The Daily News

The Daily News

1 Happy Friday.

2 Whew, what a week!

3 For the record I've been loving my babes.

4 Little toes, and so beautifully perfect in every way.

5 Sooooooo pretty.

6 I enjoyed those little cuties beyond belief.

7 I have yet to get used to their teensy perfection.

8 I stayed at Josh and Caitlin's half the night loving

those little nuggets. I stayed late, and finally dragged myself home.

9 I pretty much hugged what was left of the wine, and crashed down on Le Luge, the chair I bought from some Amazon-dot-com lady a few weeks ago.

10 Some garage lady.

11 Amazon stuff, but a wonderful leather chair, dark brown and comfy. I got home late last night and needed some veggies and some teevee.

12 I arrived ready for some Disney, The Middle, or Last Man Standing, that wonderful show with Tim Allen. I clicked on all sorts of stations, but for some strange reason, I decided that Reservoir Dogs might just be the ticket instead.

What could help you drift off more pleasantly than a Quentin Tarantino movie? Who can't drain a pint of blood-red pulp now and again? And what could it hurt?

13 <Basketball buzzer> As we speak, it was not only a poor choice, but it also froze the teevee for four minutes, a grim foreshadowing already rearing it's ugly head.

14 It became my only source of light, for a moment.

15 AND I attempted to lash out at all of this on a laptop.

16 And my laptop tends to jump up an item and down an item.

17 So...

18 Reservoir Dogs. I have somehow to make this all work.

19 Moving On, Part One: Allow me to interrupt. Any position I take on RD might doom me to an eternity of hitting myself smack on the head with Bibles.

20 Normally, I'm fine. But allow me space to criticize Reservoir Dogs. I realize this can be considered blasphemy to an entire generation, but I must blast this film, strip it to its minuteness, and then atomically blow it into the sky.

21 Let us zero in on the Mr. Name-the-Color Scene: I was pretty sure last night that the concept never struck me, never landed, and never worked.

22 <pies from tons of fans thrown in this guy's face>

23 Thank you.

24 What we seem to have here is...

25 Uhhhhmmmmmmmm...

26 Sirens and loud stuff.

27 Lots of bullet pops, and a sudden flashback to the opening scene where some guy kept screaming, "I'm goon die; I know it!"

28 Dude. Just stupid.

29 How much stimulation can we throw out there before someone stands up and shouts, "This is not cutting edge. This is garbage!" Blasphemy? Uh, yup.

30 Oh, I know it probably worked back-in-the-day.

31 Cult films. I swear. Pulp boushit.

32 Somehow, this turkey is considered a treasure.

33 Guys squirming around in a pool of dried-up sticky blood while the other jewel thieves, our heros, have guns pointed shakeingly at one another's faces. Grunts.

34 SMH.

35 Just sayin'.

36 I think I'll leave Reservoir Dogs to the folks who worshiped it originally.

37 And it ends with credits going on, giving fledgling director at the time Quentin Tarantino his ego trip, with The Lime in the Coconut somehow attempting to make sense of it all, very chic. And unutterably stupid. And more than likely plagiarized.

38 Sorry. I just don't enjoy shallowness. I fought with it trying to find any sort of artistry or touch. Must have had something I completely missed, but I don't think so.

39 So I'll back off a bit. Thanks QT, for bringing this turkey in early so I could enjoy an early Thanksgiving meal.

40 Other than that, lay off the Quaaludes.

41 I can say this: the best thing about that film was that I got the dishes done.

43 But I digress...

44 Bleh. Let's change channels and have a look at something that is sure to work!

45 Moving On, Part Two: Go see this!

What: The Star-Spangled Girl by Neil Simon.

Where: Northside Theatre Company, Olinder Theatre
848 E Willim St, San Jose, CA 95116

When: Oct. 8th-Nov. 1st

Directed by Angie Higgins

Starring: Jason Salazar, Davied Douglas Morales, and Gretta Hestenes Stimson

Photography by Evelyn Huynh

Costume Design by Amy Conners

Lighting Design by Jarku Tang Virtanen

Sound Design by Adam Weinstein

Set Design by Richard T. Orlando

AD/SM Patrick Tisdale

Northside Theatre Company The Star-Spangled Girl

46 Moving On, Part Two: And on to a mini writing workshop: Teaching writing gets tough sometimes, because it requires work. I don't subscribe to the "some-people-are-just gifted" articles, even those written by famous authors. Even by famous authors who have taught English.

47 Everybody can get better. With that brief intro, I shall conclude this week's lessons with a short one: just a few do's and don'ts from a dusty old copy of Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, Fourth Course by John Warriner.

48 This is from a chapter entitled Glossary of Usage. I posted a few of the rules, then saw that Stephen King used busted incorrectly (on purpose, for a nice effect; saw it last week but not gonna hunt it down on a Friday), and realized the challenge, but here go with some quick fixes:

Listen: The words hardly and scarcely are considered negative words, the same way no, not, never etc. are negative. The rule of thumb is that you don't use two negative words in the same sentence. It's an excellent rule. That being said, don't use those words with the word not or any contraction thereof, as can't, for example. Back to Mr. Warriner:

EXAMPLES I can (not can't) hardly hear you when you speak.

We had (not hadn't) scarcely enough time to

finish our essay test.

49 could of WRONG! Could have sounds like could of when spoken. Do not erroneously write of with the

helping verb could. Use could have. Also avoid ought

to of, should of, would of, might of, and must of. This

rule is verbatim from Warriner.

50 And still more:

discover, invent To discover means "to find something

that already exists." To invent is "to be the first to

make something not known before."

EXAMPLES Margaret Knight invented a window frame.