It's almost fall, and with the change in seasons comes the good and the bad.
Good: Football is starting.
Bad: Freakin allergies.
Good: Baseball is moving into the playoffs.
Bad: Freakin allergies.
Good: Cooler temperatures means I can open the apartment up.
Bad: Freakin allergies!
Good: The leaves change colors and it looks really pretty out there.
Bad: FREAKIN ALLERGIES!
Did I mention that I have allergy problems in fall? Yeah, same as the spring really. In the spring it's because of the flowers. In the fall, it's usually grass and crepe mertles. Hate them damn things. Oh sure they LOOK pretty, flowers all over the trees and so forth but they REALLY get me stuffy and in Memphis, they're EVERYWHERE!
Ah well, won't be long now before they lose their leaves and flowers and become sticks again. Besides, in fall, there's always more good than bad :-)
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CC and I both had a long weekend this week. She had Labor Day off and, well I always have a long weekend owing to my 10-hour work days. We both wanted to DO something with that extra day but we weren't sure what. Naturally we decided to go shopping :-)
It wasn't looking like a good shopping trip at first. We'd gone to the outdoor mall over in one of the other suburbs and nothing was really jumping out at us. THEN we went to the bookstore. Oh yes, the shopping began.
Now, in all fairness, it's REALLY easy for me to burn off a LOT of money in a book store. All I have to do is start browsing and pretty soon I've got more books than I can carry. What was funny was watching CC do the same thing. She doesn't usually go nuts but she sure did on Sunday.
Started as soon as we walked in the door. They had a display of these Mad Magazine books for bathroom reading. Thick books with lots of clips from Mad. Well we just HAD to get one of THOSE :-) Then she started browsing through the bargain section while I checked for books by "The Usual Suspects", authors I normally read. She was doing ok at that point but then she remembered that she's going to be helping the boss' nanny with her English and American culture. Let the shopping begin!
30 minutes later she's over in the reference section digging through a display of Spark charts and she tells me, "We may be here for a while."
In all we spent about an hour and a half in the book store and just over 100 dollars. Not bad when you realize that at one point we were carrying WELL over 200 dollars worth of stuff. We cut back :-)
It was also funny when she saw one of the books I was getting. It's a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. She picks it up, flips through it a little then shakes her head. "I don't know HOW you can read stuff like this. It would take me forever to wade through all this and I'd only do it if it was required for a class or something." Oh I just had to laugh at that one :-) She's right, of course. Most people wouldn't wade through stuff like that unless forced. Me, well I like to shake things up with my reading :-)
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Speaking of reading, the latest Murakami book came out last week and I've already got a copy. Pre-ordered it online. This time he's released a book of short stories so if you prefer long fiction you may want to hold off. On the other hand, even his short stories are great and it's nice to have something on hand to read that doesn't require a long commitment. According to the introduction, he writes short stories between novels. He sort of alternates between the two.
This fall we also get another James Ellroy movie. If the name sounds familiar, he's the guy who wrote the book L. A. Confidential. The movie starred Russel Crow, Guy Pearce and Keven Spacey and was excellent. Unfortunately it came out around the same time as Titanic.
The latest movie is based on his novel The Black Dahlia which is based on an actual case that shook the country at the time. A woman was found dead in a vacant lot. The more the detectives looked into the case, the more it was clear she'd gotten into a lot of creepy, underworld type stuff. No one really knew who she was and the murder was never officially solved. It's been the subject of other books and a few documentaries. I have no idea if this particular movie will be good but the novel is great and so is the cast. Time will tell.
Coming out this Christmas is another of those great Chinese movies. Zhang Yimou has gotten together with Chow Yun Fat and his old partner Gong Li (they dated for a long time and she was in a LOT of his earlier films). Once again he's doing a historical epic and it looks like it's going to be a great one. You remember how cool Hero was and House of Flying Daggers. Well, have a look at the trailers for Curse of the Golden Flower. I always try to see these movies in the theater but I rarely do. This is Memphis. They just don't get distributed very well here. If we're lucky they play for a few weeks in some creepy, run-down theater in a bad neighborhood that's supposed to show all the "art flicks". So, I may have to wait and catch this one on video. Still, it looks like it's going to be a great one!
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