Life and Pimpage
Hey, guys, back again with more about ME - heh - and a little pimping action for you. I know, I know, you want more Winter Song. Well, I'm working on it, darn it, but it's gotta come when it's going to come and not before, else it'll suck. So there you go.
Firstly, me. On a depressing note, I'm sorta flunking French at the moment, but c'est la vie, as they say. I don't understand the course and I'm falling majorly far behind, so I'm at the point where I want to just say fuck it and move on, but there's that whole pesky GPA thing. You have NO idea how supremely annoying it is to have this ONE stupid class that I don't even want to be in ruining my entire grade point average because I can't catch up to the level of French proficiency I need to be at to be enrolled in the stupid class. Ugh!
In any case, remember how it was snowing last week? Well, this weekend it's hit the seventies -- thank God and Goddess for EVER, I love the warmth -- and it's put me in a really good mood, so we're going to see how long this lasts. I hopped on the ol' Amazon.com today and bought myself some CD's -- I got the soundtracks for Underworld, Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. The soundtracks to those movies kick major ass, especially the first one.
But, the first thing I'm going to send your way is a book:
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips is an amazing novel, put simply. I bought it on a whim when I saw it on sale, because I needed something new to read (I've got to fix this spending thing I've got going on lately, note to self) and it looked interesting. All the reviews said it was zany and funny, so I was expecting a comedy. What I got instead was a deep, imagery-loaded thinker wrapped in some odd humor that actually had me laughing and turning pages to find out more.
The basic plot is that the Olympian Gods and Goddesses are living in a squalid London flat, as backstabbing and crazed as ever. The only issue is that they've lost nearly all their power, and can only hold dominion over what they've been given on a day to day basis lest they risk using too much power and killing themselves, thus ending the part of existence they hold dominion over. Artemis is really the heroine of the Gods, as she's the most approachable and indeed the most sympathetic of them all, but you find yourself genuinely caring about their plight.
Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, is now a sex-phone operator, while Hephaestus (God of Crafts and Building, and the only ugly God of Olympus) is still looked down on by the other Gods despite the fact that he keeps their decrepit flat running. Eros has fallen into depression and is trying to live a Christian life because he believes the teachings about guilt and kindness are good lessons. Artemis is a professional dogwalker, Dionysus owns a bar, Poseidon lives in a shack by the sea, and Apollo is making a bid as a TV psychic.
When Apollo and Aphrodite have a minor spat, Aphrodite gets pissed and gets her son Eros (Cupid, to you Roman fans out there) to shoot Apollo with an arrow of love to get him to fall for a mortal who would hate him. Our unfortunate mortal is Alice, a cleaning lady. Naturally, as this involves the Olympions, things soon get apocalyptically bad, and it's up to Neil, Alice's would-be boyfriend and scrawny OCD engineer, to use Artemis's help to try and save the day.
The novel is actually full of themes of belief and faith, of living and death and everything in between. It's a very serious story wrapped in comedic layers, and it was a very satisfying ending that actually has a lesson in there for you. Aside from that, it's a wholly enjoyable read, and at barely 300 pages I recommend it highly.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, despite bad reviews, is actually a good movie -- if you're a fan of the Underworld story already. It's a fair starting place if you care to watch it before the other two movies, but it really only shows the entire tragedy of Lucian and Sonja's life that we've heard bits and pieces of for the last two movies. Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy were amazing in their roles and the actress who played Sonja did a fair turn as well. It was an interesting movie and the final scenes were climactic and emotional enough to truly satisfy, though there was enough gore to satisfy the vampire-gorefest-afficionado as well.
Also, Dollhouse is getting better after the last episode, and the next episode "True Believer" is looking like it's going to be a real winner. However, this last week's episode didn't even make 4 million viewers. Methinks that I should stop getting excited about Dollhouse because it's looking very likely that FOX is going to destroy it before it gets the chance to save itself. However, there are a lot of studies that show that DVR usage is key to Dollhouse because everybody knows that virtually NOBODY watches TV at 9:00 on a Friday night, especially not a genre show like Dollhouse, so maybe, just maybe, FOX will give it a shot at a second season.
In any case, that's what I wanted to tell you, so there it is. And yes, you nags, I am working on Winter Song, and on the Passion of Angels and Demons. You'll just have to wait a little while longer! But hopefully not too much longer. In any case, I'm signing off now.
One final note: I just rewatched X-Men: The Last Stand. I clearly haven't watched it in a while, because my thoughts were turning fairly favorably toward it. I'd forgotten how they destroyed it. Honestly, who the HELL thought they could cram two enormously important storylines like The Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga and the Cure into one hour and half long movie? The Cure storyline gets very interesting, until Jean Grey comes miraculously back to life. Then it's essentially Phoenix until it moves back to the Cure. By the end of the movie, you don't remotely care about either of the plots because they each needed their own movie, so you're just in it for a quick ride and any deeper themes or emotional meanings to either of the storylines are lost on you, because it was so rushed and crushed.
As The Phoenix Saga is the greatest story arc in comic history and has held me captivated since I was twelve, I'll NEVER forgive Marvel for allowing such a travesty of a film to be made. And, by the way? Wolverine the movie looks like it's going to be bad. Cyclops is going to show up in Weapon X, for no apparent reason. Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, will be in it at one point. WHY? They didn't even use the same actors for Stryker or Sabretooth. Case in point: Movie adaptations SUCK.
Peace!