Tag: Peter Parker

Grail Overfloweth

Work-at-home Friday morning, and I have some errands to do in a moment before I do my work-at-home duties. Or maybe I’ll do it later…wait, it’s summer again, so earlier is better but not by much in New Orleans. I was very tired when I got home last night from work–not sure why; I think the heat and humidity sapped my energy on my way into the house from the car (seriously, that’s all it takes) but I did get some of the laundry going. I slept really well last night, which was marvelous, despite waking up before seven yet again. I stayed in bed for a while though, just relaxing and luxuriating in the comfort until I decided that coffee was sounding good and it was time for me to get up. But now I am awake, sipping said coffee, and really looking forward to my three-day weekend. I have to revise a manuscript (as always) but that’s it; and I don’t think this is going to be as hard as the last one. Maybe I’m deluding myself, but whatever works. I’m not dreading it at all, which is a significant change from the past.

We watched The Other Two–this season’s not quite as good as previous–and another episode of The Crowded Room. I think I’ve already figured out what’s going on, two episodes in, but it’s a slow burn show; and it’s not easy to figure out what is going on. It’s extremely well cast, and everything about the show is top notch, but the story itself is being played out a little too slowly? Maybe the pacing will pick up as the show goes, but I worry–as we have noted with other series; the need to fill out eight or ten episodes often leads to a lot of filler and sidetracked episodes that don’t advance the story. That’s a story-telling problem fairly unique to the streaming services–sometimes shorter is better. Not everything needs to be eight or ten episodes long. Tom Holland is really good in this–I think he’s a much better actor than given credit for; but playing a Marvel super-hero stacks the odds against him (although I think he does a good job playing Peter Parker) when it comes to praise for acting and awards. (I thought he was brilliant in Cherry, but no nominations for anything.)

My desk area is a mess and so is this kitchen, so I’m probably going to spend a little time cleaning up around here after finishing this. I am my mother’s son, after all, and now that I have gotten some of the authorial pressure off me, maybe I can spend some more time cleaning up this place and reading and relaxing and so on. I really want to finish the book I’m reading, and I have some absolutely amazing ones on deck to get to–with even more coming out the rest of the summer. I will never get caught up on my reading, will I? Ah, well. I can listen to Carol Goodman on my drive up north in a couple of weeks, and on the way home, too. I’ve not taken an entire week off in a very long time, so that, too, is going to be weird. I am going up to meet Dad in Alabama for their anniversary, and then we’ll convoy back up to Kentucky. I should be able to finish a Carol Goodman on the way up as well as one on the way back.

God, and football season is looming again. What kind of season with the Saints and LSU have? There seems to be a lot of excitement around our new quarterback, Derek Carr (a fellow alum of Fresno State), so there’s no telling. There’s also a lot of expectation for LSU this season, after their remarkable turnaround last year under first year coach Brian Kelly; I’m going to not over-anticipate so as not to be horribly disappointed. Can LSU beat Alabama two years in a row? That’s a feat that only two coaches have accomplished in consecutive seasons–Les Miles at LSU (2010-2011) and Hugh Freeze at Mississippi (2014-2015). Freeze is now the Auburn head coach, and in 2024 Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC (LSU plays host to Oklahoma that year, I think; while Alabama goes to Norman and also gets to host Georgia). College football has changed so dramatically from when I was a kid…I of course remember when the SEC was merely ten teams, before Arkansas and South Carolina were added to make twelve, and Texas A&M and Missouri were added to make fourteen in 2011. It’ll be an entertaining season, to say the least. (In 2024, LSU also goes to play USC in Los Angeles, and UCLA comes to Baton Rouge. LSU doesn’t have an easy schedule that season…)

Okay, time to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday before the holiday weekend, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely be back again at some point soon.

I Write the Songs

Another good night’s sleep, with gloomy Sunday glaring at me through my kitchen windows. I wound up wasting most of yesterday–although organizing and filing and so forth doesn’t really seem like a hardship to me–and then last night there was some drama involving my phone again not being recognized by my computer, so yeah, there was that. So, I managed to get next to nothing done yesterday but relaxing and some little bit of my organizing, which means today I have to do a lot of it. Which is fine–I usually dread the morning of the day I pushed everything off to arriving; because nine times out of ten I will almost always feel just as lazy on the Sunday as I did on the Saturday.

It happens.

But I am not feeling quite so out of sorts–or lazy–this morning; which means I am going to start tearing through the to-do list once I finish this entry. I am determined to get my inbox emptied once and for all; I am going to get some work done, and I am going to finish the organizing and cleaning I started doing yesterday. I cleaned off and organized most of the stuff on the top of the kitchen cabinets–eighteen foot ceilings give you a lot of storage space on top of your kitchen cabinets, in case you were wondering–and while there is still stuff up there that should probably come down, I may leave that up for a while just yet…until I can figure out what to do with the stuff. I mean, I don’t want to give away my food processor, but the truth is I rarely, if ever, use it–maybe three times once I first got it and was impressed with the novelty of having one. Or my electric wok; again, used maybe once or twice. Again, a nice thing to have…but I never use it. Maybe I should store these things in the attic. I don’t know.

Yesterday afternoon (and early evening) we watched Venom and the remake/reboot/latest sequel in the Friday the 13th series–the 2009 version with Jared Padalecki of Supernatural in the starring role. Believe it or not, I’d never watched the original until a few years ago, when it became available on a streaming service, and while I can see why it was so enormously successful at the time and am willing to recognize it as a landmark film in the resurgence of horror cinema in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, the production values are only slightly higher than that of a home movie of the time–which led me to think about how The Blair Witch Project, with similar production values and maybe a slightly higher budget, also revolutionized horror cinema and made a fortune. The reboot (or whatever it was, a sequel with no number, whatever) wasn’t a bad film, it just wasn’t a great film; it was perfectly adequate, but added nor removed anything from the canon or iconography and therefore just seemed like an attempt at a cash grab. Likewise, Venom, despite its impressive effects and being about one of my favorite Marvel characters…just didn’t fire on all cylinders for me and was actually kind of dull. And I love me some Tom Hardy; perhaps the problem was that giving Venom an origin story that doesn’t involve Peter Parker was a misfire…and Stan Lee’s cameo at the end of the film just made it sadder, knowing he’s now dead.

So, today I have to make a quick and easy grocery run, deal with my taxes once and for all, and want to finish revising some chapters of the WIP while also putting together the proposal for the suspense thriller I may want to write later in the year. I also want to read the next story in Murder-a-Go-Go’s and get started on Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home. I also have some other things I need to work on as well. And there’s always cleaning that needs to be done, and organizing. Always. I just have to make sure I don’t get into one of those oh I feel lazy and this can wait until another time moods, you know?

Which is, sadly, easier and easier to slip into these days.

But that cannot happen, I cannot keep letting things slide, so today is the day when I need to get it all together and get it all done.

Beginning with the goddamned emails.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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