Posted in bucket list, mad men, Television, wtf, tagged amc tv, betty draper, mad men, mad men 2012, mad men coming back 2011, mad men delayed, mad men returning, mad men season 5, matthew weiner, roger sterling, slate on March 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The most recent terrible news for Mad Men fans is that the series won’t be back before March of 2012.
The holdup is apparently product placement, more commercial time (ironically) and cutting two to six major characters. Ugh.
Slate did a humorous blog about which characters should be cut, though.
Also my mini bucket list of things to do before Mad Men comes back is feeling less urgent.
Posted in bucket list, mad men, Television, tagged amc, mad men, mad men 2011, mad men season 5, mad men season 5 starts, mad men season five, television, when is mad men coming back 2001 on March 22, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Super annoying. It seems that negotiations for Mad Men continue to be delayed and that the writing for Season 5 hasn’t even started yet.
According to the New York Times:
Production would normally start around this time for the next season of “Mad Men,” but AMC has not struck a new deal with the studio that makes the show, Lionsgate, nor has that studio struck a new deal with Matthew Weiner, the series’s acclaimed creator.
Mr. Weiner has said he wants the show to continue, and AMC has pledged that it will definitely return, so the delay is largely due to a disagreement about money.
“By now, the writing staff should be humming along, maybe about a month or more into work for a summer premiere,” he said. “Unless Weiner is secretly manufacturing outlines in preparation of some crazy all-night writing sessions with his staff, it might be time for fans to grow concerned.”
I guess on the bright side it gives me more time for my Mini Bucket List which I vow to have completed by the time Mad Men returns. Honestly, I’d rather have a start date for the show, though.
Posted in books, bucket list, paranormal romances, writing, writing life, tagged bucket list, how to write a novel, how to write a novel in two months, mad men bucket list, paranormal romance, write a novel in two months, write or die, writeordie, writing a paranormal romance, writing advice on March 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »
My mini bucket list is silly because 1) I am not including anything personal on it since I don’t roll that way on the Internet anymore. 2) It doesn’t have an end date and 3) It does have an end date, which is the nebulous “whenever Mad Men comes back on.”
Anyway, I checked a big one off today: Write young adult paranormal romance novel in two months.
Done.
I started writing this book (not announcing the title yet), my first novel, on January 10 of this year. It still needs a lot of work, but I did finish it yesterday. It’s currently 270 pages.
The most important thing I learned is that I can write like a fast mofo when I have to and that it’s really not that hard.
At first I was proud of myself for writing maybe 800 words a day, but now I see that 3000-4000 is not unreasonable at all, especially if you’re not doing other writing work.
I relied heavily on Write or Die and also having a writing buddy, Michelle. We met on twitter and wrote together mostly every Tuesday and Wednesday, with other check-ins throughout the week.
Twitter is great for this kind of thing. It is filled with writers who have nothing but time on their hands. Kidding, but it is a great hangout for writers.
Stephen King recommends that you don’t spend more than three months on your first draft because you lose the energy and enthusiasm for the story. Now I get what he’s saying. I felt really immersed in my novel’s world since I cranked it out so fast.
Not gonna lie, though. I couldn’t have done it if I had been working on other things. Writing a book is freakin’ hard.
Posted in bucket list, horror movies, movies, wtf, tagged antichrist, antichrist movie, blockbuster, bucket list, Deadgirl, exploitation films, faster pussycat kill kill, hostel, russ meyer, se7en, seven movie, tura satana on February 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
So my friends constantly appear dismayed, not to mention disbelieving, that I am the last person in the free world who still goes to Blockbuster. I go for the entertainment and not all of it is on the shelves.
As you know I’m doing this mini bucket list of things to accomplish before Mad Men comes back to AMC next summer. The first thing on the list, which is in no order at all, is: #1 See a Russ Meyer film.
So the other day I went to Blockbuster (and found out that their really cool manager that I loved isn’t working there anymore) and asked them about Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! because I didn’t see it on the shelves.
The new manager, who I also love, said it’s not even in the system and that several people were suddenly asking about that particular movie. I told him the lead actress Tura Satana had just died and that’s probably why, etc.
Me: You guys don’t really carry exploitation films, do you.
Him: No. Corporate is really careful about that. They want this to be a family friendly kind of place.
I love Blockbuster. I do. When I first moved to Seattle after 9/11 the employees there literally supplied some of the only interesting conversation I got in my first few years here.
But family-friendly standards, seriously?
I may not be online much this weekend because I’m getting my family together to watch Antichrist, Deadgirl, Se7en, and Hostel, which feature genital mutilation, teenage necrophilia, horrifying Biblical perversity, and, among other things, an eyeball hanging out of a woman’s head.
I will be renting them all at the big BB.
Posted in bucket list, movie reviews, movies, tagged bucket list, dystopian, dystopian films, dystopian movies, film, keanu reeves, keanu reeves in the matrix, matrix, Movies, sci fi, sci fi movies, seinfeld is unfunny, seinfeld is unfunny tv trope, the matrix on February 15, 2011 | 5 Comments »
I could only make it through a little bit of The Matrix. I just have to start owning the fact that I fucking hate dystopian sci-fi unless it’s Blade Runner. Or Brazil. But not this.
I really like Keanu Reeves, too, but the film just seemed silly to me, probably in part because I’m coming in too late in the game and so many things have borrowed from it that now the original seems derivative. [There's a trope named for this phenomenon, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Like when someone had only seen Seinfeld in rerun form and they're like, "This has all been done before," when at the time it was first shown it hadn't.]*
Even though I can’t say I truly gave it a chance, I at least attempted to give it a chance.
So that’s #3 on my mini-bucket list that I have to complete before Mad Men comes back.
I also tried to rent Faster, Pussycat from Blockbuster and hilarity ensued. That’s a post for when I have more time because it really was very funny.
* Okay, that trope is literally called Seinfeld is Unfunny.
Posted in bucket list, mad men, writing life, tagged boo radley, bucket list, don draper, faster pussycat, faster pussycat kill kill, harper lee, mad men, mad men coming back 2011, russ meyer, the boo radleys, the matrix, to kill a mockingbird, tura satana, tura satana died, tura satana faster pussycat on February 12, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Don Draper writing his own bucket list -- it's all women's names
I mean, I think last year one of my girl friends had to finish a novel and have it to her editor on Christmas Eve, which weirdly makes sense because then she got to enjoy the holidays without tearing her hair out over her book. But I assure you that kind of deadline was just a coincidence.
So I wanted to do like a bucket list (I hated that movie and only made it through part of it, by the way) but a short-term one that goes until the summer. To me a big event that I look forward to is the return of Mad Men, the best show in the history of television, so I thought I would have the items on my mini bucket list completed by the time that Mad Men returns. It usually premieres in July, so I was just looking to see if they had set a date yet and I came across some disturbing news from Variety.
It looks like they haven’t locked the show down yet. Is that right? I don’t speak Hollywood negotiation talk fluently, but it appears that some contracts have been extended and others haven’t? No!
Hopefully it will all work out. Anyway, the news that my favorite show may be in a precarious state completely distracted me from my bucket list (that I have to come up with a better name for, especially because it is milder than Things I Want To Do Before I Die).
The list may mostly be arts-related, but here are the first two:
1. See a Russ Meyer Film. I’m thinking Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! because it gets referenced so much and because I saw that the star of it, Tura Satana, died last week.
2. Read To Kill a Mockingbird. I was talking to some author friends on twitter and there were actually quite a few of us who haven’t read it. Totally disgraceful and embarrassing. It also gets referenced constantly. Just like there’s a band called Faster Pussycat, there is one called The Boo Radleys–named for a character in the book, not that I’d know since I haven’t read it.
3. I should also probably reluctantly put The Matrix on my list because people are always talking about it.
Of course if Mad Men isn’t coming back I have a lot more time to complete this project.
