"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
So if you’d told me last night that the plan for today would involve lying in bed watching the first season of The League on Netflix and doing a little light reading, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But I called in sick today, so that’s exactly what happened. I’m feeling a lot better now than I did this morning. Which is good, since I do have work to do at the office this week…and Netflix only has six episodes of The League available for streaming.
“Sarah” by Ray LaMontagne
I didn’t do a whole lot today. I went to see Source Code and thought it was okay, if ultimately a little unremarkable and forgettable. (I think I pretty much agree with everything Keith Phipps says here*.)
I watched a couple episodes of The Muppet Show on DVD and the first episode of MacGyver on Netflix. Yeah, I know. I also did the Sunday crossword and read a very little bit of Kaleidotrope slush, so it wasn’t all a bust.
I am running into some printing issues with the April issue of Kaleidotrope — of the “dear god toner is expensive and lasts a ridiculously short amount of time” variety. I’m hoping it won’t preclude my having finished copies in hand by next Saturday morning to mail them out, but that does remain a possibility. I think at this point all I can really guarantee is that they will be mailed out in April, though it’s not impossible that that will mean April 31.
* Roger Ebert, on the other hand, was a lot more forgiving; I bring up his review, really, just because of his aside that “After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous…” which I find…well, a little oddly pessimistic. Certainly now space travel is a difficult and costly affair, but need it always be? However difficult, or even unlikely, is it preposterous to think that, in the future we just might have space travel beyond our sun?
That said, the science in Source Code really is fairly preposterous.
“Ulysses” by Franz Ferdinand
I didn’t do a whole lot today. It was cold and rainy, perfect don’t-do-a-whole-lot weather.
I worked on finishing up the April issue of Kaleidotrope, and while I didn’t manage to mail out any copies today, I did post the contents, with links for purchase. Check it out if you’re at all interested. I know that couldn’t have possibly taken the entire day, even with the proofing and the printing and the website tweaking, but I’m not entirely sure how else the day went by.
I’m not automatically discounting the idea of alien abduction and lost time. Though there may have been some reading and television involved instead, I’m not sure.
I do know this evening that I watched John Carpenter’s The Fog (the 1980 original). It’s an odd movie, both a very effective horror movie and a spectacularly lame one. There’s a lot to admire in Carpenter’s work, especially in the early going, as he builds tension and dread through effective locations and use of sound. But he’s undone, ultimately, by cheesy special effects, slasher-movie tendencies, and kind of a silly plot. It’s not at all a bad movie, but it’s not even close to Carpenter’s best. (Then again, given the hit-or-miss career he’s had, it’s also not even close to his worst.)