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I've just shut down montykins.com for good. I told Dreamhost to stop billing me and I'm not even bothering to rescue the URL. The blog I kept from 2001 to 2005 is going away forever. Well, I exported it and its comments so I have a copy, but that's it.
However, I'm more affected by the news that CompuServe is finally going away. I've been on the Internet since 1993, but I was on CompuServe in 1984. IT was my first experience with a national network, and the first time I was able to read something other than a local BBS. I was a regular in the RPGAMES forum (I was Member of the Month once!), which was where I had my first contact with RPG professionals. I got to playtest GURPS Cyberpunk (not the edition the Secret Service seized; this was an earlier draft from a different writer) and a few others I don't remember. CompuServe hasn't been relevant in many, many years, but it was part of my youth and I'll miss it. |
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The State is coming to DVD!
But that's not the exciting news. The exciting news is apparently in the "coming soon" part of the DVD. It's ( behind the cut )
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I've always sort of intended to see Phantom of the Paradise. It's a Famous Cult Movie (defined here as "a movie mentioned in one of Danny Peary's Cult Movies books") and it's got Jessica Harper, who I quite liked in Shock Treatment. But I'd never gotten around to seeing it. Until now!
And I liked it, although I think I was supposed to hate Paul Williams more than I did. His character has some interesting artistic ideas and I think he puts on one heck of a show. The crazy songwriter should have just relaxed. Of course, I also think Williams should have just hired the songwriter to write songs and not bothered with stealing the music and the blood contracts and all. Things would have run much smoother for him if he'd just run things on a sensible business footing.
I did object to Jessica Harper making up with Paul Williams. I've got nothing against Mr. Williams. I like his work with the Muppets. But on the other hand, he's kind of a weird-looking troll.
I made fun of Brian De Palma during the movie a bit (oh look! A shot from Psycho! Shocking!) but I liked the Touch of Evil reference.
This movie was Good Fun. Now I have to decide if I want to get around to seeing all the other cult movies I've never seen. I used to want to see all the movies in Peary's books in alphabetical order, but Aguirre, Wrath of God is kind of intimidating. Plus, I'm not sure I have the books anymore.
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Although Rhias and I are both very fond of sleeping in, we rousted ourselves out of bed before 9:00 to participate in some of this weekend's Scooter Insanity events. And they were fun!
First, we went to Cafe Racer for breakfast. That's when we found out that the scheduled ride was happening at 11:00 so we could have had some more precious sleep. Oh well, at least we got tasty sandwiches and to hang out with other scooter riders.
The ride went to Mukilteo, which took a reasonably long time. I think we were riding for three hours or so, not counting the two gas station stops and the times we had to stop because someone had fallen behind. The first one was because of this pink Piaggio 125 that coughed a lot and was struggling to reach 35 mph. The second one was when one guy's helmet flew off his head. It bounced next to my scooter and in front of Rhias's. Exciting!
Eventually we got to the Mukilteo Ferry Landing and everyone started riding up on the grass to park. Then we found out we had to go park in regular parking spots, so we all did that, only to learn that they were pay spots. As people were grouping up to collect money for their spots (there were something like eight scooters per spot), we discovered we were in the wrong place entirely. There was a "reserve your food online" option, but that apparently connected to a different branch of the restaurant we were next to.
AS everyone started getting ready to go to the correct restaurant, Rhias and I separated from the pack. My plan was to ride the Ferry back to Seattle and maybe have some delicious shrimp at the Crab Pot. Unfortunately for me, once I paid for the ferry tickets, I learned that the ferry system is not like the one for busses. You can't just transfer from ferry to ferry until you get to the right stop. The Mukilteo ferry just goes back and forth from this one place. Phooey! So we rode home on 99, which was both fast and fun.
Now we're sitting exhausted on the couch because we rode scooters for four and a half hours or so. It's tiring!
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I went to the Padres-Mariners game tonight, but I left in the second inning. I just wasn't interested in what was happening on the field and I was getting irritated with how long it was taking both pitchers to get around to throw a pitch. I mean, it doesn't help that both pitchers were pretty bad, but it's time for me to face the fact that I don't really like baseball anymore.
It's been a few years since I went to a game and I haven't even watched a whole regular season game on television in the last couple of seasons either. So it's not that big a leap to "no longer a baseball fan". Really, all I'll lose is the Baseball Primer message board, which is one of my standard Internet timesinks. I mean, I spend almost all my time in threads that have gone off-topic, but it's still basically a baseball board. |
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Okay, look. I enjoyed Rent a lot. So don't take this the wrong way, but I couldn't help but notice certain overlaps with the movie Reality Bites. Which I also enjoy a lot, but freely acknowledge that it's not actually a very good movie. It's very much an artifact of 1994, but then Rent is an artifact of 1995-6 and nobody holds that against it.
So in Reality Bites, Winona Ryder plays a character who carries a video camera everywhere she goes, recording her jackass friends as they have fights and squabbles. Eventually she finishes her documentary, which is basically an incomprehensible mess of unconnected shots. She gets offered a fancy network job, but refuses to allow her precious creation to get turned into something commercial and watchable.
In Rent, Anthony Rapp plays a character who carries a camera everywhere he goes, recording the fights and squabbles. He miraculously lands a fancy network job but quits because only squares and sellouts have jobs. When he finishes his documentary, it's basically an incomprehensible mess of unconnected shots.
What I'm saying is that both Rent and Reality Bites use "carries a video camera" as shorthand for "artsiness" but doesn't really sell me on the character in question knowing how to use it or having a chance of making something interesting with it.
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Yesterday, Rhias and I saw "Rent" at the Paramount. I'd only seen the movie, and I liked the play a lot more. In the movie, the first thing you see is these two guys in a giant apartment vowing not to pay rent, which did not endear me to them. That place is enormous! You should have to get a job if you're going to live there!
Luckily, the play tells us that they were promised by their old roommate, who has bought the building, that they'd get to live there rent-free. And that happens before the song about not paying rent, so it makes more sense. And the staging conveys a more squalid living situation than the movie shows, so already I'm more on their side.
The touring company, like the movie and the original play, is anchored by Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal. It's cool to see the guys that originated the roles, even though I still think of Anthony Rapp as "the guy from Dazed and Confused". That's also how I think of Adam Goldberg and Matthew McConaughey. Anyway, they're quite good at their roles, as you might expect.
Then today, Rhias and I went to see Every Little Step, a movie about the creation of "A Chorus Line", both the original production and the 2006 revival. I love cover songs because it's interesting to me to see different interpretations of a single work, and that means I love seeing ten people all doing different takes on a song as they audition. I also liked seeing Yuka Tanaka, who I'd seen the previous day in "Rent". She had the nerve-wracking task of auditioning for the part of "Connie" in front of Baayork Lee, who originated the role. Which means that Yuka had to perform a monologue that was based on Baayork's actual life. Complicated!
Speaking of things that are complicated, this is basically a movie about people auditioning to be in a stage show about people auditioning. As far as I'm concerned, Every Little Step is a much better movie version of "A Chorus Line" than the actual A Chorus Line movie was.
Incidentally, to continue our theatrical bent, we'll be seeing the Brown Derby Production's version of ET The Extra-Terrestrial on Thursday at the ReBar. It'll be gross and sophomoric! Don't miss it!
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New post on a 1953 book about science fiction on my Dreamwidth account. Did L. Sprague De Camp really just say that all science fiction editors were gay? Why would he say that?
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Google Books has a wide variety of out-of-copyright works, and you can go there to read scans of them. That's pretty neat.
Also neat, albeit mystifying, is the ability to embed books. For example, they've got P.G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress. It was made into a movie starring Fred Astaire, George Burns, and Gracie Allen!
...and you'd be reading it right now, if their embedding code actually worked.
Never mind, i guess. It's over here if you still want to read it.
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I went to the All City Scooter Thing today. It was fun. There were cool scooters there, which made me want to do more stuff to mine. My only idea so far is "more stickers!" but I'm sure I'll come up with something.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) scalpel was there, and he convinced me to go on the Vespa Club of Seattle's ride after the regular event was over. It was fun, although I felt bad that scalpel fell behind and the ride carried on without him. He actually got to Cafe Racer before the main group did, because he ended up going directly there instead of taking a delightful tour through tree-lined windy avenues and past various lakes. We also saw some guys in Viking helmets jogging. I don't know what that was all about.
Anyway, I spent a few hours outside and riding my scooter. Hooray! Now my arms are sunburned.
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I have next week off from work! I don't have any actual plans, but I've got the time off, so it's not like I'm not going to take it. So: next week, no work. Lots of lying around, followed by complaining that I'm bored, probably. So anyone who wants to do something, I'll probably be desperate for the distraction starting around Tuesday.
I do plan to ride my scooter around quite a bit. Tomorrow is something called "All City Scooter Community Day" (there's a website!), so I guess I'll go to that. Monday is "Scoot to work day", but since I'm not going to work at all on that day, I guess I'm skipping it.
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I'm very proud of myself, because I now have a permanent crown on a tooth. This should have been done months ago. I delayed the appointment several times for increasingly frivolous reasons (like "We have guests from out of town and I want to be able to eat toffee with them, so we'd better not put the temporary on for at least a month"), and in the end delayed it so much that today I got both the permanent crown and my scheduled cleaning.
But I finally bit the bullet and did it. I probably wouldn't have delayed so much if my tooth had hurt, but this was just me taking the dentist's word for it that I needed a crown. I mean, I could tell there was a medium-sized hole there, but I figured if it's not causing me any inconvenience, why bother? That's not thinking that leads to long-term dental health, incidentally.
Oh, and my cleaning went well, so I have no extra cavities or anything to deal with. Hooray! Time for ice cream!
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Saw Drag Me to Hell, and didn't like it a bit. After the opening SHOCK-HORROR sequence, there's an excruciatingly long character-establishing sequence to familiarize the audience with Alison Lohman's character. The only problem is that her character has no personality whatsoever, so I was bored stiff. And Justin Long was just playing a smarmy jerk that I think I was supposed to like for some reason.
Then the action started. Basically, it was an hour and a half of things jumping out at Alison Lohman. Things happened at random, and I didn't care because I kind of thought she deserved it. Then there was an obvious twist ending and we were done.
I wasn't into it at all. Should have watched Up again instead.
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We've got a copy of Seattle Metropolitan magazine at work (I don't know why) and it lists what they believe are the thirteen best burgers in Seattle. I'm a little skeptical of their list, since it contains Burgermaster and not Lunchtime Laboratory, but it did remind me that I keep intending to go to Red Mill to try them out. And tonight, I did!
And, well, I wasn't blown away by their hamburgers. The fries were very good and the chocolate shake was fantastic, but the hamburger was just "pretty good". If I lived in the neighborhood, I can certainly imagine going there a lot, but it's not worth the trip from where I am. Anyway, the Wedgwood Ale House has better bacon cheeseburgers.
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A Five Guys opened up near work, and people are all atwitter over it. It seems that "Five Guys" is an east-coast burger chain that people love the way people from my neck of the woods love In-N-Out. So, okay, I'm willing to try delicious hamburgers, right?
My first attempt at going there failed miserably because Google Maps thought it was practically across the street from where I work, when it's actually about four miles away. The problem there is that it's on a brand new road, which Google Maps doesn't yet know about. The new road is inside a new mall, which is next to a new apartment complex. Somebody seems to have bought up all that unused land next to Boeing that used to just be a Fry's Electronics and "the place Cirque du Soleil sets their tent up in". So now it's kind of weird, since it's brand new but also 90% vacant. All it's got is a movie theater and a couple of restaurants.
I've now been to Five Guys a couple of times, and I'm pretty neutral about it. The burgers are very good fast food burgers (but not as good as, say, the Lunchtime Laboratory) and the fries are thick and potato-y. I'd put the burgers a touch below In-N-Out, and the fries a bit above. I've always found In-N-Out fries a little limp.
So the food's pretty good. But the atmosphere is awful. The place is incredibly crowded, making it nigh-impossible to find a table. Luckily for me, though, every time I've gone, it's been full of people I work with, so I've been able to mooch a seat. Today, there were five tables of my coworkers. But aside from the overcrowding, it's small and loud. And the loudness comes from the employees, who have apparently been instructed to keep up a running line of shouting the whole time. It's annoying.
It might be less annoying if it prevented order mix-ups, but based on my experience today, it does not do that. I ordered a bacon burger with ketchup and mustard. I got a cheeseburger. I brought it back, and they were very apologetic and promised to bring the replacement to my table. They brought me a cheeseburger. I sent it back. They brought me a burger with ketchup and mustard, but no bacon. At this point, I gave up and ate it. I got the impression that the guy at the register had gotten my order wrong, and that the constant shouting made it difficult to correct the order.
Now, the burger I got was pretty tasty, albeit not what I ordered. And I expect they'll smooth things like that out once they've been open a few months. But I don't think I'm going to go on a 15-minute journey to Five Guys very often. Not when there's Ezell's practically the same distance.
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Rhias and I are going to see UP tonight. And we're seeing it at the drive-in, because it is a well-known fact that movies are better when you watch them from inside a car. Whee!
Everyone in the world is welcome to come with us. After all, you'll be in a different car from us, so what difference does it make? Um, I mean, "It's fun to hang out between the cars and chat before the movie". |
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I have had a chance to get a few stickers on my scooter, so now it looks a bit more like mine. Dig it:
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I got home today from riding my new scooter to work (fun!) and saw this:
That's the elementary school playground that's my backyard. And as you can see, there is a fire truck parked in it. Can you tell what is happening? What if I gave you a close-up?
It is an egg-drop! The idea is for schoolchildren to construct something that will allow an egg to survive the 50-foot (or however far it is) plummet. There were an impressive range of designs, from the well-represented "small box taped to a grocery bag parachute" school to the more innovative "small airplane made out of foam". The airplane glided to the ground in a very satisfactory manner. My favorite, though, was the young girl who had taken a small Grover doll, taped the egg into Grover's mouth, and taped a grocery bag to his hands. It worked!
I did several of these when I was a kid. The most complicated one was one year when we had to not only come up with a structure designed to protect the egg from a fall, we also had to devise some way of getting the egg up into the air in the first place. I remember I went with a large cluster of helium balloons and a long string to detach the egg-structure. It was only after we'd finished that I realized we could have saved a couple of balloons by simply buying a smaller egg.
It was a lovely day to ride my scooter in, and it was a lovely day to stand in the playground and watch entertaining objects plummet to the ground. Now we have retreated to the living room, but the children appear to still be rampaging around the playground shrieking. They'll do that.
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Today, while Rhias and Jana watched a movie, I rode my Scooter around Seattle, including a very picturesque stop at Sand Point:
I wanted to buy some stickers to make my Vespa look more, y'know mine, but sadly the Space Travel Supply Co. was closed today. So I came home. But when Rhias came home, she was hungry, and I promptly used that as an excuse for us to go on another ride.
So we went down to Seattle Center, where we saw the Muppet exhibit at the EMP/SFM. There's a lot of neat stuff in there, including original Snowths! There are a lot of initial sketches for Muppets that I've seen reprinted, but it was cool to see the actual notepaper. We also got to operate Rock Star Muppets. I was Jimi Hendrix and Rhias was some keyboard player. I'm not sure who. Anyway, there's a lot of cool Muppety stuff there, and I'll no doubt go again a few times before the show closes. And we got tickets for the Oral History Live speech on Wednesday, in which rare Muppet stuff will be shown. And talked about.
Then we went into Folklife, which was very crowded. We managed to work our way through the throngs to the Roasted Corn, Bratwurst, and Kaleenka booths, which meant that we had a delicious dinner next to a jugband. Then we left and rode home.
Whee!
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I have a new scooter! It looks like this:
I was trying to talk myself into getting a Vespa GTS 250, which is just an absurdly large engine for a scooter. But although the lure of going almost 80mph is awfully tempting, I think the scooters themselves are too big. So I went with an LX150 instead, in a color that's apparently called "Dragon Red". It runs extremely smoothly, which you'd expect from a Vespa. And I believe it goes pretty much exactly as fast as Rhias's Buddy 125, so we can go places together!
Right now, for example, we're thinking of going somewhere to lunch. On our scooters!
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