Maulfaul Likes You

Damn, I had a huge and very introspective entry about the nature of and secret subconscious motivations behind my actor fixations, but I accidentally went to another page and it was all tragically lost.

GIST: Whenever I have the chance, I use the passionate intensity of my obsessions as a way to help me learn about related topics. See: Kenneth Branagh, Buster Keaton. It could also be some complex psychological coping mechanism for boredom, loneliness, lack of mental/emotional stimulation, et cetera. I mean, I definitely managed to keep myself occupied for about a month with the Gary Oldman obsession alone. And not just any old month--a totally empty post-Senior, unemployed, summer-month.

Also, I have managed to get the whole process down to a science, that's just how damn experienced I am with this. So, following in the footsteps of my highly successful Oldman obsession (I saw EVERY DAMN MOVIE on my list), here's my Buster Keaton list.

(strikethrough = WATCHED, BITCH)

THE FATTY ARBUCKLE PHASE (SHORTS)
-The Butcher Boy
-The Rough House
-His Wedding Night
-Oh Doctor!
-The Bell Boy
-Coney Island
-Good Night, Nurse!
-The Cook
-Back Stage
-The Garage

THE GOLDEN AGE (SHORTS)
-One Week
-The Saphead
-Convict 13
-Neighbors
-The Scarecrow
-The Haunted House
-Hard Luck
-The 'High Sign'
-The Goat
-The Play House
-The Boat
-The Paleface
-Cops
-My Wife's Relations
-The Blacksmith
-The Frozen North
-The Electric House
-Daydreams
-The Balloonatic
-The Love Nest

THE GOLDEN AGE (FULL-LENGTH)
-Three Ages
-Our Hospitality
-Sherlock Jr.
-The Navigator
-Seven Chances
-Go West
-Battling Butler
-The General
-College
-Steamboat Bill Jr.

THE DARK (MGM) AGE
-The Cameraman
-Spite Marriage
-Free and Easy
-Parlor, Bedroom, and Bath
-Sidewalks of New York
-Speak Easily

Anyway, I think at least some of these are at our friendly neighborhood UGLi. I will probably have a little trip over there in the near future. Go me. Yes, I know. I am a very sad person.

I was tentatively exploring this new "television" contraption this afternoon and stumbled upon the entire miniseries version of The Stand on the Sci-Fi Channel, something I've always been mildly interested in seeing, especially since I wrote my extended essay on the book. It's pretty okay for a made-for-TV miniseries, but somewhat crappy by any other standards. I would say that the best aspects of it are Gary Sinise as Stu, the guy who's Randall Flagg, and whoever it is that played Tom Cullen. But then, everyone loves Tom Cullen under any circumstance.

Naturally, this leads to me trying to remember more about Dark Tower and related materials. All of it seems like a kind of blur in my memory, most especially the tangled mess that comprised the last few books. Okay...so this is mostly directed at Sparky, but anyone else who can give me a refresher is welcome. Randall was the Man in Black, correct? Was he just a minion of the Crimson King, or a power unto himself? I remember him being killed by Susannah's demon/spider child or whatever...which seemed anti-climactic. What was the relationship between Roland's world and the world in The Stand? Was it implied that Roland's world is like distant, distant Earth future? What was up with the rose, again?

Erm, yeah, maybe I should just reread the books again. But they're long and I'd rather have people feed me concise and informed answers. Oh yeah, and what about that book where the Crimson King is a fish? And who the fuck was the Crimson King anyway?

(CONFUSED)

Oh, wait, I just realized I can Wikipedia all of it. 

JAY-KAY EN-VEE-EM.

I am currently listening to the smooth and soulful sounds of Billy Joel on a new, shiny Creative Zen Vision: M (a portable digital music player of the 30 GB categorization)! Now that your interest has been piqued by this striking lead-in, I will tell the story behind this turn of events.

This morning my dad, sister, and I were laying around and not doing anything (as per usual) when the meandering conversation led to technology, as it is wont to do in our house.  My dad was talking about his current quest to digitalize a portion, if not all, of our movie collection (which for the uninitiated contains more than 1,000 titles) and make it available in an on-demand capacity on the intrawebs. This, naturally, so that he could load whatever movies he wanted to watch onto his newly purchased Zune whenever he wanted. In conjunction with this he mentioned getting Zunes for the entire family so that we can mutually ignore each other with optimum efficiency. I was quick to interject that the Creative Vision is better than Zune because it supports more video file formats. 

The conversation eventually shifted to how my sister only has an old-ass desktop PC and everyone else in the family has a laptop. After a short amount of conversation and in light of the fact that my dad got a considerable bonus at the end of the year and that my mom is going to work at a full-time office job for the first time in something like 19 years starting tomorrow, it was decided that a laptop would be bough for Alison. I volunteered to come along to Best Buy because I like looking at the shiny things.

So my sister picked out a fairly nice Toshiba, my dad heaved a sigh and asked "So, do they have your Creative thing here?" I hurriedly took him over to look at the mp3 player area. Literally before I knew what was happening and with no explanation, my dad bought one for each of us girls. (!!!)

Now this is not really atypical behavior for him, I guess. He's a very impulsive buyer, like me, and according to my mom had absolutely no money in savings until she married him. But I was considerably nervous about how my mom (who typically takes ages agonizing over things before making a purchase and is much more frugal) would react, but she amazingly took it very well. And I managed to eat pot roast! Yaaaay!!

Summary: Today was a good day. I like presents. And pot roast.