My friend Jeff arrived from Germany, and wanted to get lunch. He came over with a mask on, and didn't come in the house, so I grabbed my mask and wore it in the car as we drove together to get food. I hadn't worn a mask in the car before (unless I forgot to take it off from a store or something), and it was a little strange, but as we're not in the same household, that is apparently what we were supposed to do.
It is unseasonably warm this week (I could go to the cabin if I wanted to, and would probably have an okay time), so we were able to go to Tommy's Burger and eat on their park benches, just like old times (except it cost nearly ten dollars for a Combo 2 this time, which is pretty horrifying). We talked politics for waaaaaaay longer than necessary, but Jeff has an interesting perspective, living overseas, and he keeps pretty informed about what's going on here, as depressing as that can sometimes be.
We took a walk around the neighborhood where he used to live, and even though I knew that if I went to his house, I would get no more work done, I chose to do so, and I was right. His couch was right where it used to be (he bought the house right before moving to Germany, and his son has been living in it ever since), and we availed ourselves to a few minutes of horror movies. The first we watched was an anthology TV movie from 1977 called "Dead of Night," which was pretty obviously three episodes of a failed "Twilight Zone"-type show that Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson did together (I think those two were responsible for TRILOGY OF TERROR a couple of years before, and this was a much less memorable version of that).
Also on the disc was another Dan Curtis program called "Dead of Night." It turned out to be another failed pilot for a television series, undoubtedly shot on the "Dark Shadows" sets, and even at fifty-one minutes, was really drawn out and long (it was from 1968, and really felt like a pilot for a paranormal investigation drama, before I looked it up and found out that that's what it was).
I had brought two more DVDs with me, Alfred Hitchcock's MARNIE (which I was going to watch so Marshal Latham and I could talk about it on our movie podcast) and Alejandre Aja's CRAWL (which I heard good things about and grabbed for Halloween. Jeff was afraid he wouldn't be able to stay awake through MARNIE, so we watched the highly entertaining girl-vs-nature flick instead.
I really enjoyed CRAWL. It had (what seems to me, anyway) a pretty ridiculous premise, but I felt like they took it just seriously enough that I was able to go along with it. There is a moment at the end when an alligator bursts through Kayla Scodelario's bedroom window that was Jason Voorhees-level over-the-top, but they'd had me for eighty minutes by that point, so I just laughed and played along.*
The neat thing about when Jeff comes to town (despite the fact that he's willing to spend 90% of his time hanging out with me) is that, because of his jet lag, he always has to go to sleep early enough that when he sends me home, I still have time to do the stuff I need to do. So, after he dropped me off, I was able to ship a couple more packages, do sit-ups, and do my run (nice weather tonight too). Then, I still had time to either write or edit audio.
And I haven't vowed to edit audio every single day this year, so the answer was easy. I didn't get a lot of words, but as I keep saying, anything over 300 words is a success, so I'll take it.
Sit-ups Today: 166
Sit-ups In November: 1838
Push-ups Today: 50
Sorry, I screwed up (I did fifty, took a break, then fell asleep before I thought to finish the set. I'll do more tomorrow.
Words Today: 624
Words In November: 14,410
*There was also a part earlier when a guy falls in the water and is swarmed by half a dozen lightning-fast CG alligators that swim in from all directions as we get a God Angle Shot from above watching him torn into a human-sized Sloppy Joe . . . but I think we were supposed to laugh there.
No comments:
Post a Comment