( The first episode of season 5 is already better than all of season 4, including the attempted lobotomy. )

Tags: spelling, tv

( July through September )

Tags: books

My puppy got his neutering today, and I took the day off work, knowing I would be too stressed to give my patients my full attention. I had planned to just do some light yoga, watch DVD's, and take a long nap, but I was home and awake before the sun was too high, and I had this yard project I've been putting off. My fence is pretty, but my dog is small enough to jump through it, and so I can't let him out in the back yard, and it's made it much harder to housetrain him. I had bought some chicken wire but have been worried it will look too trailer park, but today, I spent a few hours setting it up, and it actually doesn't look too bad. Not as good as I wanted it, but this is working off my own plan, and it took several tries to figure out how to make this work. When I went back to the store for more chicken wire, I hit the outdoor gardening section. I don't like my yard much. I've got a camellia tree I named Chlamydia, and beyond that, I have some boring grasses that come back like zombies every spring and an empty planter box. So I bought some gardening tools, planted some petunias in the box, tore out the grasses, planted two gardenia bushes, and mulched. I'm sure I'm doing this wrong in some way. I'm teaching myself to landscape. But I'm actually really happy with the way I spent my day. Best part? When the dog got home, I let him out, and he tried all the spaces in the fence without success, so he peed AND pooped in the grass. Happy daddy.

BEFORE (summer 2007):


AFTER (9/15/09):

Tags: photos

I saw a lot of movies this summer, several multiple times, and though I missed Terminator, My Sister's Keeper, and Perfect Getaway, I caught most of what I wanted.

WOLVERINE was a great way to start the summer. Give me some light plot, handsome naked men jumping off waterfalls, and handsome clothed men walking through a rain of bullets armed with little more than a pair of swords and a killer charm. Never strayed too far from the comics, at least where I felt the comic was important, and the movie Deadpool has a much more logical reason for his name than the comic Deadpool. Seriously, what's a Deadpool? What does that even suggest?

STAR TREK was amazingly grown-up and psychological despite a gripping action story with supercool special effects. I've already blogged about it, but it bears repeating that this was one of my top ensemble performances of the summer.

UP was a movie I saw twice. The premise makes no sense - let's make a movie about an old man grieving his wife, and throw in some talking dogs and a house that flies on a bunch of balloons. But it was so emotionally true, funny, and whimsical. I laughed and cried and went right back to catch it in 3-D.

THE HANGOVER is another one I saw twice, and I hadn't wanted to see it at all. Yes, Bradley Cooper is a sexy, sexy man, but the premise looked a little too he-man gross-out comedy for me. But the story was actually a fun bawdy mystery about what the heck everyone did last night with a satisfying ending, a real showcase of how best friends relate to each other.

THE UGLY TRUTH wasn't any more than it claimed to be. Two sexy, sexy people trade tired Men-Are-From-Hell stereotypes, but with a little charm to overcome the tired writing. Their chemistry wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but I was engaged. I lump this movie with 27 Dresses - not bad, but not worth buying on DVD.

THE PROPOSAL gave me another couple of hours to spend watching Ryan Reynolds, for which I am grateful. It looked like a stupid romantic comedy, and yes, it was a stupid romantic comedy, but it was both romantic and comedic, so I find it hard to attack. Sandra Bullock was at the top of her game and managed to stand out despite a super-talented supporting cast.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER was my third repeat-viewing, and I plan to watch the DVD over and over and over. This is a quirky indie flick about a pair of misfits who kind of fall in love and spend 500 days together, and the movie bounces back and forth among the best and worst of those days to tell a richly-textured lesson that after a relationship is over, we choose to remember the times that are going to fit our mood. But relationships are complicated and each one unique, and this movie really pushes the idea that we learn from each one. And in indie tradition, there are a dozen stylish tricks like a random interlude of foreign film parody or a musical number representing the Morning After. The humor's not for everyone, but it really tickled me. Probably my favorite movie of the summer.

HARRY POTTER was, in my opinion, better than the book. The middle books kind of dragged for me, and the movies tend to tell the basic story without getting lost in the rich subplots. If you liked the series, you'll like this one. If not, don't bother. Simple.

TRANSFORMERS 2 was a complete waste of time. At ninety minutes, I might have been able to drink my way through it, but at 150, it was just indulgent crap. I am trying hard to remember something I liked about this movie, and all I've got is that the movie theater had just the right amount of ice in my drink.

HALLOWEEN 2 is what I'd consider my last movie of the summer, decent transition to the darker, scarier autumn fare. Again, recently blogged, so I'll sum up that this movie was one of the scariest movies I've seen since Rob Zombie's last Halloween remake. I can't see it again, but I loved seeing it the first time.

Tags: movies

I spent the weekend at the beach with a couple of girlfriends and met up with a supercool girlfriend-of-a-girlfriend for 48 hours of relaxation and sun. Burned to a crisp, but I never did find a way to sweet talk sunscreen into working for me, and I tend to burn badly at least once a summer, so it's nice to stick with tradition.



The most memorable part of the weekend was when the four of us went to dinner last night. We had just been seated at a charming outdoor cafe when a loud gay man and a demented elderly mini-marshmallow of a woman sat themselves next to us. Within a few minutes, the man turned to me and said loudly, "Pretty boy, why are you looking at me?" "Well, thanks for the compliment, but I was actually reading the specials board behind you," I explained, indicating. "Well, why not look at me?" I did that laugh and shrug thing that means I'm not going to answer and hope you don't notice. He got up to go inside and said loudly, "I hope the pretty boy doesn't leave before I get back!" And when he did get back, he offered to buy me a glass of wine, got upset when I declined to give him my phone number, asked if he could ride on the back of my motorcycle (which he assumed I had), and decided to guess my occupation. "You do hair, right? You do hair?" Nope. "Oh. You do nails?" Nope. "Retail?" At that point, LittleRed glared at me and whispered, "Do NOT make him guess. Tell him! Maybe he'll stop!" When I told him, he laughed and said that he would marry me and then I could have half of his house. I thanked him for the proposal but indicated that I was staying with my friends, at which point he noticed how smoking hot one of the girls was and proceeded to tell her that she was about as cute as me and had pretty eyes and that he might marry her instead. After he left, the server explained that he was a harmless regular but was pretty drunk tonight and in rare form, but really, laughing off aggressive men is kind of what I do for a living.

But in perspective, I have spent most of the last few months with straight people, platonic gay friends, or being the oldest and fattest guy at a gay party, and it was immeasurably nice to have a complete stranger think I was a young stylist and choose to propose because of this. I'm not saying this guy could have ever gotten the response he was looking for, but he made me laugh and feel good about myself, and it felt amazing to have a perfect stranger know I'm gay in a state where this is not the default setting and most of my patients ask intrusive questions about my wife and children I must surely have. I don't know what it would take to keep me in my current town, but if I had to stay in this state, Asheville or Wilmington could probably win me over.

Tags: gay, photos
Current Location: Wilmington

A friend came by tonight and opened the door, and the white dog ran away. He wouldn't come back, I couldn't get him, and now my life is back to normal, guilt-free.

And in related news, Martini got into my open briefcase and brought me my travel bottle of Advil. Seeing my pup running around with my pills makes me feel like Valley of the Dolls. This is why gays should not have children.

I'm thinking about getting a third tattoo, this one inspired by my star sign (Scorpio) and my favorite fable, the Fox and the Scorpion. Fox is trying to cross a stream, and a scorpion creeps up to him and begs for a ride. "I don't mean to be species-ist, man. I went to a liberal arts college. I vote Democrat. But you're a scorpion. You kill foxes." "I'm not gonna kill you, man! I need a ride!" So Fox lets Scorpion ride on his nose. Well, halfway across the stream, Scorpion looks down, shakes his head, and says, "Sorry, man." Then he stings the fox in the nose. Neurotoxin spreads through the poor animal, and his limbs start to freeze, and as he sinks, he gasps, "Why...?" The scorpion looks quietly across the water and whispers, "You knew what I was when you carried me."

Sometimes I feel like the fox. I should know better. I know when I'm making mistakes, but that doesn't stop me. But other times, I feel like the scorpion, doomed by a base nature to act in a self-destructive fashion, sometimes hurting people who don't deserve it. And I think if I'm going to get another tat, this is a decent one for a reminder, and I drew it on my foot and have been liking it all weekend, so if I still want it in a few months, I might go ahead. Thoughts?

Tags: photos

I was walking Martini today, and this big white dog ran across the street to say hi. No collar, decent manners, looks like a pet. There were people all around saying someone needed to take him in to keep him out of the road, so I reluctantly agreed to do it, and I've posted a few signs around. I also called animal control and left a voicemail asking for them to call me back and advise me. If no one claims him in a week, he's free to a good home or he stays with me and I name him White Russian.

Tags: photos

Last summer, I posted about Rob Zombie's remake of the original Halloween, a movie I loved as a child. He managed to distill it to an hour and gave a prequel hour lending a humanity and realism to the carnage, then jacked up the body count, twisted the psychiatrist into a Stockholm Syndrome victim, and scared me so bad I could barely cross the parking lot at 4 PM. In short, I loved his take on a horror classic but decided it was far to scary to ever see again.

So I went to Halloween 2 tonight. Now, the original Halloween 2 is in many ways superior to the original Halloween. The basic story was that in the seconds after the credits started rolling on the first one, they loaded Jamie Lee Curtis onto an ambulance and took her to a hospital, and for an hour and a half, Michael Myers hacked up the night shift. It was scary, it was funny, it was medical. I watched it last year instead of my copy of the first movie. And I had no idea how Zombie was going to interpret it.

Without too many spoilers, Rob Zombie distills the entire second movie into about a half hour which had me clenching all my muscles and spending a lot of time looking just off-screen, then spent another hour and change telling his own idea of where the story should go next. This story was incredible. Laurie Strode is in heavy psychotherapy but has managed to start living in the world again. Dr. Loomis, on the other hand, has been twisted by his experience into a cold monster, and the juxtaposition of the two is compelling. In contrast to Carpenter's original, in this version, Laurie's best friend Annie survived the initial attack, and in this movie, she plays an emotional core, a beautiful light in an otherwise ebon experience. Amidst rivers of gore, the three main characters are compelling figures, really tying you into the story.

Zombie's story allows him to add some elements of mysticism he only hinted at in Halloween and House of 1000 Corpses. Rather than looping Myers into Samhain myths, he takes his first idea of a tortured family life taking a susceptible boy and pushing him over the edge, and then he adds in the question of what might happen if that boy held onto the family as ghosts. The imagery of this is beautiful, and truly, most of the movie reflects inspired direction. I watched a good portion through my fingers, but the angles and art direction were better than I've seen in a lot of mainstream films, and the scene where a beloved character meets up with Myers is one of the most inventive pieces of storytelling I've ever seen in a horror movie. And scaryscaryscary as all Hell.

So in short, I thought this movie was fantastic, easily as good as Zombie's last attempt and probably better. And I should really not have seen it by myself at 9:00 at night because I jumped twice on the walk to my car and pulled over on the drive home because I was flinching when cars would approach. Now that I've posted a little and pulled myself out of that place, I plan to listen to Taylor Swift and watch Mamma Mia and pretend I am man who makes better choices.

Happy Halloween, everybody...

Tags: movies

( Low-rent Mean Girls - how could it go wrong? )

Tags: movies
Current Music: Taylor Swift