So it’s exactly a month since surgery-eve and I’m doing ok physically… Aches and pains still but I’ll manage. Not wanting to go out in public much due to my eyes not being tip top, nor my hearing, or my hair for that matter. I’ll live though.

There are some things starting to get to me though. I guess I was spoiled rotten during my hospital stay and my recovery and now I feel like I’m socially in a black hole. Limited reach outs from friends, limited shout outs and more, and less.

There’s also a lack of focus I am experiencing right now that un-nerves me. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been spot on with focus. On the ball. I see something that needs to be done, I do it. If someone else has something that needs to be done and isn’t sure of steps, I consult. I consult when not requested (and not in a rude way, it coincides needed productivity for a dormant product). I was all over the friggin’ place. AND I was hitting the ball out of the park on this shit! It was incredible, it was a rush…

…It was temporary?

I’m procrastinating more right now — with incoming emails, with to-do projects and what not — than I have at any time since I went to the hospital. There’s just this… social dread? I dunno… Part of me wants to get it done, knows I gotta get it done, knows I NEED to get it done.

The other part of me wants to chill out and surf the web and wait for someone to distract me. The people I want to distract me get credence while the people I don’t drive me back to work.

How about that? “Test your worth to John! Send him an IM during anti-social/anti-productivity hour and if he drops you for a project, you know your value!”

Newest skill test at the state fair, ya’ll. :-p

Oh, one other thing that is getting to me lately… Why can’t I enjoy movies any more? I feel a horrid pain when I watch Superman Returns (who hasn’t?) due to Bryan Singer’s epic scoping of the film and lack-of-editing to make Superman seem more likable. I saw The Two Towers before surgery and thought it (again) a disaster of editing proportions. That’s what I am seeing everywhere — edit, voice-over, edit, edit, chop, dissolve, blah, blah, blah… And these aren’t action sequences where I see them (most of the time)! Is it just heightened perception or should I burn my DVD Collection, get rid of my cable box and renounce Speilburg?

Ever since Chris Columbus left the Harry Potter movie franchise I’ve found the movies to be both entertaining and thrilling. I had read the first book (Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone) and was totally aghast when I saw how incredibly lame it came off.
It compelled me not to read another Potter book to avoid similar disappointments… at least until after I had my curiosity piqued by way of the film adaptations of Prisoner of Azkaban and the Goblet of Fire.

The latter film had enough of a hook to make me want to know what was going to happen next… It nagged at me. I didn’t care for the film as much as Prisoner of Azkaban when I first saw it because it ran so long and had so much going on… But it grew on me. Repeated watchings made me appreciate it more and the ending compelled me to return to Potter literature.

Cal it a Wrath of Khan/Empire Strikes Back negative closing and how it makes you ponder where the story goes from there. Goblet of Fire pulled it off (even if the film lacked the multiple side stories that J.K. Rowling worked into the book).

So I picked up Order of the Phoenix and read it through – finding Rowling’s narration exquisite and the story compelling just as I found the first book to be. While I’ve read about the new movie (due out this summer) through Entertainment Weekly and about which side stories are shelved (Ron playing quidditch, Dobby the house-elf making a return, etc) there is enough going on to keep you interested.

And after seeing the International trailer for the film — I’m dying to see this adaption:

Yeah, they are filled with bonus material. Yes, the movies tend to be really cool or funny…

But is Universal Studios and Universal Home Videos able to CLOSED CAPTION a single DVD? Noooooooooo.

Instead, what Universal does is SUBTITLE films, thinking this will cover the hearing impaired just fine and dandy. In some cases — things are indeed fine. But white text on a bright or white background (any given movie image) makes Subtitles a pain in the ass and impossible to read. It’s quite possible to entirely miss out on certain scenes from films because the text subtitles blend in to well.

The above is an example image of a CLOSE CAPTIONED broadcast… See how the text is laid against a black screen?

This is an example of a Universal DVD with subtitles. Notice the location of the titles? On the picture with absolutely nothing to contrast the text with. It’s easy for the text to become illegible depending on the scene.

Of course, most computer DVD playing programs let you change the subtitles around a bit — make them different colors, different fonts and so forth… You don’t have that option on stand-alone DVD players…

Universal prefers subtitles to keep things on teh cheap. It doesn’t matter if hearing-impaired fans have a hard time (or can’t access the bonus materials — a common problem from all Home Video companies). It just comes down to their financial bottom line. Cheap bastards.

Hope everybody had a great Christmas.

Well, it’s been over a year since I left Netflix and what did Santa bring me but a one year gift subscription.  Ho Ho Ho…  I’m trying to build up my queue again and there are a number of films I have flat out forgotten about over the past few weeks and months that I would like to see.

At the top of my queue is War of the Worlds and Sahara. I’ve also got Seaon 3 of 24 in there, Murderball, March of the Penguins, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Team America – World Police, Crash, Constantine and a few others… But I know or sure I’m forgetting a lot of flicks and can us some recommendations. I’ve seen a few thanks to cable and owning the DVD’s (so please no one suggest Batman Begins or the last Star Wars sequel)…

It’s been a while since I decided to read any non-ficiton. Usually it’s biographical works on icons of the Entertainment industry (ie: Beatles or the Doors). Keeping with that trend, I decided to pick up Ray Manzarek’s Light My Fire, it’s a Doors autobiography I’ve been meanign to read for some time.

And yet, as I’m still in the early areas of the book, I’m trying to understand why I thought it was a must read? Probably because of all the positive reviews of the book when it originally was released. Can’t be bad at all then, can it?

From a writing standpoint, it can be all that bad. And worse. Though Manzarek has a unique perspective on his tail…. He’s not a writer.

The book comes off much like a personal journal would, I guess… Reporting the mundane as well as the gripping, life-altering events of Ray’s life… But Manzarek loses focus and direction on any given topic quite easily. At one moment he’s about to discuss finding a live performance of the Blues in the south side o fChicago, and the next moment he’s rambling about attire he wore to graduation from the 8th grade…. One moment he’s about to get into his first exposure to Beat poetry, the next he’s laying the smackdown on facism and intimidation of the California Highway Patrol. He goes off on the broadest tangents and does not focus on the event that inspires the tangent thought.

Another instance of Ray veering wildly is a recounting of Jim Morrison’s UCLA film school student film… While trying to detail Jim’s non-linear movie that Rya found “poetic”, he begins recounting Oliver Stone’s version of the student film that he made as part of his feature film on the Doors. Ray goes off on Oliver for makign an innocent film into something with anti-semitism and Nazi inneundo. He attacks Stone (as he has since the film came out in the early 1990′s) and lets the UCLA film school experience vanish from the story.

It almost comes off like a conversation — one that varies wildly as those who partake in the conversation ramble on into the night. Yet, having to read this conversation is painful… Especially with gramatical errors of repeated run-on sentences, short sentences that woudl be better combined, repetition of adjectives, etc….

Ray’s book, while from the heart, has nothing on John Densemore’s Riders on the Storm autobiography.,

Bah, this time at least take a guess if you don’t know the answer….

Anyhow — Trivia round 2 is upon us.

In The Godfather films, what is routinely used as a death sign before a killing?

OK, I want to try to do a weekly thing that will at least keep me from being entirely bored with der Stonegauge…. It’s soemthign that I usually reserve for Internet Message boards and the like. So I figure it can’t hurt to try it here on the site.

OK, what will happen is eithe ri post a quote or a question concerning films. Just answer the question and presto. You can eithe rask me a question to follow up or you can post a quote and ask me what movie it’s from.

Anyone willing to play? I’ll make the first one easy:

What was the phrase that is inscribed in black-speech on the One Ring in Lord of the Rings?

This is an example of either incredible work or too much time on one’s hands…

….and for those who can appreciate The Hobbit, here is a very very disturbing song/video (at least for me).

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, by Leonard Nimoy

Edit: 10-27-2007 The above link went dead several years ago but I’ve been horrified at the memory of the film. Praise YouTube for letting me share the laughable horror with you as well!

Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) has just attempted to explain his complicated problems with his girlfriend Alyssa’s lurid past to his friends, Jay and “Silent” Bob. This leads to the longest speech of the Jersey Films Quadrology by our beloved Silent Bob:

Silent Bob: Chasing Amy.
(Shocked silence, more for the audience than anyone else)

Holden: What? What did you say?

Bob: You’re chasing Amy.

Jay: Why do you so shocked for, man? Fat bastard does this all the time. Think just because never says anything, it’ll have some huge impact when he does open his fucking mouth…

Bob: Jesus Christ, why don’t you just shut the fuck up. You’re yap, yap, yapping all the time. Give me a fucking headache. (to Holden) I went through something like what you’re talking about, a couple years ago, this chick named Amy.

Jay: When?

Bob: A couple years ago?

Jay: What, you live in Canada or something? Why don’t I know about this?

Bob: Bitch, what you don’t know about me I could just about squeeze in the Grand fucking Canyon. Did you know I always wanted to be a dancer in Vegas? (does a gesture with his hands, a reference to a move by the exotic dancers in “Showgirls”) Betcha ya didn’t even know that shit, did ya?

Jay: So tell your fucking story so we can get outta here and smoke this.

Bob: So, there’s me and Amy. And we’re all inseparable, right? Big time in love. Then four months down the road, the idiot gear kicks in, and I ask about the ex-boyfriend. Which, as we all know, is a really dumb move. But you know how you don’t wanna know, but just have to know–stupid guy bullshit. So, anyway, she starts telling me about him. How they fell in love, how they went out for a couple of yeas, how they lived together, her mother likes me better, blah blah blah blah blah. And I’m okay. Then she drops the bomb. And the bomb is this: it seems that a couple of times while they were going out, he brought some people to bed with him, “menage a troi,” I believe it’s called. And this just blows my mind, right? I mean, I am not used to this sorta thing; I was raised Catholic, for Gods sake.

Jay: Saint shithead.

Bob (to Jay): Do something. (to Holden) So I’m totally weirded out by this, right? So I start blasting her. I mean, I don’t know how to deal with what I’m feeling, so I figure the best way is to call her ‘slut,’ tell her she was used. I’m out for blood, I really want to hurt this girl. I’m like, “What the fuck is your problem,” right? And she’s just trying to calmly tell me it was that time, it was that place, and she doesn’t feel like she should apologize because she doesn’t feel that she’s done anything wrong. And I say, “Oh, really?” That’s when I look her straight in the eye, tell her it’s over. I walk.

Jay: Fucking-A.

Bob: No, idiot, it was a mistake. I wasn’t disgusted with her, I was afraid. In that moment, I felt small, like I lacked experience, like I’d never be enough for her or something like that, you know what I’m saying? But what I did not get: she didn’t care. She wasn’t looking for that guy any more. She was looking for me, for the Bob. But by the time I figured this all out, it was too late. She had moved on. And all I had to show for it was some foolish pride which gave way to regret. She was the girl. I know that now. But (lights a cigarette) I pushed her away. (pause) So I spend every day since then chasing Amy. (pause) So to speak.