Tag: Ke Huy Quan

Diamonds

Monday and back to the office with me. Woo-hoo!

I did not want to get out of bed this morning, either, as the real effect of the lost hour actually is felt this morning. I could have easily stayed in bed for another couple of hours, without question–it’s also a bit chilly this morning in New Orleans; we’re having a bit of a mid-March cold spell, with evening/night temperatures dipping into the forties this week. Because that will make getting out of bed easier.

Yesterday was a strange day in which I never seemed to get my gears in working order. Looking back now on yesterday, I didn’t get much done but am not sure why or how the day managed to slip through my fingers. The weekend wasn’t a good time for me, alas; this not being able to maintain iron control over my emotions and my moods is something I don’t care much for, in all honesty. I did start watching the Academy Awards last night–I had to go to bed before the final hour of the show–but while usually I find the Oscars to be a tedious, self-congratulatory bore last night’s show didn’t seem that way. The winners all seemed to be genuinely delighted and appreciative of the honor received (as well as humble), and the speeches all seemed to not last terribly long for a change (I think my favorite, though, was the songwriter for “Naatu Naatu” who sang to the tune of the the Carpenters’ “Top of the World” a very sweet series of thank you’s. One can never go wrong choosing Karen Carpenter on any level of anything). I was happy to see upon awakening that Michelle Yeoh and Brendan Fraser won their categories (I used to have the biggest crush on him during his The Mummy/Gods and Monsters/ George of the Jungle days, and always felt he was more talented than he was given credit for, and now he’s an Oscar winner! The guy from George of the Jungle!); these Oscars seemed to be the “comeback” recognition awards–Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis winning supporting kind of fell into that type of win as well, but Curtis has been award-worthy before and her past as a Scream Queen always, I thought, kept her out of the running for some truly magical comedic performances over the years. It’s funny, yesterday I was thinking (and posted) about awards and so forth, and I wound up enjoying the Oscars for the first time in years. Go figure.

But this morning I’ve got to shake off the malaise or whatever the hell I experienced this weekend–I suppose it counts as a low, a valley of sorts, a holler–and get back into it this week. I know I’m supposed to be being kinder to myself these days, and that something I really want to be working on for myself going forward, but it’s hard sometimes, and when I wake up on Monday morning and see the abyss of nothing the weekend was, I kind of want to slap myself alongside the head…but that’s not really productive and the truth of the matter is sometimes you need to have those downtimes, I suppose. I am kind of tired of being all over the map emotionally lately, and the depression, which is never terribly far from the center of my brain, has really got to go. But that’s also easier said than done, by a long shot–what isn’t, really–but I guess I just need to let my mind and my subconscious and my emotional self process and go through what it needs to go through to get to the end of this.

It must have rained last night, because it’s chillier again this week than it has been, and usually a thunderstorm of some sort presages and predicts colder weather. I had to turn the heat/defroster on in the car this morning and frankly, the warm air felt lovely. I think I got a “weather alert” last night before I went to bed warning of a coming thunderstorm? I must have slept through it completely; I was out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow last night, which I didn’t think was going to happen, in all honesty; I worried about the time change and getting up an hour “later” than I usually do and all that stuff; the time change day is always kind of a waste, anyway because everything always feels off and wrong, you know? It always takes a couple of days for me to readjust and get back in sync with the clock and the calendar.

I did finish watching the Caril Fugate documentary, and I am not really sure how I feel about it. It’s trying to combat the narrative that she was a willing accomplice; one that has been pretty well established by adaptations and books and so forth that have flooded the market since the Starkweather shootings…and the fact the only evidence contradicting her story is Starkweather’s statements; I’m not so sure that he was a credible witness. It did put me in mind of how horrible it would be to experience such trauma at fourteen, then to spend over twenty years in jail for something you didn’t do, and to have that haunt you for the rest of your life when you didn’t do anything is probably the worst nightmare of a life to have. I also kind of had to wonder–why was she tried as an adult at fourteen? The way the whole case was handled in the first place was all kinds of wrong; but what would such a case look like today? A circus on a much grander, broader, global stage–as opposed to the circus of the pre-cable and pre-Internet times. With the Starkweather shootings in Nebraska coming so close on the heels of the Clutter murders in Kansas (In Cold Blood), I would imagine the people in the prairie states started locking their doors in 1958.

Ah, the prairie. I should do one of those listicles at some point for prairie noir–right off the top of my head I can think of a few books that would fit into that list.

And on that note I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll keep you in my thoughts, okay?

Take a Bow

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and I slept well–I wanted to stay in bed for another few hours, but got up anyway and am now sitting in my kitchen remembering that there was a time change and it’s actually later than I thought. Sigh. So I didn’t get up early after all, did I? I hate Daylight Savings Time and wish we could do away with it once and for all; didn’t Congress take this up last year or something, and didn’t it look like this pointless time change was going to be a thing of the past, or was that merely a fever dream brought on by the pandemic or something?

Yesterday wound up being a wasted day for me. I had some things to do yesterday morning that had to be done–some emails I’d been putting off because I knew they would be triggering, and I was right. I’m still not certain the most important one was worded correctly or the right thing to say at all, but when I finally finished it–it took me several hours to compose it and myself–I was emotionally drained and in a grief spiral, so I decided to spend some time with Scooter sleeping in my lap to make me feel better. I wound up actually drained and exhausted and fatigued, so I simply stayed there. Paul didn’t go into the office yesterday (he is going today) and we finally spent some time together last night, getting caught up on Servant (which is really phenomenal; Lauren Ambrose doesn’t get near the credit as an actress that she should; there’s a scene in the second to last episode–the series finale is this Friday–that can be Ms. Ambrose’s Emmy reel; the scene where her husband and brother finally come clean with the secret they’ve been keeping from her since the first episode is a master class in acting, and it’s all done with her facial expressions, and it’s a tour-de-force), and then the first episode of Outer Banks. We were both getting sleepy, so we put on a true crime documentary series (Two Shallow Graves, which is quite interesting; we figured if we fell asleep it would be okay because we could rewatch it if necessary without necessarily spoiling anything) and finally repaired to bed (later) than I thought it was (stupid time change), which is already throwing me off this morning.

I am still digesting Cheryl A. Head’s marvelous Time’s Undoing, which I finished yesterday morning and greatly enjoyed. I was hoping to spend some time with my next read this morning….but I’ve already lost an hour. Maybe instead of reading this morning, I’ll finish this and get cleaned up and write for a few hours before curling up with a good book later on this afternoon. Paul is going to see his trainer this morning and then to the office, so he’ll be out of my hair for most of the day so I should be able to get a lot of editing and so forth done, as well as some planning for future writing. There’s also always cleaning and filing to get done; yesterday after the depression set in was pretty much a wasted day. But I’m not going to beat myself up over the lost day; it is what it is and nothing I can do now can ever change that, so I am going to be kind to myself and recognize that, while still disappointing, there’s a significant difference between deciding to be lazy and blow off the entire day as opposed to being so overwhelmed that you can’t do anything. (This being kind to myself thing I am trying this year is such an outlook change that it’s not reflexive and I always have to process myself into it; maybe at some point it will become reflexive and…yeah, I don’t see it becoming reflexive any time soon)

Oh, yes, and the Oscars are on tonight. My interest in awards shows has declined as I’ve gotten older; sometimes I wonder if my gradual growing antipathy for awards shows I used to look forward to when I was younger has anything to do with my own eligibility for awards since getting published? Don’t get me wrong; I don’t object to awards by any means, but they also aren’t why I do what I do. It’s always nice to be recognized, especially by your peers and especially when you’ve always felt like an outsider rather than a peer. But while winning an Oscar (or even being nominated) can change a film industry member’s career for the better, do book awards make a difference to someone’s career if they aren’t the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize? I do think it’s important to recognize excellence in the field, but awards are just as subjective as anything else, and when an award is decided by a panel of judges..well, a different panel of judges might not come up with the exact same shortlist and winner, either. It isn’t like you can campaign to win an Edgar–but there are awards for mystery novels that you can campaign for, and the campaigning always makes me uncomfortable. In the beginning, I hated asking people for votes and wouldn’t do it. Then I started adding my eligible stuff to Gabriel Valjan’s awards-eligibility lists, which he compiles every year for every award as their nominations period open up.

Last year was the first time I actually made a little announcement on social media that hey, Bury Me in Shadows is eligible for the Anthony for Best PBO because there wasn’t a children’s/young adult category on the ballot. A second ballot was sent out at the almost last-minute because they’d inadvertently left that category off the ballot, so…figuring I didn’t have a prayer at a Best PBO nomination, I asked people to write me in on their ballot for y/a. IMAGINE my shock to wind up nominated in both categories (I lost both, PBO to Jess Lourey and Y/A to Alan Orloff; it’s lovely to lose to friends because you can be happy for them rather than disappointed at losing–losing to someone you don’t like or respect is an entirely different situation); so this year I figured I had nothing to lose by asking for votes–and wound up nominated for a Lefty for A Streetcar Named Murder and an Agatha for #shedeservedit, so go figure, you know?

Another reason I stopped caring or watching the Oscars is because they’ve become so predictable in every category in every year that there are no fun surprises, or if there are any, they are so few and far-between that watching become tedious (although one delightful surprise was Olivia Colman’s win for The Favourite a few years ago); but there doesn’t seem to be a clear cut winner in every category this year, even though I will go out on a limb and predict Oscars for Brendan Fraser (everyone loves a comeback story), Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan (another comeback story), and Jamie Lee Curtis. The two actresses will not only be rewarded for their work in the film but also for lengthy, glorious careers that have never been recognized before; while the two men are feel-good comeback stories. I’ve not seen Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I do think it’s trending to win everything. (If I had to chose, Barry Keoghan probably deserves an award for The Banshees of Inisherin; to me his was the strongest performance in a film I really disliked.)

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you later.