I was just going to Trader Joe's to replenish my supply of Kashi Crunch and other necessities. I had good intentions. But I got there, and my attention was captured by the huge banners saying "Books! Up to 80% Off!" And so I was sucked into the vortex of one of those big remaindered-book-sales that pop up in empty storefronts sometimes.

I did pretty well. Which means that I didn't buy nearly as many books as I wanted to. Because I couldn't carry that many. I had to keep reminding myself of certain facts. Like, if I liked Little Green Men when I checked it out of the library a year ago, but I hadn't felt any need to reread it since then, I probably didn't need to own it. Especially since I could always check it out again when I did want to read it. And, at the opposite end of the spectrum, even if I do like Roddy Doyle, and even if I haven't read The Snapper, since I've never felt compelled to even look for it at the library, maybe I should reconsider spending money for a copy.

It was rough, being bullied by the saner part of my brain. But probably for the best. The toughest battle was actually over a coffee-table edition of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner with full page illustrations by Doré. It was very pretty but it was also way beyond oversized and venturing into gargantuan. I don't understand "coffee-table books" anyway, and this was just way too big. And how often do I need to read Mariner? Apart from when I'm writing parodies of it to include with wedding presents, not very often at all. Actually, it's not very often even if you count those times.

Here's what I ended up with:

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: I've gotten the impression that this starts out okay and gets more and more irritating the further along you go. At least I've been warned. I've vaguely intended to read it, just so I know what the hell everyone else keeps going on about, and hey, it was cheap.

• Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter. I've read a bunch of Carter's short stories, and while she's not always great, she's fun and quirky. Although I may not want to read this one right way, since Turner Classic Movies had a Tod Browning festival tonight, and so I probably don't need further odd circus folk cluttering up my subconscious just now.

• The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 2. I'm not sure if Bloch is someone I've read and liked, or read and disliked, or never read at all. I read SF anthologies and then have no idea who wrote what; it's distressing. He wrote Psycho (the book that the movie was based on). But he also wrote The Deadly Bees, so I think those cancel each other out. Oh! He also wrote the Star Trek episode "Wolf in the Fold," which I think began the tradition that all science fiction shows must do a Jack the Ripper story at some point. (I'm still waiting for that to happen on Farscape.) He wrote great bunches of stuff, is the point.

• The Business, by Ian Banks. I have been seeing books by Ian Banks every damn where lately. Well, in bookstores. They aren't piled up on the sidewalk or anything. But I keep spotting them while looking for other things, and they usually look intriguing, and I feel as if I've seen nice things said about him by critics, which doesn't mean a whole lot, but what the heck. So I picked this one up because it sounded amusing.

• The Yeats Reader. I've read very little Yeats. I think I've only read those poems that have the word "Second" in the title. Hah. English major joke. So I thought I should patch up this gap in my education. This book has bits of his plays, fiction, and criticism too, so it should be interesting.

New stuff to read! Not that I've finished all of the old stuff. But at least this was a bargain. I paid about $32 for what was originally almost $100 worth of books. So it's practically like they paid me to take them!

I'm still mostly re-reading things. Too tired. All that new TV, and new recaps and so on. Skimmed through From Hell before seeing the movie last weekend. And at some point over the weekend I read Fletch and the Widow Bradley. I love the Fletch books. Well, maybe not the last two about his son, but they're more like spin-offs. And also the Flynn books. All of these are by Gregory McDonald. They're mysteries, I suppose, but they're just funny. Yeah, you're thinking about the movie, I know, Chevy Chase. The first movie wasn't bad, and that's actually why I read the first book, but the books are ever so much funnier. Big on the witty bantering, and the plots are tight enough that even when I reread them, I still can enjoy watching all of the elements come together.

Hey, I just found and looked at McDonald's site, and there's a new Flynn book. Wow. I hope it's better than the "Son of Fletch" stuff.

Anyway, after reading Fletch and the Widow Bradley, I skipped over to Flynn. Which deals with an airplane explosion and Middle Eastern politics, so I wasn't sure I'd really want to read it but once I picked it up I just raced through it. I'm now reading Confess, Fletch, which is a bit of a crossover with the Flynn series. While I'm downplaying the mystery aspect, they are pretty good mysteries. That's just not why I keep rereading them. But it is worth mentioning that I can't even tell you how many times I've read this one, and I still can't remember exactly who's doing what, and why. I mean, I know who the killer is, and I kind of remember why, but it's complicated enough that it's still fun to reread for the plot, as well as for the dialogue.

The Flynn series is fun because McDonald managed to cram every genre series character trope into one character. Flynn is: a spy, a policeman, and, since he's not an ordinary policeman, a bit of a private detective. All at once! Pretty good. Flynn is mostly a police procedural, with a few elements of the other aspects. The Buck Passes Flynn is mostly a spy story. And Flynn's In is mostly an Agatha-Christie type British mystery. That amuses me a lot. And makes me curious about the new book. Maybe it's a hardboiled noir mystery. That would be pretty funny. The stories aren't parodies, though; they just fit all the different conventions. I could probably come up with more coherent praise if I weren't so very tired. But, well, I am.

I didn't end up seeing Vachss, by the way, for very stupid reasons, which I'll go into later. My original plan was that, after I went to the book signing, I'd write up a little thingamabob about it, and also tell stories from the other times I've seen him. So I guess at some point I'll just tell stories about the other times when I did actually see him, and maybe complain a little about why I didn't see him this time. Right now, I think I'm probably going to go read ten pages of something and fall asleep on the couch.

I just stumbled upon Aliens on TV. Which has led me to consider the exciting topic of "Movies I can pretty much recite." Aliens was on HBO nigh-constantly one summer, and my brother and I would recite the words along with the movie, annoying our parents immensely. Although we did manage to make "Game over!" a common exclamation in our home. During college, I was in NYC and went to The Slaughtered Lamb, one of the Eerie Pubs. There used to be a bunch of them, but it looks like the only one left is Jekyll & Hyde's [warning: site features irritating thunder sound effects], which is fun but a bit too Chuck E. Cheese for me. The Slaughtered Lamb was a more subtle -- the only noteworthy FX was the constant thunderstorm going on outside the windows downstairs -- which were, technically, underground. [Update: The Slaughtered Lamb seems to exist still/again as of Jan 2006.] Anyway... I went there once and Aliens was playing on a TV above the bar, but we couldn't hear it. However, I could automatically fill in the dialogue. Luckily my dining companion was also a geek, and so he was amused and not irritated by this. Plus, I didn't keep doing it throughout dinner, because I'm not completely insane.

I'm also frightentingly familiar with Back to the Future and Gremlins. I'm not sure why, really, except that they were also on HBO an awful lot when I wasn't leaving the house very much. I did annoy Katie once when we happened to run across Back to the Future on TV -- I can't help it! That darn irrepressible Michael J. Fox has worked his evil mojo upon me! Oh, and The Empire Strikes Back was another feature in regular rotation on cable. So I know it well, and I get particularly irate when people talk about how great it was. I realize that's not particularly fair, and if I'd seen the other movies fifty times, I might even agree, but saying it's the best of the Star Wars movies still ain't saying much.

And before this gets too depressing, there are movies that I've intentionally watched a gazillion times. I talked about my freakish obsession with Batman Returns a bit elsewhere, and obviously I've seen that a lot. I don't claim it's good; I just like it. To be fair, I've mostly seen my own "good parts" version, which means I tend to fast-forward through the parts that don't involve Catwoman. Which makes the movie about an hour long. I watched Heathers often enough in high school that it's going to take a few more years before I can look at it again.

Wait! Before you write me off completely, there are a couple of good movies I've come close to memorizing. Like Miller's Crossing, which I kind of want to do a whole page about sometime. Except I think it would just consist of me going, "Man, what a good movie! And the dialogue? So good! And the plot? Good! Also, it's very good! " It is, no question, my favorite movie. So I can't be particularly coherent about why I like it. But there are so many lovely lines in it that sometimes I use one in conversation and then have to spend an hour or two figuring out what movie I'm quoting. ("I was just speculatin' about a hypothesis," for instance.)

I loved Dangerous Liaisons -- and it has the advantage of being adapted from a play (which was adapted from a book, yes, but that's not the point here, and now I've lost my train of thought, damn you). Ahem. To give you an idea of how familiar I am with the movie/book/play, at one point some friends and I were desperately bored and started reading through the play (I was Mertuil, needless to say). So we were sitting together on a sofa so we could all see the book, and at some point, one of my lines ran over onto the next page. Since I knew the line, I just kept going before anyone could manage to turn the page. At which point they both looked up at me and asked how many times I'd read it.

To be fair, I have a pretty good memory for things I read. If I like something enough to read it a couple of times, I usually start memorizing random bits. Which has led to all sorts of ridiculous flotsam getting stored away. And that seems to be the end of this train of thought. How's that for a snappy ending?

I saw From Hell yesterday. I didn't expect too much, and I enjoyed it at first, but the longer it went on, the less I liked it. So I'll just share some random thoughts. I'm not making any particular attempt to avoid spoilers, so consider yourself warned.

As many other rather surprised viewers have noted, Heather Graham's acting is not a particular problem. Her appearance is, though. There's a rough attempt at realism in portraying Whitechapel, and all of the other prostitutes look a bit worn and rumpled, which makes Graham's flawless skin and big bright eyes and sky-blue dress look utterly ridiculous. She could at least look dirty.

And Abberline's psychic visions? The hell? That bit never sounded promising, and it's even more frustrating when you realize that it's entirely unnecessary. His "powers" don't help him figure anything out, as far as I could tell. The visions themselves are kind of neat and pretty looking, but you could leave them in as cinematic wackiness without making them something that Abberline sees while in a drug-induced stupor. Coppola and Lynch don't need plot-related reasons to have fun with cinematic tricks, so I don't think the Hughes brothers should feel obliged to come with a reason to play around a bit.

And the romance between them is just silly. They have the most ridiculous movie kiss I've ever seen.

I expected that the movie would be more interesting to people who hadn't read Moore & Campbells' book, but now I think the opposite is true. If you haven't read the book, I think the movie will manage to be both dull and confusing, which is quite a trick. (Of course, I've seen reports that some people have liked it, so what do I know?) But there are basically just cameos by elements and characters in the book -- John Merrick makes an appearance, but there's no particular reason for it. At one point Gull talks to one of his victims about Cleopatra's Needle, but it comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again. On the other hand, if you've read the book, you can entertain yourself by spotting all of the hints as to what's going on. As far as I know, in the book none of the members of the Old Nichols Mob are named -- in the movie, their leader is "McQueen." So when Kelly says, "If you want to catch the killer, why don't you talk to McQueen?" It sorta sounds like "My Queen." Well, I chuckled.

But that just highlights why making the story a whodunnit is silly. I enjoyed spotting all the Masonic rings and hints like the above, but that's because I read the book. I suppose if you see it twice you'll catch onto those hints, but I don't know how many people will feel inclined to do that.

Oh, and making the five victims such close friends in the movie also seems like an error. They know each other in the book, but in the movie they're constantly together, sharing rooms and so on. You have to walk a fine line with it, since they do all have to be connected for the theory to hold any water. But it's important to portray that they were, essentially, co-workers; they lived in the same area, and travelled in the same circles. If they're made out to be as tight a group as they seem to be in the movie, halfway through you have to start thinking, "Well, it seems pretty clear that this one group of woman are the targets, so why don't you have detectives watching them constantly?"

If anything, the movie just highlights the things that made the book work. The problem with any Jack the Ripper movie is that you need a protagonist to tell the story. And with this story, the audience knows going in that the good guys lose; the Ripper was never caught, at least officially. It's not a story you should try to make suspenseful: "Will they stop him before he kills again?" Well, no. Duh.

If you're doing a Jack the Ripper movie, it should be a pure horror piece. Do the movie from the point of view of either the victims or the murderer. Or both. I think the first part of the movie worked largely because it was focused more on the prostitutes, their day to day struggles. It's much scarier when you put it in context. Two murders in about a week. Then nothing for almost a month. Then two murders in one night. Another pause, and then one more. And the murders were apparently committed on public streets, in an overcrowded part of the city that was, after the second murder, near panic. There were extra police patrols and vigilante groups roaming the streets. Letters claiming to be from the Ripper were displayed on posters in case anyone recognized the handwriting. And the newspapers reported the crimes in great detail, with excerpts of the coroner's reports. All that going on, and yet movies about the Ripper always end up with lots of scenes in upper-class drawing rooms.

So you can go for a "panic in the streets" feel, with the paranoia and desperation. The women are scared to go out into the streets at night, but if they don't they can't pay for a room, and they're out on the streets anyway. Or you can do it from the killer's point of view, which the book, to a great extent, does. Don't make him the hero, but follow him, with cuts to the investigation -- then the audience is scared because they know he won't be stopped, and you're not forcing them to pretend they don't know the story. Then you can make up an ending where he's caught, or killed, or just leaves for Europe -- and then you can do a sequel! I dunno, I can't solve all your problems or I'd write the damn story myself.

It's worth mentioning that there are plenty of scenes with a high ick factor. Many of which don't involve the murders, actually. References to Victorian medical procedures are enough to make me squirm.

Oh yeah. There was a trailer for Spy Games, which is one crappy title. So, Robert Redford is this master spy who trains Brad Pitt and then Pitt's caught by the Chinese and Redford suspects double-dealing and other stuff happens. The thing that caught my attention was, toward the end of the trailer you see Redford sneaking about, trying to figure out what's going on within the CIA (I assume). And there's a shot where you see him pick up a manilla folder and hide it under his jacket. He's a master spy? Stuffing paper under his jacket like a teenage shoplifter? I could do that. Shouldn't he have a hidden camera? Or at least a briefcase? Sheesh.

Well, I didn't go see Blount, for obvious reasons.

I'm playing catch-up. donnanottori reminded me that the new Vachss book, Pain Management was out last weekend. I mean, she reminded me last weekend; I think it came out the week before. So I picked it up on Saturday and finished it on Sunday.

Vachss' lectures were particularly notable: the book's title is based on a sub-plot, and there's a digression about comic books that is almost funny, it's such an obvious break from the story. On the other hand, while recognizing how they bring the plot to a halt, I still like hearing Vachss' take on things, so I enjoy those oddities. And the anvilicious digressions are sort of balanced by the fact that the main story isn't as violent or horrific as usual. I also really liked all of the interactions Burke had with Gem. It was as close as Burke's ever come to a "normal" relationship, and I thought the way it fell apart was really well-handled; Burke truly doesn't have the ability to form a long-term relationship. I felt as if it kind of exorcised Flood's memory (for the reader, not for Burke) because even if she returned, he's so changed by everything that's happened since the first book. Not that he was great boyfriend material then, but now he can't even deal with the slightly-screwy-yet-functional Gem.

I finally finished The Other Glass Teat at some point. So that took me about, what six months? Pitiful. It's not because it wasn't good, it was just fun to read in small chunks.

Mostly I was rereading things. Comfort food. I'm two-thirds of the way done re-examining House of Leaves, and I'm sure you're bored to death hearing about that so I won't start. This time I'm stopping to look up references, so I'm taking my time, and my copy of the book has several dozen post-its marking the pages.

Vachss will be in DC next week as part of his latest book tour, so today I told my boss I'd be taking most of the day off for that.