cainmark

The Complete Peanuts volume 1
My favorite cartoon from this collection:

The kids are playign cowboys and indians
"I'll be a good guy."
"I'll be a bad guy. What'll you be Charlie Brown."
"I want to be both. I gues I'll be a hypocrite."

The Spirit 14 and 15 (this newspaper comic book series that DC is putting out in these awesome hardback archival editions) The Spirit is the only one my devilgirl admits to just loving. Ebony and the "leave me tell you, boy" stereotypes from that time (think Amos and Andy fromt he 1940s and 50s) is hard to take sometimes, but the stories are always fabulous.

The Rabbi's Cat
Joann Sfar
had a very funny scene of the cat eating a parrot and gaining the ability to talk, and when asked what happened to the parrot, the cat says he went on an errand, a feather still sticking out of his mouth.

Sep 8th is Blondie's 75th anniversary strip. There's crossovers all across other comic strips. this was my favorite:

http://www.grimmy.com/images/MGG_Archive/MGG_2005/MGG0823.gif

Barbie as Elektra. That's right girls, be a murdering assasin!

http://www.dollyrama.com/products/proH1699.htm


I love this line:
"If television's a babysitter, the internet's a drunk librarian that won't shut up."

http://catandgirl.com/index.php

Yawn

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawning.html

I saw on Ebert & Roeper (Monday September 5, 2005 12:30am) that Proof has been made into a movie. When I was in New York City 2001 December I saw Jennifer Jason Leigh as the main character in this fabulously written play. The movie version has Gwyneth Paltrow with Anthony as the genius going slowly crazy dad. They'd have to try really, really hard to mess this story up.

Arlington Road with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins
Boy, this was disturbing on so many levels. I think everyone who believes in the ideals of what America can be should see this to see how easy it is to stray so far from that ideal (besides watching the current adminstration, of course)

Finding Neverland
This was so sad to me, not because of the melodramatic real life and death circumstances, but that imagination was lacking in one of the very young characters.

Behind Enemy Lines
Owen Wilson should stick to playing Owen Wilson. Not that good a movie, but a pretty good script idea. Not very well executed, though. The explosions and music got waaay to loud, especially in contrast with the whispered dialogue.

Ginger Snaps Back
was the 3rd in the Ginger Snaps films. I loved the 2nd one, and have heard nothing but good things about the first one. This one is a pretty good movie if you can eliminate the other two movies out of your mind, apparently. Not as funny as the first (so I've been told), and not as scary and plot-twisting as the the second. But I still liked it a lot, despite beign told it sucked.

Wild Things

I wish there were more movies like this. Good solid movies that don't try to be blockbusters, just focus on telling a good story, not necessarily a great one. So many of the problems with movies that set out to be blockbusters is that they lose the characters, the plot, and the story.
There were some nice film and videomaking hints from commentary track, though:
Reflected water from a pool can be achieved by broken mirror pieces in a pot of water that is shaken.
Binocular effect can be achieved with a piece of cardboard with two holes cut out and clamped in front of camera lens.
A neon sign reflected in a car window can be acheived by colored lights shining through a small piece of cardboard with the stencilled letters cut out.

Wordcount is a fun experiment

http://wordcount.org/main.php

Teach us to Outgrow our madness
by Knabourou oe

was an incredible collection of stories, especially the title story about a man dealing with his mentally ill son. The first stroy is a difficult to read stream-of-conciousness story dealing with how a characters father's life is shattered by the events of WWII

Masks
Fumiko Enchi
was a really interesting story that on the surface was just about an adultress affair, but was more about the dissolution of friendships and the spirit of revenge, no matter how unwilling.

Bimbos & Zombies: Bimbos of the Death Sun & Zombies of the Gene Pool
Sharyn McCrumb
Fun, fun, fun books poking fun at Science Fiction Cons. Written in the late 80s and early 90s, before the geeky and nerdy became mainstreamed.

The Mothman Prophecies
John Keel

The book is really interesting, putting me in mind of Forbidden Planet and the id machine creating things from the subconsicous that are real and not-real. Really interesting read too, as it goes form one kind of story to another.

Lives of the Monster Dogs.
by

So sad, with a great gimmick. My favorite was the liberetto that described that revolution against their masters.

Fifth Business
by Robertson Davies

Always like the covers to this authors books (by someone named Bascove) and just now started reading the first book in the Deptford Trilogy. There's a scene in Fifth Business where the main character taeaches a younger chum legerdemain, and is envious and irritated that the illeterate younger person has natural manual dexterity that he does not. This struck me because I had this happen to me when I was a youngster in elementrary school. Frustrating to want to be able to do something that just isn't in your capabilities and the point is driven home to you so early (like stage magic and singing for me).

This morning in a grocery store a toddler about 3 years old pointed at me in my bike helmet and sunglasses and whispered "Mommy, it's Lord Vader"