Marissa Turner

Further devolving into a woman who likes rom com (what happened to the me who loved action flicks and aliens?  I miss that me) I rented From Paris With Love the other night.  A bald Travolta should be entertaining, and reviews tooted him as the coolest Travolta since Pulp Fiction. 

Aside from stabbing a guy in the throat with a gun barrel- which I’m going to call BS on, because just… no.  Stakes, knives, spoons, pizza cutter, even the little kids safety silverware (you know, the kind where the forks have rounded tips instead of pointy tips) I can accept, but not a gun barrel.  It was a small gun and the barrel wasn’t long enough for me, with my midget hands, to have a good enough grip on it to stab someone in the throat with it.  And John Travolta has bigger hands than me.

Other than that, it was a cute movie.  And it’s nice to Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing someone other than a king, be it royalty or the king of rock n roll.

Another reason why I read lit agent blogs: so I have it reaffirmed that acting like a dumbass will not get you ahead of the game.

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While not giving anything away, I will say that Shutter Island was a pleasant surprise (despite Leonardo DiCaprio having a truly terrible Boston accent)

I’m having a hard time working out the intro I want for the short story I’m working on.  The story is plotted, and the meat of it is written, but the intro, the part to hook someone… not there.  Should I scrap the whole story and start fresh?  Or keep giving it the ol’ college try?

(Sent my Nook out yesterday to be reborn as a new, unbroken e-reading device.  I already miss it)

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It’s not even 0830 yet, and I’ve been up almost six hours.  Go me. 

Part of clinical is we have to pull a rotation at the local nursing home, testing their blood sugars for those who need it.  First shift starts at 0500.  And since the home is in the middle of BFE, that meant I had to leave my house at 0415.  Color me thrilled.

The little blood reading machine didn’t want to work, I felt bad having to wake the patients up before the sun had even come up and then I had to stick one of them twice before the reader said there was enough blood on the strip for it to work.

For visual entertainment, I recommend RocknRolla.  Why?  Because it made me laugh- though I can never again watch 300 without picturing Mr. One Two slow dancing with Handsome Bob.  Sort of takes the bad-assery away, doesn’t it?

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I had movie weekend on Saturday and Sunday, and enjoyed it greatly.  I watched TAKEN and CORALINE, and you get the impressions I took away from them.

TAKEN was… well, it was entertaining in the “kill the bad guys any way you can” but there wasn’t a challenge in it.  He was really damn lucky, and they were way too damn stupid.  Think about it; a cell phone camera takes such a great picture, he can see the reflection of Bad Guy Errand Boy in the side of the bus stop?  And he finds the one girl who met his daughter and who now has her coat?  Oh, and the house with the red door?  You want to tell me there is only one house in that whole neighborhood with a red door? 

And he doesn’t get his ass handed to him until the very end?  Pffft, whatever.

Next up was CORALINE- which I really, really enjoyed.  I loved the book, but Neil Gaiman is good like that.  It was a cute movie that made me smile and laugh, and now I want to knit a lot of things from the movie (in normal sizes, not mini-sizes).

So, I recommend CORALINE but not TAKEN.  Unless you’re looking for a mindless movie that is predictable enough it makes your teeth hurt.

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That came on the radio last night, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.  Good song, no matter the mood.  But, I like everything, so you might not want to trust me on that.

I’m currently reading a book that is both a source of irony and a reason for a ‘thank you higher power’.  This is why I fell in love with reading in the first place; books can take you anywhere you want to go.  And sometimes, they fit your life so perfectly it’s scary. 

I’ve never really been a fan of the chick flick I don’t think.  I loved Baz’s Romeo and Juliet, but I was a hormonal 14 when that movie came out (I remember playing it at my party) so of course I loved it.  Love Actually, The Princess Bride, and Dirty Dancing are my stand-by ‘feel good and eat ice cream’ movies.  Usually I go for blood, guts, explosions, and fast cars. 

I told you that to tell you this: Bride Wars was adorable.  D. rented it, so she and I parked our butts on her sofa, me with my knitting, and turned it on.  It had cute moments, ‘awww’ moments, and funny moments. 

Some parts reminded me of my own wedding, minus the bridesmaid who showered with me that morning (”Move over Gunner, and hand me the shampoo, we’re on a time crunch!”), the bridesmaid who told “eat something so you don’t fall down and break your nose on the communion rail, make up won’t fix a bloody nose”, a groomsman smuggling wine into the church and telling my mother he’d blessed it before bringing it inside so God was fine with it (I was raised Methodist, there is no wine in church), and the flower girl demanding that *she* be escorted down the aisle and *I* could walk by myself. 

I pity Little J. and Baby E. when they start dating.  I really, really do.  Because all those things kids do that we think are adorable, are going to embarrass the hell out of them when they’re teens.

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I’m pretty sure women/girls the world over swooned when Patrick Swayze came out to do the mambo with Patty in that pink dress of hers.  (Which I desperately wanted one, but my Barbie got one instead.)

And you’re never too old to dance around you apartment to Otis Redding’s Love Man.

And who hasn’t done this?  UPG got only slightly pissed when they went to open the chow hall only to discover the lawn littered with their sleds, which instead of being neat and clean, were covered in snow and dirt and boot prints.  And here my mother thought I went to class.

Well, she thought that until today probably, when she reads this and will learn differently.

I didn’t go see the movie with D. yesterday; we decided Savannah was too far to drive and we’ll wait until it comes to town. 

Cliodhna #2 is coming well, just slow.  Which is good; I learned my lesson from the tortoise and the hare when I was a small child.  Too bad for me she’s gotten a mind of her own lately and is not doing anything at all that I want her too.  It’s hard for me to sit here and let someone else pilot when I’m used to being captain of my ship.

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Got Marley & Me.  Come on, a movie about a psychotic yellow Lab, did anyone doubt that I’d own it?  I didn’t think so.

C and D invited me over for supper last night (Hubby had to work a 24 hour shift) and I suggested we watch the movie after the kids went to sleep.  Great idea, right?  Movie, some knitting, it’d be a grand time.

“Oh, can I bring Thunder Butt?”
“Of course!  You don’t have to bother asking, she’s your baby, she can always come.”  Having friends who say that makes you smile. 

So, C. comes to pick me and TB up, right as the rain starts coming down harder.  It’s been raining since Saturday night, so getting the puppy out of the house would mean that she could burn off some of the energy she hasn’t been able to run off all week.  If not, there’d be another accident of her eating the drywall.  Or the kitchen floor.

So, while watching the movie, D. and I wind two skeins of The Pirate King, which was found during a stash diving afternoon for a friend of mine.  I love the colorway, hopefully they will too.

Get to the end of the movie, and I know how it’s going to be.  I read the book, saw the movie on Christmas Day, but I still ended up bawling.  On the floor, with my arms around Thunder Butt and my head resting on her ribs. 

Finish crying, Thunder Butt gets the tears off my face, and goes galloping off to find something to destroy.  And she comes up with a plastic golf ball!  Rescue that.  Next on the menu, a sock of Baby E’s that D has been looking for.  Rescue that.  Then the stuffed teddy bear, C. tried to rescue that until she bit down on his finger.  I rescued that.  Spider-Man was not safe either.

Thunder Butt is sweet and loves me totally, and I wouldn’t trade her for anything, but sometimes, I wish she wasn’t so interested in everything.

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I’m sorry, but I just can’t keep silent anymore.

I’ve seen the previews for the new Underworld movie.  You know, the one that tried to make RP vampire games into a new myth system? 

Here’s the preview for Rise of the Lycans, set to release on the 23rd:

First issue: They are not following their own timeline!  At all!  They established in the first movie (which I do own, because the black lycan with the deep voice?  OMG) that Lucian escaped AFTER the death of his lady love.  They didn’t start the war together.  She was crispy fried and he escaped and THEN the war was begun.

Second: Can they get anymore RPG with it?  There is nothing wrong with role playing games, I used to play them (yes, I took part in Vampire: The Masquerade) but to make a whole movie based on it, then tout it as something fresh and original, is BS.  It was cookie cutter vampirism; they brood, they smoke, they sit around and look pretty. 

Show me who is complaining about the weeds in his vegetable garden.

Third: Werewolves who don’t have hair and are biped.  Um… what?  They had a serious argument with their waxer and must now suffer having cold skin.  And they sure as hell can’t run twenty feet up a tree trunk or on the ceiling.  If they could do that, would they really be able to be contained in cells?  I mean, jump up really high, and run on the ceiling to get away from your prison guard.

If I could overlook all of that, I would be thrilled to see it.  But I can’t.  I’d be sitting in the dark theatre going pointing out everything that was wrong.  It’d be like watching a boob job performed by Crusty the Clown.

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I did get to see Marley & Me yesterday afternoon. For those who’ve read the whole book, parts are missing, while others were changed. For example, they get Marley from a woman who accidentally adopted a pregnant female Lab, not a backyard breeder.

But the ending… they kept the ending. And I cried into my hankie and missed my dog. Then I hit PetsMart with my gift money and blew it all on stuff for her. Retail therapy is great, but I hardly ever use it to get stuff for me.

Editing is going well; I knocked out three chapters last night during the House marathon. I also started in on Wolfsbane and Mistletoe; I love Briggs and Vaughn, I’m testing out the rest. But, werewolves and Christmas? Who doesn’t love that?

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I can’t believe it.  They’ve taken Marley & Me and turned it into a movie.  While I think the Labs they chose for Marley are a-freaking-dorable, they picked Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston as John and Jenny?  The reason I say this… it’s Owen Wilson!  I don’t think that man has ever done a serious movie in his life.  Granted, a movie about a dog who killed furniture and stole a table from an outdoor cafe isn’t that serious either. 

But, I loved the book.  Probably because I was going “Oh my God!  Thunder Butt, I found your ancestor!” while I was reading.   I thought she was the only Lab who was wired for sound and thought everything in the world was her chew toy. 

I’ve got that feeling towards this movie as I did toward Lord of the Rings and Interview with the Vampire when they came out.  Loved the books, and movies fall short of the mark 99.99% of the time in their adaptation. 

I’m still going to see Marley & Me… do you think they’ll let me take Thunder Butt?  She loves movies.  Also, I know I’m going to cry, and it’s a lot easier to cry when you’ve got a dog to lean on than by yourself.

For the record, Thunder Butt is worse than Marley.  I swear it. 

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