"X-Men 3: The Last Stand"

I've seen X-Men 3: The Last Stand twice now. The first time it felt kind of disjointed, since there are really 3 storylines going at any one moment. Blipping from one to another to yet another got kind of irritating. The second time, though, I could latch onto little foreshadowings that I missed the first time. And I could anticipate the ouchy stuff and start feeling horrible about it whole minutes before it happened. I think poor Cowboy lost circulation in a couple fingers during one part.

You see, it's not a happy movie. Both times left me feeling like I was the one who'd nearly been flayed alive. But it also gave me several huge adrenaline rushes both times, and made me want to go do some slicing and dicing. If only I could figure out how to get my claws to emerge....

Some odd things happen in this movie. Mostly, there's Cyclops, who traditionally is my least-favorite X-Man (he's so whiny! So preppy! Such a pretty boy!). Cyke got broody and sexy! He should be scruffy all the time, wearing jeans and boots and letting his hair misbehave!

Not that I'd ever stop loving Wolverine best, of course. He's the broody baddish-boy with all the great lines. He's the one that always needs a hug. And he's been one of my three absolute-favorite superheroes since time immemorial (the other two are Robin and Spider-man, both also great with the one-liners...but Spidey from the comic books, not the movies). Besides, he's got claws. He wears jeans and wife-beaters. He's constantly scruffy. And when Hugh Jackman embodies him, he's got one of the greatest voices ever. Not to mention those Rudy-Valentino-esque nostrils. And okay, the muscles are nice too. Get nicer all the time, actually.

Anyway, yes, I quite liked X3. I didn't love and adore it the way I do X2, but it was worth seeing twice, and if someone like Noumenon or the Leatherneck wanted to go see it again and let someone tag along, I'd volunteer to do the tagging....

If enough people like me worked there, we could actually change the name.

Only 48 more days until Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man's Chest!!!

This meme comes from DKoren:

If you comment on this entry, I'll give you a letter so you can come up with ten words starting with that letter, plus explanations of what each word means to you.

DKoren gave me the letter "L", so here goes:

1. Lynne--My middle name. Also the middle name of my childhood best friend, spelled the same way.

2. Luc d'Yae--The middle child in the d'Yae family. Poor Luc (which is short for Lucien, btw) doesn't get to show up in either of my Combat! fanfic stories that feature the d'Yaes. Why? Because he died a couple weeks before "Hide and Seek" takes place. Poor Luc. He was the tall one too, the one who raised horses and helped his older brother Marc in their Resistance efforts against the Nazi invaders. He wasn't quite as good at deception as Marc, and got himself shot by the Nazis, in the living room in front of Marc and their younger brother Jean. I'm quite fond of Luc, even though I haven't gotten to write a single line of dialog for him. He's present in the stories anyway. Sorta.

3. Lutheran--I was born one, raised one, and I'm able to prove it. Jello, anyone?

4. Linkville--Tiny little hamlet in the Thumb area of Michigan where I lived between the ages of 3 and 12.

5. Luger--I got to fire an actual WWI Luger (which is a German pistol) a few years ago. It had a lot more recoil than I'd expected.

6. Lindbergh, Charles Augustus--One of my childhood heroes. I can still remember sitting on the floor in the living room as Mom read his books aloud to us. I'm still fond of him, and I love the movie about him, The Spirit of St. Louis, that stars Jimmy Stewart :-) I also really like the writings of his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, especially Bring Me a Unicorn.

7. Lucas--A black Lab/mutt we had when we lived in Michigan. He got hit by a car and had to have his right front leg amputated, but that barely slowed him down. Very sweet puppy.

8. Ludlum, Robert--A new favorite author of mine. I read his Jason Bourne trilogy last year and liked them so well I've acquired about ten more of his books at various yard sales and thrift stores, and am gradually working my way through them.

9. Lupins--As in "I'm sick to bloody death of lupins!" from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Everyone sing along with me: "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore,He steals from the poor and gives to the rich...." Probably my favorite of their longer skits (although I think I'll always like "The Spanish Inquisition" best of all their stuff. Well, except for a couple of their movies). "Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought!"

10. Lanyn--The name by which I first knew DKoren, because it's the one she uses on her LiveJournal blog. My wonderful writing mentor :-)

I FINISHED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I finished the first draft of Josey!!! Just a few minutes ago, right before midnight. Whoohooo!

It's 196 single-spaced MS Word pages long, 98,385 words, 33 chapters. Yeowsa.

The first sentence is "How can I begin?" and the last one is "And I smiled." :-)

I'm going to celebrate now. I'm going to watch a couple movies and maybe a Combat! ep or two and run around screaming in jubilation. Yippeekiyay!

I just got back from eating out with N, V, and A, friends from that jury I served on a year ago! We met at a Chinese buffet near here and had the best time reminiscing about our tour of jury duty and catching up on what's been happening to us since then.

I can't believe it's been a whole year already. Here's my journal entry from one year ago today. It was the beginning of the last week of hearing evidence...

@ 10:27pm Mon, 5-16-05

I really like the granola on the breakfast buffet--I have it almost every morning. It was sunnier today. When we got to our jury room, we found gifts from Judge H. and the Clerk of Court: glass mugs with the county seal on one side and our names etched on the other side, with "May 2005" and some words of appreciation. The Lone Male, C., got a special one, with "13 to 1" etched on the bottom :-D So I said if I ever write a book about this, that's what I'll title it :-D We got subs from Erbert & Gerbert's for lunch, then a bunch of us took a brisk walk. It was warm enough most of us shed our coats part way through. Our afternoon stint lasted until after 5pm, and then we all went bowling! I got 66 the first game and 79 the second. We ate supper at the bowling alley too--it was great fun :-D When we got back here around 8, I hung out in the Swiss Room a bit, then came back here and worked on my fanfic story, still called "Summers' Day" for lack of a better working title.

Oh yeah, I woke up way early this morning, so did yoga before breakfast.

It sounds like we had nothing but fun, didn't it? And we did have a good time, really, except when we were in the courtroom itself. Then we were very serious. Oh, and that story I was writing eventually turned into "Dying Like Men" ;-)

Ohmanohmanohman, I'm this close to finishing the first draft of my second novel ever, Josey!!! As in, tonight I started writing the final chapter! Wow. I can hardly believe I'm almost done with it. The first draft of my first novel took me over three years to finish. This one has taken me six and a half months. Zowie!

Yes, this is the novel I started in November for NaNoWriMo. And there's lots of rewriting to do on it, I can tell that already. For one thing, I'm going to lop off the first twelve chapters and use their events as flashbacks. Yeeeeeah...

Dad and Grandma O. are here for a couple days, on their way to points west of here. So Cowboy and I had supper with them last night and hung out for a while at their hotel. And tonight I had supper with them again, and then Daddy and I went to see Mission: Impossible 3!

I liked it. I liked it almost as well as the first one, and waaaaaaaaaaaay better than the second. The first one was sizzlingly original, while the second one was too informed by The Matrix and used too many identity-switches. This one is more informed by the Bourne movies, with wham-bang collisions and the use of random common objects as weapons (both a pen and a phone receiver, ala Bourne), but with crunchier fights (I do like the mind-altering swifty fights of the Bourne movies, but this was a movie about losing blood and getting hurt, so those wouldn't have worked).

M:I and M:I 3 are kind of like James Bond got buddies and some street smarts, lost his unrufflable tux-clad exterior somewhere along the way, but retained his gadges and panache. If that makes any sense. I'm tempted to rewatch the first one tonight, to see if it's as shiny as I remember. It's been several years since I watched it...

It's Good Shepherd Sunday, and in church this morning we sang one of my favorite hymns. It's Psalm 23 set to music, and I adore the way the text is rewritten. It's very lyrical and just enough different from the psalm that it gets me to think about the words and their meanings again, rather than just reciting sounds from memory. Here they are:

The Lord's my shepherd; I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures gree; he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

My soul he doth restore again,
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
E'en for his own name's sake.

Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear no ill;
For thou art with me, and thy rod
And staff me comfort still.

My table thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes;
My head thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.

Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me,
And in God's house forevermore
My dwelling-place shall be.

(Text from the Edinburgh Psalter, 1650)


AND (drumroll please) we have a new niece! Cowboy's older brother (not Noumenon, the other one) and his wife now have three kids...hooray for them!

I finally got to rent Capote last night. It was amazing! I won't say I liked it, because it's not really the kind of movie you like. Just like the book he's writing during it, In Cold Blood, isn't a book that you like and enjoy. But it's something you can respect and learn from.

Philip Seymour Hoffman definitely deserved the Best Actor Oscar. Yes, even over Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line. If it hadn't been for Capote, Phoenix would have gotten it, but this was just another cut above. Capote completely enthralled me, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who read In Cold Blood or digs movies about writers. But serious ones, not fun romps like Alex & Emma. More like The Hours, only without the triple-narrative time-line-hopping fictional stuff. It's a film, not a movie, in other words.

And in other exciting news, I now have all 6 Harry Potter books in hardcover! Thanks to some birthday money, I ordered the first five from Amazon.com, and they arrived today :-D I already had book 6, of course, since I bought it last fall when it came out. I think I'm going to reread the end of my favorite, The Prisoner of Azkaban, tonight after Cowboy commandeers the computer...