn’t mean better, of course, but the stress and anxiety I usually feel from writing a book on deadline feels pretty fucking marvelous, to be honest.

And on that note, I think I am going to get cleaned up and head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later.

  1. But make no mistake, the Pass the Torch people are on my permanent shitlist and I will never forgive them. I’m still carrying a grudge against Susan Sarandon from 2000. I will carry a grudge to the fucking grave. ↩︎
  2. I, for one, will never forget that it was Biden who got President Obama to change his mind about marriage equality. ↩︎

In the Back of My Mind

Here we are back on another Monday morning with another work week staring us in the face and not blinking. Great, right? It was a lovely weekend around the Lost Apartment, if a bit lonely; Scooter was definitely needy all weekend and it’s weird to have the bed almost entirely to myself (not including Scooter). I felt well rested both weekend mornings when I arose; yet after running my errands on Saturday and doing some cleaning I became extremely fatigued, which sent me to my chair. I did manage to get some things done once the fatigue set in–I think low blood sugar had an awful lot to do with it, to be honest–and it’s irritating, frankly. I had wanted to be a lot more productive on Saturday than I actually was; but c’est la vie and all that nonsense. I do think I am going to need to do some restructuring of the opening chapters on my book, but that’s cool; it certainly makes more sense for me to order it the way that I am going to restructure it all. And no, I didn’t get a lot done this weekend. Maybe a restful weekend of recharging my batteries was just what the doctor ordered; who knows? I am trying not to get overly stressed out about everything that is pending for me.

Stress is the mindkiller.

I’ve oddly enough been sleeping better and more restfully recently, despite the addition of cappuccino to my morning routine every morning–but maybe the caffeine crash is why I am so tired in the afternoons. Maybe, but I was also tired in the afternoons before I got the new espresso machine (which I love, if I’ve not made that clear enough already) so who knows what the new normal/Greg’s reality is anymore? I certainly don’t know.

And it’s Halloween, of course. Happy Halloween!

I was going to rewatch the original Halloween last night, but instead I rewatched Robert Wise’s 1962 adaptation of The Haunting, based on the novel by Shirley Jackson. I originally saw this movie when I was a kid, staying up late one night to catch it on the late movie, and it was absolutely terrifying. It’s exceptionally well done, and Julie Harris is so definitive as Nell–the cast is all so definitive in their roles, really–that I can’t help but see them every time I reread the book. It really is a stunning performance by Harris–she really embodies Nell–and the entire thing is so claustrophobic and terrifying, really; the concept of what you cannot see being more terrifying than what you can played up perfectly by Wise’s incredibly capable direction and camera shots–and the editing ratchets up the suspense and terror perfectly. It follows the book incredibly closely–one of the most faithful adaptations of book-to-film; up there with Rosemary’s Baby, really–and as I watched, not terrified because I’ve seen it so many times so thus able to watch for the direction and the editing, which were superb, as was the black and white cinematography, I couldn’t help but marvel at what a great job Wise did with the cast and the film. The remake was terrible, absolutely terrible–unwatchably bad; which remake a classic in the first place, especially when you’re just going to go crazy with the CGI budget, which takes away the most important suspense/terror aspect of the book and the original film: you don’t see the monsters, you don’t see whatever it is that is haunting Hill House and it is never explained. I also don’t usually like movies that have voiceovers to show a character’s thoughts, but the book itself is so intimately from Nell’s point of view that it would be hard to translate that on film and get the same feeling–and the emotive way Julie Harris does the line reading makes it work, draws the viewer in, and makes the viewing experience incredibly intimate and claustrophobic at the same time, which is exactly how Jackson wrote the book.

I also recorded Alexia Gordon’s Cozy Corner podcast yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. We talked for a very very long time–we both lost track of the time, really–and talked about a lot of things. It was seven by the time I got off the ZOOM call, and when I got up to make myself something to eat was when the fatigue hit me. Was it related to the podcast and social intercourse, which also required me to think and be smart and actually put thought into my answers? I don’t know, maybe it was but I was pretty tired by the time I made my grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwich for dinner and repaired to the living room to watch the movie. I didn’t stay up much longer after I finished watching either; I was watching some documentary on Youtube about the Hapsburgs and started nodding off, so I decided to just go on up and go to bed early–more sleep never hurt me, after all.

I may even go to bed at nine tonight. Perish the thought!

But I think my restful weekend did the trick, and it was clearly what I needed. I do feel refreshed and alive and rested, both physically and mentally, this morning–or it could be the cappuccino. I guess we’ll find out this afternoon when the caffeine wears off.

So on that note, without further ado, I am heading into the spice mines on this lovely cool Monday morning in New Orleans. And may your day be lovely and bright, Constant Reader–I will talk to you again tomorrow morning.