So I wasn’t back after all. This sorting out of personal stuff is harder than it looks.
I will, however, be back on Friday. And someday my review of The Conjuring will publish. But those are probably going to be two different things.
In the meantime, here’s a mantis who spent an afternoon hanging onto my house.
You wouldn’t think taking my mother to appointments would stop the site in its tracks, would you?
Yeah, I didn’t think so either, but here we are. I guess that hour out of my day is The Blogging Hour and I had no idea until now.
I haven’t forgotten my 1.4 readers, though: Fright Night review is going to happen! Now on Valentine’s Day, because I love it that much, and because I shouldn’t write about how awesome Donald O’Connor is in Singin’ In The Rain two years in a row. See you next month!
I know, I haven’t been posting on schedule, partly from laziness and partly from a desire to get some movies I haven’t seen into the Friday mix this month (The Conjuring arrives at my house tomorrow and will be written up the minute someone can pull me off the ceiling and stop the whimpering, I assume).
Until then, an anecdote from this century this time: I Am A Prophet, But Not A Very Good One
In 2003, I was still with the guy I refer to as Future Ex-Husband. I was also working on a piece of fanfiction for my own amusement (amazingly, not about Highlander—though I did see a crossover fic once).
I had an original character in this story and was working on her backstory, realizing that people don’t spend seven years only doing [big plot activity]. No, she’d probably dated at least one person, even if it hadn’t worked out. So I invented another character, “Bill,” whose job put him near the action of the story. They’d dated for a couple of years, but she was more interested in her work, and eventually the two of them split up. Bill had brown hair and glasses and presented himself as being more stable than he probably was. A good guy, in other words, who was too flawed to date.
My unfinished story got stuck in a drawer for ten years, the first two of which were spent breaking up with the FEH. A year or so after the separation, I entered what in retrospect was probably the rebound phase and started dating again.
He had brown hair and glasses. He thought of himself as a strong, stable relationship partner, but he could be moody and flaky. And I kid you not, his name was “Will,” one letter off from the fellow in my fanfic. They even worked in the same general field… and I did not notice any of this until I pulled that story out of my desk in 2013, long after it could have done me any good.
That’s right—I predicted my own rebound guy in a silly fanfic and I still went out with him, never once making the connection between Fanfiction Bill and Sitting-Next-To-Me-in-2006 Will.
So take it from me: you’ll probably gain more wisdom by reading other people, but do look over your own drafts once in a while. Your dignity may depend on it.
It finally happened: Thanks to some plotting for October and December (which, surprise!, will look a lot like most people’s October in terms of Friday posts), I’ve kind of cordoned off my possibilities for slow viewing weeks. As a result, I am all out of Friday at the moment.
When TV shows hit this sort of obstacle, they often do a clip show, so I will too.
Apropos Of Our Cynical Omelet: Search Terms And Me
I love reading search-term posts on other sites, but having few readers means it’s taken almost two years to amass enough for one of my own. I also think it might be fun to grade the Omelet in terms of providing service, so let’s see what people have been looking for!
“Hellboy’s heroine”—This was my first-ever search term, and though I’ve since referred to the end of the Hellboy movie, all this person got was a photo of my 2014 Hellboy Halloween costume. I’m so sorry. Grade: D+
“Sean Connery and Carol Sopel”—Apparently these two were married. I didn’t know that before seeing someone look for it, and I can’t imagine the searcher felt edified by my bitching about Highlander and Darby O’Gill. Grade: F
“Highlander absorbance”—This is the search term I’m most proud of; when I first noticed the spelling of “absorbance” on Brenda’s printout in the movie, I couldn’t find any confirmation that it was correct. That was several years ago, however, and the internet is much improved. I’m oddly pleased to be a resource to the three other proofreading Highlander fans out there. Grade: A+
“The Big Easy movie”—I like it for no compelling reason! Grade: A
“Jay Sherman and his sister Margo”—I mentioned the sibling relationship in my Friday post on The Critic, but didn’t really get into it. Margo’s great, though. Grade: B-
“Count Blah”—I used the Count—a Greg the Bunny character veeeeerrrry loosely based on the other famous vampire puppet—as a sight gag in my review of Frankenstein. I should probably do a Found-Again post for Greg the Bunny one of these days. Grade: C
“Kurgan fanfic”—Dude, I have tried: not to write any, but to find some, especially when I was doing the There Can Be Only Monday! posts. After on-and-mostly-off searching since I first saw the movie in the early 2000s, I have found maybe five stories. Highlander’s villain is such a beloved bad guy…by me, for one…but apparently does not inspire people to churn out reams of prose. Grade: does effort count?
The spirit of summer vacation appears to be strong with me this year. More “Double Danger” next Monday, and my thoughts on the 2007 modernized adaptation of Mrs. Amworth next Friday!
It’s the first time I’ve seen the sun in three days, so I’ll be having Found-The-Star-In-My-Solar-System-Again Friday instead. See you Monday!
A music-flavored anecdote from my youth:
When I was a kid, time in the car with my parents was spent listening to WLTY*, the “lite” radio station that played ’60s, ’70s and ’80s music, with a little ’50s thrown in. (This is probably where I get my lifelong affinity for sappy songs. You will pry my copy of History: America’s Greatest Hits from my cold, dead fingers, if that.)
Sometimes WLTY would play Richie Valens, and Mom would say, “He was so good. It’s a shame there won’t be more music from him.” Valens, of course, was dead.
Sometimes they’d play Jim Croce—actually, often they’d play Jim Croce—and again: “He was so talented. It’s a shame there won’t be any more music.” Jim Croce, as you probably know, is also no longer with us.
Sometimes they’d play “American Pie” or “Vincent” by Don McLean, and my mother would say exactly the same thing…
You can see where this is going, can’t you? To me being the only person struck with eldritch terror upon finding out Don McLean was playing Harborfest in 1990, that’s where.
Our house had an open-plan kitchen/living room. I was on the sofa. “Mom?” I called out.
Mom, cooking dinner: “What?”
I cleared my throat meaningfully. “It says here Don McLean’s playing in Norfolk this weekend.”
Nothing. If he weren’t a zombie, wouldn’t she express some interest since she loved his music? Then again, if he were in fact a zombie, she should definitely express some interest. I tried again.
“But isn’t he, you know…”
She did not know.
“…um…you know…dead?”
Thinking a musician from times past is dead is a normal mistake (especially in 2016). That’s the point at which a normal human being would have looked at the news and concluded that they’d misinterpreted what might be called Mom’s Standard Eulogy For Musicians. I’d love to say I have no idea what I was thinking, but I do. I was thinking GHOSTS AT HARBORFEST!, and for some reason couldn’t be deterred from thinking it.
What was even less normal, in retrospect, was the way I not only brought it up but backed gently into the idea, as if I were actually going to find out that Don McLean was a revenant, but only if I asked in just the right way so as not to alarm the ‘rents.
Eventually my mother stopped laughing at me…for this particular incident, anyway.
And I have never, in the intervening decades, been in any doubt as to whether Don McLean is alive or dead. In fact, every time I tell this story I seem to gain yet another person who will personally call me on the phone if and when the sad news ever breaks.
I can’t say I actively recommend the “embarrass yourself horribly” method of remembering whether a given famous person is alive or not, but I do know it works like a charm.
*I see that the WLTY call letters are now used by a station in Cayce, SC. The mystic Edgar Cayce used to live in…the Tidewater area, where I grew up! Coincidence? You bet.
Why Found-Again? Because this book used to be everything to me, that’s why.
There really isn’t a lot more to cover, since the last three sections are both well-written and still relevant today. We learn a bit about the criminal justice system:
More about surveillance, with diagrams and glossary:
And the history and general nitty-gritty of fingerprint identification.
And that’s all she they wrote.
The Verdict: I’m so glad I picked this up to reread: in a way, it explains an awful lot about me and the existence of this site in the first place. A little embarrassing, a lot of stuff to learn, and the occasional unfortunate hairdo: The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook isn’t just a part of childhood, it’s practically a mirror of childhood.
Might go well with: Anything tagged “Mystery” here on the Omelet.
Why Found-Again? My mother sold the family home last year, and I finally had to deal with the last thing I had left there: call it The Big Box Of J.A.’s Late Adolescence.
When I finally went though it—through the college papers and the really long satiric poems (mine) and the souvenir pom-pom from a 1991 ODU/Penn State basketball game I attended, among other odd treasures—I found neatly trimmed and stapled Soap Opera Digest recaps of every episode of what was then referred to as “the new Dark Shadows.”
Suddenly I was reminded of the weirdness of being a 17-year-old American kid with an absolutely scorching crush on Ben Cross. I suppose the answer to “Why Found-Again” might be “dignity”?
The Premise: In the little village of Collinsport, Maine (of course it’s Maine), a down-on-his-luck handyman decides to rob the Collins family crypt and accidentally frees 200-year-old vampire Barnabas. Barnabas and his new Eurotrash wardrobe—seems there really was some gold in that crypt—pose as part of the British branch of the wealthy Collins family and are welcomed with open arms.
When the vampire meets Victoria Winters, a governess who… surprise!… looks exactly like his long-lost fiancée, the stage is set for a story of loss, anguish, revenge, witchcraft, and time travel. Shortly after the doctor who was trying to cure Barnabas turns on him…
…Victoria finds herself thrust into the 18th century, embroiled in the Collins family troubles that led to Barnabas’s vampirism. (From what I’ve heard, this throw-in-all-the-paranormal-stuff-and-see-what-sticks approach is very much in the spirit of the original series. There’s always something happening in Collinsport!)
The Dark Shadows revival has a certain thematic similarity to Highlander in that we have a protagonist who would like to end his inner turmoil and become a nice, normal, incredibly wealthy mortal guy—which in this case would deprive the audience of Ben Cross roaring with fangs bared, so I’m completely against it.
The Verdict: During its original run, I loved this show so much I named my hamster Josette after Barnabas’s long-lost love. While I still enjoyed re-viewing, I must admit it no longer elicits quite that level of enthusiasm. If you are the sort of person who feels self-conscious watching something over the top, the ’90s Dark Shadows is certainly to be avoided (of course, you also won’t be reading this, since you will have perished from self-combustion somewhere around my eighth Highlander post). On the other hand, there are only twelve episodes, and it hits the comforting staples (also not a vampire joke) of everything I thought horror was as a young child.
And speaking of young children, take a look at the cast member who turned out the be the breakout movie star:
Might go well with: A black shirt, candlelight, anything Christopher Lee ever appeared in, a decent port.
The foolhardy and the bored can now officially navigate through my first 37 Highlander posts—the ones about the original movie— in order via helpful links. In my defense, going back and fixing that was exactly as boring as I thought it would be.
