Blocked? Lazy? Dried up Well?

As I read through my backlog of old poems, it hits me that I haven't written anything new (with the exception being the translations of Angelina Vidal I've been doing for my Master's Thesis) since December of 2002. For nearly two years now I haven't written a new poem. January 2003 is when we began the process of foster parenting. Since then, I haven't penned new poetry, my steady online communications with friends has come to a drizzle, I've felt less and less inspired...

Is there a causal relationship between the two, or is it just a coincidence? I know I'm a much more busy and tired person, but even when taking seventeen units and working a graveyard shift I found time to write... Am I just blocked or too lazy (oddly, these would be the best answers...)?

If there's one thing I hope, it's that my well hasn't run dry.

I need to start writing again.

Sampain

Today (as I write this, it remains Saturday, October 30th), we had Halloween part one. See, due to the fact that Halloween falls on the Sabbath this year, the City of Chico decided to celebrate its city-sponsored event on Saturday. Every year, the Downtown Chico Business Association gets the downtown stores to participate in "Treat Street." For three hours, typically 2-5pm, families take their kids to all the stores, the stores give kids candy and, presumably, this increases sales for the stores later. I've been taking the kids to this every Halloween since 2001.

Due to the fact I've broken or sprained my right ankle due to volleyball more times than I've counted, I now have arthritis in that foot. It only acts up when the weather goes through abrupt changes. In California, that's generally only two times a year--late November and sometime in March. Remember when I mentioned our weather has been about twenty degrees colder than it's supposed to be? I spent hours this morning soaking the ankle, downing meds and walking on it, well hobbling on it in order to numb the pain so that I could take the kids out trick-or-treating at Treat Street. Aeia was a princess and Lash was Hellboy. Both great costumes and I have pictures but since I can't find a decent server to hold photoc online, I shant be posting any here (I suppose people could e-mail for 'em). Halloween being my favorite holiday, there was absolutely no way I would let a little thing like debilitating ankle injuries that refuse to be walked upon stop me from letting my kids beg for free candy under threat of "tricks."

After the first half-hour, I was able to move at the kids' pace, as the pain had reached that place where it hurts so badly you can no longer feel it. I'm looking forward to enduring the real deal tomorrow.

Weekend at Home at the Movies

Saw two rented movies this week: Ghostwatcher and Saved!

Ghostwatcher has the distinction of being really really crappy. For camcorder-fare it was decent, but too much logic was often left at the door. Worse, a plot point ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL to the film was relegated to the deleted scenes section of the dvd rather than placed in the movie itself. On the plus side--there was one fart-funny gag reel, for those with more purile humour. Sadly, the basic idea of this film was astounding. Done well, I would have loved to see a horror movie about an agorophobe who discovers her home is haunted by a malicious and evil ghost.

Saved! I'd been wanting to see badly and just never had been able to. For the last 13 years or so I'd had this mindset that movies where Macauley Culkin dies are good movies, and movies where he doesn't are not good movies. After last night, I have to re-assess. Not only did he survive, but he was an enjoyable member of the cast to watch. Not being a Christian, I thoroughly enjoyed how well the movie performed at being somewhat tongue-in-cheek about various extreme religious personalities in today's youth while simultaneously making a really positive message about the nature and importance of faith. A message I thought it nailed wonderfully without being heavy-handed or religion-specific. And did I mention that the humour was dead-on groovy? Eva Amurri speaking in tongues is was worth the price of rental alone.

Top 5 of the Day

In the vein of my cultural snobbery, today I present my Top 5 movies that are considered classics and yet I personally find them incredibly bad:

1. On the Waterfront
2. Citizen Kane
3. Apocalypse Now (A movie that starts well for me, but always leaves me sleeping before the end...)
4. Rebel Without a Cause
5. Taxi Driver

I JUST saw Taxi Driver for the first time this week, and I want my two hours back.
Also, having Taxi Driver on the mind, I effed up and added another Deniro pick here that I hadn't seen (and mentioned as such in my buddy Drew's blog) so I had to fix that.

And Drew, I HATE 2001 too. Almost enough to swap it with A-Now.

Cultural Snobbery

I am such a snob. Whenever Denise and I are watching something and she doesn't recognize somebody on the telly from their other role or roles on other shows or films, I just can't seem to let her off the ridicule hook. People as mentally bereft about pop culture as she often is really get the snobby disdain from me. I can't seem to control it. The same thing goes to people who like music or film or tv that I obviously feel to be inferior. Like those legions of over-eighteen fans of boybands. They are all on crack.

It's probably why High Fidelity made my top five list a couple weeks back--I see so much of myself reflected in those three record store clerks. No one who has taste and isn't in a coma wants to listen to "I Just Called to Say I Love You." Sometimes peoples' tastes in pop culture hurt me physically. I get ill.

To this day, I continue to shake my head in dull shock that Denise still has not seen the Godfather or any of its sequels, but she likes the new editions of Star Wars just fine.

More in Iraq

The co-owner of my comic shop is in the Army Reserves. He's been reactivated and is leaving for Iraq two days after Christmas. Happy holidays. :(

Top 5 Soundtrack Songs

I've been really glomming on to random songs from movies and tv I watch lately, and in that vein I've compiled a top five list of favorite songs prominently featured in a motion picture soundtrack.

1. One April Day by Stephin Merritt/Magnetic Fields (film: Pieces of April)
2. Ray of Sunshine by Go Sailor (film: But I'm a Cheerleader)
3. Falling From Grace by the Gentle Waves(film Pumpkin)
4. I'll Never Tell by Emma Caulfield and Nicholas Brendan (tv show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode: Once More With Feeling)
5. Outdoor Type by the Lemonheads (film: Tao of Steve)

Chicken Cordon Bleu Burgers

This is a great way to fudge the taste of cordon bleu (my favorite dish, AND cook it quickly.

You need:
pkg ground chicken
pkg Canadian bacon (or other fully cooked pre-sliced ham would suffice)
grill seasonings
shallot
sliced swiss cheese
garnish & buns

preheat grill, add a little oil (extra virgin olive for me) because chicken is stickier than beef.

Throw a couple teaspoons of grill seasoning (and maybe a little sweet paprika and cumin) into the ground chicken. Dice up the shallot and add it to the chicken. Mix it all and then form into burgers.

Grill the burgers.
Put ham on the grill and heat to warm.
When burgers done, put ham on burgers, put swiss on ham. Turn off heat to grill. Tent aluminum foil over burgers and allow then to keep cooking themselves through while they melt the cheese.

Move to bun and garnish to taste (a dijon mustard/mayo/chopped tarragon sauce is nice. Use about 1-to-2 ratio of mustard to mayo).

Tastes great with lettuce buns for low carbers too.

Top 5 John Cusack Movies

SO I watched Hi Fidelity for the upteenth time yesterday, and in the vein of that film, my first Top 5 blog list--my top 5 movies starring John Cusack (in no order of importance):

1. Hi Fidelity
2. One Crazy Summer
3. Say Anything
4. Identity
5. Grosse Pointe Blank

Maybe I'll keep the top five list idea goin every now and again. Suggestions for the next? What are your top five Cusack movies? He's only been in 47 films, surely you've seen some of them.

Evan's Theory of Complacency

Yesterday I was watching a Smallville re-run when, half way through the program, I tried to figure out why I was watching the show. I don't like it. At least I despised it enough when it first came out that I chose to stop watching it about a quarter of the way through the first season. That got me to thinking about how Denise's Law & Order has come to be less annoying to me (another show I downright dislike), or how both of us are able to sit through an episode of CSI: Miami even after the death of Rory Cochrane's character. It all comes down to what I'm dubbing my Unified Theory on Television Complacency.

Unlike watching a car wreck, bad television has this capability to seep into you in such a way that before you realize it, you're a consistent viewer of the show (I have absolutely no other explanation for Out of Order). See, it doesn't matter how bad a show is, or how much you dislike it. If, for whatever reason--reruns everywhere else, sheer boredom, remote control laziness, amnesia--you make yourself sit through a bad show again and again...soon it stops seeming as much like a bad show to you. Eventually it becomes routine. Smallville is on my satellite's daily recording schedule now. Admittedly, #3.2 loves it, and the other kids like it, but I don't have to watch too... As viewers, we numb ourselves to bad television programming.

I need to be very careful to avoid further exposure to Pride of the Family and dr. vegas.

On a brighter side, I gave Desperate Housewives a try. It was...entertaining. I think it might be able to become the next Twin Peaks, and I think that the fatc I didn't come to that conclusion until close to the end of the program bodes well for its ability to, hopefully, stay fresh. Because any show that can make it believable that Terri Hatcher would struggle for a date has got to be worth watching.

A Walk Down Gay Cinema Lane pt. 1

I finally got around to renting Latter Days last night. My general response to gay cinema is that much more often than not, it sucks. "Landmark" films such as Go Fish, Bar Girls, Longtime Companion... they all just bore the piss out of me with either bad acting, too slow story telling, or horrendo as it is: both.

Anyway. Being a lapsed Mormon (and no return in sight, honey), and being an Amber Benson fan, I've wanted to see this film ever since I first read about it some many months ago.

It's a love story centered around, rather cliched, gay party boy Christian who falls in love with one of the Mormon missionaries (Aaron) who move into his apartment complex. Well, initially, he pursues Aaron in order to win a bet, but the Mormon with a heart of gold, assisted by AIDS crushed Eric Palladino (who held perhaps the most interesting and enjoyable part in the film, well, along with Bissette), turns Christian into a caring, loving man in need of a relationship.

OK, I've read that and have to admit it sounds about as cliche and cheese-filled as does any other typical gay film. But this one had its nuances. Careful attention was placed on making the Mormon stuff as accurate as possible (the only slip up I saw was having Aaron wear a blue shirt in one of his missionary scenes)--they even had Aaron in the correct underwear (yes, I notice these things, as would any other good Mormon boy--or lapsed bisexual Mormon boy like me). I was bothered at the harshness portrayed by Aaron's family. While accurate to the experience of many in the LDS church, I've found just as many who were more lovingly excommunicated. I thirsted for a bit more compassion (and as it turned out, the dvd has a deleted scene with Aaron's sister than should have stayed in the film and handled the absence of familial sympathy so absent from the theatrical cut) from Aaron's family members. I was, however, just as happy that they didn't sugar coat things (except maybe the attempted suicide. The cut scene mentioned above was cut because it was the extended suicide scene and was deemed too graphic--I don't really agree with that take, and don't think many other viewers would) and really shone a light on the difficulty of being Mormon and gay, and the struggle Aaron faced coming to terms with his homosexuality, his abandonment by church and family, his feelings for Christian.

The movie,a s a drama, did for me what so many gay dramas don't: it made me care about the characters progression through the film instead of making me want to go out for coffee so that I can be chemically induced to sit through the entirety of the film.

Final thoughts: strong performances by all actors. It could have worked a little harder to abandon so many of the cliches of the single gay male. It could have had more Amber Benson. Subject matter was great and the characters felt real.

It's joining a small contingent of gay films that I'll actually be willing to sit through more than once without coercion (as yet, that list consists of Bent, Jeffrey, the Laramie Project, Psycho Beach Party and Big Eden

Slow News Day

So I pulled myself from my pit of apathy and sat through the Presidential Debates last night (of course, I recorded them so I could watch and pause at my leisure rather than sit through it start to finish). In a very odd paradox, they were both more boring than I expected them to be and less boring than I expected them to be. Perhaps I could clarify...

I expected a long-winded, circlical speaking and overly intellectual contribution from Kerry. Surprising me, he proved only to be long-winded (though by my count, Bush was the only one to ever exceed his allotted time limit). I was happy with how Kerry handled accusations of indecisiveness, and felt he did an excellent job of explaining and defending his position on the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.

Bush was surprisingly better than I expected, though it's not hard to be good at speaking only one point--over and over and over and over again. After 90 minutes I get that Bush's camp wants me to think John Kerry is only a flip-flopper and will destroy America because of it. That really was the only straw he tried to grasp and hold on to for the entire debate--which is why it was more boring than I expected. More time was spent on accusing Kerry of being too indecisive, and on Kerry having to defend against this point, for the debate to be all that interesting (granted, there was a nice deal more done, but please, who can remember they talked about North Korea or nuclear proliferation when you think back on the giant monkey head going back to the flip-flop card, despite its inability to work in the debate?).

There are people I know who, when you have a debate/argument/discussion with them, no matter how carefully you word yourself, they just can't seem to respond to what is actually said (or more often typed). It's a major failing in our ability to hold discourse, and it's a major failing I saw in Bush's ability to debate last night.

All that said, though, I hold to my dreary prediction that it won't make a difference and Kerry won't be elected. This is a race that's clearly to be decided by the swing states and the voters who don't traditionally vote. The problem? Those voters weren't watching the debates, and they won't be watching the remaining debates. The majority of the LGBT population don't actually turn out for elections, and despite how heated a time this is for LGBT issues, I continue to see more and more apathy from members of the community than I would expect from reading the vocal minority in the news and in the HRC.

The stoned slackers in the Daily Show viewership sure weren't watching. They were toking up. Ignoring the innaccuracy of the Daily Show viewership being stoned slackers, the real stones slackers, wherever they are, weren't watching the debates, and are just as likely to not vote as they are every other election.

On a final note, I'm going to stop harping on the communities that don't traditionally vote, and aren't expected to vote this time, and harp on one last thing: Theresa Heinz-Kerry. Could she have looked any frumpier and frazzled? Can't someone in the Kerry camp buy this lady a smart, well-fitting suit?