Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

The twitter feed for the Thoroughly Entertained post reviewing, among other films, World War Z, called it "tense and scary." I want to watch Krista and Scott's review, but first I'll give my own without being influenced by their opinions.

I am happy that I had the opportunity to see this movie on the big screen, and that I did not have to wait for Netflix, which could have taken years. 

What can we learn from World War Z? My top five: 

1. "Every human being we save is one less [zombie] we have to fight." This line really struck me. What kind of zombies are we talking about? I think this wisdom applies to more than just the creatures in the movie. 

Two seconds later, because we didn't seem to learn it from the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, the Berlin Wall, and the large fence between U.S. and Mexico (was that ever actually built?), 

2. a wall erected to keep invaders out is rarely effective. 

3. Possibly, when you end up the seemingly only survivor of a deadly plane crash, you might feel like a bit of a jerk. Until you realize you are also impaled. 

I kind of don't ever want to fly in an airplane again. But, not flying in airplanes conflicts with some of my important life goals, so...

4. When it comes to a baseball bat, a crowbar, and an axe: "Each has its merits."

Finally, I personally learned that

5. I should perhaps have married into the military. Then again...no, thanks. 

So. Go see it if you haven't yet. Whatever you expect it to be, it's a little different than that, and a little more than that. 

In just short of six months, it will be the holiday season. If the people on your gift list are zombie fans, I highly recommend buying them this movie, Warm Bodies [self-link], and the excellent novel by and about my homeland of Northwest Indiana, Dust [real link]. They will love you forever and possibly gift you with beastie stuff like juicers and hacksaws in the future. 

Now to see what Krista and Scott had to say. 

A Fitting Memorial

Let's begin this post with the actual memorial for Memorial Day, "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae:

And now to add in some photos of and/or taken by myself, as I enjoyed this morning off by hanging out with Krista in the Boneyard. Here then, unformatted and in no particular order, I give you the history of Las Vegas.

Our tour guide (Troy?) under the city's founding date on an old Golden Nugget sign.

In the back is an old sign for the El Cortez, where I like to park my car when I go to Fremont St.

First and last sign you see on your way in/out of the tour.

We reminisced about the days when "T.I." had a family-friendly show.

You were unlikely to have seen anything in the above display that you won't see in anyone's photos who has ever visited the Boneyard. Krista (pictured above) is tres professionnelle, so I look forward to seeing her interpretation, color-corrected and in proper order and format. I'm sure her collection is where my FB profile photo and/or cover photo will come from.

Happy Memorial Day.

Around the Block

According to yahoo answers, which I think is less reliable than even wikipedia, the phrase, "been around the block a few times," originates with British Pagans who believed their lives would be prolonged if they danced around the "blocks" of Stonehenge. It might not be right, but it's a good story. 

I'm using it here to refer to the obvious writer's block that I complained about in last Friday's post, which I'm hoping to get around. 

The Memoir of Narrow Escape actually does have a theme, and I wonder what you think the theme is. Haha. 

In the meantime, I have envisioned other blog concepts, one of which I'll discuss now. I suggested it to my cousin, but she did not respond to my suggestion, so feel free to steal it. 

Concept #1 is "Second Life," wherein the blogger follows an item s/he has sold, freecycled, or (dare I say it) pawned, either researching to find the story of the object as told by its previous owners, or keeping in touch with its new owners to see where the object ends up. Kind of like a geocaching travel bug, but concentrating more on something like the ratty old couch (which is how the idea started, because the ratty old couch came from Krista's first classroom, and I know there's a story about how it got there, but I don't remember it). 

(More parentheses, huzzah! There's a second ratty old couch that was purchased by the former project facilitator, now a high school teacher, which at last viewing was in the lounge of a high school where she worked a decade ago but doesn't anymore.) 

Concept #2 (that's right, there's more than one) is more of a short story collection, because it is fiction, and it involves a Sliding Doors-type collection of vignettes that follow Jeannette Winterson's idea that there are millions of versions of us, because each time we make a choice, there is a parallel universe where one version of us lives out the other choice, the one we didn't make. Therefore, we follow an opportunity that we failed to take advantage of, all the way to its natural conclusion. 

All of this reminds me that I would still like to write a novel. 

Any suggestions as to what it should be about? Let's see if your concepts come anywhere close to what I have in mind. ;)

Right Quick

I have little to say tonight, but what I have to say is important.

Boys and girls, it doesn't seem as if zombies are going anywhere anytime soon. 

I first read about the film Warm Bodies in this episode of the new Thoroughly Entertained blog, and I immediately knew that I wanted to see it. 

Many, many thanks to Miss Gokey, who happily gave up two hours of her President's Day to see it with me at Aliante Station. 

It's PG-13. Its cheesiness is part of its charm. It made me laugh, and it almost made me cry. 

It wasn't the whole from-the-zombie's-perspective thing that got me. I was blown away by that concept already, when I read Dust.So no, it's just that Warm Bodies is flat-out inspirational. 

Take those cinema passes you have laying around and go see it. 

In the meantime, or if not, at least check it out on tumblr. Unlike on my phone, on this laptop, tumblr moves. That kind of freaks me out, and so I hesitate to link it. It'll be okay. 

Be inspired. 

Random Media Reviews

I feel ill-equipped to deal with posting tonight, so I thought I would use the old idea I put out there a while ago about telling you about random movies I've been watching on Netflix. For a while there, I was on an indie-road-trip-film kick, and I thought

The Go-Getter was decent. This high school kid who has lost his mother steals Zoe Deschanel's car and takes it on a quest to find his long-lost brother, who is 18 years older than him. It's creepy in places, and if you suffer secondary embarrassment on the behalf of your fictional characters, this one's chock full of that. It ends well, however, so I recommend it, only if you have nothing better to do.

I also cued up a movie called Drool. It had nobody in it I recognized. It is the story, told from her daughter's perspective, of a mother-of-two who lives in a dream world most of the time. A new neighbor moves in, and when the mom befriends the new neighbor, she also begins an affair. Her husband catches her and pulls out his gun, at which point...mom accidentally shoots him. The road trip component involves the family (including the new neighbor) dealing with the body. It's not bad, so I recommend it, again if you've nothing else on your plate.

Then I watched one that was terrible. Really, really terrible. So terrible that I don't even remember the name of it and wouldn't tell you even if I did, because, in the immortal words of one of my long-lost collegiate sorority sisters, "Some days just need to be wiped off the calendar."

Finally, I decided to watch Craigslist Joe. In this one, a sensitive guy decides to see if he can live for a month using nothing but the tools of societal decay: social media. Specifically, well...as the title would imply. His experiments result in shenanigans and realizations. I recommend it if you are into sociology.

Right now, I am actually in the middle of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief, because my students credit it with any and all interest they have shown in ancient Greece. So far, so good. I'll get back to that now.

I must say. Watching movies about quests is not the worst way I could be spending my new borrowed time. Now, if you want some *real* entertainment news, check out Thoroughly Entertained. Enjoy!