Movies, better weather, and yarn winding
Well, I missed last week because reasons… or at least, I think I had reasons, I don’t really remember.
So, what have I been up to?
Well, watching a lot of movies. I’ve talked about my writing projects a bit here and there and I’ve decided to narrow my focus to comedy writing and specifically one main project, a web series I’ve mentioned in passing, which I currently have 7 episodes written for, as well as a couple short “character interviews” (I will do one for each main character as bonus material). I’ve begun compiling my shot list for the first episode so I can know exactly what I need to build to start shooting.
Aside from that and when I have that production starting to move along, I will be writing screenplays and sitcom pilots. And while in the past I’ve watched a ton of movies, it had been a while and I figured I should refresh my memory and also watch a ton more.
So far over the last couple weeks, I’ve watched the following:
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- Manhattan
- Annie Hall
- What Women Want
- True Romance
- Splash
- My Best Friend’s Wedding
- Steel Magnolias
- Tootsie
- Groundhog Day
- Tin Cup
- L.A. Story
- Some Like It Hot
- As Good As It Gets
- Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
I might be forgetting a couple. Some of these, like L.A. Story and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and True Romance, I’d seen before as a teen, but a lot I hadn’t, as at some point in the early 2000s I kinda stopped paying attention to movies and put all my focus on music.
So far, I’ve learned that what takes a movie over the top for me is some sort of a fantasy or surrealist or whimsical element. Like the mermaid thing in Splash or all the toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or the talking freeway sign in L.A. Story… or the ghost of Elvis in True Romance. (All of these had strong stories aside from that aspect, but like I said, it’s what takes it over the top for me.
Others I liked but probably won’t watch again like Tin Cup and My Best Friend’s Wedding.
And then there’s some like Steel Magnolias that I found very overrated. I mean, there’s some very funny stuff in there, but I felt like the most well-rounded characters were the supporting ones like Dolly Parton’s Truvy. I know we’re supposed to be sad when Julia Roberts’ character Shelby dies, but that shit was telegraphed so far in advance and the character is so flimsy that she’s kinda basically a prop and I couldn’t give a shit.
Anyway, I might try to write a paragraph or two here from now on after watching a flick, we’ll see.
What else… my weekly trips to the driving range have been continuing and I’ve been continuing to hit embarrassingly low yardages, but oh well. At least the lines are mostly straight now… straight into the water hazard at 50 yards. But that’s improvement over balls going sideways or all of 4 feet.
I had to renew my driver’s license, should be interesting to see what particular serial killer I look like in this one’s photo. A couple licenses ago, I had a picture that was a dead ringer for Aileen Wuornos’ mug shot.
The worst of the heat seems to be over for this year, which is to say, life is getting better. In theory, there will be some rain later next week. We’ll see if that’s true or not.
I should say, the heat here at home. I’m planning on a trip to California come October, and I’m sure it will be shorts weather there.
In any case, with a drop in temperatures comes a renewed interest in knitting. I tried starting a couple projects with laceweight yarn but found the casting on and starting to be a pain in the ass, so those were abandoned, but hey, at least I got a skein of that yarn balled up:
Somewhere in the midst of the pile of my stuff that’s still at Dad’s house is a ball winder that operates by crank. I need to find it and use it for the other 8 hanks of yarn I have for a stole/wrap that I started working on last night.
And by “working on,” I mean, ball winding over the course of watching Some Like It Hot:
I’m hoping to move to California soon, so in some ways I wonder why I should bother, but then I noticed many condo listings I looked at had fireplaces, and my friend from LA told me that living there makes you soft and thus people start lighting up their fireplaces at 55F, lol… so… come my first winter there I may well still want to be bundled up in an alpaca/merino wrap after I’ve gotten used to the heat and also gone soft. And if I knit this up quickly enough, I can bundle up in it here this winter, which will be much colder than 55F, especially when the annual foot of snow gets dumped on my driveway around Valentine’s Day.
Otherwise, I think it’s all lace shawls from here on out.
Not much else to report, or at least, not much else ready to report at this stage in development, so let’s wrap up with some garden pics:
