well...alot's happened....

My mother is in the hospital. She had an infected ant bite on the front of her left leg and as she's diabetic, they wanted to admit her in order to pump her full of antibiotics and insulin. They lanced the bite, dug a small inflamed cyst out of the wound, packed it with gauze, and took a culture of the pus inside. She's been in there since Friday and HOPEFULLY they'll let her come home tomorrow. I've visited her twice with my sister, the latest being about six o'clock tonight. I've been feasting upon fast food and my birthday money is all but gone.

Hopefully I can return the Dane Cook CD I mistakenly purchased (I'd heard most of the material on the CD, unknown by me) so I can have some extra cash. I also have to purchase a small, under-$10 gift for our Christmas party at work. The theme is toy so I'm leaning towards a yo-yo. I also want to see Syriana, Aeon Flux (which was scheduled to be my birthday movie), and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I'd also like to see Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice before it leaves our area. And then there's, of course, King Kong on the 14th. This is the time of year when the good movies come out and I sincerely hope that we get some indie films in a timely manner. Plus there's the $26 balance on my account at work, which is partially Mom's fault as she wanted sodas late last week.

I've got Fantastic Four due to arrive tomorrow from Netflix. I've heard it's great popcorn fare and I shall treat it as such. I've also got sleeper cell, Showtime's new terrorism-related series to watch on TiVo, along with part one of SCI FI's The Triangle miniseries (produced by Dean Devlin, who produced Independence Day and Bryan Singer, director of both X-Men films andThe Usual Suspects). The cast includes Catherine Bell, Eric Stoltz, Sam Neill, and Lou Diamond Phillips. The Triangle debuted to stellar ratings last night, with 4.3 million viewers.



Click the poster to see the official teaser trailer for the Brett Ratner-helmed X-Men 3. I don't care how this trailer looks; I will not watch this movie. Ratner is a hack of the very worst kind and his movies always sacrifice competent storytelling for loud, dumb, garish action. This breaks my heart as X-Men was the one comic book I read religiously in elementary school. If Fox had simply waited, Bryan Singer would have been more than happy to make this film. But Tom Rothman and the morons at Fox are impatient morons, so in order to be truly petulant they wanted to beat Singer's Superman Returns to the theater. Whatever. I'll entertain myself with seeing Singer's film and various other films this summer. It truly doesn't matter what I say - the slack-jawed willfully ignorant masses will line up in droves, not caring that a hack with all the directing ability of a coffee table is behind the camera. Let them deaden their minds for two hours. I'll not suffer that fate.

Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist was brilliant. It told a stripped-down, articulate story of one man's lack of faith and how he is tested and begins to believe in his convictions and beliefs after feeling like he has no purpose. Stellan Skarsgard was masterful and Schrader's direction was strong and true. One of the best films of the year, Dominion doesn't rely on shock scares and copious gore to convey its frightening notion that evil can be found anywhere, and that it's not always clearly defined as horror films usually present.

So I think I'm going to break out the summer sausage, the cheese ball, and the cracked pepper-flavored crackers (we got those at Fresh Market....oh my God! What a place! Fresh meat, fresh fruit, fresh *everything*!) in a minute.

More later of course...I'm off tomorrow then work Thursday-Saturday, 3:30-close. I hope to cram in many hours of TiVo-watching between now and then. I've also promised to tape the new season of Desperate Housewives for a co-worker who I hooked on the show. She's the same one I hooked on Firefly. Yep, she bought a copy of the show as well. Sadly, she missed Serenity in the theater but she's promised to throw a shindig at her and her husband's on the 20th when the DVD is released.

Your homework is this....






MORNINGWOOD

Lead singer Chantal Claret leads this band. They produce a sound that can veer from punk-sounding explosion to infectious pop-rock. Their debut CD, released by Capitol Records, is coming out January 10th and I can't wait. I haven't fallen in love with a band in a long time. I still need to pick up Tegan and Sara's So Jealous CD. Hell, I'm a White Stripes fan and Get Behind Me Satan is still not in my possession! Anyway, pick up Morningwood's CD. You won't regret it. To get a feel for them, here's music videos for "Jetsetter" and "Nth Degree", the first single from their upcoming CD.

Click here to rock the fuck out.