Movies Update:
I've had the opportunity to see more movies than usual this summer, thanks to a girlfriend who loves going to the movies. Three genres dominate: Superheroes, Horror and Comedy.
I've already talked about Batman Begins, which was a masterpiece in some ways, so what about Fantastic Four?
Well, definitely NOT a masterpiece, but not the total stinkeroo many critics claimed. The FF were one of my first and favorite comics as a kid, so I was really hoping they'd nail the mood of the 1960s FF with this film. They almost do. The tongue-in-cheek dialogue has a definite echo of Stan "The Man" Lee, and the main roles are well cast, especially Michael Chikliss as Ben Grimm. It's the screenplay that slows stuff down. I really like the trend to focus on the emotional and personal aspects of superhero life, but this film focuses too much on that issue. It's pretty much all origin story and little else. The result is more like an afternoon soap opera. We see way too much of the personal in-fighting and emotional conflict, and damn little saving the world. So much so that the villain, Dr. Doom seems less interested in conquering the world than settling the score with his ex-friends. Also Doom is very un-doomy. He looks like Dr. Doom, but sounds like a pissed off hairdresser instead of a mad genius in a metal suit. Yes, the movie is entertaining enough, but it just needed a bit more REAL doom.
PG-13 Horror: My favorite new sub-genre. Creepy little movies with a low gore quotient. I've seen two very good-examples this year, Dark Water and The Skeleton Key. Both star talented young actresses getting stuck in very creepy settings; Jennifer Connelly and a haunted New York apartment in Water and Kate Hudson and a haunted Louisiana mansion in Key. Both films feature excellent actors in supporting roles, creepy, heavily textured atmospheres and Twilight Zone style twist endings. Both are effective, but Water is kind of depressing and Key is slightly silly. Both are good fun for those who like their horror in milder form.
Raunchy Comedy: Saw "The Wedding Crashers" and "The 40 Year-Old Virgin." Both show a trend toward a kinder, gentler rudeness. Both are packed with swear words and sexual, scatalogical humor, but the characters are well-rounded, more real and more sympathetic than in most other films of this type. Both are very funny, with "Virgin" having a slight edge in my book, but both films are at least a HALF HOUR TOO LONG! "Crashers" runs out of steam at the 90 minute mark, but keeps on going, and "Virgin" just could have used a little tightening up.
I'll yak about my Improv experiences of late in the next post.

Summer Music. I haven't gone to many concerts this summer, mostly stuff at the BioPark. Here's what I've seen:
June 9th: Lowen and Navarro: Really cool acoustic rock duo of guys who have been knocking around the independent Los Angeles music scene for years. Mostly slow insightful ballads with quirky lyrics. Rarely have I heard such great male harmonies. Lowen is the serious older guy and Navarro is the weird funny guy. They were very fun to talk to and signed my CD with some very funny remarks you wouldn't understand unless you saw the show.
June 16th: Uncle Earl: All girl old-time country group. Great fiddle playing and musicianship, but not enough harmony. Great authentic sound, and the addition of Sharon Gilchrist formerly of New Mexico's Mary and Mars is a good thing indeed. Lots of great energy and a great mix of songs, including some old-timey gospel.
June 30th: Blame Sally: San Francisco quartet of "mature" women. My least favorite of the Bio Park shows, due to a lot of poppy ballads I couldn't really relate to. Also, while their stage presence was likeable, the vocals weren't very strong and most of the music was too keyboard heavy.
July 14th: The Clumsy Lovers: The grand slam home-run of all the Bio Park shows. Vancouver BC band that blends jangly pop, clever funny lyrics and a Celtic-country-bluegrass overtone. Great playing, quirky boy-girl vocals and amazing pop energy. The band was a little odd for the Bio Park crowd, and may have been better suited to a more open-minded Launchpad crowd, but I loved 'em. If I were programming an alternative radio station, these guys would be on heavy rotation.

August 12th: The Robert Cray Band At The Rio Grande Zoo. This concert started with a great surprise. We arrived only an hour and a half before the show, expecting the place to be jammed and the parking to be non-existent. We parked very close-in, waltzed in with no lines and found a nice spot fairly close to the stage with no hassles. Then the music started. Robert Cray is Mr. Smooth: smooth vocals, smooth personality and the most seamless, flowing and blazing guitar playing around. He was ever the cool gentleman, saying "thank you so very much" after every song. Of course he played the hits like "Smoking Gun," but he also featured some songs from his more serious socially conscious new album "Twenty." Nobody can sing with the slickness and blend of blues and sixties soul feelings or play guitar with the intensity he can. Absolutely awesome show, tied with The Kool and the Gang show for best of the year.

Finally I'm Sitting down to write.
Susan: Since the last round of posts here's what we've been doing:
Susan took me out for my birthday May 25th to Indian Palace and Laffs. Great time.
We went camping at Jemez Falls in mid June. My first camping trip since I was 12. Didn't much care for Susan's claustrophobic one person tent I tried to sleep in with her, but the rest of the trip was great. We ate great meals cooked on the campfire.
July 29th, 30, 31. Flew to Detroit for the wedding of Susan's son Chris. Awesome experience. Met Chris, Susan's daughter's Annie and Heather and Susan's mom Irene, or "Boushi" as she is called. Love all the kids, who are all in their twenties. They seemed to like me too. Boushi is in her eighties and didn't warm to me until the last day. Also met the ex-hubby, her brother and his family, and a passle of nuns. The bride, Kay, looked magnificent, like a Grace Kelly Barbi doll. The reception was a hoot, with most attendees getting properly sloshed, especially the father of the bride. Great band, and Susan and I danced almost all night. I even got to dance with Susan during the parents of the bride and groom dance, as her ex-husband was out of the room at the time. Went to a cool Middle Eastern restaurant (that wasn't as good as Pars here) the night before and also saw the Motown Museum and the Henry Ford Museum. The trip back was less than spectacular due to a dead bug in Susan's salad at the Friday's in the Dallas airport and a three hour delay in the flight home.

August 9th through 12th, Susan and I went on a trip to Herron and El Vado lakes in Northern New Mexico. We stayed at a cabin at Stone House Lodge which overlooks El Vado Lake. It was gorgeous up there. We planned to fish as the lodge website said they rented fishing poles, but when we got there, we found out you had to rent a boat to get a pole. Talk about the shaft!
We went hiking along the Rio Chama trailhead, which was almost too adventurous for Susan; a steep hike down to the river via wood and stone stairs, then across the river by suspension bridge and up more steps on the other side. Really fun but after about a mile or so, we both were pooped and turned around. Ended the afternoon at the Brushy Point campground, where we soaked our feet in Herron Lake and skipped rocks for an hour. Susan tried to wade in the lake, but her foot sank into the mud up to mid-calf and she lost her flip flop.
It rained heavily both nights we were there, but it just made it more romantic. I could have just hung around the back porch of the cabin watching the birds fly by, but Thursday night we ventured into Chama for dinner.We got stuck in a torrential downpour on the way, but found a cool little BBQ place run by a red-headed mother-daughter team from Louisiana that was well worth the long drive.
We left about 10 Friday morning, and stopped at Tierra Wools in Los Ojos, because Susan wanted to learn more about their weaving classes. What a cool place in a super-funky little village! The weaving shop was awesome, and set up so you could watch people weave and dye the wool. There were also a number of friendly dogs to greet us and follow us around. I had no intention to do so, but I ended up buying a beautiful $175 rug for my wall. Susan wants to move to Los Ojos to weave, and I could buy the bookshop next to the weaving shop and write my books during the slow days. A lot of potential in that idea, really.
After a couple more detours, mainly going 10 miles down a winding, bumpy, muddy road looking for a campground a friend told us about that we never did find, and stopping off at Trader Joe's in Santa Fe, we made it home in time for the Robert Cray concert at the Rio Grande Zoo, which I will talk about in an all-music column soon.
Our latest big adventure was to the Santa Fe Indian Market yesterday. We got to Santa Fe early in the morning, and took the park-and-ride bus from Villa Linda Mall to the Plaza. An illustration of Santa Fe style was the free bottled water and pastry offered at the bus stop. Cool! We watched the Native American clothing contest on the plaza, which was very fun, especially thanks to the young children wearing many of the traditional outfits. The event was hosted by some old cowboy guy who was boring as hell, but at least the star gazer in me got a kick out of watching Wes Studi, Joe Leaphorn in the Tony Hillerman PBS movies, who was one of the judges. After frying in the sun awhile, we walked around the booths and oohed and aahed at the art, most of which was well out of our price range. We got hungry and tried to find a sushi restaurant we liked but it was too far away from the plaza, so we settled for a Thai lunch. It was good, but not great, though the decor was a neat mix of Thai and Santa Fe style. Once we got back to the plaza, there were many more folks walking about, and after going down a few more rows of booths, it all started to look the same, so we headed home. Looked to me like the Indian Market as a whole wasn't as busy as expected though, just like my summer business.

Susan has helped motivate my to start writing a mystery novel, and as of last week, I've started jotting down possible characters and plot ideas. We plan on having regular work times where I write and she works on her school stuff. I want to be far enough along by November 30th to actually have an novel writtten for National Novel Writing Month.

Catching up.... Yeah, it has been 3 months since my last post. Everything's fine really. I just haven't had time to sit down and write. Blame it on my life. Between all the major areas of my life; Susan, work, improv and church, oh, and with a slowly dying computer, who has time to write? Now, two of my major commitments of recent months have ended, (the church 4T class and the student team improv class) and I now have a snazzy new Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, so the writing should be easier. I plan to catch up by devoting each of the next several posts to stuff worth writing about, namely Susan, improv, church, movies, books and music. So, catch you on the flip-flop, good buddy! Okay, so I watched about a half hour of Convoy on cable over the weekend. Sue me.