Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for November 2005

The Weather Man: the review

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It’s November, NaNoWriMo has begun, and when it came time to pick a movie for date night I said, “Let’s go have a long fancy dinner somewhere.” I couldn’t find anything I wanted to see that we hadn’t seen already. The movie probably start flying into the theaters fast and furious in a week or two, but for now there are very slim pickens.

Darin said, “I’d kinda like to see The Weather Man. It’s gotten good reviews.” So we went to see that.

Note to self: next time Darin talks about reviews, read them first.

The Weather Man is the story of a TV weatherman in Chicago (no, not a terrorist — that Weatherman movie might have been interesting), Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage), whose life is falling apart. He’s divorced, and he doesn’t really know his kids: his overweight daughter who’s miserable in ballet class and smokes, and his teenaged son who’s attracted the unseemly attentions of his drug counselor. His father (Michael Caine) is a Pulitzer-prize winning author who makes Dave uncomfortable, because he feels like nothing he does is good enough. Everything makes Dave miserable: being recognized for being a TV weatherman, his relationship with his ex-wife, whether or not pursuing a job on a national morning show is a good idea. Dave’s emotional range goes from “blank affect” to “emotional constipation,” and the only time we seem him animated and happy is when he’s doing the weather map dance in front of a green screen.

The best scene is definitely the final one, and I’m not completely sure that’s not because it was the final damn scene of the movie.

Slowest. Movie. Ever. It’s cram-packed with actory goodness… Long stretches where the actors talk. Long scenes of people walking across snow. Nicolas Cage as his most nasal. I don’t want every movie to be full of slick dialogue or slam-cuts or problems neatly wrapped up in a bow after ninety minutes. But I’d like, I don’t know, something like an interesting character. Every single person had the same energy, the same languid affect. It felt like the director said, “Okay, take your time, take as long as you need to do this scene.”

The movie’s interminable. I went to the bathroom three times and I’m quite sure I didn’t miss anything.

Darin, for his part, liked the movie. I need to ask him why. No matter what his answer is, though, he never gets to pick a movie again. EVER.

The Rodeo Beach Trail Run

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Today’s trail run was at Fort Cronkhite, in the Marin headlands, just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Two words: utterly gorgeous. We started across the street from a popular surfing spot — the water temperature approached 0 Kelvin, but there were a lot of surfers out there — and we ran up the hill (puff, puff) past lots and lots of WWII (or WWI? or earlier?) concrete gun emplacements. There’s a lotta concrete in the hillside up there, complete with bunkers with iron doors.

Hey, no one ever invaded the Bay, did they? (If I remember correctly, the Presidio was originally built to defend against the Russians…the Tsarist Russians. So it wouldn’t surprise me if those bunkers were WWI or even earlier.)

The start of the run was brutal: pretty much the entire 1100 foot rise was the first half of the run. Everyone was walking after a while, except maybe the extremely fit. I asked Rob if he was getting a workout, and he said, “I don’t do these runs for the workout. I do the workouts so I can do these runs.” (Because they’re so beautiful.)

I’m pretty sure I didn’t beat the 9-year-old this time, but this is definitely a run we’d do again. The surroundings are completely stunning — more than once we stopped not (just) for me to catch my breath, but just to look out at the Bay and the Pacific and the headlands — and, except for not being able to hack the initial run to the top, I didn’t find the trail excruciating. I felt pretty good at the end, actually.

I don’t know what the trail runs will be like during winter. Wet dirt trails don’t sound like much fun, but the uncertainness of the terrain is half the fun of these things. Much better than a boring ol’ flat land run, that’s for sure. And my desire to run (or at least keep jogging) all the way to the top of one of these runs is quite the inventive for me to keep up my program.

What amazes me are the people who do the 50km runs. (Not that I’ve been around long enough to see what they look like when they get back.) They do a run much longer than a marathon over terrain harder than any normal marathon, and there’s no medal at the end, no cars to win.

I would love to be one of those runners. I guess I need to work my way up to doing a 20km run first.

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During the drive back I pulled out my Alphasmart and managed to write 600 words as Rob drove. And now I have to go do my other 1400 for the day.

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Update: Rob points me to a page that talks about the artillery bunkers and emplacements at Fort Cronkhite.

Nano 2005

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Yes, it’s that time of the year again. I’d been looking forward to this for some time, at least for the past month, when I realized I really needed to take a break from the novel I’ve been working on since last Nano and work on something new for a while.

Well, I guess it’s kinda new: it’s in the same series as last year’s. (It’s a mystery series.) Same main characters, different crime. And so far I’m 5005 words into it, so I guess I’m having a fairly good time so far! I want to get ahead of the game a little, especially in regards to Week 2 (when everyone hits the Wall and has no idea what to write) and Thanksgiving. But hey: 2500 a day, I’ll be done by November 20th.

Well, it could happen.

Writing is never like “taking dictation” for me. I read that over and over again from various people. What it’s more like for me is that I see a scene and I try to write down what happens, with enough set decoration to set the stage and enough internal monologue to provide a little humor along the way. I’ve never been given a plot in one single lump — I always have to play with things to put it together. Apparently I am not on a hotline to Inspiration Central: everything I come up with comes from me, not the Great Ether.

Of course, if the Great Ether wants to show up and help out and give me a little boost, I am all for it.

And now, after 3200 words today, I am going to go take a little break.

Update: I have no idea if I’ve mentioned this before, but my handle on the Nano boards is “Dianeofnka”, in case you want to friend me. And let’s face it: it’s all about having long friend lists. And the 50,000 words, of course.