They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. This screen capture, on the other hand, equals just one word:

de·spond·en·cy/

diˈspändənsē/
Noun: A state of low spirits caused by loss of hope or courage.

Sorry for the radio silence of late, but there’s truly nothing happening.  The only consuming pursuit around here of late is that we’ve been looking into getting a dog.

*insert gasps of Crazy Cat Friends Here*

I know, I know.  We are not Dog People, we are Cat People.  Always will be.  That’s probably why it’s been taking so long.  But it’s not as if I hate dogs, I just don’t find them as intrinsically loveable as Dog People do.

But at the beginning of summer, I stumbled across a lovely, pre-owned, trained, older dog on Petfinder.  And I began to think, “We could deal with THAT.  A mature dog that we didn’t have to train?  That would be acceptable.”

And really with my unemployment and ample free time, if not now, then when?  We have the time, we have the resources, the only thing that’s not 100% is the motivation.  But we’d be helping an animal, and you never know until you try, right?

However, the process has been pretty slow and arduous so far.

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Almost every day since February, I’ve given thanks that no one in MY immediate family is a hoarder, and that we all have our psychoses on the OTHER end of the spectrum thankyouverymuch.

Except I found this picture in one of MiL’s boxes and I so, SO wish that I or my mom would have hoarded this t-shirt.

Detail.  Once a sk8er ho, always a sk8er ho.

Skateboarding is a Rad, Fast, Speedfreakin’….something er other.

Truth!

THIS is why I’ll probably be unemployed or underemployed for the rest of my days.  Because I when see shit like this in job ads, I don’t know whether to laugh or spit at the pretentious double-speak, the misuse of words, and the way HR fuckers can string together entire sentences that are utterly devoid of meaning.

From a job description for a Web Content Editor (i.e. Update the website and make sure it looks nice and works):

Locates, negotiates and pursues content.

The FUCK?!

I can’t even start with the inanity of this.  Good thing I’ve got Viserys on my team.

After nearly forty years of effort, I finally have solved the problems I have with interpersonal communication.

Because now I have this gif, which pretty much says everything I ever need to say to other people.  Done and done!

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—

If I’d had the interwebs and blogs had been invented in the very early 90′s, I would have done this then.  Because today we are paying long-overdue tribute to Iain Glen!  The man who has the distinction of being My Favorite Hamlet Ever.

I made his acquaintance at some point in the early 90′s when I was searching out every frame of film that Gary Oldman had ever appeared in.  And as had happened before and since, my love of Mr. Oldman lead me to a profound, life-changing discovery — I saw Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  “What a piece of work,” indeed! I’d been a Shakespeare dweeb since high school, and R&G was such a revelation!  So genius!  And yet so fucking funny!  I’ve since seen stage versions, but it’s the movie that I return to time and again.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it; I’ve absorbed it, it’s part of my DNA.

And yeah, I first saw it for Oldman (as Rosencrantz).  And he is a miracle in it.  And his interplay with Tim Roth’s Guildenstern is one of the finest cinematic parings of all time.  But Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not exist without Prince Hamlet.  And in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Hamlet was played by Iain Glen.  He matched their awesomeness volley for volley.  I’ve since learned that he was doing the role onstage in London when he was scooped up for the movie.  Obviously, Tom Stoppard (writer/director) knows the Best Hamlet ever when he sees him.

Iain has unfortunately had one of those “under the radar” careers, lots of BBC, Masterpiece Theater, stage stuff, that never gets seen on these benighted shores, so after R&G he was hard to keep track of but I never forgot him.

And now he turns up on my TV every week on Game of Thrones as the sexay Jorah Mormont!

I had no idea he’d been cast, so when I first started watching GoT I did double and triple takes, asking BW repeatedly “OMG, is that…Prince Hamlet?!”  (We never use Iain’s real name around here.  We say “Prince Hamlet”, and we both know who we’re talking about.)

Not surprisingly, he is knocking his role out of the park.  See how I said “the sexay Jorah Mormont” up there?  If you had told me 2 months ago that I’d utter those words, I’d have wrinkled my face in disgust.  In the GoT book, Jorah is not a sexy character…he’s actually kind of a creepy pedo-bear.  But thanks to the show writers’ brilliant casting choice and Iain Glen’s Iain Glen-ness, Jorah is now the most appealing hot piece on the show after Sean Bean!  It’s magic, I tell you, how the character has been transmogrified by his hotness and talent!

But to me, he will always be the Sweet prince of Denmark.

I was going to go with “X Missed the Spot,” but that’s cringe-inducing, isn’t it?

X-Men First Class was my most anticipated big studio movie of the summer.  You guys saw the trailer, wasn’t it magnificent?  It looked like it was going to be a serious, weighty take on the mythos — the Dark Knight of X movies.  What a misleading trailer.

There were two huge problems at play with this film. 1. It looked like they spent NO money.  CGI was BAD, and overused.  (CGI palm trees? Was that necessary?)  2.  Poor design.  I never once believed for a minute that this movie took place during 1962.  In the age of Mad Men, you can’t do 60′s half-assed and expect anyone to accept it.  3.  The script.  First Class grew from a script that was originally planned to be an origin movie about Magneto, and it shows.  They should have just made that movie instead.  Magneto is the only character in First Class who is fully-realized and has a great story arc.  This is Magneto’s film, and every part of the screenplay not dealing with him was obviously shoddy, last-minute hack work ranging from dull and lifeless to just flat-out bad.

You think my original title for this piece is cringe-inducing?  How about having young Professor X say, “Next thing you know, I’ll be going bald?”

See?  The script was littered with junk like that.  And whereas in the first (i.e. good) X-Men film, the mutant-gay allegory was thinly-veiled and deftly handled, in First Class we have a mutant utter the line, “They didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.”  Are you fucking kidding me?!

I will say that the cast was uniformly good (with a few glaring exceptions, Ms. Jones) with what they had to work with.  Lesser actors would have put this movie on par with Fantastic Four.  So kudos to them.  Any film where you get to look at J McAvoy for 2 hours is not without merit.

Finally, I have to admit that even if this had been the great movie I was expecting, I wouldn’t have liked it as much as I could/should have.  To some extent, I ruined X-Men First Class for myself.  See, I’m cursed with a very powerful visual imagination.  Maybe that’s my mutant power.  It’s so powerful in fact, that during the entire length of First Class I found myself mentally overlaying Michael Fassbender’s young Magneto with a vivid imagining of a young Ian McKellen performing the same part.  (If you grew up in a cave, McKellen played old Magneto in the original X-films.)  I tried to stop, but I couldn’t!

And so I made myself depressed and angry about what an infinitely better movie I could have been watching, how much more delicious the scenes of young Erik and Charles being buddies, how much sexier the scenes of Magneto being a badass, how much more convincing all of his speeches….I think I may have made myself cry.

Listen, I had nothing against Michael Fassbender personally.  I’m sure he’s a fine person and a good actor in other parts.  And I can hardly expect someone to be like a young Ian McKellen, can I?  Because who could?  It’s unfair to draw comparisons, truly.

But I did.  And now I deeply resent Michael Fassbender’s existence.  Call it a personal failing.

Enough of this.  I’ll rub more salt in my wounds.

Shaun has often been seen sporting the 3-day stubble look over the past year; I heartily endorse it…makes him look more masculine/mature.  Lately though, it seems he’s trying out a more structured approach to facial hair.  Check it out:

What do you think?  At first I was iffy, but I think I’m warming up to it.  It gives him a rather 17th-century air, as if now he should don a plumed hat at a rakish angle and wear a rapier.  Like this, actually….

or a modern take….

Yeah, I think if SW wants to adopt a Medieval allegorical trickster figure look, I can sign off on that.  Go on with yourself, mon beau renard.

DONE. DONE. DONE. DONE.

And by the way, fuck you, George Lucas.  How dare you take the Ewok song out of ROTJ?!  Soulless cretin.

Apart from a few insincere words of thanks, I got Amazon gift cards from the Board as my parting gift.  Not bad.  I also got a cold.  So it looks like I’ll be spending my first day of freedom blowing my nose and watching bad tv.

Back from Memphis, had a great time.  Pictures forthcoming.  But, what I really want to say is…

Because this Monday is Memorial Day, as of today there’s only THREE MORE days of Job Hell left to my name!

And that’s what BW and I are doing tomorrow morning.

We’re off to visit Teresa and Howard; it’ll be my first time meeting Howard, BW’s first time meeting either.  This trip was originally scheduled for March, but we rescheduled it after MiL’s death.  I’m really looking forward to it — it’s been so long that we’ve been anywhere besides PGH and New Castle and the road in between.

This will be our second trip to Memphis.  (We did the awesome E-centric road trip with Loup and LK a few years back.  Mr Lansky!!!) But it will be cool to see it from a local’s-eye view.  Anyway, we leave tomorrow morning, back on Monday. Check FB for updates, y’all.

I’ve been enjoying HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation very much.  I’ve not written a formal review because I think I need to see more episodes to gauge how it all hangs together.  But the cast have overcome all of my doubts; the actors are almost all flawless.

And there is ample hotness to enjoy.  Sean Baby, that’s a given.  But the real breakout star for me has been Harry Lloyd as Viserys “The last dragon” Targaryen.  He has transmuted one of the most vile, reprehensible, repulsive characters in a book series full of vile, reprehensible, repulsive characters, into a smoking little ball of hotness on the screen.  Sheer magic!

Sure, Vissy is still a batshit psycho, but now he’s a HOT batshit psycho.

I seem to be all alone out in left field on this one, but what else is new.  In the off chance that I’m not, and there are some other Viserys-lovers lurking out there who maybe just haven’t come out yet, here’s some screencaps from Episode 4′s delicious “bath time with the dragon” scene.

https://picasaweb.google.com/cg.vicious/BathTimeForViserys#

In honor of Mother’s Day, I’ve scanned a bunch more old photos from my Mother-in-law’s collection.

This latest batch all feature MiL as a baby up through High School graduation.  If you visit the album here,

https://picasaweb.google.com/cg.vicious/NovoaGreerAncestors#

the last fifteen pictures are the new ones.

Happy MOther’s Day, mothers….and that goes for mothers of pets as well!

Surely you all remember how for many, many years I woke up to Sean Baby’s face every morning on my trusty Boromug personalized coffee tumbler.

We were inseparable.  I took him on vacations, long road trips, meetings.  Then the tumbler broke and since I was replacing it, I decided to go for a new look at the same time.  I made a Sid Crosby mug after the Olympic mania last year.

BUT NOW…..

Thanks to Game of Thrones’ visionary casting department, a tradition is reborn!  Join me in welcoming Sean Baby back to his rightful place:  in front of my face every morning!

I’m writing a blog post about Nabisco Newton cookies.  WHEN CAN I SEE A MOVIE?!

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Last month of work begins today!  Thirty more calendar days, twenty-two more work days!

Let me tell you straight up that I think the modern British monarchy is a joke, I do not like the Queen, never fell for Diana’s pity party, and if I were (oh how I wish) a British citizen, I’d be right pissed off right now.

That said.

I am a die-hard Britophile, I do have a soft spot for Prince Charles, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Prince Hot Ginge (erm, that’s HRH Harry to you), and what the fuck…I have been following the antics of these people since at least King Ethelred The Unready, I’m not about to stop now.

I’m watching.  Hip, hip and all that!

I think I know how I will be celebrating my First Weekend of Joblessness in early June.  Watching X-Men: First Class repeatedly.

Wow, this looks unreal and about to kick the ass of all previous X-Men movies.  Possibly of all previous comic book movies of the past decade.  And I don’t even especially like the X-Men.

(Obligatory shallow fangirl:  Oh James McAvoy, you are too hot to grow up into Patrick Stewart.  Oh Michael Fassbender, you are so not hot enough to grow up into Ian McKellan.)

Behold!

en·er·vate/ˈenərˌvāt/

Adjective: Lacking in energy or vitality.

Such is why things have been dead here.  Nothing going on, nothing grabbing my interest, nothing new on the horizon.  Can’t BELIEVE I’m still doing my job for another month.  And the WEATHER, omg don’t even get me started.

Bright spots on the horizon:

• May 13 — Hesher release date.  Won’t be in PGH, I’m sure but one can hope.
• May 20 — Trip to Memphis to visit Teresa & Howard.
• May 31 — LAST DAY OF WORK

Until then, don’t be surprised if things continue to be dead around here.