Week 2

Well, week 2 has come to an end and I've failed all four of my followers. I didn't make it through even half of what I'd scheduled for myself. I didn't even get around to making a prioritized viewing schedule with sub-categories and bullets. What's become of me? Here I am, with four fans and I'm on a path to blog-self-destruction.

I blame Stephen King.

I have a real love/hate relationship with the man and his eclectic collection of horror novels. Some of Mr. King's works are near brilliant. The thoughts and ideas so unusual and startling that my mind is forced into a kind of horror-overdrive. A few come to mind The Shining, Misery, The Langoliers, The Long Walk, Secret Window - Secret Garden, Dolan's Cadillac, Insomnia, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (not exactly in the horror genre, but excellent nonetheless), and of course, my all-time favorite: The Stand.
Some of his work... eh... I guess we'll call it average serial horror... It, Carrie, Pet Semetery. (Misspelled intentionally!)

And some of it is just downright bad. Have you ever read Dreamcatcher? Don't. People actually pass creatures during bowel movements in this one. I'm not making this up. B.M. aliens. Or at least, I think they were aliens. Honestly, after the toilet part, I just flat-out gave up.

In my quest to reread The Stand I found myself remembering something about Mr. King's works that I hadn't thought of before I started. The man is wordy. I mean, Wordy with a capital W. This guy can write and write and write. I can't say it's babble, because the fact of the matter is, it's all interesting and usually relevant to the story at hand. Every character gets his fifteen minutes in a Stephen King novel. From the hero to the guy who dies on page eighty-eight. If Stephen King is wordy in the average novel, well then, The Stand isn't really a novel, it's an eleven-hundred page event. An event which this reader reads about about half-speed. It's taken me an entire week and almost all of my precious TV time to weed-through exactly four-hundred and six pages. I'm telling you, this book is not for the casual reader. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best choice as a re-introduction into the reading world - but then, if I can get through it, I can get through anything. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

I'd like to try to catch you, my four fans, up to speed - but that's just an impossibility. I'll tell you what, when I finish, I'll dedicate an entire blog entry to The Stand then we'll talk. So, let's move on to the few other Reading List items I accomplished this week:

The Glee Season Finale:

Our friends in the New Directions show-choir took last place at regionals, mainly due to some shady judging by Olivia Newton-John and Josh Groban. I don't think any of us Glee fans thought they'd actually win against those spoiled Audio Adrenaline brats, but losing to Aural Intensity? That was low, Josh Groban. Low.

I don't think anyone was surprised to find that Sue Sylvester was secretly rooting for our Glee friends. She's the villain you love to hate and we all know that deep down, she's a good person. Her good side doesn't show itself often, but when it does, it's refreshing and welcome.

I give the finale-writers a lot of credit for daring to let New Directions fail. I know I was expecting them to place just high enough to eek by. A hero's failure is not often depicted, but in the end, I suspect we'll admire them more for it.

Son of Rambow:

Here's a movie I'd been looking forward to watching for quite some time. It had been sitting, neatly packaged in a Netflix envelope for seven months, just waiting to be watched. It was with me through Christmas and New Years. It moved with me from Arkansas to Nebraska. Then finally, last Wednesday, I dared open it's red envelope and began to watch.

After all this Netflix dvd and I had been through, I was almost hurt when I discovered the movie wasn't much to my liking. It surely had it's fun moments, but I just didn't connect to the characters. Much of the humor felt forced, contrived. The obvious "weren't-the-80's-so-stupid?" jokes were played out. It's hard to place what was missing from the movie, but I just didn't feel much for it at all. It was far from bad. If you want to see bad, go rent a copy of Dreamcatcher, the movie. And... If you think reading about alien bowel movements is bad, you should try watching it. How did Jason Lee and Morgan Freeman end up in that heap of garbage? I hope they got new agents.

But, I digress. I know the movie was a surprise indy-hit. I know thousands of reviews say otherwise, but the first word that comes to mind when I think about Son of Rambow is - cold. I was never able to form that emotional attachment that is so critical in movie-viewing. Or maybe I'm just old and don't have an eye for quirky anymore? Maybe I've just because the kind of person that can only appreciate Jennifer Aniston comedies? No, wait. I don't think anyone appreciates those...


In the end, that Netflix dvd wound up back in the mailbox, just like all the others... alone, waiting to move on to another (and possibly more appreciative) viewer.


Recap:

TV/Movies:
"Glee" - 1 episodes, finale. Still holding at 4.5/5 Stars.
"Son of Rambow" - Movie. 2.5/5 Stars. Boring. Cold.
"King of the Hill" - 2 episodes. This wasn't on my list. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. I frequently catch the 2-episode run on Cartoon Network from 9-10pm.

Books:
"The Missing Girls: A Shocking True Story of Abduction and Murder" by Linda O'Neal, Rick Watson, and Philip Tennyson. 3/5 Stars. Complete 06/08/10. It's a true crime book. What more can I say?

"The Stand" by Stephen King. 406 pages. 4/5 Stars. I will finish if it kills me. 700 to go...

Other News:
I have chosen to italicize titles for ease from here on out. My recap will continue to use quotation marks. Blogging is an art form and my style will take time to master.