"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
This week marks the end of our summer hours at work, and we move back to our regular week after Labor Day. Me, I’m taking all of next week off while my parents are on vacation in England — partly because I only need to take four vacation days to get a nine-day weekend out of it, and partly because I haven’t had a full day off from work since the 4th of July.
I’m looking forward to it. I just need to get through the rest of this week intact.
It was a slow day at work, but at least it was a half slow day, so there was that. I did manage to get several hundred books pulped before the end of the day, so I guess it wasn’t all wasted.
Actually, what happened was, earlier this week, I noticed by chance that one of our older titles, inherited from another publisher, was being sold in both its first and second editions. This isn’t standard practice; when a new edition publishes, the previous edition automatically goes out of print. So, by bringing it to the attention of production and getting the remaining stock of the first edition pulped, I was essentially just facilitating a process that should have happened a few years ago as a matter of course. Still, it feels kind of strange to be sort of directly responsible for destroying all those books.
But it was just a half day at work. The rest of the afternoon, I spent seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Which, you know, is just ridiculously silly and infectious fun. I think the things that have sort of been turning me off from the comics — I’ve been halfway through the first book for many, many months now — are the characteristics of the title character we’re supposed to not like. I’m not really much of an old-school gamer or indie music/comics geek, but the movie was great fun. I’m having a tough time thinking of a recent movie that’s handled its special effects so expertly. (You could almost call the movie the anti-G.I. Joe in that respect.)
I figured I should see it now, before it’s gone from theaters altogether. There were only two shows on one screen at my local multiplex. The movie has been kind of a bomb (and not a Sex Bob-Omb) at the box office, and lots of people have been wringing their hands about why it’s a huge financial failure. It’s a shame, because the movie is a lot of fun, but it’s also not entirely surprising that it hasn’t caught on with a wider, more mainstream audience. I mean, the fact that a big-budget Hollywood movie was even made from a quirky indie relationship comic about twenty-something musicians in Toronto is kind of remarkable. And maybe it’s just that geeks have been getting spoiled by the mainstreaming of ComicCon and superhero movies and the like, but it’s not exactly like an indifferent mass audience and disappointing box office are unfamiliar territory. Yeah, the big box-office winners are increasingly drawn from the geek crowd, but it’s the Star Treks and the Iron Mans, not the Serenitys and the Scott Pilgrims.
That said, I had a blast. Probably not quite as much as the half dozen other people I saw it with, some of whom were reciting dialogue and singing along with songs, but I’d definitely recommend it. Hopefully it will play as well on the small screen as it did in theaters, because I think that’s the only place most people are likely to see it.
And that, really, was my Friday. Last night, I finished reading the last book in the Joe Pitt Casebooks — not bad, and a fitting enough ending — and today moved on to Paul Auster’s Invisible, after buying a copy on impulse at Penn Station. Auster used to be a real favorite of mine, but his recent novels have been a case of ever-diminishing returns. But the reviews on the jacket copy were quite positive, and so far it’s not bad, so we shall see.
My father overslept this morning, so we caught the same train into Manhattan. Of course, we didn’t ride in the same car, since I work further uptown than him and it makes more sense for me to be at the very back of the train. I was a lot further back from him this evening, too, but only because summer hours at work get me to Penn Station with little time to spare, and no time to be choosy. It’s unfortunate, since in my car we were again packed in like sardines — tighter, in fact, than yesterday and with less cool air getting through — and apparently not packed at all in my father’s car. The LIRR is naturally still predicted delays and canceled or combined trains again for tomorrow, but maybe it won’t be so bad. And Friday, I get to leave early.
I’ve pretty much gotten into the swing of summer hours…so of course they end after next week, right before Labor Day.
The day got off to kind of a weird start when I logged on to Twitter under my Kaleidotrope account and tried to follow somebody, an editor whose work I admire and respect, and discovered that this person had preemptively blocked me. Well that’s strange, I thought, but there it was at the top of the screen: “You have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user.” We’ve never had any run-ins that I’m aware of, and I hope it’s just an accident or a misunderstanding. I’m disappointed that I’m blocked from seeing this person’s updates, but worried that the Kaleidotrope account is coming across as some kind of spammer. I honestly don’t update it as often as my personal account.
But, nothing really to be done about it, so I put it out of my mind and went to work. And of course, the half day on Friday turned out to be my busiest day of the whole week. I had corrections to make and reviews to solicit and a couple of other tasks I wanted to complete, and luckily I managed to do so just as the one o’clock hour was drawing near. I got home around 2:30, spent some time playing with the dog and watching this week’s episode of Top Chef, and generally just remembering why it’s more fun to hang out in the backyard with my iPad than in my cubicle at work.
Then this evening, I went to the mall and bought eyeglasses. I have the prescription, and while I didn’t get as good a deal as I might have at the eyeglasses factory outlet, I wound up with a decent price and what I hope are a nice pair of frames. I should have them in 7-10 days, so we’ll see I like them as much then.
And that’s really it. More than anything, I’m just shocked it’s already the 20th of August. Where does the time go?
Last night, just before I went to bed, I learned that a recent story from Kaleidotrope (Will Kaufman’s “Eris Sinks Pluto,” April 2010) had been named to the editor’s shortlist for the next Best American Fantasy volume. This isn’t the same thing as it being included in the volume, or even necessarily among the honorable mentions, but it was one of several stories selected by series editor Larry Nolen and passed on to the volume editor, Minister Faust. I thought it was exciting news.
Of course, in the same breath, it was announced that the series, sadly, won’t be continuing. The volume, with or without Will’s intriguing story, won’t be printed.
Oh well. C’est la vie.
Today, on the other hand, was just a regular Friday around here. Went to work, came home around 2 o’clock, did some light grocery shopping, and put together my new kneeling chair. I’ve sat in it a little, but I think it’s still going to take some getting used to. My back has actually improved quite a bit in the weeks since I bought the chair, but we’ll see.
And that, such as it was, was my Friday.