Jumpy Stomp

6.8.11

5:01 pm

 

First things first: after being out in the sun for about thirty minutes, most of my body is bright red.

"Paul", one may ask, "knowing you, why the fuck would you ever choose to be out in this weather?"

Well, yes.

Fuck you.

I was just helping a brother out.

Alan needed a huge madman to destroy a box in front of him and Jess Howell for Bob Greenberger's roast next month.

And I, being that helpful, box-destroying type, of course, agreed.

We were also running hella behind on the shoot and so I had no time to get home to grab my stuff for work, so I've been here for the past two hours or so with nothing but my thoughts...and my sunburn.

I'm going to streak home on my break, stand in a cold shower until my genitals disappear and then get my stuff for the final four hours of today's sadness.

"What stuff"?, did I hear you murmur?

No?

Well then...I began to find the second book of the Fire and Ice series a bit...annoying and decided to check out Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.

As I said before, I'm learning a lot more about Swedish economics than I ever would have thought from such a lauded book.

How the fuck can out fasterfasterfaster culture have accepted such a slow-starting book?!

It's astounding!

On one hand, it makes me think people are getting smarter, on the other hand, this book isn't nearly as fun as I thought it would be.

Larsson certainly understands the definition of "juxtaposition" though...one paragraph has one main character reading quietly through a binder of decades old police reports while, in the next paragraph, the other main character is being brutally sexually assaulted.

I'm almost halfway through and beginning to get into it, but the pace, at least of the sections following the financial journalist are dryer than the sheaves of papers he's spent most of his time sorting through.

ZING!!!

Take THAT, Mikale Blomvkist!!!

I'm curious as hell how Fincher is going to make this an interesting film.

Then again, I had that feeling before The Social Network and...well, he didn't really make an interesting film, per se, more like he made it...engrossing.

But, seriously, the first quarter of the book is like one big library scene.

At one point, the financial journalist is being set up for a long story and he actually says, "look, get to the point".

I pumped my fist in utter unanimity and prepared for the chase to be cut to...but then the person telling the story says, "you must be patient" and the first responds with, "Okay."

Christ...

Phil liked it very much because he said he found it grounded the book.

Look, grounding is one thing, but watching the ground as rain dries on it?

I'm especially rankled by the fact that I put down A Clash of Kings because it was dragging, not knowing I was in for a history of Swedish industrialists.

AND NOT EVEN REAL SWEDISH INDUSTRIALISTS!

FAKE SWEDISH INDUSTRIALISTS!

I CAN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT THESE PEOPLE THE NEXT TIME I'M INVITED TO A RECEPTION AT THE SWEDISH CONSULATE!!!

But, like I said, the book is growing on me.

Hopefully it will pick up.

And hopefully Fincher will find some way to reconcile his awesome, tense, insane directing style with this tinder-dry story without doing anything ridiculous.

And, again, like I said, I'm only about halfway through this thing.

Everything could explode on the next page for all I know.

I'll weigh back in when I've finished it.

 

Meanwhile, I've decided to record no more than two chapters at a go with The Grind Show, for the sake of vocal integrity.

Chapters one through three are all edited and ready to rock, while four and five exist in their rawest, unedited forms, waiting to be glossed.

Not sure when that will happen, as all I want to do in this horrible fucking weather is die, scream at the sun and die again.

I'll do my best though...for science.

 

Time to run home.