I saw Apollo Up last night. It was another loud show but not nearly as unbearable as the Exit/In show on Thursday. AU are a really great band. It had been a while since I’d seen them and they were in fine form–very tight and the sound was crystal clear even with earplugs. It’s always nice when you see a band after not having seen them for months and they’re better than you remembered.

I finished reading Director’s Cut this morning. I enjoyed it. There were bits where I thought the writing lacked the proper emotion–e.g. action scenes were described with very plain language so much so that I would re-read the preceding passage to make sure the action was actually taking place and this wasn’t the narrator blandly describing a past action. The tense of the book also caused me problems. Written in the narrative past tense, in first person, it was occasionally troublesome to figure out the order of events. Most novels are written in past tense and the impression to the reader is that the events described just happened. But in Director’s Cut, the first-person narrator will leap out of that immediate feel to describe an event you just read as if it happened long ago. The effect was that I kept feeling like I was being pulled out of the story.

It’s a choice Simon made as an author. I’m really only noting it for my own benefit.

There’s a Law & Order SVU marathon on USA right now and it’s distracting the hell out of me. Even though I’ve seen all these episodes. If I switch channels and there’s a CSI marathon on, it will be official: I won’t get any work done.

Yesterday, I bought a couple of DVDs. Two Days in the Valley which I just sort of find myself sucked into when I see it on TV. And not just because of the cat-fight between Charlize Theron and Teri Hatcher… okay, just because of the cat-fight between Charlize Theron and Teri Hatcher. I remember when the movie was released, one of the review quotes for the ads was it “out-pulps Pulp Fiction.” Our local paper, the Scene, noted in their capsule review that “any movie that boasts it ‘out-pulps Pulp Fiction‘ will out-suck Destiny Turns on the Radio.” That cracked me up then and it cracks me up now.

I also bought Striptease which I used to own on VHS. It’s a really crappy movie, but it has a special place in my heart (and not just because of Demi Moore’s expensive boob job). It’s one of the few big-budget exploitation films that even does justice to the whole wacky genre.

Okay, it’s just because of Demi Moore’s boobs.