Tag: Zac Efron

It’s Nice to Be With You

Here we are on a Sunday morning, wide awake and feeling pretty fine, if I do say so myself. I slept later than I intended–the past two nights I’ve slept for over nine hours, if not ten–which will be a problem for me tomorrow morning, but that’s every Monday morning, isn’t it? Heavy sigh. Our anniversary was nice and low-key. We ran all the errands I didn’t run on Friday because of the weather–we also got rained on yesterday–but I also noticed when I got home from all the errands and had everything put away, I wasn’t exhausted like I have been every time I do a big errand like Costco–and I made groceries, too! I realized once I had the groceries all put away that I wasn’t tired or worn out. This is a great development on my return to normalcy (or what passes for it around here) with recovery and exhaustion and stamina. It also rained overnight–thunder and lighting and downpours–which woke me up around two or three, but the bed was so comfy and warm and cozy, and the sound so comforting that I was able to go back to sleep almost immediately. Sparky also was cuddling with me after I fed him and went back to bed. No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Paul’s getting a tattoo this afternoon and is going to bring a pizza home, so that’s today sorted. I am going to do some chores this morning, get cleaned up, and want to write this afternoon. I am also going to try to get some reading done–maybe a short story, since for whatever reason I don’t seem to have the bandwidth to read anything longer–and I do want to get chapter four of the new book finished. I’d like to dive into one of my short stories, too, now that I know how to revise them and make them work better. I may even start writing another Sherlock story–crazy talk, right? But my coffee is kicking into gear and my head is clearing, which is always nice, and I should be able to have a productive day. I think I’ll just put Spotify on the television and listen to music while I do things around here. It certainly works for me.

We watched A Family Affair, a romantic comedy that actually worked, mostly thanks to it’s incredible cast of Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King and Kathy Bates. It was cute, and funny, and really well done; which I generally don’t say about this film genre because they are generally goofy and kind of fluffy and predictable. It was like a big budget Lifetime movie, but they put the money into the cast, script and director–and it was also beautifully shot…though I’d kind of like to know how an author can afford a house in southern California right on the ocean, but…fantasy, Gregalicious, it’s a fantasy.

I think today, after Paul gets home, we’re going to start watching Lady in the Lake on Apple, based on a book I loved by an author I loved, Laura Lippman, and after that, we’ll dive into the new gladiator show, Those About to Die, which looks to have lots of gratuitous male skin and homoeroticism. Woo-hoo! I do want to watch some other films that have come out this summer, but not enough to rent them, like Civil War, which was controversial and might be fun to watch from a ‘the world IS burning to the ground’ perspective, and could spark an interesting (to me anyway) entry about dystopian art and/or whether art used for propaganda is still art. I generally have a lot of Imposter Syndrome when it comes to writing essays and so forth, because I have this feeling that any arguments or interpretations i might made during the course of said essay had already been made or debunked–especially when it comes to commentary on any kind of literary art. I like to think I am smart and intelligent and have interesting perspectives, but I always suspect that I’m not as smart as I think I am (no one is as smart as they think they are) and that trying to sound intelligent and discuss something artistic will simply expose my ignorance and lack of education to the world.

Like that’s ever stopped me before.1

And on that note, I am going to finish this, get some more coffee and have some breakfast before getting cleaned up and getting to work. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

I never tire of pictures of Finn Balor. That body! That face! Superstar!
  1. It actually has, to be honest. I often decide not to write things because I fear I am not educated enough on the subject to even try. ↩︎

Don’t Fear the Reaper

Ah, the Von Erich curse.

I’ve always been interested in wrestling. I wanted to go out for the wrestling team in high school, but enough people were already bullying me and calling me a fag, and as painful as those words were, they were made worse by the knowledge they were true–and absolutely godawful knowing I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant….but I knew by their faces and the tone of voice it was spoken in that it wasn’t a good thing. The last thing in the world I wanted was to wear one of those skintight singlets and get aroused for the world to see (although I learned, much later, that it was so common no one ever said anything about it; but even now I am not certain I would have been given that same grace as a sexual suspect); that would be the end of the world as I knew it…so going out for the team wasn’t an option for me, and I kind of regret that fear kept me from something I’d enjoy.

But as I was figuring out my sexuality and trying to figure out what all was entailed by being an object of scorn and disgust by everyone, I started being drawn to professional wrestling. The heyday of pro wrestling was long in the past in the late 1960’s and 1970s, and the WWE boom was yet to make it mainstream once again. But the body contact and domination/submission aspects were the closest thing I could actually find on television that was sort of like a male/male sexual experience–which made my liking for pro wrestling even more suspect and something I couldn’t really talk about with anyone because of course he likes pro wrestling, the fag.

So, I was closeted in that way, too.

But one day when I was a teenager I was in a store–a Walgreens or something–and I saw a professional wrestling magazine with a cover story on Kevin Von Erich, and he was like nothing I’d ever seen before–a tall, long, lean and muscular body in white trunks and barefoot, and handsome in a rugged kind of way. I bought the magazine, and became a fan of the entire Von Erich family…and also was aware of how tragedy haunted the family. When I first heard about this movie, I had to see it…although I wasn’t sure how telling this story would have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But…I did enjoy it. A lot.

It’s actually very well done, but it’s also kind of sad to watch almost from the very beginning. The movie also cut out one of the brothers, but seriously, another death in this grim film might have been too much for any viewer to handle or take.

The film is very well done, and the story is sad–one about toxic masculinity, distant and emotionally unavailable parents, and how the dream, the drive, of being at the top of the wrestling game caused so much damage. Afraid to admit weakness, not really able to ask anyone else for help when struggling emotionally, the suicides make complete sense. The Von Erich brothers were so tightly bonded they didn’t have room for much else in their lives–friendship, love, etc.–other than the grind of training and wrestling and tightening the bond with each other. The cast is brilliant–great casting, but ultimately flawed in the physical side of things; the Von Erichs were taller than the actors playing them, and of course Kevin was never as jacked as Zac Efron; those kinds of bodies were extremely rare during those decades. Kerry was big and muscular and defined, but he’d also been an Olympic wannabe in discus and javelin.

There’s a particularly moving scene towards the end of the film where Kevin finally breaks down from how overwhelming all the tragedies have been and the toll on his soul and psyche, and his young sons come to comfort him…and he tells them how much he misses his brothers and misses being a brother; the boys tell him they’ll be his brothers, and he apologizes to them because “men aren’t supposed to cry.”

Maybe if the Von Erich brothers had been raised to not believe in toxic masculinity and the narrow definition of what a man is, and allowed themselves to be vulnerable and get help for their demons, the story may not have been as tragic.

Kevin’s sons now wrestle professionally, and Kevin himself doesn’t believe in a curse on the family–though he did for a number of years, but he’s made peace with the past and focuses on his family.

I really enjoyed the movie, but it’s depressing. Four out of five stars.

Three of the actual Von Erichs, with Kevin in the center

Show Me the Way

Saturday morning and I slept in, as I always seem to do on Saturday mornings. But really, things have truly come to a sorry pass when getting out of bed at nine is considered sleeping in. But that’s when I got up and I feel good and rested this morning, which bodes well for the things I’d like to get done today.

I spent yesterday afternoon getting caught up on laundry (there’s a load going in the dryer now), and doing a surface clean of the apartment. After Paul got home last evening we finished watching Dead to Me, which is really fantastic–if Christina Applegate doesn’t at LEAST get an Emmy nomination, it’s a travesty. The show is fantastically written, has two amazingly great roles for the two lead actresses (Linda Cardellini, of Freaks and Geeks/Mad Men fame, is the secondary female lead and is heartbreakingly terrific as well; I’d be hard pressed as an Emmy voter to chose one over the other), and the writing is also award-worthy; the premise is in and of itself exceptional, thematically exploring the grief of two women who’ve suffered recent great losses; but it is ever so much more than that. It’s smart, angry, funny, and oh-so-twisted, oh-so-clever. Bravo to Netflix; this is up there with Ozark for dark comedy with a crime twist. I cannot recommend Dead to Me highly enough, Constant Reader.

I also, before Paul came home, rather than falling into a Youtube vortex of LSU or Saints highlights or Game of Thrones fan theory videos or whatever might strike my fancy at the moment (music videos or Dynasty clips or whatever), switched on Starz and started watching The Spanish Princess, which is the latest Starz mini-series based on a Philippa Gregory book. We’d watched and liked The White Queen, but gave up on The White Princess relatively quickly. I’ve not read Gregory, and I’ve seen all sorts of mockery of her on-line as to her changing history to fit the needs of her narrative, but that isn’t why I’ve not read her work; I’m just not that interested in fictional biographies of royalty anymore, certainly not the way I was as a teenager. As a teenager I would have read everything Gregory wrote, anxiously awaiting the next. But I’ve read Jean Plaidy and Norah Lofts, and of course others like Maurice Druon and Thomas B. Costain, so Gregory’s work has never held much appeal for me; I am more apt to read an actual biography now rather than fictionalized versions (although I do want to read Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell books). The Spanish Princess is, of course, about Catherine of Aragon, who has gotten mostly favorable press throughout history as Henry VIII’s poor, abandoned first wife; I’ve always viewed that with an arched eyebrow, primarily because she had a great PR machine in the Spanish ambassador, Chapuys, and of course she had the entire PR machine of the Hapsburg empire behind her as well–whereas Anne Boleyn, her replacement and the cause of her misery, soon enough had Henry’s PR machine blackening her name. At least this production had the wisdom and sense to ignore modern sensibilities; this is the first time I’ve ever seen Catherine portrayed on film (since the 1970s BBC The Six Wives of Henry VIII) to have the actual coloring she had in real life; she is usually shown as dark when she was actually fair; like her husband, she had reddish-gold hair; and she also had Plantagenet blood as a descendant of Edward III–her grandmother was Blanche of Lancaster, a daughter of John of Gaunt, and as such had her own legitimate but unrecognized claim to the English crown herself (since no illegitimacy was involved, she actually had a better claim than her own husband–his claim was based on his grandmother’s descent from John of Gaunt, but she was descended from his liaison with long-time mistress Katherine Swynford–whom he later married and legitimized their offspring–but Catherine’s descent was not marred by the bar sinister).

However, they did depict Catherine’s mother, Isabella, as being dark–which she wasn’t, either. Isabella of Castile was blonde and blue-eyed, but she’s a minor character we’ll never see again, so I will overlook it. (Isabella is one of my favorite historical queens; she was kind of a bad-ass but at the same time her bigotry planted the seeds for the eventual downfall of Spain from the great power she turned it into; but more on her at another time.) Anyway, I enjoyed the first episode; which also has laid the groundwork for Catherine as stubborn, proud, and arrogant–qualities that eventually led to the upheaval that changed world history forever. I’ll keep watching, of course–but at the same time, it’s not “must watch”; it was okay and can serve as a time-filler when I need to relax and when Paul’s not home and I don’t feel like actually wasting my time on Youtube.

I also want to watch the Zac Efron as Ted Bundy movie on Netflix.

So many riches, so many choices! It’s kind of like my TBR pile.

The plan for today and tomorrow is to work on the WIP and work on the article a bit, maybe even work on a short story. Given I have the attention span of a squirrel lately, I am not sure how much work I am actually going to get done today, but I have good intentions. I also have a Bouchercon subcommittee conference call later on this afternoon as well, so I should be able to bounce back and forth between cleaning, writing and reading until such time as the conference call; after which time I can call it a day and relax for the rest of the evening.

Ah, to have the energy and ambition I have in the morning after a good night’s sleep and two cups of coffee, right?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me.

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