So this is addicting...

This is a website for a company that does photo retouching:

http://glennferon.com.nyud.net:8090/portfolio1/index.html

You can click on a picture and when you hover your mouse over it, it becomes the original, raw photo. Take the mouse away and it's retouched again. There aren't too many tummy tucks or breast enhancements (although there are some). What I mostly noticed was super-skinny chicks like Halle Berry were losing protruding bones like ribs, hip bones, and clavicles so they look smooth all over.

Now that is nefarious.

Comments

I realized a while ago that my comments setting was wrong. It was only allowing comments from people who also had blogs through blogger.com. Very small crowd, actually. Now anyone can leave a comment.

I hope this doesn't create a spike in spam comments, but we'll see.

To leave a comment, click on the comment count at the end of the post after the time (for instance 0 comments). Then, umm, follow the instructions? I'm not sure what happens after that if you're not a blogger (blogger knows I'm me on both my computers so I can't see what it would look like to an outsider). It's supposed to ask you to verify a word to screen for spammers, but I'm not sure what that's going to look like either.

Not much help, am I?

My week's vacation

I've been coasting in neutral for about a week now, writing wise. It's distracting; I know the WOTF preliminary judging is done, but I haven't gotten a letter yet. I have a hard time focusing on new writing when I'm sweating through these last few days of knowing how things went. Thankfully I no longer sweat through the whole 10-12 weeks of judging doing nothing new because that's just inefficient.

I finished the outline for the novel and had another emotional struggle with the size of the thing. I debated setting it aside and coming up with something shorter to write first. The general advice is shorter is better for first-time novels (more likely to be picked up, I mean). But I think I sort of have to write this first. Just to get it out of my head. Then I can move on. You know, two years from now.

But I took a week off to come to that decision. I've done this before; it's almost a joke. Since no one but me is affected by whether I choose to spend all my spare time writing or not, when I have trouble with the writing I usually say to myself, "Why don't you try not writing?" And then about a week later I'm writing again, because when I try not writing, I find that I can't not write.

But what really brought me back this time was William Gibson. I recently got a DVD documentary, really just him talking, called No Maps for These Territories. It took forever to watch it because Quin wanted to see it too so I had to wait. The director's style is annoying; he apparently believes we all have zero attention span to just listening to a really interesting man talk and keeps putting up weird visuals and music cues. Since I usually listen to the TV rather than watch it this annoyed Quin more than me. For my part, it was really cool to hear him talk about what he went through to write his first novel Neuromancer. Just listening him talk about what excited him about it got me excited about my own work again.

So, vacation over. Back to the writing. On one last Gibson note, he hadn't blogged for several months but just a few weeks ago he came back to post "I am. I am writing." Ahh, the waves on the beach. I'm so there. I had the same response I had when Neil Gaiman griped about his characters stopping the action to discuss the story so far when working on his novel.

First I say, "Thank god, it's not just me!"

Followed very quickly by, "Wait a minute, this never goes away?"

I don't usually do this, but...

The neatest thing happened last week. I've written about the sci-fi writer Tobias Buckell before (here). I mentioned I have his first novel on preorder from Amazon (although it won't be out until next February). I also read his blog; he always has cool links and just in general lots of advice for spec. fiction writers just starting out. He mentioned last week that he has a ton of refrigerator magnets with his book cover on them (with his web page, etc, because it's a marketing thing) and if you sent him your address, he'd send you a magnet.

See the pic below. I love that book cover.

Still, just sending my address seemed a little demanding and impersonal, so I sent a brief (4 sentence) note about how I found him. That was through his story in All-Star Zeppelin Adventures, although I had read "In Orbite Medievali" first. It wasn't until I found his blog that I realized he had written both.

That's technically too short to be a "fan letter" right? But the cool thing was he sent back an e-mail longer than mine, talking about the stories I had mentioned and about his novel coming up, and wishing me luck with my own writing. What a cool guy!

Here's the book cover. 

I'm Chevy Chase, and You're Not

I have no idea where he got it from, but the younger son, Oliver, has taken to lip-syncing along when people are talking. Just now my husband was telling me about how LeeAnn Chin's was bought out by another company. I don't remember why. I certainly didn't ask. But it was hard to keep a straight face during his Cliff Clavin, way too many details speech with a 4-year-old standing behind him just out of his view, pretending to talk.

Where did he ever pick this up? And he's so animated when he does it, it's hard not to laugh. Even if you were just trying to send him to his room for tormenting his brother and you really, really don't want to crack a smile. Sends the wrong message, you know.

But perhaps I shouldn't worry too much. The two of them were talking to someone else's grandmother at the park the other day and Adain was explaining at length why Johnny Depp was now his favorite actor and not Jim Carey with Oliver adding his little shout-outs.

I guess they're too young for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But hey, Corpse Bride is out next month, as I know because I've seen the trailer about a hundred times by now.

I Love Keanu Reeves

Just going to put that out there. We'll circle back to it.

Tao of Troth was rejected this week. It only took eight days! I understand the preliminary judging for WOTF is done and I should either something or not here something in the next week or so. Not hearing something would be good news here since that would mean that Of Tapestries and Daemons had moved up to the next level. But having Tao rejected twice in two weeks has me in the duldrums, so I decided to take time off of "writing" (since at this point it was mostly self-loathing in front of a computer) and watch a movie instead.

So I picked up Constantine. See how we circled back?

I was expecting to be unimpressed. The reviews had been mostly tepid, and I understand the fans of the comic really hated it. I'm familiar with the character from Swamp Thing and the issue of Sandman he was in, but the only issue of his own title I've ever read is the one Gaiman wrote. I have a Hellblazer graphic novel, but it's buried under a bunch of Dr. Strange and Robert E. Howard books in the stack of things I totally intend to read when I have the time (come on, Powerball!). So you can say I went into the movie knowing the basic facts but without a real emotional investment in the character.

It needed more humor. There was a some in there, but they should have kicked it up a notch. I know that much about John Constatine; he has a smart mouth. Otherwise I was pleasantly surprised; I really liked it. I would like to thank the director for making a movie with a dark theme without feeling the need to shoot it so dark I can't watch it at 2:30 in the afternoon. It's such a rare treat to be able to see the action. Also, it was violent but not gory. Well, the scene were Lucifer puts his hands into Constantine's chest was a little intense, but no gushing spouts of gore.

I understand the chief comic-book-fan complaint was that Keanu doesn't look the part. John Constantine is blond/blue-eyed in the comic. I can only assume this is to make him look angelic, but that's a stereotype that bugs on so many levels I (personally) am happy they deep-sixed it.

I watched this movie alone because my husband won't watch anything with Keanu in it. Or at least he won't watch them with me (he's seen Hard Ball and I haven't). Part of what I like about Keanu is I can always see what appealed to him in the scripts he chooses. Not every movie works, but I usually enjoy them on some level. Something else that drives Quin crazy, I can like a movie that he thinks sucks just because I can see what they were going for and enjoy it for that. Which is why I don't usually recommend movies to other people. They just get mad.

Examples? Johnny Mnenomic. Cool idea, not executed really well. A different director might have helped. Another actress in the role of Molly. It's hard not to think of Carrie-Ann Moss now since Trinity was clearly modeled on Molly on some level. She would have been great. But I can say I liked Johnny Mnemonic just on the basis of the scene where they are on the trash heap and he is listing the things he wants: Laundered shirts! Room service!

Worse than Johnny Mnemonic was The Watcher. I don't like serial killer movies (or books or TV shows), but I liked the idea of making James Spader the good guy and Keanu evil. That pretty much tapped out the film's cleverness, and the visual effects were distactingly bad. Still, there's this one scene where the two meet up in a cemetary and Spader hands Keanu his gun. At the end of the scene as they are walking off Keanu fires the gun into the ground and says something like "Shit! That was loaded?" Which just struck me as completely hilarous. It was so out of context with the rest of this super-serious movie it was like an outtake they just left in there. Well, it's never a good sign if the part of the movie that I really liked didn't seem to belong. Don't see The Watcher.

The thing is, I don't like that school of acting where it's all about the shouting, going over the top. Overacting. Al Pacino. The only thing I liked him in was Insomnia. So when people tell me they don't like Keanu because he underacts, well there's not much I can say to that. My spectrum is cranked down and he's right where he should be. Part of the problem is half his movies are special effects extravaganzas (not meant to be acting showcases), and half are independent films the general public doesn't see. If you watched a bunch of Keanu movies, you'd see the real range. Try this:

Permanent Record. Not a particularly good movie; the ending is really bad. Offensive bad. Singing a song makes everything OK? But Keanu is great as the best friend of the boy who commits suicide, dealing with the survivor guilt. He's a pup in this one; it predates Bill and Ted.

My Own Private Idaho. I didn't really get this movie when I first saw it. What was I, 18 or 19? I picked it up again a few months back when the DVD came out, and wow. It also has River Phoenix in it. It's hard not to think what he'd be doing now if only.

The Last Time I Committed Suicide. He's not the main character in this, and having read Kerouac's On the Road is probably crucial to getting the movie, but I liked it.

The Gift. Keanu is a redneck wifebeater. See it.

Something's Gotta Give. In which Diane Keaton makes the wrong choice.