Beautiful Handcrafted Animals

So, I had two cups of coffee today and now it’s almost four a.m. and I’m still awake.

I tried to go to sleep about two and that was a complete waste of time. So I got up, came inside, parked myself at the keyboard and just wrote 2,205 words. Which, hey, is pretty nice.

That’s Chapter One done, and pretty nicely done, too. To say this is a different kind of writing than I’ve done previously would be a massive understatement. I couldn’t say if it’s good yet or not, but it’s definitely different.

And fun. Fun to write, which is also nice.

Jessy and I finished watching Season 1 of Heroes tonight. We marathoned our way through the last three episodes and, heh, if you’ve watched the last three episodes, you can probably guess that she was disappointed.

I’ve watched them before — so I was pre-disappointed.

I won’t go into the story, or how things end, or why it was disappointing, other than to say it’s a shame when a show spends the whole season going out of it’s way to do cool, interesting stuff, and then drops the ball for the big finale. Still, I guess we need to see Season 2 (starting in about two weeks) to fully appreciate what they did with Season 1.

Overall, I enjoyed it, though. Don’t get the wrong idea. And yes, I’ve read that-certain-comic-book-limited-series-who’s-name-I-won’t-mention, but I’ve been able to look past Tim Kring’s “I’ve never read a comic book” crap and enjoy the show on its own merits. “There are no new stories since the Greeks,” one college professor once told me and even if he didn’t directly contradict himself 10 seconds later by listing off Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest as two “original” ideas created by the Bard, I’d still consider that a truism.

Long story short: Heroes is worth your time, if you haven’t checked it out.

Maybe I should see if I can grab some sleep, eh? I tell you, I never drink coffee. Ever. But today I was bookended by meetings, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and wound up with a cup of the stuff each time.

For the morning meeting, I actually asked for an Iced Tea, but got an Iced Coffee instead. No worries and I drank it while we talked. In my afternoon meeting, I think I ordered without thinking, intending to just have a sip, chat, and then hot foot it home. We wound up going nearly ninety minutes and it was a very, very productive meeting.

And now here I am, not sleeping, 2,200 words richer. So I guess I can’t complain, and that was never my intention. Really, two cups of coffee in a single day is, um, probably two more cups of coffee than I’ve had in the last year.

I’m not sure if I’ve said the word, “coffee” enough in this post.

Ah well. Oh, if you have an X-Box 360, go and buy Bioshock. Also, get the external HD-DVD drive. It came with King Kong and it will blow the eyes out the back of your head (and your eyes, splattered on the wall, will thank you for it, I promise).

So far this weekend, we’ve watched Transformers and 1408. Live Free or Die Hard is still on the list, along with a couple other pictures.

What’d we think of the ones we saw? Well, Transformers was pretty much exactly what you’d expect it to be; giant robots beat the crap out of each other. Jess and I seem to agree that the last 40 minutes or so — what’s supposed to be the most exciting part of the whole show — was pretty unsatisfying. There are better, smaller fight scenes earlier in the movie. Still, for the price of a movie ticket, you get to see giant robots fighting. Shia LeBouf is pretty fucking amazing, too (especially given the limitations of the script he’s handed).  And there’s nothing at all wrong with Megan Fox on a sixty-foot screen.

1408?

Oddly, we had the same problem. When the movie is small, it’s great and creepy. Weird, odd things keep happening to John Cusack’s character and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the hell out of myself. About 2/3 of the way through, though, it’s like they threw the switch that said, AMERICAN MOVIE AUDIENCES ARE DUMB, MAKE IT BIGGER, LOUDER AND MESSIER.

In my humble opinion, they would have been better served keeping it small.

1408 was pretty creepy, though. And I raced home to re-read the original short story. I’m pleased to report that (a) good, bad or indifferent, the short-story is right where I left it, so the movie can’t hurt that. And, (b) even with going “too big” at the end, I still walked out fairly creeped out. Can’t complain too much about that, then, I suppose.

Jess didn’t think much of it, but the temperature in the theater felt like about fifty degrees, so we agreed she probably wasn’t as into it as I was. First time I haven’t brought a jacket with us in two months and it’s the only time she needed it. So it goes, eh?

Oh, I’m not actually reviewing either of these movies, but for whatever it’s worth, each is, in their own right, worth the price of admission. Neither will shake the foundations of Heaven and Earth, but as they basically deliver exactly what they promise, I don’t see how you can complain too much.

Still, here I am, waiting for a movie to come along and blow me away. Been a while, hasn’t it? Be a nice treat, wouldn’t it be?