Weekend Warrior
It's been awhile since I blogged on a weekend. Avoiding the internet on Saturdays and Sundays for the past month was one of several failed schemes, along with three glorious mornings last week when I got up at 7:30 AM to go jogging, I have embarked upon to try and get myself to be more productive in general; without teaching, I've fallen victim to structure-less existence (my two classes are both at 5 PM, and so there's no pressure to be awake, ever, before 1 in the afternoon). The struggle is on-going, and hopefully I'll get something to stick soon--I'm only on the internet today because I put off my Culturology (it'll go up on Monday) post a bit later than normal this week, so I should be back to not-internetting on the week-ends.
In fact, I've generally felt that I operate best with a full schedule - I still look back to my Senior year of college, especially the middle third of it, as the best example of that, where I was preparing both my recital and then my grad school auditions at the same time that I was writing the poems that eventually filled in the bulk of my grad school portfolios and getting my band back together to play the greatest concert/house party of Carnegie Mellon history, plus taking a full course load including several upper-level undergraduate theory classes.
But I guess this is the part of grad school that is preparing me for, like, the real world, or something. Since it's very unreal, having so much free time--feels almost criminal, in its way. Most of my friends are bogged down in grading papers this weekend. Other than spending some quality time sending out contributor correspondences for the literary journal I work for (Gulf Stream Magazine) , it's pretty much up to me to, like, do some stuff, and like, maybe even get some stuff done. Which I will, damn it; writing this post reminds me to get some damn wind in my sails.
I did go see the movie Appaloosa last night, with a couple of the above-mentioned paper-graders. Deeply weird, that movie. Tried very hard to be an old-school Western, and succeeded on many fronts, but the pacing and editing were off in a way that destabilized the viewing experience in a major way. Probably worth watching on DVD in the future though, if for no other reason that catching the scenes that work, especially since at the same time that it tried to be old-school, it tried to be pretty funny too, and the funny bits are quite entertaining. The main other things that I bring out of it are:
1) Viggo Mortensen might actually be a good actor - I had kind of written him off for the Lord of the Rings movies and Hidalgo, but he's actually made relatively few movies since. I had somehow assumed that he had been in more crap movies like Hidalgo before making A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, but he hasn't. Therefore: more good actor than bad.
2) Renee Zellweger is not only a bad actress, but also ugly. Maybe she was cute 10 years ago, but she's tough to look at in this one. Maybe that was intentional. I dunno.
In fact, I've generally felt that I operate best with a full schedule - I still look back to my Senior year of college, especially the middle third of it, as the best example of that, where I was preparing both my recital and then my grad school auditions at the same time that I was writing the poems that eventually filled in the bulk of my grad school portfolios and getting my band back together to play the greatest concert/house party of Carnegie Mellon history, plus taking a full course load including several upper-level undergraduate theory classes.
But I guess this is the part of grad school that is preparing me for, like, the real world, or something. Since it's very unreal, having so much free time--feels almost criminal, in its way. Most of my friends are bogged down in grading papers this weekend. Other than spending some quality time sending out contributor correspondences for the literary journal I work for (Gulf Stream Magazine) , it's pretty much up to me to, like, do some stuff, and like, maybe even get some stuff done. Which I will, damn it; writing this post reminds me to get some damn wind in my sails.
I did go see the movie Appaloosa last night, with a couple of the above-mentioned paper-graders. Deeply weird, that movie. Tried very hard to be an old-school Western, and succeeded on many fronts, but the pacing and editing were off in a way that destabilized the viewing experience in a major way. Probably worth watching on DVD in the future though, if for no other reason that catching the scenes that work, especially since at the same time that it tried to be old-school, it tried to be pretty funny too, and the funny bits are quite entertaining. The main other things that I bring out of it are:
1) Viggo Mortensen might actually be a good actor - I had kind of written him off for the Lord of the Rings movies and Hidalgo, but he's actually made relatively few movies since. I had somehow assumed that he had been in more crap movies like Hidalgo before making A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, but he hasn't. Therefore: more good actor than bad.
2) Renee Zellweger is not only a bad actress, but also ugly. Maybe she was cute 10 years ago, but she's tough to look at in this one. Maybe that was intentional. I dunno.
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