Strange Realizations

1) Probably news to no one on my flist, but I discovered I write better when I don't spend as much time thinking about writing, but fill more hours of the day reading nonfiction, cooking gourmet-ish suppers, riding my bicycle in the park, and making appreciative noises about Toy's increasingly firm-from-jogging physique. Then when I sit down at the computer, all is clarity. Go figure.

2) Escape from L.A. is a prophetic movie. What is it about John Carpenter? They Live gives me shivers enough. This one, though... future un-fun-loving America taken over by an increasingly repressive and warlike religious right? Uh... And Cliff Robertson as the president even looks and sounds like Dubya. Surrealist ray of hope provided by the fact that the True Spirit of America is represented by Kurt Russell as foul-mouthed cigarette-smoking leather-duster-wearing eyepatched antihero Snake Plissken, who decides in the final seconds of the film to shut out the lights on everyone's power games. God, I love that movie. Cheesy surfing sequences and all.

3) Rewatched The Lost Boys recently and Near Dark - just feeling the need to brush up on my modern vampire lore. Was shocked to realize that the entire concept of Sunnydale - So-Cal town with unusually high death rate (nicknamed the "murder capital") is actually overrun by vampires, which only selected members of the community know about, namely some comic-book-reading geeks - is actually lifted wholesale from The Lost Boys. Including the vampire's candlelit lair under the city that was once a building sunken in an earthquake, ala the Master's sunken church. Dianne Weist also seems very much a prototype Joyce. (Kiefer Sutherland's platinum Goth look in LB and all the flammable-vampires-under-blankets imagery and RV with tinfoil-covered windows in Near Dark are also kind of eyebrow-raising, but easier to pass off as being part of the accepted cultural vampire image. And LB itself borrowed a major scene from Salem's Lot.) Had strange moment of clarity on how incestuous the entire vampire genre really is, how heavily each creation adds to the stew pot and is then reguritated nearly wholesale in the next, e.g., The Forsaken (good film with two hunka-hunka gorgeous guy leads) is pretty much a direct descendant of Near Dark, as is John Carpenter's Vampires, not that that's a good movie, unfortunately (the book it's based on is worth reading, though). Makes me wonder if from now on, women fighting vampires will be the new norm in such movies from now on. And I'm trying to pinpoint when it was that the vampire characters turned all Matrix-y and cool. Blade? Or was that a Buffy influence? Lost Boys?

4) I miss going to work. I really need to find a new job. I don't adjust well to a) having no money and b) feeling less than useful. I can fill my time, but... I like talking to people. Which is why, I guess, I babble off so much here. Sigh.

Fic Rec Circular

jwaneeta added my story "The Dead Walk" onto this list, so according to the rules, I must pay it forward by recc'ing some more. This is a cleaned-up version of the list - I tried to reinstall at least people's LJ user links and as many direct links as I could - damn that cut and paste mode! My three recs are at the bottom.

So this is how it goes (pasted from the original post): I'll rec three writers, pointing out two of their stories that I love. These three writers will copy/paste the list to their journal and add three more. Kinda like a pay-it-forward thing. Recs cannot be repeated so each new person must read the list and make sure they don't rec a writer that's on it. Making sense so far? By the end of this there should be like a million billion recs! ( Recs, Recs, and more Recs )