It's snowing in Britian right now. Pretty heavily, too. Classic "winter wonderland" scene. I always like to watch the neighbors' kids making snow angels each year. Once in a while they come up with something new, like a couple years back one made a 2-headed angel, and another used his legs for the arms & legs, thus changing the shape a bit. Maybe later in the week I'll go out and make a summertime rain-angel? ...no, I think not. It's just not the same.
Well we all get different things for Christmas now, don't we? I got from my family a vintage record player that looks like an antique but plays perfectly, along with a record of American children's show theme thongs from the 80's, as a sort of tagalong joke. Iam got from me a pair of boxer shorts with "Private" printed on the front, in hopes he'll eventually wear them.
And somewhere from around the neighborhood, Hubble got worms. Just found out a couple days ago. Happy holidays, lower intestines.
These are a few days late, but happy birthday to Dominic, Miranda Otto, Bernard Hill, and Sean Astin's mum. That's a pretty good score for one month. Then again, with a cast of 10,000 with 20 or so main characters, they're bound to clump. Either way, cheers!
By the way, Craig? Is your cat okay being around dogs? I notice Hubble will trash-talk any animal that comes into the home, but when he's out in the city he gets along with all sorts, including people, other dogs, and other animals. I wonder if we got him together with Miss Kitty (was that her name?) out of the home if they'd make friends. I think it's worth testing. Hubble never actually hurts anyone anyway, even when he's bitchy.
..give or take. Hello, I'm not dead, unless they killed me and put my brain inside a 3D CGI Hologram. But that wouldn't explain the breathing & eating etc.
Anyway, I've been a little distracted lately, I've got a new project I'm working on. Been on it for a long time, but well, novels are hard to write. There ya go, I'm writing a novel. Won't be the first I've started, although whether or not I've published anything is still up in the air (after 26 years I'm still plotting that agent's horrible painful death). Won't go into the details now, but I will tell you it has some connection to The Lord of the Rings. But don't expect sneak previews of chapters or anything. It's bad luck. Though I may post some passages.
In other news, Hubble's made a new girlfriend in the neighborhood (good thing he's fixed), I rearranged my furniture, won $50NZ on a scratch ticket I bought for no good reason, and Iam has failed to get into my pants. As it will always be.
And welcome to the club, Liv. Beware of men kissing each other.
I'm a very worldly man, you know. I've been to many places that the average college graduate can't pronounce; I speak more languages than Aragorn; and I've been in more movies than you can shake a lightsaber at. And as time goes on we all change our own status quos, recarve our niches. I'd never thoought to be in one in particular, though.
I was buying some blank CDs at a local computer store so I can backup my files, and the cashier says "So, yer ternin into quite the computer geek these days, eh Chris?"
Computer geek? Well I'm no afficionato, I merely dabble at the stuff, but I see where he's getting at. I'm a man who's been famous for what people call "old school" movie roles for over half a century, far far from being the Microsoft generation. And here I am riding the bandwagon of today's youth, the internet. I'm probably more "tech-savvy" than 99% of my generation, but I'm still a far hurl from a computer geek. So how do you spell it? Oh yes, "lol".
Well I'm back from my week of vacation (show of hands, how many noticed I was gone?), traveled all around spain & portugal for a few days with some relatives, saw some rather bizarre sights.
For example, I rented a little boat (not big like a yacht, more the kind you go out for a few hours in) from a little port on literally the most western tip of mainland Portugal, it's about 30 km west of Libson (my congrats go out to those of you who know where that is without consulting a map). I went northward along the coast for about an hour, to where it's rocky and there's a lot of small islands about the size of houses jutting out not far from the coast. The water's real rough, and there's waves breaking and a strong tide, people have been known to die swimming there. Anyway, one of these little islands is a little flat on top, such that a person could stand & walk around on it if it weren't impossible to land a boat near it.
And there was a table on top of it.
A medium sized rectangular wooden table, like you might eat breakfast off of. It was standing firmly on the surface of the rock, stained all colors from weather and rotting, but still in one piece. Somebody must've gone to great pains to get it up there, and leave it there. As if it had done terrible deeds, and was being banished from society as punishment. And they must've fastined it hard to keep the wind from blowing it away. It was hard to tell in the wave-rocked motorboat, but there may have been a bird's nest against one of the legs.
Of the strangest things I've seen in this world, there are always more.
Iam came over last night to share spaghetti dinner & a brandy, and have a friendly talk. I was amazed that he went a full 25 minutes without mentioning underwear. But it didn't last forever; he started up on his personal campaign to get me to stop wearing underpants, but I told him away from the subject before he got too into it. Relentless, that man is. Worse than a spider monkey.
Also today I received a postcard from my daughter from Tokyo. Which is all good and well, except that she didn't tell me she was going to Japan. We tend to keep track of where each other are, but this surprised me. Turns out an old colleague of her invited her there for some sort of exposition or convention, the postcard didn't detail what sort. So it rather spur of the moment for her.
I've got a week vacation coming up soon, for you see Saruman isn't in THAT much of the movie, and I'm planning on heading home to see as many family members for as far out the tree as I can, so my daughter sure best be home at that time. I can just imagine getting off the plane and saying "Where's Christina?" and hearing "Oh, she's in Moscow for a few days. Didn't you get the memo?"
So in honnor of _billy_boyd's birthday, we sang a slew of rock & roll at kareoke last friday, some of them relevant to the occasion, like The Beatles' "When I'm 64", some of them sort of but not quite, like Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen", and Rolling Stones' "Princes of the Universe", and Mellencamp's "Life Goes On". But we finished it off with 6 of us together singing "Seasons of Love" from the play Rent.
I think all this singing is actually improving my voice. Today while filming some stuff between Saruman and his Uruk-ha minions, I startet to accidentally sing my lines instead of just say them. Fran & Barrie were rather confused. But Lawrence Makaore seemed to like the idea, so he started singing too. Then some stage hands joined in. Pretty soon the whole stage was belting out "My Baby Takes The Morning Train"! It took us over half an hour after we stopped to be able to concentrate of filming the scene.
I sure hope that makes it onto the DVD, one way or another.
Apparently Hubble does not like Alfred Hitchcock. His show airs weeknights on the tele and I'm rather fond of it, however when the opening theme music plays, and Mr Hitchcock walks into his outline, Hubble takes it that he's a rather rabid pit bull trying to come out the TV screen. Once the opening sequence is over, he calms down and goes back to chewing on rubber things. I find this amusing, yet I still may get to turning onto the channel two minutes after the hour.
thoughtful
rejuvenated
geeky
stuffed with potatoes