Sometimes the movie really is better

There are certain movies that I love so much, I'm not even willing to try and read the book, lest I ruin the movie.  Is that weird?  I'm watching How Stella Got Her Groove Back right now, and maybe it's just that I have a crush on Taye Diggs, but I have always loved this movie.  I bet the book is great too, but I never care to read it.  I feel the same way about The Princess Diaries and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  I know these are cheesy selections, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples that I could cite, but these come to mind.  I feel like reading the book would somehow ruin the movie for me.  I've heard that this is the case with Julie & Julia - the book was downright painful to get through, but the movie was excellent.  I would like to see the movie one day (it's totally a wait-for-DVD kind of movie), but I have no intention of ever reading the book.  I've picked up the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books a few times in the library, but then always decide that I like to movie too much to read a book.  Usually, I say that I don't want movies to be made of my favorite books, because I'm so terrified that the movie isn't going to be good enough to live up to the book.  It feels weird to think the opposite and be afraid that reading the book is going to ruin the movie that I like so much.  But I kind of like it.

Shutter Island is one of the best books I read last year

** MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD **

Seriously, if you haven't read this book yet, and you have any intention of ever doing so, or of even seeing the movie, please STOP READING, I'm about to ruin the whole thing for you.  Seriously.  I loved this book so much, and I don't want to ruin that for anyone who might read it in the future.  I wish I could write an adequate review posting my thoughts on it without giving it away, but I just can't.  I know my own inadequacies.  So please heed my advice and go pick up a copy of this book from your local bookseller or library, read it immediately, and then come back and visit.  And comment.  And follow. 
Okay.  Moving on . . .

I'm beyond excited about this movie, first of all.  I think that with Scorcese at the helm, Lehane's brilliant mystery is going to come to life beautifully.  The previews look promising, and I think DiCaprio was a great casting decision to play Teddy.  That aside, this book is one of my favorites of all time.  That is a very short list, and making it is no easy feat, but Shutter Island really blew my mind.  Prior to reading it, I picked up Lehane's collection of short stories, Coronado, just to get a feel for his writing.  It was the first thing of his I'd read, and I fell in love almost immediately.  For real, Dennis Lehane can do more in a 25 page short story than most authors can do in a 250 page novel.  I'm just so impressed with his writing.  Captivating comes to mind.  The one story, "ER," blew my mind.

Shutter Island takes place at an asylum for the criminally insane - a place where they take the people that can't be anywhere else - on a small island in Boston harbor.  Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule are sent there to investigate the disappearance of a patient who seemingly evaporated out of thin air, and in the process they come across some other shady dealings that seem to be taking place on the island.  Now, I've heard some people say that they knew right away that Teddy was actually Laeddis and that he was patient 67 and that the whole thing was some kind of set up all along, but I think that's bullshit.  I had a feeling that something was up, and that maybe he was somehow tied into the patient 67 thing, but how anyone could have foreseen that the whole thing was an elaborate set up because Teddy is a patient there is impossible.

I believe it's impossible to have foreseen that, because the book ends without really letting the reader know if that was the case or not.  And I love Dennis Lehane for that.  I've had discussion about the lady in the cave, and I firmly believe that she is the turning point of the whole book.  Without her cautioning Teddy not to take any meds or accept any cigarettes or anything, that layer of doubt wouldn't ever be placed in the reader's mind, either.  She, and that conversation in the cave, is the turning point for Teddy, it's when he truly starts to question whether he'll ever get off the island, and even to question his own sanity.  At the same time the reader starts to see the disturbing patterns developing, and begins to wonder if Teddy was a bit off to begin with, or if it's the pills he took for his migrane that are making him that way.  What were those pills?  At the end, you still don't know if the whole set up that was described was the beginning or the end of the cycle.  Did they really set it up to try and cure Teddy of his mental illness, or was that story something they made up to essentially capture Teddy and keep him on the island indefinitely.  There are just so many layers to this book, and it's so well-written and suspenseful and just brilliant that I'm beside myself whenever I try to talk about it.  Love.  I love Dennis Lehane, and am now on a quest to read all the rest of his books.

By the way - I'm totally jealous that my internet friend Heather, of See Heather Write, got to meet Mr. Lehane himself at her writing workshop recently.  Totally jealous.  She's also now doing a contest on her blog, giving away a signed copy of The Given Day, as well as a signed copy of Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife.  Good deal.  Check it out.

John Frusciante is awesome

On December 16, 2009, via blog post on http://www.johnfrusciante.com/, John announced that he was officially out of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I didn't hear of this news until a recent issue of Rolling Stone informed me, about 2 weeks ago. I'm really bummed about his departure, but I completely understand his reasons, and I'm thrilled that he is in the place he's in creatively, and excited to see what he puts out. I'm also hopeful that, down the road, he'll come back to work with RHCP again.

I've been a fan of RHCP for as long as I can remember.  Literally, I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't listening to them and shaking my ass to their music.  There are very few bands that I can actually say that about - in fact, RHCP and U2 might be the only ones.  My earliest memories of music and my enjoyment thereof all involve those two bands, and their music provides the soundtrack for A LOT of major events and memories in my life.  When John left the band to deal with his addiction back in 1992, I was bummed, but obviously understanding that he was at a place in his life where he needed to focus on himself, and the band was getting in the way of his recovery.  That made sense.  And the Peppers moved on and circulated through a couple of guitarists before settling on Dave Navarro.  I'm a Jane's Addiction fan, and I love Navarro's quirkiness, but I gotta say - his style just didn't fit with the Peppers.  One Hot Minute was one hot mess, in a lot of ways.  It's still a great album, there's just something off about it. 

Anyway, when Frusciante returned for Californication, I might've had a party.  His return brought the band back to it's core and pushed them into new and amazing creative waters.  By the Way is one of my favorite RHCP albums, and I now realize that had a lot to do with Frusciante's creative energy pushing the band to explore new heights.  The album has an almost ethereal feeling to it, in my opinion.  Like One Hot Minute, it's different from any of their other albums, but it's diferent in a different way.  And I now relize that it resembles a lot of John's solo stuff from that period, and I'm totally into that.

So, the news of John's departure just as RHCP are heading back to the studio to work on their next album has me concerned, to say the least.  I know that new guy (Josh Klinghoffer, an additional touring guitarist on the Stadium Arcadium tour) has the chops to pull it off; my concern is with the loss of John's creativity and energy.  I have recently been checking out his solo albums, and I'm blown away by the more recent ones.  He's an amazing guitarist, and songwriter, and it turns out he can sing too, and he has a very cool, almost haunting at times, voice.  If you have the chance, check out the songs "Omission" and "Song to Sing When I'm Lonely" from the Shadows Collide with People album and "Murderers" from To Record Only Water for Ten Days.  Those are a good start.  I'm really into his solo stuff now.  I just hope that the split with RHCP is worth it.

New Laser Cats!

I've posted before about how much I love the Laser Cats sketches on SNL, so how exciting that there was a new one on over the weekend!  Laser Cats 5 featured James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver, and was based on an Alien/Avatar theme.  It's not my favorite Laser Cats ever, but I still love it.

What I read in 2009

This is going to be a doozy.  As you can see in my sidebar, I managed to read 81 books in 2009.  Listed in the order I finished them in, including author and date finished, here they are:

1	House of God	Samuel Shem	1/21/2009
2	The Host	Stephenie Meyer	2/1/2009
3	This Lullaby	Sarah Dessen	2/4/2009
4	Just Listen	Sarah Dessen	2/8/2009
5	Invisible Monsters	Chuck Palahnuik	2/14/2009
6	Dead Until Dark	Charlaine Harris	2/17/2009
7	Living Dead in Dallas	Charlaine Harris	2/21/2009
8	Club Dead	Charlaine Harris	2/24/2009
9	Dead to the World	Charlaine Harris	3/1/2009
10	Dead as a Doornail	Charlaine Harris	3/11/2009
11	Fight Club	Chuck Palahnuik	3/16/2009
12	The Truth About Forever	Sarah Dessen	3/23/2009
13	Lullaby	Chuck Palahnuik	3/29/2009
14	That Summer	Sarah Dessen	3/29/2009
15	Without You	Anthony Rapp	4/1/2009
16	Intensity	Dean Koontz	4/6/2009
17	Sloppy Firsts	Megan McCafferty	4/9/2009
18	Second Helpings	Megan McCafferty	4/14/2009
19	Stargirl	Jerry Spinelli	4/14/2009
20	Love, Stargirl	Jerry Spinelli	4/20/2009
21	Charmed Thirds	Megan McCafferty	4/22/2009
22	Crank	Ellen Hopkins	4/23/2009
23	Go Ask Alice	Anonymous	4/25/2009
24	Definately Dead	Charlaine Harris	4/28/2009
25	Fourth Comings	Megan McCafferty	4/28/2009
26	A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	5/3/2009
27	Glass	Ellen Hopkins	5/4/2009
28	All Together Dead	Charlaine Harris	5/9/2009
29	Perfect Fifths	Megan McCafferty	5/10/2009
30	From Dead to Worse	Charlaine Harris	5/22/2009
31	Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist	Rachel Cohn & David Levithan	5/31/2009
32	Certain Girls	Jennifer Wiener	5/31/2009
33	Audrey, Wait!	Robin Benway	6/6/2009
34	The Soloist	Steve Lopez	6/14/2009
35	Dead and Gone	Charlaine Harris	6/21/2009
36	Pygmy	Chuck Palahnuik	7/3/2009
37	The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing	Melissa Bank	7/5/2009
38	I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell	Tucker Max	7/6/2009
39	The Dirt	Motley Crue	7/12/2009
40	Always Running	Luis Rodriguez	7/15/2009
41	Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	Hunter S. Thompson	7/17/2009
42	Candy Girl	Diablo Cody	7/19/2009
43	Bitter is the New Black	Jen Lancaster	7/22/2009
44	Dry	Agusten Burroughs	7/22/2009
45	The White Arrest	Ken Bruen	7/24/2009
46	Taming the Alien	Ken Bruen	7/25/2009
47	The McDead	Ken Bruen	7/28/2009
48	Geek Love	Katherine Dunn	8/9/2009
49	Junky	William S. Burroughs	8/10/2009
50	Queer	William S. Burroughs	8/12/2009
51	Less Than Zero	Bret Easton Ellis	8/16/2009
52	Lunar Park	Bret Easton Ellis	8/16/2009
53	Bright Lights, Big City	Jay McInerny	8/19/2009
54	Everyone Worth Knowing	Lauren Weisberger	8/31/2009
55	Magical Thinking	Augusten Burroughs	9/2/2009
56	The Gun Seller	Hugh Laurie	9/7/2009
57	Blitz	Ken Bruen	9/10/2009
58	Vixen	Ken Bruen	9/11/2009
59	The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	9/15/2009
60	Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	9/19/2009
61	Coronado	Dennis Lehane	9/20/2009
62	Shutter Island	Dennis Lehane	9/26/2009
63	13 Reasons Why	Jay Asher	9/29/2009
64	The Art of Racing in the Rain	Garth Stein	10/7/2009
65	Outlander	Diana Gabaldon	10/10/2009
66	Twenties Girl	Sophie Kinsella	10/13/2009
67	A Great and Terrible Beauty	Libba Bray	10/25/2009
68	Roasting in Hell's Kitchen	Gordon Ramsay	10/29/2009
69	Granny Torrelli Makes Soup	Sharon Creech	10/26/2009
70	Lock and Key	Sarah Dessen	11/15/2009
71	The Heroin Diaries	Nikki Sixx	11/26/2009
72	A Touch of Dead	Charlaine Harris	11/27/2009
73	Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Society	Mary Ann Shaffer	12/3/2009
74	Why We Suck	Dennis Leary	12/3/2009
75	Maus I & II	Art Spiegelman	12/7/2009
76	The Lost Symbol	Dan Brown	12/15/2009
77	Complete Persepolis	Marjane Satrapi	12/20/2009
78	My Friend Leonard	James Frey	12/23/2009
79	Tommyland	Tommy Lee	12/27/2009
80	Fighting Ruben Wolfe	Marcus Zusak	12/30/2009
81	The Art of War	Sun Tzu	12/31/2009

Another new addition you will notice on my sidebar, also reading related, is a display of what I'm currently reading, which includes a link to my other GoodReads shelves.  If you're not familiar with GoodReads.com, it's a reading website where you can keep track of all of your books and all of your friends books, etc.  It's almost like FaceBook for books and reading nerds.  And I love it.  So I'm no longer using the "I'm Reading" App on FB to keep track of what I'm reading, but I've yet to transfer the reviews I wrote over the past year to GR yet.  I also don't think I transferred the ratings I gave anything last year.  So 2009 books are in FB and 2010 books are and will continue to be in GR.  I'm not sure why I never used GR last year, but the more I use it now, the more I love it.  Feel free to poke around, and feel free to request me as a friend or leave a comment here and I'll send you an invitation

I'm with Coco

I love this.

 

 Because I really am.  I've been no fan of NBC or Jay Leno for a while now, and I really thought that giving that huge-chinned, no-talent shmuck his own prime-time-five-nights-a-week show was the last straw for me, that it couldn't get any worse, but my friends, last week it did.  My displeasure with NBC and Mr. Leno has risen to a new level.  It's completely absurd that the network is going to give Leno back the 11:35 time slot for his show, bumping THE TONIGHT SHOW, a television icon, into tomorrow, at 12:05.  What's next, Saturday Night Live on Sundays? Ugh.  Thankfully, Conan has stood his ground, and with all of the grace and dignity expected of him, despite the uncertainty that he's walking into by doing so, and I'm really pleased to see that he's not selling out or otherwise taking shit from a network gone awry.  (PS: Hey NBC?  I loved the Black Donneleys, as did a number of others.  It was a shit decision to cancel it.  In favor of what? Another Law & Order spin-off?  Another run-of-the-mill hospital drama?  Every single half-way decent hour-long drama that you get, you cancel before even giving it a chance.  Boooooooo.)

Read Conan O'Brien's statement here.

I guess we'll see what more happens, both at NBC and for Conan's future in television hosting, in the coming days, but make no mistake: I'm with Coco.

Minerva's Pizza on the east side = chicken parm lasagna wrapped into a calzone. At least that's what it tastes like. Yummm.

David Cook review

No, this is not a new David Cook album - this is the one that came out in November 2008.  First, I can't believe it was that long ago.  Second, I don't do a lot of album reviews, so why pick this one, right?  The answer is that it's a good album, I'm listening to it today, and in honor of the new season of American Idol starting last night.  This is very much not the kind of album I'd generally pick to review, but it's on my mind.

When David Cook was on AI, it was one of those few seasons that I actually watched all the way through.  Usually, I watch some of the silly audition stuff right at the beginning, more because I'm excited that it's back on than because I really want to see it, though.  That excitement always dwindles before Hollywood week even rolls around, usually, and I get tired of the joke singers that they put on the auditions just to make America laugh.  (I've come to think that many of them are actors that Fox is paying to sing badly on national television just to boost ratings that first week and spur YouTube sensations, but maybe that's just the conspiracy theorist in me.)  Anyhoo - My interest usually sparks again when there's between 7 and 4 people left on the show, because then at least I know they can sing.  But there have been 2 or 3 seasons that I've actually watched beginning to end, and have felt some stake in the outcome (though I've never voted).  Cook's season was one of them, and I had my money on him from day one.  Say what you will, but the kid can sing, and I've always liked that he wasn't a fit-the-mold pop star.

I was understandably excited and interested when his solo album dropped, and I wasn't disappointed.  I've liked the album, every song, beginning to end, since the day I downloaded it.  It wasn't until this past October, almost a full year after first hearing it, that I realized exactly why I like this album so much.  I'm an aspiring writer, and every November I participate in an online writing challenge called NaNoWriMo.  Which means that I spend much of October getting ready for that challenge.  "Getting ready to write" for me includes not only the standard plot outlining and character development exercises, but also picking the playlist that is going to score my hours and hours of banging away at a keyboard.  As I was doing that, and I listened to this album with my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel in mind, it hit me just how emotional the album is.  Damn.  Kid can sing?  Kid can sing in a way that can make you feel it, make you sit up and pay attention, even though a lot of the music on the album comes across at first glance as little more than good radio background.

Cook had a lot of help writing the songs on the album, from a lot of great songwriters, and it shows, but he didn't have any help in belting them out.  On every track on this album, the lyrics, the music, and Cook's voice come together with such emotion, you can't help but be impressed.  From love to loss to sadness to joy to hope, the range of emotions is seemingly endless, as is Cook's capacity to represent them with his voice.  This is very much a pop-rock album, don't get me wrong.  It's very mainstream and very accessible, and very radio-ready.  No kidding, every single track could be on the radio tomorrow, and most of them would immediately be played to death by most top-40 stations.  Like I said, at first listen it's a decent album, but the music doesn't stand out as anything more than radio background.  Doesn't mean it's not a valuable album.  In that way, I question what Cook could've done without the "AI Winner" badge hanging over his head.  I think any album that comes out of an AI winner is to some extent a dilution of what they might truly be capable of in order to appeal to the masses.  I think of some of the people I know who watch AI religiously, and then imagine how the powers that be try to package the winner in a way that will make each and every one of those people want to buy the winner's albums, and to me that's representative of everything that's wrong with the record industry and the major labels on the whole.  But I digress . . .

Specifics: "Bar-ba-sol" and "Declaration" are my favorite tracks on the album because they rock just a little more than the rest.  "Bar-ba-sol" has an almost funky feeling to it, and I think that's what draws me to it over some other tracks.  "Light On" was the first big single, and I like it almost as much.  The AI winner song, "Time of My Life," doesn't fit, IMO.  I don't think it's really him, and I don't think it's an accurate reflection of his style or what he's capable of.  That said, it's not a bad song, except for that garbage lyric about rainbows.  "Permanent" is a beautiful, beautiful ballad about the temporary nature of life and love, and another of my favorites on the album.  Overall, the album is so accessible, I think there's something for everyone, but more importantly, since this is my blog after all, I like it, and I recommend it.