My Quick Review of the New Harry Potter Movie

1. It's not as good as the last two Harry Potter movies.
2. But it's still better than many, many movies.
3. Is it better than the giant crocodile alligatorsaurus movies on the Sci Fi Channel?
4. Yes.
5. Daniel Radcliffe needs to learn that in acting, there is more than one way to express anger.
6. Just breathing loudly and tensing one's neck muscles is not enough.
7. Maybe he has asthma.
8. All that gasping got really annoying after a couple of hours, though.
9. There was a girl - well, actually a woman, I think - sobbing loudly in the theatre through the last part.
10. So what with all the angry Harry breathing on screen and the sad moviegoer snuffling in the audience, there was a whole lotta wheezing, coughing and other lung noises going on. Even the occasional moan.

The whole Harry Potter thing is still just so damn cool, though, that it makes all the breathing noise oddities okay.

project 364 #125: waterdrops on poppy petals

project 364 #125: waterdrops on poppy petals
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

So the party is over and we're slowly beginning to clean up. Yesterday was hopeless for this, since it was raining and we were all hungover anyway. Instead of tidying we went and got three thoroughly weird movies (I am the queen of picking strange movies at random in the video store) and lay around and watched them and ate party leftovers and hamburgers. We watched Basquiat, which had waaaaaaaaaay too many long musical interludes during which nothing much happened and strange cut in blue surfing over skyscrapers interludes which were highly symbolic of a way over self indulgent filmmaker. As N remarked, too much art and not enough drugs.

Then we watched some new, totally bizarre Asian movie called Curse of the Golden Flower which made no sense at all but was highly, or well, passably, entertaining anyway. There were endless sequences of extremely technicolored hallways (N said, this must be from the Acid Dynasty) up and down which people in totally improbable costumes rushed in various states of extreme emotional distress, and later in the movie, gory stabbed-ness. There was incest. There were like ten million yellow chrysanthemums in pots - an apparently infinite supply, actually, of yellow chrysanthemums in pots. There were ninjas on bungie cords and zip lines. There was tons of gold everywhere and a freaky sauna chair. And, best of all, there were all these people whose apparent total job consisted of roaming around the aforementioned long psychedelic hallways banging on gongs and announcing what time it was in strange little metaphoric poems. I have decided that this is probably my dream job, so if you're hiring a human clock any time soon, let me know.

Drug Movie Reviews

In keeping with our general theme lately of sex, drugs and what used to be called rock n' roll but is now going by some new name, like Elmer, we've been watching lots of dysfunctional drug movies. Sometimes this is a good thing, because I guess it was high time I finally saw Requiem for a Dream, and then I made it all the way through Naked Lunch this time and actually enjoyed it and we got to see Gothic again, which is just as odd as I remembered, but sometimes it is a very, very bad thing.

A terribly bad thing indeed. Yes. Party Monster is about the worst damn thing I've ever seen and if anyone was in any kind of doubt whether Macaulay Culkin can, in fact, act or do anything much except pose for those vaguely remembered iconic posters with the open mouth and the hands and such that always made me so grateful to god that he wasn't one of my kids, on whom that expression would have earned either a swift slap or a trip to the DNA lab to figure out their actual parentage, well, the question has been answered. He cannot. No, he cannot act his way out of the proverbial paper bag (what the hell does that mean, by the way? How would you act your way out of a paper bag? Emote a la William Shatner all over the place and say LET. ME. OUT. OF. HERE. with great feeling? Take it off your head very slowly with tortured arm motions like interpretive dance? Well, however you would do it, rest assured that it would be better than Macauley Culkin doing it.) and, while he's not acting, the script is busy not making much sense, the club scenes are badly realized and the movie just sucks.

How do I know that the club kid thing is badly done? I know this because I was there. Well, kinda/sorta I was there, inasmuch as I wasn't really a fabulous club kid but instead a) poor, b) female, and c) as always, more interested in cheap booze and good music than fabulousness. I went to Limelight once but I was more a CBGBs performance space/Danceteria before it closed/Max Fish/various dive bars girl than a fabulous club kid party girl. But I could have been. If I had wanted to. Well, okay, I mean, I lived in the East Village and went to gallery openings - it's how I fed my kid once a week - and was friendly with Red Ed, who was this weird guy always dressed completely in red leather who also hung out at gallery openings, and people often gave me invitations which I promptly scrunched into my purse and then threw away weeks later. There may still be some down in there. So I was tangentially a club kid and I totally know that the movie was full of remarkable shit.

Unfortunately, the movie happens to be one of N's favorites. Usually we're in complete accordance on movies except in the horror genre, where his tastes run to psycho slasher gorefests like Saw, which I will not watch, and my tastes run to campy over the top things like Lair of the White Worm, which he will not watch, but there we were, watching a movie he's been bugging me to see for weeks and I hated it. Always an awkward moment: not quite as bad as when your new boyfriend's band sucks, but close. Actually, I'm really surprised that he liked it, given his usual casual homophobia "That is so GAY" commentary, but he says he's secure enough in his own masculinity to watch it. Secure humbug; I think he just wants to put on makeup. I told him this and he kicked me, heh. Therefore it must be true. Still, he was pretty cool about me hating it and now in payback I'm going to get him to watch The Coca Cola Kid which is my personal "nobody else likes it but for some inexplicable reason I always have loved it go figure now you must watch it as well to prove that you do love me" movie.

Also, in other drug movie news, we watched part of Tideland last night, but thank the gods the DVD was all messed up and we only got to see about the first 40 minutes, which I think was quite enough horrific depression for one evening. I'm not even going to ask Orbit for another copy.

project 365 #7

project 365 #7
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Rainy day. Houseguests - my friend D's son N, who, despite being terribly, terribly bad (A and I think he is probably the most bad person we have ever even spoken to, which is bizarre in someone you have known since he was in diapers. Also, he has grown up quite unnervingly attractive.) is actually still really sweet and adorable and has a good heart and his friend B, who we have also known since his somewhat obnoxious childhood. B's turning out much better than we thought he would. And The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which was pretty damn good. I only left the house to take this stupid, not particularly good photograph for this project. As I was trying to focus it properly it started to rain again and blah, yuck, I had to come back inside. Now the only question tonight is beer, wine or liquor? Hmmmmm, a tough one. . .

The Insect's Christmas

Merry Creepy Christmas from long, long ago. This is some amazing stop motion animation and extremely, uh, weird. Enjoy! (via Metafilter)

Holiday Spirit

I finally got it together today and got the holiday decorations up. First I threw a hissy fit though, because my mother very nicely gave me a Christmas tree. She lives in a retirement community where they're not supposed to have trees or lights so they won't set the place on fire (my feeling on this is that if they can't be trusted with Christmas lights they probably shouldn't be trusted with objects of real danger, like toasters and coffee machines, but whatever) but in previous years my mother had calmly flouted this rule. This year, however, she got the tree, had the tree guys set it up in a stand and suddenly had a guilt attack. So I got the tree. Which is a nice tree. But it blew my fantasy of going off to a tree farm with the children in the snow, tra la, and singing carols, tra la, as our happy family cut down a defenseless piny forest denizen. Tra la. Of course this is just a fantasy, since in reality neither of my horrid children gives a good goddamn about Christmas except for the parts that involve presents. But I had my heart set on it, like I do every year, hope over experience and all that, and I'd even printed out the list of tree farms. I was leaning towards the one that proudly advertised that it had a restroom - it harkens back to simpler times, when indoor plumbing was a marvel that should be exclaimed over - when my mother called to tell me that instead I had just won a free tree, come and get it. A was vocally relieved, but I got all upset: I mean, how dare they give me a free gorgeous tree that's much nicer than any tree I could afford? Tobacco deprivation can do some strange things to your brain. My mother and brother had some pointed comments to make about the poor little match girl, waiting all year to go to a tree farm, so very few good things ever happen to her, boo hoo. Yeah, okay. I did take the tree.

To cheer myself up I went off and bought more lights with the money I saved, though, so that worked out very nicely, and it is a really pretty tree. After I did the outdoor lights (good thing I got new lights, since a bunch were dead as roadkill, including my favorite stars, damn it) I started on the tree. Tree decorating involves, of course, putting on a Santa hat and listening to Christmas music. It's supposed to involve the children albeit preferably smaller than they actually are, and cleaner than they ever actually were, and wearing clothes that they have never actually even owned. In my personal holiday fantasy I should be sipping sherry while my handsome husband puts up the lights and the kids, in velvet, say adorable Christmasy things and compete (politely. With no shoving.) to hang their favorite ornaments and we all reminisce a lot about Christmases past. Ah, it's a lovely evening. Or it's supposed to be. What actually happens is I drink a couple of PBRs (sherry is gross) and decorate the tree alone; A drives off in my car saying "Have fun with the tree!" and M plays World of Warcraft loudly in the other room, every so often running in to hang up an ornament and make gagging noises in reference to the Christmas music.

It's okay, though, because we have a new holiday tradition now. I found a copy of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians at Target for, get this, ONE DOLLAR. Yes. As M said with truth and feeling, "A dollar is a great price for this movie! I might even pay 2 dollars for this movie!" No kidding. It's quite a movie; it's kind of hard to know even where to begin or how to describe Santa Claus Conquers the Martians although it must be noted that the Martians have some serious outfits; the world was rather different in 1964 and, mental note, it's probably a good idea to omit the air ducts from the air lock when designing Space Ship Number One. It's hilariously funny for the first half and then starts to drag a bit (it would probably be enhanced by some serious drugs) and then gets completely surreal at the end when the evil, moustached Martian fights a very young Pia Zadora in green face and a hallucinatory toy Indian chief with a drum kit. Seriously. So, we have a new and wonderful source of Christmas joy and we can watch it every year. In velvet. Sipping sherry. Or maybe absinthe would be more appropriate.

Conan Movies Are Way Underappreciated

Here at Hangover Headquarters, we have special ways to recover from post Thanksgiving stress disorder. It's a multi part process that involves first laying around in bed most of the day, reading magazines. By the way, Bark magazine? Really strange. Who knew there were so many expensive dog thingies out there? Or so many dog obsessed yuppies to buy them? My brother brought it over as part of his latest quixotic campaign, which is to turn my daughter into a dog whisperer and I read it cover to cover yesterday. Sorry, Bark people - I really hate to break this to you - but dogs aren't kids. They're dogs. I have two dogs and I love them dearly, but they're dogs. They're fine with plain dog food and a backyard and sleeping on cheap dog beds on the floor. They don't need clothes, designer bowls, handmade treats and special environmentally conscious toys that have been hand made by disadvantaged handicapped blind children in Nepal. They like empty water bottles to chew on and tennis balls. Their collars came from K-mart. Their rabies tags came from the clinic. And their ID tags came out of a machine at the Petsmart.

But wait. Back to Thanksgiving recovery. After you're done marveling at the weird world revealed by niche magazines and napping (many naps. Naps are mandatory.) you must eat Thanksgiving dinner all over again and then settle in for an evening watching both Conan movies, back to back! Yes! Conan movies are AWESOME! Conan movies RULE! Conan movies require NO HIGHER THOUGHT PROCESSES! Although you can mentally note that the director was smart in keeping Arnold's lines to a minimum - mostly he just says "CROM!" with a look of surprise. He's very good at saying "CROM!" Then his muscles ripple or something else amazing happens or they have a big old clanking sword fight and it's all good. You can relax into a leftover turkey haze and just lay back and enjoy. Seriously, though, they're not bad movies at all. Trust me on this - I watch bad movies for fun, and neither of the Conan movies qualifies - although the second one comes perilously close in parts, particularly the parts where Olivia D'Abo is required to do something besides look cute. They're well paced; they're nicely shot; the dialogue is mercifully minimal and the actors don't go insanely overboard.

Besides, my favorite movie line of all time is in Conan the Barbarian: "A couple years ago it was just another snake cult. Now, they're everywhere!" Truer words were never spoken - a subtle political observation that's more valid today than it was even then and makes the recent elections even more heartwarming, since we got to crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentations of their women.

Red Sonja!

In a moment of total madness this afternoon, I actually rented Red Sonja. M said, horrified, "You actually went in the store and rented that? You'll never be able to go in there again." It is true; I had forgotten the true awfulness of Red Sonja, although one must give it credit for being a fairly awesome metal hat movie. The characters pretty much all have way over the top metal hats, except for the Asian kung fu super master ninja guy, who has what appears to be a large hookah and small dog assembly on his head. And then Red Sonja herself sports hardly any headgear, but with that mullet, who needs a hat? It was hilarious. I laughed until I cried, several times: the utterly, utterly diabolical acting, the dismal effects, the ruthlessly atrocious script and the endless clanging sword battles (I don't think you're supposed to aim for the other guy's sword just to make a better clanking noise, really) make for a good time, I swear. The kids were fairly good sports about it, although when they found out that yes, I actually went to see it at the movie theatre when it came out (it is true. Of course I went with a bunch of people and we were all heavily medicated.) they started speaking softly to me in words of one syllable.

The end of it got me thinking, though. A friend of mine on a forum recently said that she has always wanted to walk away from an explosion in slow motion, putting on her sunglasses and I thought that was brilliant. I'll go one better - I want to run out through a collapsing castle of doom, leaping over lava pits and dodging boulders. I wonder if, when my arch nemesis finally appears and all my evil plans are thwarted, this house will slowly collapse in large yet surprisingly light hunks of masonry? It is obligatory, after all. Meanwhile, I had better get around to stopping up that totally obvious secret passage into the throne room that my nemesis can get through in about 3 and a half minutes.

And if it actually does snow tonight? I am SO going back over to the video store and getting BOTH Conan movies.

Me and Andy Goldsworthy

We watched an amazing documentary tonight: Rivers and Tides, a film about the British artist Andy Goldsworthy. His work is so beautiful, I can’t stand it. I sat there and watched this incredible film about this intense artist who creates this astonishing, tremendous work that’s almost all completely ephemeral in nature and I thought well, hell, what does Andy Goldsworthy have that I don’t? Besides, you know, talent. But am I not also an Artist? By god I am, and I even have a diploma from the College of Charleston somewhere in the back of the coat closet (unless the cat peed on it, which is eminently possible) saying that I am. So I have come up with a list comparing me to Andy Goldsworthy (also, due to poor HTML or blogger or something, I have come up with a lot of weird white space, but them's the breaks and actually, you know, kind of indicative of my art, which relies heavily on it's, uh, spontaneous, childlike and whimsical qualities):

Andy Goldsworth	Me
Has many books both by and about him	Has read many books
Creates heart stoppingly beautiful objects	Creates heart stoppingly peculiar objects, such as my hats, also just plain heart stopping objects like my patented and amazing post gallery opening macaroni & cheese, which uses all the cheese cubes left over from any average opening and can stop up most healthy arteries in record time.
Creates objects from natural materials that become more beautiful as they fall apart	Creates objects from mostly fake materials that fall apart, period.
Creates objects that are held together with amazing craftsmanship	Creates objects that fall apart without ever exhibiting one whole hell of a lot of craftsmanship
Uses natural materials, such as thorns, to hold sculptures together	Uses hot glue and lots of it to hold things together, mostly unsuccessfully.
Has commissions from major international art centers.	Has sold a couple of paintings out of bars.
Lives in beautiful home in Scotland.	Lives in messy home in North Carolina.
Has German film makers following him about.	Has springer spaniel puppy with printer ink cartridge in mouth following her about.

So you see, we are very similar, Andy Goldsworthy and I. And when the dog is done making the beautiful documentary film, the world will see the truth.

Seriously though, it’s an amazing, amazing film and well worth seeking out. They have it at Orbits; that’s where I got it. Watch it. Be amazed. Be inspired.

On Being A Celebrity

So I go into work on Wednesday morning (just for the record, for once it is not my own lameness that causes this blogging lag. No, just this one time, it is the fault of blogspot/blogger. I could at this point insert some undeserved vitriol towards them since they were down much of yesterday or I could say, which I will, thank the gods they exist, and honey, this is FREE, and so anyway. . . back to our regularly scheduled programming.) and I'm a celebrity. My bosses watched CNN, my friends watched CNN, friends I haven't even spoken with for three years watched CNN and a coworker who didn't even know I was going to be on grabbed me to tell me she saw me on CNN. Yes. I am famous now and apparently people on DailyKos were slamming us all for not having team spirit and supporting Heath Shuler unconditionally, for which I say to them, fuck off. Heath Shuler is anti-choice and anti gay marriage and for those two things alone I will be GOD FOREVER DAMNED if I support him unconditionally. I'm supporting him because he is, a) the lesser of two evils and b) because he is not Charles "Darth Vader" Taylor and c) because he is pro universal health care and pro union and d) because he is earnest and honest and trying very hard and e) because his campaign staff is doing this for love and not for money and f) because he named his kids cute names and f) because he is, yes, extremely cute. And also because I am a dead yellow dog Democrat, for better or for worse, or until we finally get a third and fourth and fifth party in this country who will actually represent my own personal political wishes, which are not aligned with the Demopublicans at all but instead favor accountability and the crushing of the corporatocracy and the question, what can governments do for their citizens, to wit, health care and time off and limits on the credit card companies and food for the children and the artists. God damn it.

I watched Iraq for Sale tonight and while I can't really recommend it wholeheartedly in the spirit, say, in which I would wholeheartedly recommend Mars Attacks , still, if you want to see something utterly depressing and sobering, I recommend it. The gist of it all is that there are far too many private contractors in Iraq, making horrifying bazillions of tax dollars doing things that we shouldn't be allowing them to do. This is not really a huge surprise to anyone who is even slightly politidcally aware, but it does bring it all together in a chillingly thorough way, plus a lot of very sad and depressing interviews with families of people who went over to Iraq apparently naively expecting that these companies wouldn't send them into the line of fire which is, of course, exactly what happened and then these people died. I will say that if you take a job with Halliburton and they send you to Iraq you are really kind of staggeringly innocent if you think you're not going to get shot at, but still, in the larger sense, the growth of "private contractors" in this country from the truly horrifying like the interrogators at Abu Ghraib to the small and sad like any given clerical employee at your favorite telecom is a large and terrible evil worthy of record and eradication.

And now I must go and do the dishes because I seem to have been talked into a written private type contract with my son whose dish night it is supposed to be, in which I will do his dishes tonight and then I get to take actual pictures of him for 10 days, except I'm not allowed, of course, to blog them. Hmmmmmm. Perhaps it is unwise to sign contracts when you get home from Drinking Liberally.

Dimensional Time Slippage

I feel better, if a bit transparent, as you can see from this lovely self portrait. It took exactly 24 hours and some Chinese food to cure me; the ghost of the chicken salad is forever exorcised, thank the gods. And another simple pleasure is removed from my life: fuck chicken salad. I am never eating chicken salad again. That part of my existence, the I think I'll treat myself to some chicken salad for lunch today part is fini, kaput and ended. Chicken salad turns out to be treacherous stuff, not to be trifled with. Or eaten. God, not eaten.

Meanwhile, there is a ghost ship in Italy and my son has a theory that it's all due to seismic activity. He thinks that tectonic plate collisions under the Bermuda Triangle may occasionally cause interdimensional time slippage, small vortices of time, and that's where the ship came from. It thrills me beyond measure to have someone in the family at last with whom I can carry on these sorts of conversations, I must say. I am very fond of this boy. Last night we went over to get the aforementioned Chinese food at the Golden Dragon, our favorite takeout, and he was lamenting the fact that we don't live in NYC, which he perceives as a mystical wonderland where noone could ever get bored and they have Thai takeout on every corner. He cheered up, though, when we got to the strange little strip mall which houses Golden Dragon (this strip mall was apparently dumped there by a Bermuda Triangle time slip itself, because its location is vastly peculiar, its architecture unlikely, and its tenants ill assorted) and discovered that a shop calling itself the Euro Grocery had opened next door. Euro Grocery apparently caters to displaced Russians and Greeks (in Asheville? Who knew?) and it contains a treasure trove of strange Russian candy, whole smoked herrings, and soda with improbable labels. We promptly bought some mysterious chocolates, a jar of taramosalata and a 2 liter bottle of soda which was billed as pear flavored and turns out to be a little too obscure, not to mention sweet, for our lame American palates.

Then we came home and watched a vintage Dr. Who episode, City of Death, and he actually got into it right along with me. It turns out that my deep love for Tom Baker remains, which may, now that I think about it, be one of the reasons I can never date, because, you know, who can live up to Tom Baker in the 70s? That hair. . that scarf. . . those deadpan jokes. . . god, I love him so. M did not, of course, understand this true love, and to protect his adolescent sensitivities I tried not to mention it more than 50 times or so, but he did get into the whole Dr. Who ethos: that "Oh my god this is SO bad. . no, wait, wait. . this is awesome!" thing that you either understand or you do not, and I am happy to report that in at least this instance the apple has not fallen far from the tree, and he gets it. Gets it totally, just as his sister, who sometimes seems to be not a bit like me, still managed to greet the arrival of the hand chair, seen above, with something approximating my own glee and delight. Yay. It is good when your kids like the same things you do.

Surrealist Weekend

It's that time of year again - the dreaded Bele Chere, Asheville's annual ode to all things drunken, sunburned and redneck. Also, crafts. Not, for the most part, good local crafts but instead shiny machine made crafts from New Jersey and of course obligatory mass produced hippie clothing reeking of incense. I kid, because I love. Or no, not love, love is too strong a word - but kind of enjoy. Although this year I am fuming over the music selections, since all the national acts are ticketed and 95% of the free music is local. I love local music; I support local music - I can see local music 365 days a year for $5 in far more pleasant surroundings and with better sound quality than at Bele Chere, so having all local music does not tempt me downtown. I used to pick a couple of bands I really wanted to see, the kind of bands who don't play here often - George Thorogood and John Hiatt spring immediately to mind - and go, but this year? Forget it. I like Government Mule but I'm not paying $20 to see them outdoors, from a distance, standing up, squashed in a giant crowd with hooting idiots spilling beer on me. I want that experience to be free of charge. And, as you may have guessed by now, I'm not much of a crowd person anyway. I always start uneasily looking for the exits.

However, I did go downtown, because, hold on to your hats gentle & fierce readers: I have acquired a Job. Yes. An actual Job. In my field. In what passes for my Career, or what used to be my Career and I guess is again. It's contract and part time for now but it may become salaried and full time in the very near future and I'm excited and I basically started Friday, at Bele Chere. Since I like this job, or the idea of this job, I'm not going to blog about it, for we all know where that leads. Nevertheless, there I was, starting work - in the middle of giant inflateable Ingles bags and kids swimming in the Pack Place fountain. The sky was unutterably blue and the crowds were much thinner than usual and so it was quite bearable, not to say fun.

But I left Bele Chere (by public transit! I took the bus downtown and back and it was not bad at all!) because I had heard that Walk In Theatre was playing a Monkees movie and I was excited. I gathered up a posse consisting of my friends S and J, who are also old Monkees fans and we plunked our folding chairs down in the Westville parking lot and prepared to discover the answer to that eternal question: who's cuter, Mike Nesmith or Mickey Dolenz? Because Davy's too short and Peter, well, Peter's just too Peter. Although cute. And it's eerie, I must say, how all of them have gotten, well, younger. When I used to watch them on TV they were, you know, old, and now they look about 12.

Yet we were fooled, for Head, the Monkees movie is not cute. No, cute is not a word I'd use - bizarre, yes. Drug induced, check. Psychedelic, mmm hmmm. Makes Eraserhead look like a stroll through normalcy, yup. It may have been the weirdest movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of weird movies. What the hell was it about? I have no idea. I wasn't on enough drugs - I'm not sure there are enough drugs in the universe to make that movie coherent. It seemed to be the Monkees' Manifesto: rather in the spirit of Karl Marx, manifesting away about being trapped in the library, the Monkees used Head to protest their terrible imprisonment in, uh, whatever state of consciousness it was that they were imprisoned in. Possibly their pants, which were scarily tight. It was brilliant and bizarre and there were sudden impossible glimpses of Teri Garr and Jack Nicholson and Annette Funicello and, holy shit, Frank Zappa! And somehow, juxtaposed against the surreal transformation of downtown Asheville into even more of a three ring circus than it usually is, it fit most perfectly.

Long Week

sunflower, backlit
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

It was a long wild week, a week where it was necessary, for one reason or another, for me to go out drinkin' every single night. I know, that's a lot to ask of any mere mortal. Not everyone could bring themselves to make that kind of a sacrifice simply in the name of fun, but let it never be said that I quail at such responsibilities, that I cower in the face of taverns or that I, god forbid, can't hold my liquor like a gentleman. Actually, you could say the last and be terrifying accurate, but let's not go there. Ever again. It was, as M would say, epic. Yes. An epic week, like an old Norse saga, with similar amounts of beer and sagas, if slightly (only slightly) fewer horned helmets and clashing sword on shield. Which gives me a chance, oooh, to link to one of my new total favorite pieces of Viking flash in the world!

I went out, I drank vast quantities of beer, I had fun, I had hangovers of varying proportions, although none, I'm happy to say, as cripplingly bad as I almost certainly deserved. I even somehow managed to clean the house up, mow the yard and get a little work done. And watch the first two installments of the Back to the Future movies, which I hadn't seen in many years and about which I can only say, "Scientists, get cracking. There are only 7 years left before I get my flying car - hop to it!"

And meanwhile, the garden is rocking right along and the sunflowers, which I love so much are, as my friend C would say, raging. Raging most awesomely, dude.