I finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Feh.

Full disclosure: I had to skim a lot, especially in the first third. The details of day-to-day life with a dying parent would be brutal enough, but adding a stream-of-consciousness style meant it was skim or not read it at all. I really don't get what the big deal with this book is. I can write in an overly self-conscious and self-aware way -- if you think this site is bad, you should see my journals. But I'm aware that a little of that goes a long way, which is why you don't see my journals up here.

And what irritates me is when Eggers occasionally settles down for five minutes and stops trying to be hipper than thou, he's a lot more interesting. There's a bit near the end of the first half that is presented as an interview, for reasons that he, of course, explains as a stylistic device early on in the interview. Bleah. But there are segments in there when he's just telling his damn story, finally. Here's what his childhood was like, this was his neighborhood, there's the time Mr. T. moved to the area, here are some creepy stories about his parents. Those parts are interesting, and helpful in understanding the family, and apart from the framing "questions" there aren't any gimmicks. It's like a short oasis of straightforward narrative before the long trek to the end.

I'm sure spending a lot of time developing literary devices and post-modern gimmicks and so on helped him distance himself from some of the unpleasant things he was talking about. That doesn't mean it actually adds anything to the story, though. It's like all the stream-of-consciousness; yes, it gets you in his head. But fairly early on I discovered that his head is a really annoying place to be. And so I end up feeling more alienated from him when I think maybe I'm supposed to be sympathizing, or something. All the layers: "Here's a story in which I'm a jerk, but I'm emphasizing what a jerk I was so that you'll know that I know I was a jerk, and that way you'll end up thinking that deep down I wasn't really a jerk, right? Except I'm also aware that you'll think that I'm trying to convince you I'm not a jerk, and that makes me look like a bigger jerk, but I know that, too, and so I'm still not a jerk, or am I?"

And I'm sure his personal relationships are very fascinating to him, but working Might seemed likely to be interesting to me. So I was also irritated that was only touched on occasionally. He wanted to start a magazine. Then he had a magazine. Insert two or three anecdotes. Then he got tired of it. End of magazine. He doesn't seem to care much about it, but he felt obliged to mention it. Which pretty much drained my interest in it. Oh well.

I guess it's interesting enough that I kept reading it, at least. But again, with lots of skimming, and lots of wishing he would just tell the story instead of constantly trying to anticipate the reader's reaction. After I finished I went back and reread all of the introductions and explanations. (All thirty-odd pages.) His style is still fun there, but I think maybe he should have gotten it out of his system and settled down for the actual text.

I think I'll get rid of this pretty quickly; I can't imagine bothering to reread it.

So. The Oscars. I'm not going to bother predicting the winners because better minds than mine have already done that, and plus I've hardly seen any of the nominees. Which actually makes me about as qualified as the Academy voters, but anyway. No, these will be predictions about the ceremony itself.

Russell Crowe:

Now, I kind of think he will win Best Actor, but Johanna and I are really hoping that he doesn't. Johanna predicts that if he doesn't win, he will immediately kill someone. Hopefully Whoopie. I see it playing out this way: As Denzel Washington's name is read, we'll get the obligatory reaction shot of the other nominees. Crowe is poker-faced. Until someone sitting next to him, trying to lighten the tense mood, makes a little joke like "Guess they didn't want to risk editing your speech, ha ha." And then Crowe will slam his elbow into the nose of the jokester and stomp out. My advice is, have your VCR cued up just in case.

Whoopi:

• Number of times she will draw more attention to a joke that bombed by saying things like, "I can wait for you all to get it.": 5

• Number of Enron jokes: 3

• Number of Lord of the Ring jokes: 5

• Number of Republican-bashing jokes: 7

• Number of jokes combining any of the previous three items, for instance by comparing Mordor to Enron: 3

• Number of funny jokes: 2

• Number of costume changes: 7

• Number of times she will introduce someone who will introduce someone who will present a montage or a tribute to someone else: 1

Miscellaneous:

• Best acceptance speech: Ian McKellan.

• Best presenter: Owen Wilson

• Number of tearful references to September 11: 6

• There will be at least one comment about how the industry has moved from the bewildering surprise ending to plots which are bewildering all the way through (Memento, A Beautiful Mind, Mulholland Drive).

• There will also be at least one wacky and over-excited winner for some minor category, whose enthusiasm will be endearing until his acceptance speech enters its third minute.

• Number of montages: 5

And most importantly:

Predicted end time: 12:07 EST.

Get the Blood Simple DVD. The commentary track is absolutely hilarious. It's like a parody of directors' commentaries, with ridiculous "behind the scenes" details (the apparently normal German Shepherd is actually an animatronic dog, for instance) and gushing over what geniuses the Coens were for mastering the fact that you shouldn't show the camera on-screen, and... oh, lord, it's funny. (And the movie's good too, y'know.) I'm so happy I bought it.

And I rented Memento, so I'm in the process of watching the scenes in chronological order. Whee!

I read volumes 6 & 7 of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Theresa lent them to my mom, and I stole, er, borrowed them. Yay. And I'm pleased that the basic scenario is changing a bit, and I probably can't say any more about that because Johanna hasn't read them yet and I'm not sure if Katie has, and if spoil the books for them they might hurt me.

I've been reading bits and pieces of The Big Picture, by A. Whitney Brown. I think I got it at a library sale a while ago and forgot I had it. Remember A. Whitney Brown? Used to be on SNL? And I want to say he was on The Daily Show briefly but it might be that I just kept thinking he should be on The Daily Show. I like him. The book is from the SNL days, and it's just a collection of his pieces linked with the occasional transitional paragraph. But well worth the quarter or two I spent on it.

I started watching Night of the Living Dead earlier and then decided that was a bad idea because it was already kind of late and it's rainy and the other day I had to kill a centipede (in addition to the cricket I mentioned) and, well, yeah. I wasn't in the mood to be tense. I'll probably watch it this weekend. Oh, and the faulty Farscape disk will be replaced. Yay.

It's been quite the emotional roller-coaster today. I found a new person that I want to add to my collection. Not in a creepy The Collector way. I swear. The point is that I found a very funny website and I think the person who runs it should be my friend.

So that meant I had a new fun project to look forward to. I like to have goals. Then I left work early, which was also nice, and when I got home my DVD's had arrived, which was very nice indeed. I was taking my friend Kelly out for a belated birthday dinner, so I just had time to pop in the Farscapey goodness and look at the extras. But the disk wouldn't start up automatically -- it had a load error of some kind. That wasn't nice at all.

However, hitting "menu" got it working okay, so I went to look at the extras. There was a quiz! I love a quiz. It's twenty questions, of varying difficulty -- I had to guess on a couple (Crichton's middle name? Jeez.) but I guessed right and I answered all twenty correctly. Go me. And after you answer them all, you get to access the "hidden file." (I assume you have to get a certain number right, but that wasn't an issue, obviously.)

And then there was another problem with the disk. Poop. I had to go then, so Kelly and I had a yummy dinner, hooray, but the waitress was very bad, boo. Then, since I owed her a present, we went shopping. We both got... um... stuff, and the clerk gave us big discounts because we're such wonderful people, or something. It might be that their stuff is a little overpriced, too. Still, things were looking up again.

Then I dropped Kelly off and came home. And then I found a cricket in the bathroom, and that made me sad. Especially since it's my own fault for cracking a window for twenty minutes or so while I was home earlier. Stupid Spring weather. So I sprayed poison at it (I mean, from a can. I don't naturally emit poison. At least, I don't think I do.). The cricket ran out into the hall and then it climbed up a wall behind a coat that's hanging there, and now I don't know where it's gone. I mean, I'm sure it's dead. Fairly sure. I'm just concerned that it's dead in a fold of my coat, or it crawled into a sleeve or a pocket or something. I don't want to grab my coat on some chilly morning and discover a dead bug on my clothes. I think that would be an unpleasant way to start the day.

Plus what if it isn't dead? What if it was just driven insane by the Raid and now it's homicidal and it's hunting me? It could be anywhere now. Eek.

Sigh. Then I went to try my DVDs again. The second disk played fine, but the first one was still having the same problems. Rats. So I'll have to email Benson's World and whine about that. Oh, I did get Night of the Living Dead, too, hooray. But I probably shouldn't watch it until I've finished the Buffy recap. Or while there's a chance that there's an undead insect in my home.

Whole new media vistas open up before you as I report that this evening I went to see... a play! Okay, they probably don't, but pretend. It seems like that should have been "mediac," but I'm pretty sure that's a word that doesn't exist. It should, though. Anyway.

Tonight Johanna very kindly took me to see The Weir, by Connor McPherson, at the Round House Theater. Which is a local theater that's very cool. It's odd; I love live theater, but I hardly ever see any. It's just such a different buzz -- like a packed movie theater, except the performers are there with you and reacting to you. I suppose it's like seeing a band in concert, but I think we've established that I don't go to concerts. (Have we? Well, I don't. That's a topic for whenever I get around to discussing music, I guess.) I suppose I should take this in order.

The play is one (longish) act, set in a pub in Ireland. A couple of regulars, and a woman new to the area, hang out and drink and tell ghost stories. Which meant I was occasionally distracted by the fact that Johanna is, um, easily startled. It's bad enough when you're nervous because someone's telling a scary story; it's much worse when you're even more nervous that someone will say something so scary that the person sitting next to you will suddenly jump in fright. Okay, it's also a little amusing. Mostly, though, it's distracting. Heh.

Anyway, it's a neat play. Afterwards Johanna and I agreed that Hollywood had kind of spoiled ghost stories for us lately, because we both were expecting some kind of twist ending where everyone turns out to be dead, or something similarly odd. Which didn't happen. Which is good, and I'm only mentioning it because I think that expectation keeps you from enjoying what is going on, so if you have a chance to see it, I'm telling you now that there is no twist ending. It's mostly just about mood and character. And it's very effective at both. I was amused because when the actors were taking their bows, the likable pub-owner got more applause than the slightly sleazy visitor to the pub, even though the visitor is a much showier part. I just think it's funny that people were applauding the parts, instead of the actors -- and I was doing the same thing.

The Round House is a very neat theater, by the way. They're about to move into new digs, and tonight was the last performance of The Weir, so the actors' bows were followed by extra-special roses (and bottles of Guinness) and praise for the actors and it was all just... I dunno, you get a sense of community, and it reminds me of college theater in some strange way. Have I mentioned how much I miss theater parties in college? I really do.

Oh my god. You guys? Danger Mouse is out on DVD in the UK. I was reading the Warren Ellis forum and someone mentioned it, and then I confirmed that Bensons World has them, and now I don't know what to do. Does anybody else remember this show? Because I remember it being really funny, but it was a long time ago and I also remember Voltron being an incredibly complex soap-opera that just happened to always end with a climactic battle with a ro-beast. So I don't want to order them and then discover that my memory had built it into something better than it was. The only specific thing I remember is a Dr. Who joke, because I'm that big a geek. But I thought it was generally quite funny, that's just the joke that stuck with me. Anybody? Advise me. They're about $13 USD for a six-episode DVD. And it would help justify the DVD player if I got more things that aren't available here, right? So very tempting.

And now that's got me thinking about Voltron. The one with the lions, obviously. The spaceship one was boring. Oh, Prince Lothar. (My crush on Spike is not an isolated case.) I used to hurry home from school to catch it. And then there was the big climactic finale in which the castle turned into a spaceship, and I think the Voltron team (or were they a "force?") were all in a creepy coma, and the next episode was the first one all over again! I never found out what happened. It was a bit upsetting.

Random story: The Cartoon Network aired the show for a while -- maybe it still does? So a few years back I went up in NYC visiting the Sociopath. He met me for lunch, then went out to finish work while I hung around the apartment. And he'd told me Voltron was on, so I watched it, and it happened to be the very first episode. Cool! It was so unbelievably cheesy, I was in heaven. I started writing down particularly goofy lines of dialogue, one of which was the cheer: "We're space explorers! And we need space!" Huh? After that I curled up with a book, and was half-asleep when I heard the Sociopath come home. He came in, paused, and then hurried down the hallway asking his roommate (who'd come home in the meantime) where I was. His roommate was all, "Um, in your room?" It turned out that the Sociopath had seen my dialogue snippets and thought it was a melodramatic note for him indicating that I'd left. Which was goofy, since I'm not in the habit of storming out that way, and if I was, I wouldn't refer to myself as a "Space Explorer." I guess my point is that he was crazy, but it was amusing at the time.

I should be working on the latest Angel recap, but I'm sleepy and that requires concentration. And it occurred to me that I was due for an update here. So hi!

Let's see. I finished The Big Time back whenever that was -- last week? It was not what I expected at all. I thought it would be a big time-travelling epic, and it was actually more like an updated version of "The Purloined Letter." I liked it, I was just surprised. It actually seemed as if it could be a play, because there's a limited cast and a single set. Although there's also a lot of exposition, so it wouldn't actually be a very good play. These are some insightful comments, huh? Sorry. The book isn't handy, and it's been a week since I read it. Let's move on.

What with one thing and another, I never got to the Kornbluth collection before it was due back at the library, so I'll have to check that out again sometime. And maybe not get ten other books the same day. That would probably help. I did apply that lesson to my life though: when I dropped off books at the library, I didn't get any new ones. I also cleaned this weekend, which is relevant (no, I swear) because I made a nice tidy pile of the books I Plan To Read. And I will! Plan to read them, that is. I might even actually read them. We'll see.

The "To Read" pile consists of Mythologies, Three of Swords, The Sexual State of the Union, Don Quixote, and Alone Against Tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I've read that last one already, but it's been a while, and it's always nice to have some short stories to mix in. Oh! And in the course of cleaning, I dug my "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" collection out from where it had gotten lost under the bed. That was a nice surprise.

You might ask, am I reading any of those books at the moment? Obviously not, because I'm typing this. But the answer to the question you meant to ask is also no: I'm not even in the middle of any of these books. Take that, clever plan! Because I read volumes 5 & 6 of A Series of Unfortunate Events last weekend -- I got my sister-in-law hooked, ha! Now I don't have to buy them all! Except they're such pretty books.... Where was I? -- and that meant I had to reread The Basic Eight this week. And listen to Magnetic Fields a lot. So now I've got "Absolutely Cuckoo" repeating in my head at random moments, which is, let me tell you, a bit worrying.

Moving on to other media, Bensons World sent me a email to tell me that their Farscape DVDs are on sale again. I hate them, with their tempting and all. Plus, now it appears that the US releases will start having commentary again, at least sometimes. The last set for season one will be out this month, and it's got commentary. They're so lucky I didn't buy those from the UK yet. But see, by the time the complete first season is out here, the first season 3 set will be out overseas. It's very, very annoying. I don't want to wait years to make sure that the US versions won't have added features. Grrr. Anyway, I ordered another set. The one with the "Look at the Princess" trilogy. Because while it's got some problems objectively, it's fun, and I think it's a good series to show off what makes the show different -- hey, it worked on Katie -- and it's one of the first few I saw when I started watching the show again, and the teaser? With the hair-sniffing and the kiss and the... Oh. Man. That sold me on the show. I need it on DVD, just because I've probably worn out that part of the tape. I may have some issues, but that's not the point here. Anyway, I'm betting that they'll save the commentaries for the season finales. And I got the original Night of the Living Dead, because it was essentially free. I've never seen it! Yeah, I know! I saw the remake. Um, on TV. Stop yelling at me. I can't always be the pop culture maven, okay? Joe Bob was hosting it on Monstervision at the time, does that help? Okay then.

I'll stop pretending that we're having a conversation now. Mostly because I think I've rambled enough. Someday I'll get around to talking about music, and especially about mixes. Mentioning "Absolutely Cuckoo" reminded me that I have an "Insanity Mix" lying around somewhere. Wasn't high school fun? And my talking about music will be entertaining, because I don't even pretend to have good taste there. But that's gonna have to wait, because I've got to go to work in the morning.