A small complaint about my recent move: my chances of seeing Spirited Away in a theater may have gone down quite a bit. The film is in a slow, gradual release. I have no idea if it was even going to play in Buffalo, and now that I’m in an even smaller town than Buffalo, I may miss out entirely.

But I have high hopes. One bit of niftiness came at our new local grocery store, which has a typical Halloween-type display with big cutouts of cartoon characters in Halloween outfits. This place actually included Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, a Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro, and the dragon from Spirited Away. To see these characters in a grocery store display was somehow deeply satisfying.

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The tallest building in Syracuse is 21 stories (or so). That’s apparently about to change, as construction is about to begin on a 47-story hotel that will be part of the gargantuan shopping-entertainment-restaurant-hotel complex that is in the planning stages. They’re building the hotel first, even though the rest of the project doesn’t exist yet, because the company involved believes that the construction itself will be a tourist draw. I’m not sure about that — did people go to Boston to see the Big Dig being dug? Maybe they did, I don’t know….anyway, the whole shebang is called Destiny USA. I’m still a bit fuzzy on why they want to build something like this in a fairly small town in Upstate NY, but it still sounds interesting to me. Too bad they couldn’t do it in Buffalo.

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My level of anticipation for The Two Towers has officially been upgraded from “Really looking forward to it” to “Nearly drooling”, on the basis of the new trailer. In this day and age of junky marketing for junky movies, it’s so amazingly refreshing to see a film project where everyone involved is saying, “You know, let’s get this one right, shall we?”

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In the “That’s what you get for asking the pertinent question after writing the chapter in question” Department: I posted a question to a Usenet group today, pertaining to an injury that I inflicted on one of my characters a few chapters ago. It turns out that I have mishandled it slightly, and I may need to go back and fix it — unless I can graft on a fix in the coming pages. That, I fear, would be a bit of a cheat. But of course I’m going to try it anyway, because as the Bard himself once said to no less a personage than Queen Elizabeth the First, “Rewriting sucks.”

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I’ve noticed that other bloggers like to note, with amusement, the incredibly odd search-engine results by which their blogs are located. I’ve been a bit disappointed that I haven’t had any good ones to report, except for the fact that I have a permalink at left to the film music website “Scoreland Soundtrack Reviews”, which apparently shares the name “Scoreland” with some kind of….site with pictures of scantilly-clad women. But, I finally got a nifty hit from a “naughty search” today: someone was using Yahoo! UK & Ireland to find sites matching this search term: women and underwater and sex and video files. I’m sorry this particular person no doubt went away from Byzantium’s Shores unsatisfied. I’m reminded of a scene in the book Time After Time (based on the film of the same name), in which H. G. Wells, having traveled forward in time from 1898 to 1979, wants to impress a lovely woman in San Francisco by taking her to a wonderful Scots restaurant he’s discovered, named “McDonald’s”.

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I am now sufficiently moved-in that I can finally return to writing today. I have not written a word, either in my current short story or in the novel-in-progress, in two weeks. But the desk is unburied and workable, the fountain pens have been re-inked, the printer is fired up, and I’ve finally got the computer set-up the way I want it. (Over the last week I have experimented with four different arrangements for the computer.) It’s time to throw open the doors, clear out the cobwebs, and get back to doing the important stuff.

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In my post yesterday about the new TV season, I forgot to sing the praises of one of my favorite shows: Scrubs. This hybrid of ER and The Wonder Years never fails to get at least five good belly-laughs out of me, and it often does so in unexpected ways.

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A couple more football thoughts, after yesterday’s action:

:: I didn’t get to see the Vikings-Seahawks game last night, but judging by the game’s box score, it appears that the Vikings are a team that is short on talent, especially on defense, and completely devoid of leadership — whether from the front office, the coaching staff, or even amongst the players. It’s kind of sad to see a team that is a year removed from two NFC Championship Game appearances in three years sink to this level, but if you consider the Vikings’ recent luck with the draft and the clubhouse problems that have been metastasizing for two or three years now, it’s not all that surprising. It may be time for them to give up this year, and probably next, by cutting Randy Moss loose, taking the hit on the cap, and moving into a full rebuilding mode. The Vikings are going nowhere mighty fast, so it’s probably time for them to just start over.

:: In three years we’ve had the arrival of Kurt Warner from out of nowhere, the re-emergence of Trent Dilfer (and his immediate, and inexplicable, re-disappearance), and the arrival of Tom Brady. If the theme in the NFL these days is “Great Quarterbacking From Completely Unexpected Places”, then maybe it’s Tommy Maddox’s turn. He was apparently very sharp and impressive in coming in off the bench to spark the Steelers to their first win this year.

:: Apparently the officials in the Oakland-Tennessee game were being fitted for eyepatches and Miracle Ears, judging by the two blatant illegal blocks they missed on an Oakland player’s punt return for a touchdown.

:: Funniest post-game comment yesterday, courtesy of Drew Bledsoe after the Bills QB-Extraordinaire won his second overtime game in three weeks (which was also the third one the Bills have played this year): “I guess I just don’t do enough in regulation. I need to get more done in regulation so I don’t have to keep dealing with this.”

:: The Patriots finally lost. Yippee. (I’ve never liked the Pats much, but nowadays I’m really mad at them because they got Brian Cox, the greatest force for evil in the entire NFL, a Super Bowl ring. Cox has a ring, and Jim Kelly doesn’t. Thanks, Pats. Harumph.)

:: I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the college game, but both Iowa and Iowa State had good weekends. Iowa beat Penn State (despite blowing a big lead, which I’m sure has a certain friend of mine rather angry this week) and ISU knocked off once-mighty Nebraska (which I’m sure puts my old college adviser in a tough spot, as he is a Nebraska fan teaching at ISU). And I’m slowly getting up to speed on the activities of the Syracuse Orangemen, who lost a thriller in three overtimes this week. Living in a town that actually has decent college athletics is something new. Buffalo wasn’t much for college athletics.

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Football stuff:

:: The Bills have played four games. Three of those have gone to overtime. They’ve won two of those, on touchdown passes. They are now 2-2. I’m still of the view that they are too young and raw to really compete this year, and they’re too thin on defense to stand up once they start going on the road to some pretty tough teams later in the year, but maybe I’ll upgrade my original prediction for a 6-10 season. They could go 8-8.

:: I had to watch the Jets today, instead of the Bills. (I don’t know if the Bills sold out today.) Man, are the Jets b-a-d.

:: I can breathe easier about my AFC Super Bowl pick, because the Steelers won today. Of course, they needed overtime to do it. But they’re showing signs of life. (My NFC Super Bowl pick, the Eagles, are doing just fine. They beat up on the Texans today.)

:: Mike Martz can breathe easier now, because his team’s bad luck is beginning to overtake his team’s bad coaching. Kurt Warner got hurt today, in his throwing hand.

:: A holdover thought from last week, when the Bills played the Broncos: I hope Brian Griese wins a Super Bowl soon, not because I like Griese (I have no opinion of him, really) but because I’m sick of hearing the commentators on TV, every time I watch the Broncos, babble on about how Griese still lives in the shadow of John Elway. We get it, already!!

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The new TV season has started at last! Here are some random thoughts on the season premiers of shows that I watch.

:: Frasier. This was rather a let-down. I think that Niles and Daphne deserved more of a wedding episode than this. I expected a grand farce dealing with Daphne’s goofy English family, but there was little of that. The feeling was, “OK, we’ve taken eight years or however long it’s been to get them together. They’re together. That’s that. Back to Frasier.”

:: That 70s Show. OK, Eric and Donna are back together, and now apparently Hyde and Jackie are a couple. According to the opening credits, Tommy Chong isn’t around anymore, so I guess his riotous stoner Leo is history, which is a shame (although admittedly the character didn’t have much growth-potential). I still like this show a great deal, but I wonder how much longer these actors can play high-schoolers convincingly. I don’t know how much more mileage this show has.

:: NYPDBlue. This show is underappreciated, given the level of quality it has maintained despite the revolving-door cast it’s had through the years. (Only two actors, Dennis Franz and Gordon Clapp, remain from Year One.) That’s about all I have to say there.

:: Everybody Loves Raymond. Brad Garrett won an Emmy for playing Robert, which is a fine thing. And now that Gillian Anderson and Sela Ward are both off regular television, I guess that makes Patricia Heaton one of my top-three beautiful women on television right now. (The other two are ER‘s Maura Tierney and The West Wing‘s Stockard Channing.) Nothing really new on Raymond; just solid, funny storytelling with a cast that probably has better comic timing than any other cast on TV right now.

:: Ed. I’m a bit disappointed, on the basis of the first episode this year. What made the Ed-Dennis-Carol triangle so interesting to me was the fact that all three characters were good people, although flawed. The solution now, though, seems to be to make Dennis into a jerk. I had higher hopes for the writers of Ed than this. But, maybe I’m wrong.

:: The West Wing. This was a terrific episode. I loved all the stuff with Josh, Toby and Donna being stranded in Indiana and the troubles that arose from their complete inability to relate to anyone outside the Beltway. The business with the assassination last year of the terrorist chief continues to be interesting; I expect this to be the first big scandal of President Bartlet’s second term. Lily Tomlin has been one of my favorite actresses for years (ever since I watched a comedy special of hers on HBO when I was seven years old, even though I didn’t get very many of the jokes), so I’m excited to see her on the cast. I’m hoping for The West Wing to make a return to the form of its first two seasons; last year, while high-quality, was nevertheless not as good as the first two years. They’re off to a good start.

:: Friends. Yes, I still love Friends. But I also hope that this is the last year for the show, not because the quality has fallen off but because with the arrival of children on the scene, it’s about to become a completely different show. Apparently they are talking about another season, which to me would be a bit pointless. At this point, I’m ready to see this season bring Ross and Rachel back together, have Chandler and Monica conceive by season’s end, maybe find love (or maybe not) for Joey and Phoebe, and call it a series.

:: ER. This series has always tended to pack its episodes full, but this one was dense even by ER‘s standards. Parts of the story took place on three continents; we had a contagion-story, some romance, some culture-clash, a doctor alone and desperate to save a crashing patient, a blood-soaked trauma, a doctor facing a huge new challenge (Romano’s recovery from the severing and reattachment of his left arm), and more. All that, in a single hour. I found this episode hard to follow, containing as it did so much plot. Nevertheless, I’m still hooked. John Carter and Abby Lockhart have the most chemistry of any couple on the show since Doug Ross and Carol Hathaway, and I’m interested to see how Dr. Romano responds to what may be the loss of his surgical skills. I just hope the show’s producers remember that sometimes one can achieve more tension with less plot. Witness that harrowing first-season episode that focused entirely on Dr. Greene’s efforts to deliver a baby to a woman suffering complications, or the second-season episode in which Dr. Ross rescued a child trapped in a drainage pipe during a flood. Those were sparse episodes, plotwise — and utterly absorbing. (I do have to report a bit of gallows-humor that occurred to me during this episode. When the docs were trying to stabilize Romano after his arm was chopped off, at one point Dr. Chen says, “I can’t find his pulse.” I wondered: is she checking the wrist that’s still attached to his body? I know, I know….)

:: CSI. They’ve got a formula, and they’re sticking with it. Fine by me.

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