Yesterday, I got a haircut and finished reading the last of January’s submissions for Kaleidotrope. That maybe doesn’t sound like a full day — and heaven knows submissions have kept coming in all through February and into March — but if you think my Saturday was in any way wasted, I have just two very simple words for you:
Arctic Blast.
I watched this cinematic — or is tele-visual? Wikipedia suggests the movie premiered on screen, but I think it aired primarily on the Syfy Channel — classic over Twitter with friends. On any objective level, it’s a terrible movie, with bad effects and some questionable acting. Michael Shanks gives it his all, or at least whatever percentage of his all he decided the movie was worth, but it’s ridiculous disaster movie. Heather’s already posted a good rundown of the night’s film, including several of the funnier comments. (Keep in mind, of course, that this is a woman who calls Sharknado “a metaphor for modern life, in which chainsaws solve all our problems.”)
I’ve been watching my fair share of bad movies lately, but watching them with friends — even when those friends are separated by several time zones — is a whole lot better.
Today, I wrote a little with my weekly group:
“Do not call me Master,†the doppleganger said. “Call me…Phil.â€
He didn’t look like a Phil, but Alison knew it wouldn’t do her any good to tell him that, not with that weird crooked staff, still crackling with energy, held over his head. It had taken only a single blast of that energy to get rid of Nate — which was no big loss, as far as Alison was concerned, but she also wasn’t in any hurry to join him in an atomized spray of used-to-be-people particles. She’d called this weirdo Master out of some instinct — it was what the long crimson robe and dangerous magic seemed to demand — but if Phil was what he wanted, then Phil was what he’d get. She wasn’t going to risk making him angry like Nate had, at least not until she managed to wrestle that magic stick away from him.
It was funny, though, Alison thought. He didn’t look a Phil so much as he looked like…well, Nate. She hadn’t really noticed that before, but the resemblance was a little uncanny. Was that why her now very ex-boyfriend had called the man the doppleganger before they’d awoken him? Then he’d just looked like some old dude propped up on a big rock inside a cave — “entombed upon the altar of Circe’s midnight slumber,†Nate had said, which she was sure was something he was remembering wrong from out of some book. The man had looked kind of peaceful, actually, serene, and she hadn’t seen Nate look like that even once in all the time they had been dating.
True, they’d been hunting magic and legends since their second date — or was the Bigfoot trap officially their third? It had seemed fun at the time. Nate had seemed fun at the time. But that was long before they’d stumbled across this Merlin-wannabe who’d zapped Nate into a cloud of nothingness and then taken his face. Alison had been planning to break the relationship off after this excursion, just waiting for the right moment between the caves and the flight back home to the States. Should she tell him before they cleared customs, or after? Now Nate was gone and she’d escaped having to go through all that, thank god, but she hadn’t escaped this deadly wizard who could zap her too if he wanted, and even worse who looked like her ex.
You know, sometimes I just go wherever the prompt leads me.
