A curve in the road

First of all to all my loyal readers I am sorry for not having updated this in a long time. Things have been busy. And by busy I mean....I lost my job.

It wasn't a total surprise, gentle readers, but it was hard to deal with and on some level, heartbreaking. Many of us grow up with the concept that if we work really hard and try our best, that things will turn out all right in the end. The bitter pill that life makes you swallow on occasion is that your best isn't enough. Sometimes it has nothing to do with you. And then you find yourself on a path you never dreamed you'd be on, trying to make the best of it all.

After the axe came down last Friday, I dived right into the job hunt and have been busier in this past week than I ever thought I'd be. Some people need time to collect, to lick wounds, etc. For me, the way I deal with a bad situation is I start working as fast as I can to fix it, and with every click of the button on my laptop that sends off my resume to a possible job opportunity my heart and soul feels a little bit better.

One thing I am infinitely grateful for is the parting of the ways from my previous employer was very civil and there is no bad blood between us. My bosses told me they have no problem with me using them as references. I don't think anyone really wanted it to happen, but it is what it is and they did their best to help me out by giving me a very decent severance package.

I have been humbled and awed by the unbelievable amount of support my friends and family have sent my way. They always say in times of crisis you find out who your real friends are - boy, do I have a lot of them. To those people who have offered me food, lodging, job opportunities, or even just notes of encouragement and love in the digital realm as well as over the phone and in person, I can't thank you enough.

During this time, I have had some very powerful signs come to me. Yes, as hokey as it sounds, I believe in signs. Recently my friend gave me a purse charm that is a moth in lucite; a few days later my Dad had a dream that he was in my apartment with my mother and moths were coming out of cocoons, drying their wings and getting ready to fly. Our dear family friend Janie tells me that in Native American lore, moths are symbols of transformation and new beginnings.

Sign number two came today at a job interview for a part-time position at an audio books company. One of my all-time favorite blogs is The Daily Coyote, written by a woman named Shreve who left her fast-paced city life behind her to live in Wyoming and raise her ever-expanding "farmily", which includes a coyote, Charlie. She is an amazing writer, photographer, and woman and I have had the great opportunity to talk with her not only over the phone but over email as well. Although I hardly know her personally, she is very dear to me. She came out with a book called "The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming" in 2008 and I have an autographed copy of it. During my interview today, they showed me one of their most recent audio book covers that had one of the employee's dogs on the front of it. The dog looked so much like Charlie I started talking about Shreve and the site, and they said to me, "Oh actually, we've produced her audio book!" I couldn't believe it. They handed me a copy and told me to keep it.

Now of all the thousands of books in the world and the numerous audio book companies out there, what were the chances, really?

As I drove home, I popped in the first disc, and a clear voice read out the first line of the book. "The jewels in this life are the events we do not plan; at least that is how it has always been for me."
I felt my eyes fill with tears. It was exactly what I needed to hear. And in that moment, in my car driving down 95 on my way back home, there was this cosmic sensation that all of this has been woven into the fabric of my life forever. That I really am exactly where I need to be right now. People always say things happen for a reason, but it wasn't until I heard and felt what I did that I really believed it.

I promise that there will be a real movie review blog coming soon, but I felt that you all deserved to know what the hell was going on. Thank you for your patience and stay with me - after all, I am insatiable!

Bring on the feedback!

A dear friend notified me that it was rather difficult for non-Google users to comment on my posts, but now I have made it easier! You can now choose the option of OpenID or just add your name and a URL if you so choose and voila! Your comment will appear below. You can also choose to remain anonymous, but then we'll all wonder what you have hiding up your sleeve...hmmmmmm. ;) No more snarky word verification nonsense!

Next up, a review of Clash of the Titans remake! (hint: it's beyond terrible.)

Special Talk Like a Pirate Day DVD Spotlight!

Image be courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (no pirating of images here, matey)








Avast, me hearties! In honor of International "Talk Like a Pirate Day" I take it upon meself, Captain "Cutlass" Ellis, te write a review about o' the best pirate movies of all time: Cutthroat Island.

Now to be sure, not all landlubbers will like this film, because not all of ye squid-faced sons of sea rats like pirates. And you know what happens when people don't like pirates - they walk the plank! Well, more likely they just don't watch the movie. Anyway, back to my heading.

Geena Davis plays Morgan, a pirate captain who must recover a lost treasure as her father's dying wish. Matthew Modine, the eventual love interest (aye matey even pirates need a little love) is the unwitting con man who gets dropped in the middle of the high seas action. The ever-sinister Frank Langella plays Dawg, Morgan's uncle, who will stop at nothing to get the treasure.

There's plenty o' steel, guts, and even a rather annoying monkey, but even though the film got a baaad reception with audiences at the time, it is still a ripping good time, even 15 years later. Pirate queens never do get their proper credit, arrrgh! Ye can tell much of Pirates o' the Caribbean took its inspiration from this film.

I owe my discovery of this film to me best hearty, Libby Cudmore. The DVD edition isn't exactly a treasure trove of special features, but the archival featurette on the making of the film includes swashbuckling interviews with the cast, including the notorious Geena herself.

So today, cast off yer landlubber status, pour yerself some rum and step aboard the Morning Star for some good ol' fashioned, buccaneer high seas adventure!

DVD Spotlight: Taking a blind date with Date Night

I happened to see Date Night quite by chance at my friend's house not too long ago, and was pleasantly surprised.

There's a little something called a screwball comedy that Hollywood seems to have forgotten the significance of, but Date Night brings it back with a vengeance.

There is something delightfully forgettable about Date Night. It's like a glittering glass of champagne you had at the beginning of the evening, and the next day you can almost remember what it tasted like, and yet not enough to readily identify what the brand was to buy it for next time. Date Night has no real need to actually exist; it just happens to be a whole lot of fun.

Steve Carell plays Phil Foster, a decent guy with a hardworking wife Claire (Tina Fey) and a couple kids living in New Jersey. Claire has a demanding job as a real estate agent, but in an effort to keep some of the romance alive, they have a date night every week. However, even that has become dull and routine. Phil, determined that he's not going to let the spark die out completely in the monotony of their lives, decides to take Claire out to New York City for dinner at the most posh seafood place in town. When they can't get a seat, they take someone else's reservation. They get mistaken for criminals, the chase is on, and hilarity ensues.

Could there be a more perfect pairing of great, talented comedians? What is so charming about watching Fey and Carell act together is you can actually believe these two people would be married to one another. It is comedy with a razor-sharp edge - jokes about infidelity, c-sections, and the like are thrown around with wild abandon. And the few heartfelt talks about marriage sprinkled here and there are sincere without slowing down the film's momentum. And Mark Wahlberg is brilliant as Grant Holbrooke, the swaggering, hot macho guy who hates shirts and becomes an integral part of the poor Fosters getting their identity back.

The only shame is that it all goes by a bit too fast. I got to the end of the film and wondered if there could've been a slightly more coherent plot, but perhaps you're not supposed to think too hard. The genius is in the moments where Claire asks for her husband's coat and he gallantly lends it to her, believing she's cold, only to see her wrap it around her fist and punch her way through a glass door to enter a locked building. To which Phil responds, quite reasonably, "Who ARE you??"

It is interesting to see how this film is a throwback to the capers such as "A Fish Called Wanda" and yet uses a brand of humor that is reflective of people's current tastes now - many of the jokes are so funny because they are so true, and as an old friend of our family once said, "If we weren't all laughing, we'd be crying."

The kind of bawdy, over-the-top humor so indicative of successful films in the 90s (such as Ace Ventura, Pet Detective) has stepped aside in this case for a more sarcastic, edgy humor that tries to put a wry grin on the face of cold reality. In other words - it hurts so good.

Date Night reminds us that win the shit hits the fan, all we have is each other. And that's something no one should ever take for granted.

Consorting with the enemy - a chat with Jessie from Team Rocket!

Image downloaded from www.pokemon.com

Hello all! Saturday counts as the end of the week, right? So sit back and enjoy my interview with Michele Knotz, a voice actress whose best known for the voice of Jessie from Team Rocket, the (semi) villains of Pokemon!

Many thanks to the staff at Connecticon for letting us use their staff room as interview space, to Dylan Ferrara for holding the camera steady, and of course, to Michele for agreeing to do the interview in the first place!

Also, thanks to Laura Robida, member of She Eats Planets, for letting me use their song "No Time At All" as part of my ending credits. You can find more about the band here.

The music used under the video, "Amanda" by Aisha Duo, was a free download that came with my Dell laptop. More information can be found about the group here.

A new banner and a guest reviewer!

I would like all of you to just take a gander at the top of this site. Even the short guy in the corner over there. This is the shiny new banner that the amazingly talented Tina Pratt, the mastermind behind one of the funniest webcomics out there, made for me. Tell me - is it not EPIC???

No, you can't tell me it's not because the unabashed awesomeness of it denys - nay - wipes the very thought from your mind.

And there's more fun stuff coming - by the end of this week, I will have one of the video interviews I have promised you with voice actors of Pokemon talking about their favorite anime series and movies.

But for now, I must share this thought-provoking review of Eat Pray Love, the recent film starring Julia Roberts. It is written by a brilliant woman named Amanda who runs this gem of a blog. I'll leave you with the first part, and if interested the rest you can read on her site, which is well worth looking at. You may not agree with everything she writes but I appreciate her honest writing and reactions. This has been linked and copied by permission from the author. (P.S. Thanks Ro for linking me to this site!)

Movie Review - Eat Pray Love

My brother won tickets to an advance screening of a new movie, and he was kind enough to offer them to his mother and little sister. Awwww. What a nice guy.

Except the movie being previewed was Eat Pray Love.

Oh. Well, he’s still a pretty nice guy, I guess.

So now that I’ve watched Julia-Roberts-as-Elizabeth-Gilbert prance self-centeredly through crowds of foreigners trying to find herself, what do I think? Here’s my brief summary of Eat, Pray Love, as reported on my Twitter feed:

Hi! I’m an upper middle class white woman who doesn’t like her husband. I’m going to let a bunch of cute people with accents change my life. Fix me, brown people! Your poverty & inability to escape your problems centers me. Me. Meeeee. MEEEEEEEEEEE! Now I’m centered. I’m going to go marry Javier Bardem.

Read the rest of the review here.

Gettin' our freak on

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

So I am patiently awaiting the DVD arrival of the best cult classic animated series of the 1990s and perhaps the best cartoon of my youth.

FREAKAZOID!

Thank goodness for the Amazon gift certificate.

To those of you not in the know, it was a series that permanently warped me in the best possible way. It took the idea of a superhero and turned it completely upside down. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, the series was "Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

Sprung from the minds behind Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, Freakazoid ran for two seasons from 1995 to 1997. While I enjoyed all three series, Freakazoid had an acerbic wit that was a little sharper and more bitter than its contemporaries. It was the kind of comic genius that couldn't quite capture the minds of the kiddies and not fully engage the attention of adults. EDIT: my Dad actually remembers more of this show than I did now that I have the DVDS in my clutches. For some reason I remember him not liking it very much, but apparently he did...huzzah!

The plot (on the occasion it had one) revolves around Dexter Douglas, who gets sucked into the Internet and is given all of the information from the worldwide Web (which was even back in its earliest days was a pretty weird place), which in turn, makes a wise-cracking, fast-talking superhero out of him.

The episodes pulled punches, making fun of nineties pop culture and politics with a kind of wild abandon. If Animaniacs pushed the envelope in that regard, Freakazoid tore right through it. One memorable episode shows Freakazoid hunting down a fellow driver just to tell him his tail light is out. When Freakazoid tells him he has to give him a ticket, the man takes it and it reads "One free admission to the Jerry Springer Show" which causes the man to be rather traumatized. Executive producer Steven Spielberg even makes an appearance at the start of one episode (in his animated form) when the group of writers can't figure out what the hell they should make the episode about.

I look at today's Adult Swim shows, particularly Venture Bros., and I realize the creators must have all watched Freakazoid a million times over. This show made random weirdness in cartoons hip long before Adult Swim even existed, and unlike many shows or movies, it can actually make me laugh right out loud. In its fun, likeable way, it held the world of the mid-90s accountable for all its crazy, silly actions. It's as if Freakazoid exists to say "Hey guys, I'm acting really strange and weird over here, but look at what YOU guys are doing!"

It's a shame the show was cancelled, but perhaps if it had kept going it would've been too hot to handle. Can you imagine a show's cartoon theme song today ending with "He's here to save the nation, so stay tuned to this station. If not we'll be unemployed, Freakazoid!"

Being cut a little close to the quick is not for everyone, and I understand that. But for those who can appreciate the artful balance between genius and insanity, this is the show for you.

I can't wait until Friday when I blitz myself into a papaya-induced hallucination.