Dandesun

http://pasoroblesdailynews.com/major-motion-picture-studio-operating-creston/30624/ I hadn't realized that Catherine Hickland had remarried much less that she now lives in my neck of the woods! Creston is just north of me, part of the amazing wine country we have that is still, somehow, a secret to many at large. She's now married to Todd Fisher and they're opening up their family movie studio (Todd's mother, Debbie Reynolds, and sister, Carrie Fisher, are part of the studio as well) to encourage local talent and film-making in SLO County. A part of Llanview has shown up in my neighborhood! I didn't even know!

I would love to know the thought processes at the SPD for this decision. "Yes, this is an amazingly good idea. A 60+ guy with a recent brain injury and a long history of not knowing who the fuck he is = perfect candidate for police work!"

The blaming Eve bit was kind of weird. At first, I thought that he was blaming her for making him break up with Paige... which is sort of true but it's also understandable given what she's done with him. ("You've cheated on my daughter twice! With me! I know for a fact that you're not good enough for her because of that!") But she reacted to it like he was accusing her of forcing him to have sex... so it confused me for a moment. I will say, though, that given my over-riding fear that Eve was going to accuse JJ of raping her when this all started it was almost refreshing to have him suggest quite the opposite despite it being patently untrue. Then it just kind of came off as a petulant kid blaming anyone else for his own bad behavior rather than take responsibility. I fully expect Eve to bear the brunt of this and for Paige to somehow 'forgive' JJ and completely align herself with the Horton clan. What would rather delight me in that scenario is if JJ actually developed actual sympathy for Eve in that situation... you could see him reacting to Jennifer telling him that 'you're my son and, no matter what, I'm with you' and thinking that Eve was right about the fact that she is and always will be Paige's mother... I don't know. I just think it would be more interesting to see him unable to stay away from her even if he gets the golden ticket of forgiveness by the holier than thous. It's kind of a shame that JJ and Eve hate each other so much because I do think KDP and CM work really well together. He's got real talent and she's an absolute pro. The whole story wavers when it comes to Paige, unfortunately. I don't think TOB is the worst I've ever seen by a longshot but she doesn't seem to have the ability to interject any real life into Paige. Paige is, unfortunately, the mopiest, saddest sack that ever sacked sadly and that's a freaking chore to watch. I think both CM and KDP are making the effort to show the complexity of their characters' mutual situation while the writing gives them very little to go on. I also think it's interesting that their mutual guilt is manifesting in completely different ways... Eve is trying to figure out any clues JJ might have let slip so she can immediately cover it up but her paranoia is going to be her undoing. JJ is trying to tamp it down and never let any of it see the light of day which will likely result in his exploding and the truth coming out that way. And I agree with the previously mentioned question of: why are Paige and JJ supposed to be in love? It seemed they went from kind of digging each other into TRUE LOVE within an eyeblink and I honestly don't get how. WHY does Paige think she and JJ are solid and for real? They've never seemed to be on the same page about anything. Ever.

I sat there going 'What the hell is that thing?' But, damn, if she didn't wear it well.

He's going to be one of the Flying Graysons? Interesting!

This book has almost caused car accidents on road trips when my mother and I go to Disneyland. Sometimes, I'm not sure what makes her laugh harder, the commentary or when I actually sing the songs... not that my voice is bad but it's hard to sing when you're laughing and if it's a song I haven't heard I attempt to make up a tune which just makes the song worse. And now those songs show up on the radio and I almost die laughing when they do. So many of them are from when my Mom was growing up so she knows a lot of the songs. Sometimes, she's mildly insulted that one is on the Worst list but the commentary is so funny she gets over it. I've also created a Dave Barry Worst Songs playlist on Spotify... though I couldn't bring myself to add Disco Duck to it, even as a joke. That song is an atrocity!

Devo's cover isn't better than the original 'Satisfaction' but it's the only other version of the song worth listening to simply because it's so completely different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tHrUr_ozZs Yep. He French braids an interns hair after posting an image of Anna's hair that he French braided. He even takes the interviewer to task for a) not knowing how to braid hair and b) not knowing that rubber bands damage the hair. I have not seen it yet but I have seen clips of "Agony."

It's the first one.

Keep in mind that there is a very very very slim margin between them all: Chris Evans: His portrayal of Captain Steve Rogers has made that character my absolute favorite in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But his portrayal of Johnny Storm was easily the best part about the Fantastic Four movies and, really, Johnny and Steve could not be more different (save for them both being blonde, blue-eyed dudes.) He's very self-aware and self-depreciating, loves his family, and is hilarious. He won me over, as himself, when during the Avengers press stuff, the question of 'if you had a time machine and could go back in the past what time period would you go to?' was asked. Hemsworth immediately said 'Dinosaurs.' and Evans pauses and goes "Can I bring stuff with me? Like penicillin? I don't want to go back in time, get a tooth-ache and then die." I like a guy who can be practical in the face of fantasy... it works for me. And he can dance! Chris Pratt: Absolutely adorkable. Another self-depreciating, hilarious guy who totally loves his family and has no problem showing it. I love that one of the writers for Parks and Rec admitted that the funniest line he thought ever happened on their show was actually a Pratt adlib. And the French braiding interview is just hot. Chris Hemsworth: He was George Kirk in the Star Trek reboot for about ten minutes of screentime and that absolute reassured me when he got cast as Thor. Dude can act. That he can get ridiculously huge to play the God of Thunder is a bonus. He requested a visit to Conan after seeing their joke promos for Thor and came on using the wimpy voice for the first minute of the interview before talking in his real voice. Sense of humors are hot. Chris Pine: I will forever love him solely for Bottle Shock but I also love his James T Kirk. I haven't seen as much of him as himself though but he's got a great voice and can do it all.

JJ doesn't come off as 18 to me... he honestly comes off as someone in his 20s. Mid-20s at that so this 'oh, he's so young and innocent' vibe that I guess I'm supposed to be getting from him isn't coming across that way at all. He certainly comes across as fucked up and with issues but then so does Eve. For all that Eve should be 'older and wiser' -- well, looking around Salem I see a lot of hugely fucked up people that should probably have learned a lesson or two ages ago. I mean... why, exactly, did Kate devote so much of her fucking time to digging up Jordan's secrets again? Because she wanted Rafe? And now she's banging Jordan's skeezy rapey step-father and despite having gone through this shit in her own life she's got absolutely no radar at all that Not!George Hazard is skeezy and rapey? I mean, Eve is clearly a TLC-reality show level train-wreck but I'd say that a significant part of that is these writers seem absolutely incapable of writing anything resembling nuance or layers or anything. Cripes, how long have they had Jordan and yet they've done absolutely nothing to make her remotely interesting. Jordan is the human equivalent of a flatline and, in all the time she's been here, the writers seem incapable of giving her anything to do other than wear 'I shit myself' expressions over her 'secret.' So while JJ clearly has issues galore that probably aren't helped by the distaff side of his family and their smug, holier-than-thou weirdness, I don't see him as an innocent in this at all. What we've seen has shown him being a very willing participant in the Eve/JJ sex humiliations. As for Eve, the first incident was clearly a rock-bottom situation... but I don't fully get the second. But I don't think the second was staged very well at all. They are both disgusted with themselves in the aftermath but they certainly don't show any signs of stopping during. The second bout didn't come off as passion-fueled-by-hate even... it was just... badly staged, like I said. Plus, I know Eve's going to catch all the shit for this. Paige will hate her. The Hortons will probably show up at her apartment with pitchforks and torches. If Salem had stocks they'd throw Eve into them as fast as they could get her to Holy Horton Square, of this I'm sure. The question is if Eve then gets jettisoned from the 'teen scene' and allowed to interact with actual grown ups for a change or if she's consigned to play the evil temptress against the teen true love... bleargh... I can't even. It would be really nice if they let her do something else. This story sucks and KDP can do a lot with very little... but come on already. Give me something to actually root for, for a change!

She was that way with Todd... and Franco... and Jakeson... and, God knows, during the Guza years it seemed to be a requirement to go on and on and on about Carly's imagined virtues in order to remain in Port Charles for any length of time.

So... it sounds like Carly's still an idiot. Dumping Franco, and let's be real, she didn't so much dump him as he was done with her and made it pretty fucking easy... and besides, he's the one that said no at the wedding first, didn't do a damn thing to improve her minimal intelligence. Arguing with Sam about Jakeson's innocence... she knows absolutely nothing about this guy... except that, again, he does little more than tell her how awesome she is. She's an idiot. (And I'm so glad Ron can no longer write Blair like this.)

PoA is my favorite of the books. It really blew open the whole wizarding world and was the first to really stretch out and I loved that about it. Plus, it's also the one that made the history very personal... connecting it to Harry very deeply and digging into his father's young years and all of that. I would agree that the movie had a good grasp of vision... but I'd also agree that cutting out the Marauder's detailing was a huge mistake.

Yeah, I assumed burial meant entombment. It strikes me that elves probably don't bury their dead... they either go to the Undying Lands or... I would honestly assume that they use a pyre or even perform a sort of Viking funeral for those that fall in battle. If elves love the stars I can see them rendering their dead unto ashes that fly into the sky like stars. So, for me, Tauriel speaking of 'they want to bury him' seems an elvish way of not wanting someone she came to care for interred in the ground. Elves just don't understand that. I have purchased the Extended Editions of both An Unexpected Journey and Desolation of Smaug because I'm something of a world-builder myself and seeing the thought processes of the film-makers in the world of Tolkien delights me and have rather immersed myself over the weekend in such things (when not finishing painting my room, grocery shopping, hardware store shopping etc...) It's funny because they do point out that Tolkien didn't do a hell of a lot to differentiate the dwarves in The Hobbit and just having thirteen dwarves that looked like Gimli was just not going to work. I also loved how Richard Armitage didn't think he'd get the role because he was too young to be Thorin as he is in the book but he wanted it because reading those books were one of the things that made him want to be an actor and tell stories. Also, the idea that the oak branch that Thorin used as a shield would become important enough for Thorin to gild and whatnot was Armitage's idea... he even sketched out ideas for it. All of this appeals to the D&D girl in me... where you play a character and you immerse yourself so much that you really start getting into the ideas of where this weapon came from or why the character follows this or that god and all that. Like I said, I have a weakness for world-building. Also, the focus on Martin Freeman's portrayal of Bilbo is great. They show a lot of the different takes he does for scenes... and, man, Ian McKellan has some amazingly wonderful things to say about Martin as an actor. I've always liked Martin Freeman and I freaking love Ian McKellan so hearing the things he has to say about Freeman, how he actually expressed jealousy and admiration over Freeman's abilities, to the point where he mentioned that he seemed to be doing a style of acting McKellan had never seen before... I put a lot of weight into that sort of thing.

I remember liking Gia, what little I saw of her since I was so hardcore on The Barge at that point I wasn't even following the boards all that much. The thing about Gia, though, is that she was such a complete break from that dark, Romantic Gothic vibe that the Cassadines wear like cloaks (they all wear cloaks, of course, and are transported via horse-drawn carriage. It is so.) that she either would have been a perfect foil or she would have ground them into the dust and irrevocably changed them all forever. Which, depending on the day, could be a good thing or a bad thing. I think it might have been ideal for Gia to be the one to kill Helena... taking her place in a manner of speaking. Frankly, Helena isn't going to respect anyone that her descendants choose until they go old school and put down the old guard with their bare hands. Helena's old school like that... she's the Alpha and only being replaced by one strong enough to kill her will earn her respect in that last breath.

It seems to me that writing a nanny killing herself at a Cassadine party "Spencer, look at me! I'm over here! I love you, Spencer! Look at me, Spencer! It's all for you!" would be right up Ron's alley. You can just imagine Helena off to the side, smiling to herself as it all plays out. Nik would and should be appropriately horrified. The Cassadines are so bizarrely Gothic... trapped part way between respectability (for some) and (for others) living in a past that has long since abandoned them. Helena is basically a character from Vampire: The Masquerade except that she appears to have absolutely no actual interest in maintaining said Masquerade... which means she's a full on Sabbat, probably Lasombra. Anyway... the point is that Helena lives in a world completely separate from the one Port Charles exists in, even as fucked up as it is. She is a woman who truly believes it is her right to call upon scores of virgins to be delivered to her door so she may kill them and bathe in their blood. She has no actual connection to the real world even in soap terms and the fact that she continues to carry on and hold sway over others pretty much convinces me that she is a vampire. While Helena's generation fancied themselves to be akin to Transylvanian nobility which was passed on somewhat to Stavros, though he also seemed to align himself with some version of Dr. Doom, Stefan took a few steps away from that and fashioned himself more along the lines of a dark Gothic romantic hero. It suit him, really. He was along the lines of a Heathcliff or Mr, Rochester... darkly tragic. Romantic with a capital R in the sense that there was a Sword of Damocles over his head... a happy ending was never his fate but if he could only live grasping for it then he lived well... And now there's Nikolas, who is rather a disappointment given the over-wrought schemes and desires of his predecessors. I mean, his romantic choices have been exceedingly common. Sure, Nik has tried to dress them up to fit some semblance of Cassadine flavor... fashioning Emily into a lost princess, stealing Elizabeth away from his half-brother, ... I have no idea how SWMNBN even fits into that mess... I'd like to think even an insane Cassadine would choose better than that... Even if an argument could be made for Britt, she's more a product of a strange match that comes out of a Robert Ludlum Cold War spy book than anything dark and Gothic and Romantic. Nik's just failing on that front... although, to be fair... there aren't any ladies in Port Charles who come close to being a foil for that Cassadine tradition. There are no Bronte-esque heroines in Port Charles. There are no dark ladies in shadow searching for a way to claw their way up the ladder to claim a place for themselves come hell or high water. And no, Carly doesn't remotely fit that description. There aren't even any pristine heroines that could tempt a creature of the dark with her inate goodness and nobility, that would at least satisfy the dark Gothic craving that most Romantic Cassadines crave like the very air. It's disappointing.

I see the Castle of Dr. Brain on there as well as Conquests of the Longbow (no Conquests of Camelot, though, odd)... whee! The various different Sim games... man, I remember when there seemed to be SimEverything. Various Carmen SanDiego games... LOTS of Sierra games of old.. especially ones I've wanted to introduce my niece and nephews to. Oh, this is going to be a major timesink.

I squeed quite loudly when it was announced that there was going to be an Agent Carter short on the Iron Man 3 disc release. It was a great one. I was absolutely delighted. Bradley Whitford playing in his wheelhouse as Infuriating Smug Douchebag is always fun. But I loved the final clip with Dum Dum Dugan just flabbergasted over the bikinis and Howard casually answering his questions. "It's called the bikini." "Did you invent it?" "No. The French." Peggy having the picture of pre-serum Steve has always been endearing. It was obvious that she grew to appreciate him before he got all tall and strong. Erskine picked him for a reason, the reason being that Steve had that inherent goodness in him that the serum would enhance along with the rest of him. Steve figured out how to get the flag, Steve never gave up despite being targeted and picked on by Gilmour Hodge... the dude Peggy socked within minutes of meeting him. I always found it funny how in The Avengers Tony mocked Steve for being nothing more than a lab experiment "Everything special about you came out of a bottle!" when the thing that made Steve special was Steve. His enhancements came from a bottle (so to speak) but Erskine knew that Steve was the right one, the obvious choice. Steve was smart, had guts, was compassionate and just wanted to be useful. In a lot of ways, just wanting to be useful is probably something Peggy was able to empathize with.

I'm still ticked off that that got the kibosh and then they jettisoned Max. Max and Roxy combined with Max being mentor to Natalie in her pool game was finally getting Max back on my good side after JFP made him absolutely insufferable for way too long. (Complete separation from Blair also helped. I have hated Max/Blair from jump... long before she ever crossed paths with Todd.) Max and Blair were just the worst around each other so getting them away from each other was a good thing. That being said, when Roxy was trying to figure out what Max liked and was going down his list of women she actually referred to Blair as "Lady Blair" as if she were this high society dame and it was hilarious because a) Blair never was and b) of course Roxy would think that. Roxy ended up doing this bizarre amalgam of all of Max' loves complete with accent a la Gabrielle and it was pretty awesome. That's what they should have continued with. But alas... they did not.

This is giving me Claremont X-Men flashbacks. It's fairly common knowledge in X-Lore that Chris Claremont absolutely intended Nightcrawler's parentage to be Mystique and Destiny. Mystique being a shape-shifter was meant to be the father and Destiny was Mystique's long time companion (a precognitive former opera singer) was meant to be the mother. This was back in the early 80s so you can imagine that Marvel editorial was not remotely keen on going that route. So what they ended up doing was having Mystique be Nightcrawler's mother and depending on the story lost him while she was being hunted down by the pitchfork and torch bearing generic European crowd (seriously, this mob of pitchfork and torch bearing Euros shows up... a LOT) OR she deliberately threw him off a cliff to then shape shift and save herself. I'd almost wonder if Ron ever read Claremont's X-men but... no, impossible. Claremont wrote amazingly strong and layered women who did not exist solely to be incubators, who were flawed and troubled yet also powerful and mighty. One would think that might have rubbed off, alas. I do remember talking about the Roxy situation over at TWoP. IK certainly had the whiskey voice that you could possibly play with a transgender role (think Kathleen Turner as Chandler's father on Friends) but much like Claremont in the early 80s, you just knew that ABC was never going to go there. Ever. In any kind of serious way.

To be fair, neither did Tolkien. But then, the bulk of the dwarves were background noise. The major stuff was Bilbo, Gandalf and Thorin.

Well, she's been blaming Franco, hasn't she? It's all his fault... I seem to have seen that particular deflection in quite a number of recaps. And yet, no one seems to be all 'YOU BROUGHT THAT ON YOURSELF YOU STUPID GIT!' when she does. It wasn't her and Sonny who did anything wrong... it was all Franco's fault for blowing the whistle on them. HE was the one that was wrong. Carly gives me a headache.

I think I'm the opposite there... of the cast of The Hobbit I knew Lee Pace and Martin Freeman and Luke Evans as well as the characters who were present in the LOTR trilogy. I had heard the name Evangeline Lilly but I had no idea who she was (yes, I know now she was on Lost. Never watched it.) And Richard Armitage seemed familiar to me but I don't know how because I hadn't seen anything he was in. Except for Captain America: The First Avenger where he was the first HYDRA guy to show up (as Steve became Cap) shoot Stanley Tucci and then be the subject the chase scene through Brooklyn. And it wasn't like I went 'Hey! It's the HYDRA agent from the first Cap movie!' when I saw him. With the Hobbit I just went "They made some hot dwarves... I was not expecting that." As for LOTR, I knew Ian McKellan, Christopher Lee, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Sean Bean (major pull for me even if I hadn't been already interested), John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett and Karl Urban. I didn't know Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan. or Orlando Bloom or Viggo Mortensen. And, as it turned out, Sean Bean made the character of Boromir infinitely more likable to me than in the books. I found Book!Boromir to be a major douche. Sean Bean!Boromir had a lot more pathos about him. As for keeping them all straight... well... I am something of a D&D nerd and so much of that is born from Tolkien's high fantasy AND I grew up watching the Rankin-Bass versions of The Hobbit and Return of the King (I've always loved Eowyn, man, and a lot of it comes from that cartoon.) No lie, the child in me was a bit bummed that Jackson's Elrond didn't have the motes of light dancing around his head... but Hugo Weaving played Elrond and that made up for a lot. Has anyone seen any of the extended version stuff for the various Hobbit movies, yet? That was something I found mesmerizing with LOTR... not just the lengthened and added scenes but the behind the scenes stuff with WETA Workshop and how hard they worked to create the various cultures in Middle-Earth. I'm thinking that immersing myself in that sort of thing with the Hobbit might not be a bad thing because I have a deep fondness for world building -- which might be why I like Tolkien so much despite his tendency to go off on tangents about Tom Bombadil or the Entwives or whatever.

Tom Bombadil is one of those purely Tolkien things that later writers have no idea what to do with. The fact that Tolkien himself never explained what Bombadil was probably added to that. He has reams and reams of history and explanation for everything in Middle-Earth... except for Tom Bombadil. His explanations of Tom are vague and I think he admits that he's not sure exactly what Tom actually is... save that he's been where he is longer than anyone. There are a lot of speculation about Tom... some think he's an evil presence held back by the power of the elves since the land he lives in is rather wretched and evil itself. I can totally understand why they removed Tom from the films. He's such a bizarre character in and of himself that he would stand out in the absolute wrong way. Besides, the Hobbits getting caught by the Barrow Wight in the Barrow Downs and all that is also unnecessary to the story when you've got so much to tell. It's fine for the book but they really did need to edit the shit out of that story in order to even make it fit into three movies. My aunt is a hardcore Tolkien purist (so much so that she refuses to see the movies at all -- she is deeply offended that the elves have pointed ears) and I should really ask her what she thinks of Tom Bombadil. I think her answer might be interesting.