"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
Just a quiet night at home, just me and the dog. I dropped my parents off this evening for their flight to London — they’re on vacation to there to the end of the week — and spent the rest of the night doing nothing much more interesting than watching A Perfect Getaway on cable. It’s an okay thriller, I guess, even if I had guessed its big twist pretty much right at the beginning.
And that’s really it, as far as my Saturday goes. Where did it all go?
Today marked the end of my summer hours at work and the start of my week-long vacation. My parents are headed off to England tomorrow evening for a week of their own, and I don’t go back to work until Monday, September 13. It promises to be a quiet and relaxing week, just me and the dog.
Today was the last of my half days, though even the people who didn’t take advantage of summer hours got to leave at 3 o’clock, thanks to the Labor Day weekend. Judging by how crowded my train was before two o’clock, I’m glad I didn’t have to stay in the city a lot longer. I also wanted to go pick up my new eyeglasses, which you can see in the photo up above. (Or here, if that’s too extreme a close-up for you.) They’re a lot different (and a little heavier) than either of my other pairs, or any of the glasses I’ve worn in decades. But they’re comfortable, and I actually quite like them.
This evening, I watched (and pretty much enjoyed) 3 Days of the Condor. It’s maybe a little dated and occasionally a little implausible, but it’s a taut and well-crafted ’70s thriller. And how can you not like a movie with the line “You can always count on the old spy-fucker”? I can certainly see how it was an influence on AMC’s new conspiracy show Rubicon — which I’ve also been quite enjoying.
And I also finished reading Paul Auster’s Invisible. I hope to write more about that later, but it’s quite good, if occasionally disturbing and difficult to puzzle out. And I’m not sure how well it hangs together, or is meant to, in the end. I also don’t know that it actually “is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written” (as the New York Times claimed), but it’s definitely a return to form for him after a string of disappointing novels. (Of which, admittedly, I’ve only read Man in the Dark, but that was pretty weak stuff.) Again, hopefully more later.
I don’t know what you did today, but me, I spent way too much time making up “facts” about the new Robert Rodriguez movie Machete.
You could probably argue that any time spent doing this is too much time, but every man needs his hobbies.
It all started when Joe Hill posted the following on Twiter this morning:
Robert De Niro has twice won the Oscar. By coincidence, Danny Trejo cut a guy named Oscar in jail, a couple times.
He appended the hashtag #factsaboutmachete, and I decided to just run with it.
Anyway, here are the so-called facts I posted about the ex-Federale-goes-on-brutal-rampage-of-revenge movie:
Based on the novel of the same name by Jane Austen.
“The feel-good musical of the year!” raves Gene Shalit.
A spin-off of Hans Christian Andersen’s heartwarming holiday classic “The Little Machete Girl.”
Audiences will have to wait until the director’s cut to see Danny Trejo have sex in 3D with blue aliens.
Ever the Method actor, Robert De Niro served eighteen months in Congress to prepare for his role as Senator McLaughlin.
Machete was actually the name of his sled.
“Whosoever pulleth the machete from the stone shall be king,” proclaims a possibly inebriated Cheech Marin.
Follows in a long tradition of characters named for deadly weapons: Bullitt, Blade, Celine Dion…
Legend has it that to every age, a new Machete is born. Frankly, though, I don’t what Legend has been smoking.
In Japanese, Machete is known as Happy Sunshine Sharp Pointy Man.
An origin story in which Danny Trejo’s character is bitten by a radioactive machete was scripted but never filmed.
Be sure to stay through the end credits for a thrilling sneak peek at Machete joining the Avengers!
If you stand in front of a mirror and shout Machete! three times, Robert De Niro’s character will appear and deport you.
Machete’s blades may not be crafted from adamantium, but they still put the fear of god into that gringo Magneto.
The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Machete from the bosom of the water…
A shocking twist in Martha’s Vineyard reveals Trejo to be Kyle Machete, formerly of the Kennebunkport Machete family.
A few other people got into the action, too. I particularly liked this from RichterCa:
Originally planned to be the next “Spy Kids” sequel, it was rebranded after children in test audiences cried for hours.
And this from TwittterRock:
He takes just like a Machete. And he aches just like a Machete. But he breaks just like a little girl.
Amazingly, I actually also managed to get a fair amount of work done, too. Today marked the last of my long summer-hour days. I have a half day tomorrow — provided Hurricane Earl doesn’t change those plans — and then I’m off until a week from Monday.
Maybe I’ll even go see Machete while I’m home…
The most exciting thing that happened today was, I called the place where I purchased my eyeglasses a week and a half ago, because they’d said the frames would take 7-10 days on order…and moreover that they would call me when they came in. Seeing as that was a week and a half ago and no call had come through…
Anyway, the first person I reached led off, before I’d even had a chance to say a word, with a long spiel of “thank you for calling” and blah-blah-blah — half a minute, at least, that, only after I’d asked her to repeat herself, did I realize ended in offering to set me up for an appointment with their eye doctor. Um, no thanks, I was just calling to check on frames and lenses I purchased a week ago last Friday?
She transferred me to someone else, who took my name, phone number, and the identifying number on my receipt. Then she went away for a minute, came back, and asked if she could call me back in just a few minutes more. Either because they had to check something there, or because they were with a customer, or…it wasn’t entirely clear. But okay, sure.
She didn’t call back in a few minutes. So I went to lunch. I had my cell phone with me, and that’s the number they had.
An hour later, I’m back from lunch, and still no phone call. Another hour, still nothing.
So I call back, and go through the same song-and-dance — though no breathless opening spiel this time — and get connected to a different salesperson. Who also wants to call me back in a few minutes. I sigh. That’s what the other person I spoke with two hours ago said, I tell her. And she never called back. Don’t worry, sir, this woman tells me. She’ll definitely call me right back. She takes my phone number — my work number, since I’m sitting at my desk — and tells me her name, I guess so I’ll feel like I have someone to complain to if she doesn’t call back.
But she does, first to my cell phone, which I let go to voicemail, and then my work number. My eyeglasses are ready to be picked up at any time. Hopefully, I’ll go pick them up on Friday, the last of my half-days at work for the summer.
Seriously, though, the local LensCrafters needs to invest in a better phone system. If it’s seriously just going to be a few minutes — because you have to check in the back, or talk with the optometrist, or something — just put me on hold.
It should tell you something about my day that this was the most exciting part of it.
I don’t think there’s any denying that was a Tuesday. Nope, no sir. Definitely a Tuesday.
But since nothing much of interest happened on this Tuesday, I thought I’d just use this opportunity to share my August mix. This is new music, or newly discovered music, or newly rediscovered music that made an impression on me over the course of the month.
It’s hard to believe, but until just recently, I thought I wouldn’t have many songs to list here. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, I guess.
I do this — like most everything else I post here — mostly for myself, but as always, if you’re interested in a mix exchange, just let me know.