Yeah, you may notice some new entries below. I was keeping the 9/4 entry up top for a reason. It didn't work, but it wasn't just laziness. It was only partly laziness.

I think I'm developing a cold, so after a trek to Trader Joe's for sustenance, I spent the day watching movies and eating soup and napping and chugging orange juice. And now I feel a little better! But still tired, so we'll see how much I get done here before I collapse.

I watched It Happened One Night, which is one of those "I've always meant to see that" movies. It's cute. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but it's fun, and Clark Gable & Claudette Coubert are quite charming together. There was a commentary track with Frank Capra, Jr., but it's not very interesting. He has a few good anecdotes, but there's a lot of dead air, and sometimes he's just chuckling at the movie.

I also saw And God Created Woman, which is another one of Joe Bob's recommended flicks. It's odd, but I wasn't bored by it. And Bridgitte Bardot is crazily pretty, and sort of hypnotic. In his piece on the movie, Joe Bob talks about how the movie works because her character, Juliette, is so remote -- you never know what she's thinking, what she feels. She gives nothing away. The men's feelings and emotions are always clear, but Juliette is a cypher. Which is why they want her. I dunno, it's not a Great Movie, but if you want to know why Bardot was such a big deal this'll give you a clue.

Last weekend I got Lemony Snicket stuff! After the TWoP minature-golf fest (which was quite fun, and I want to go to that place again) a couple of us ducked Dave & Buster's and went to Border's instead. Where I found all kinds of Lemony Snicket merchandise, because the new book is coming out soon. I got a calendar, which is extremely funny. If you like the Life in Hell calendars (Do they still make those? I haven't had one in a couple of years.) this is along the same lines. The illustrations are from the book covers, and then in addition to holidays, the calendar has important events from (or alluded to in) the books. And quotes from books, and historical notes, and odd little things. Like February 10: "February is the shortest mont of the year, so if you are having a miserable month, try to schedule it for February." And October 11: "Columbus Day. Columbus is credited with 'discovering America,' which here means 'arriving in the Caribbean and believing it is India.'" It's really funny, is all I'm saying.

And I got The Periolous Parlor Game, a board game! I know! It is very pretty. There are pewter pawns, and the cards and board are in Helquist's style, and as best I can tell, the game isn't bad, either. One person plays Count Olaf, who is trying to kill the guardian, and up to three other people play the Baudelaires, who can collect items to stop Olaf, and reveal his disguises. I think it'd probably take half an hour or so to play, and it's got some clever design elements -- there are secret passages from place to place, designated by tiles you place on the board. So every game, the board is a little different. There's no ingenious strategy -- I mean, it's for kids -- but it's clever enough that I'm glad I bought it.

And I got a couple of magazines and Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, but I haven't read that yet. Because I'm almost done with Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. Really! It's four books, and I usually get bogged down in the last book and don't finish it, but I'm in the last section now and will finish it tonight. So perhaps tomorrow I'll talk about that.

Let's jump right in.

The Wild Bunch is very long. Good, but very long. I got it because it was one of the movies Joe Bob talks about in Profoundly Disturbing. In the book, Joe Bob mentions that when a director's cut was released in theaters in 1995, the MPAA tried to change the rating from the R it got in 1969 to an NC-17. I'm sure there was more violence in the director's cut, but the gore alone wouldn't keep it from airing on broadcast television. There's some nekkid breasts, but I'm sure that wasn't the problem, either. The violence is intense, and the gunfights go on and on, instead of ending quickly like in an Eastwood movie -- I think seeing it on a big screen could leave you with a mild case of shellshock. If the MPAA weren't so deeply insane, I would kind of agree with them about giving this an NC-17; the violence isn't there just to be entertaining, which is what makes it so intense. But its probably not the violence so much as the nihilism that probably upset the MPAA. It's a very bleak movie. You do feel the length, since it follows the gang from an opening salvo, through their setting up a big score, the double-dealing that ensues, flashbacks to establish the mercenaries on their trail... but none of it is unnecessary. Actually, a lot of it feels unimportant at the time, but after it was over I thought, "Oh, yeah, you couldn't have left that out." And of course there's Pekinpah's jump-cuts and slow-mo, which was imitated so much that it's now obligatory for fight scenes, although as usual, imitating the technique doesn't necessary recreate the effect. (I'm looking at you, Angel.) Good movie. Set aside an afternoon and see it.

I picked up The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton. Neil Gaiman and some others have praised this book a lot, so when I saw it at the used book store I thought, "Oh yeah, I should read that." It's about a cop who infiltrates a gang of anarchists. Or its a parable about, uh, religion? Or something. You will figure out a lot of the story early on. That's okay. I wish I'd read it when I was fifteen or so, because I think there were times when I was appreciating the technique instead of just rolling along with the story, but it was still a lot of fun.

In comic news, Neil Gaiman's 1602 has been hyped for a while, since it's Gaiman's big return to comics. I kind of suspected I wouldn't care about it, and while I did actually hope to be wrong, based on the first issue, I'm not. Nothing wrong with the writing or anything, but it's a giant in-joke for people who grew up reading Marvel comics. I didn't. So I don't get the joke. I recognized exactly two of the characters, and I only recognized them from movies (and not movies I'd seen, but the ad campaigns were so relentless that I couldn't avoid knowing something about them). I guess it would be like reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if you knew absolutely nothing about Victorian literature -- I suppose you could still follow the story, but I'm not sure that the story by itself is a reason to read it. I don't plan to pick it up again. But if you get the joke, it's probably good. For all I can tell.

I also picked up Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls, a children's book illustrated by Dave McKeon. It's cute. I dunno, I liked The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish more. But when I was little I liked books that had the kind of clear progression you get in Goldfish, so it's not that I think it was better, necessarily, but it was more to my taste.

The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings gets bonus points for being a nice hardcover with a great 70's horror anthology cover. And more bonus points for having one of Doré's illustrations of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" opposite the title page. I love Doré. "Gone" is probably the spookiest of the stories. "Stray" is Evan Dorkin's contribution, and is funny and sad, plus it's got the most brilliant high concept: a haunted dog house. The Hellboy story makes absolutely no sense to me, I assume because I don't read Hellboy. Probably I should, I dunno.

Hooray, it's time for the fall movie guide in the Post. Oh, it's by you-know-who. Damn. I am, of course, judging these movies on heresay and trailers.

• Is it wrong that the trailer for The Rundown makes it look kind of fun?

• Intolerable Cruelty opens October 10th. Oh boy!

• The Singing Detective opens October 24th. Ssssss.

• Just in time for Halloween, we get Alien: The Director's Cut. Rumor has it Scott inserted outtakes of Legend in this one, too. Not really. But he might as well, since the term "Director's Cut" has lost all meaning.

• Tim Burton's Big Fish is due November 26th. Hey, Ewan McGregor's in a movie I have some interest in seeing! Wacky.

• Paycheck. Ben Affleck. John Woo. Based (apparently) on a Philip K. Dick story. The trailer starts with some narration explaining (well, sort of) what "reverse engineering" means. Boy, is this ever going to suck or what?

• The Young Black Stallion. Wah? I think they meant to adapt Little Black, a Pony and got confused. Shame, as that bit at the circus would be great cinema. This might be the most obscure joke I have ever made.

• Hey, there are two movies about the madcap adventures of the President's daughter opening days apart in January. That's odd. One stars Mandy Moore, and the other stars Katie Holmes, Marc Blucas, and Michael Keaton. I had to reread that last part a few times to make sure I understood it correctly.

The Post's Book Club is dong Good Omens this month, because Michael Dirda is just that cool. In addition to the online discussion on the 25th, they're also having "An Evening with Terry Pratchett" on the 30th. Gaiman was hoping to join in as well, but can't make it.

Dirda's review this week is of School of Dreams, an examination of a year at Whitney High School, one of the top-rated schools in the nation. It sounds interesting, since it seems to be both an examination of what works at the school, and why, and what doesn't (parents who already have their kids' careers planned, and a national educational system that doesn't really value education for its own sake).

The Business section had an article about boardgames (especially strategy boardgames) from smaller manufacturers becoming increasingly popular. I'm somewhat vexed that they focus mainly on games from Germany. No love for Cheapass Games at all. Anyway, there was one bit that really confused me:

Playing time [for games like Settlers of Catan] is usually 90 minutes, about average for the industry. By comparison, the strategy game's closest mass-marketed counterparts, war games Risk, Diplomacy, and Axis and Allies, can take weekends, if not weeks, depending on the intensity of the combatants.

I like commas, but that sentence has a lot of commas. That wasn't what confused me, though. The part about "weekends, if not weeks" did. Weeks? None of those games require so much time that you need to break them into multiple sessions. What are these people doing? Even if you spend a lot of time making deals in Diplomacy, there aren't that many things to make deals about, so I can't see how it could take more than a few hours.

Hawk, the Slayer is a terrible, terrible movie, in every way possible. It's amazing. It's Dungeons & Dragons without the money. Or a Wayons brother, to be fair. But it does have Jack Palance, who makes Jeremy Irons look subtle. You should probably see it with people, though. It wasn't until after I'd seen all of it that I really understood how insane it was. And then I had to call Johanna and try to describe it to her, and she had to humor me by imagining the things I was describing.

There's a giant, magically created on-screen by hiring a guy who's tall. Not that tall, though. I mean, Jaws from the Bond movies, he's a huge guy. This guy is just a little taller than average. And there's a "dwarf." Yes, played by a guy who's short. But not actually a midget. Or dwarf. Or little person. Whatever. He's just kinda short. The hero, Hawk... I guess it's good that he's not the type who makes speeches. Or quips. In fact, he barely talks at all. This is what he does instead: he stares. He stares and stares and stares. And the bad guys stare back at him! For what seems like hours. The bad guy is Jack "Raging Madman" Palance. I don't need to tell you what that's like. And Morgan Shepherd is in it! I love Morgan Shepherd! He was Blank Reg on Max Headroom!

Oh, and there's a witch who helps Hawk. A lot. A very lot. So at the end I was really wondering why Hawk was necessary at all, since it seemed pretty clear that the witch could have taken care of Palance all by herself.

Here are just a few of the many things worth mentioning about this movie:

• Jack Palance kills Hawk's wife, but he doesn't get really ticked off and swear vengeance until Palance also kills their dad. But after swearing vengeance, he just roams the countryside or something, while Palance terrorizes people. Palance is not exactly a low-profile guy, so I don't think Hawk was looking for him. Especially when he's got such keen vision from all the staring.

• At least half the movie is spent on the old "gather the old team together" routine. Which is basically a series of vignettes where Hawk goes to each old sidekick, helps them kill someone, and then asks if they want to join his gang again. First of all, there's never any indication of why they disbanded in the first place. You know what I mean? It's not even clear if they're old friends from before Palance killed Hawk's wife, or if that came after they stopped hanging out together, or what.

• I particularly loved the sequence introducing the "giant." Apparently what happened was, a merchant's wagon broke. The giant offered to fix it in exchange for a lot of beer and some money. First he drank the beer, and then the merchant asked him to fix the wagon before he handed over the money. The wheel is popped back onto the axle -- takes five seconds, tops. Then the merchant admits that he doesn't have the money on him, but he'll come back tomorrow and pay the giant for his help. The giant gets ticked off and smashes the wagon, attacks the merchant, and then prepares to kill some soldiers who try to intervene. And the giant is the good guy? Yeah, the merchant didn't pay what he owed. In addition to giving him all the beer. For the work that took less than a minute. I'm okay with having some shades of grey in your heroes, but this guy is just an asshole.

• In order to make the fight scenes even more amazing, the action is sped up. Or edited out. Or both. You need to see it, because I can't describe it. Even for 1980 fantasy movies, it's astoundingly dumb.

• I mustn't forget the Mindsword. Ooooo, the Mindsword! Sounds pretty amazing, doesn't it. It holds a magic glowing rock for some reason. And if you wield the Mindsword, you have the astonishing power to... make the sword float up into your hand. Wow. It's not that Hawk can throw the sword, and it flies around killing people and then returns to him like a boomerang. No, it's just that if he puts it down on the ground, he doesn't have to stoop to pick it back up. I think Johanna suggested that maybe Hawk has a bad back, in which case that would be a selling point.

• I don't want to ruin the moment, but I believe that this movie features the first Death By Silly String ever featured in a motion picture. Such magic.

Wow, Sunday's Post was full of interesting pieces.

This article about the obesity "epidemic" spends a little time on the varying definitions of what exactly we mean by obese, which is something worth talking about. But I think the more interesting, and pointed, part of the article is about how there's a personal privacy factor as well. Living "healthily" became a moral issue somewhere along the line, and we cover that by claiming that it has social implications. Well, yes, it does. But that's the price we pay for having the right to decide what we do with our bodies. When the only person you're placing at risk by your behavior is yourself, you get to do whatever you want. That's why I hate seatbelt & helmet laws. No, I can't think of any good reason not to wear seatbelts & helmets, but I also can't think of any good reason to skydive. And I believe that people are allowed to do dangerous things when the only consequences are to themselves alone. The author, Fred Barbash, says he'll own up to the social cost of obesity if people who are overworked own up to the cost stress incurs, or even better, if the health nuts own up to the cost of the injuries they get from working out.

Tom Shales talks about Trio's "Brilliant, But Cancelled" series and get a little bit Stephen-Hunter-y in his digressions. But I'm not enraged by it because Shales' digressions do at least make sense. And, y'know, they last for a sentence or two, instead of being two-thirds of the article. Oh, and the review is fun, as well.

This article about Larry David's movie with Bob Dylan is also interesting. And I don't really care about Dylan, but the article kinda makes me want to see the movie. Vaguely. I'm sure I won't, but maybe I'll rent it in a year or two. Look, I'm lazy, okay?

I just love Michael Dirda. This week he reviews The Road to Delphi, which is sort of a history of how oracles & prophecies have been treated in literature. I wonder if it mentions Angel.

The Travel section has the winners of the annual photo contest. Which is worth checking out, just because a lot of the photos are great. I particularly like the one of Yellowstone, and the super-creepy waterfall shot. Oh, and the goat. Wait, and the bull.

This cover story is a good anecdotal piece that suggests a lot of general points. It's about a couple who thought they'd be able to make a living in Vegas, and found themselves homeless instead. Sort of sentimental, in that the subjects seem to have been selected based on how upstanding and shiny they are. But on the other hand, there's a pretty strong tendency to believe that people get what they deserve. And this article makes it clear that in the current economy, one miscalculation can be pretty devastating.

On a cheerier note, here's an article about thousands of toys drifting in the ocean for a decade. I guess if you tend to anthropomorphize toys, it's actually even more horrible. The poor little ducks! But it's neat that they're using flotsam to track currents and so on. And I really liked this sentence: "To their knowledge, Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham are the only people on the planet who keep tabs on the world's flotsam, which at the moment also includes more than 30,000 Nike running shoes, 34,000 hockey gloves, 5 million lost Legos, and a number of onions." I love that "a number of onions" bit. This is one of those articles where you get the feeling the reporter had a lot of fun.

I like Maryland because, for being such a small state, it manages to be pretty eccentric sometimes. Like, jousting is the state sport. Yeah, I know. And there are still people jousting, and not just at the Renaissance Festival.

And finally, there's a long piece in the Magazine about baseball. In the tradition of Magazine pieces, it's very long and amusing, but in the end you're not quite sure what, if anything, was the point. In this case it seems to be, "Baseball's neat! But not perfect." Yeah, I'll make a note. I spent half of the article trying to figure out how old the author's daughter is, until he finally clarified that she's 12. I feel like they're so in love with the fact that they can write longer articles, that they forget that they should still attempt to make as much sense as they do in the paper. If not more. Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the article, because there are so many points which depend on the idea that yes, organized sports really matter to society as a whole. I don't exactly disagree with that, but I do question why, because as I've said before, I don't get it. I do have to mention that I'm bewildered by the way the writer claims that if DC had a team, he wouldn't have to fight traffic on the Beltway to get to Baltimore for a game. Hon, if DC had a team, there'd be that much more traffic on the Beltway. You wouldn't have to drive as far, true, but there'd be even more cars on the road, so it's not like you'd save that much time.