Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Gaming the related books field

I really wanted to go to the movies this weekend, but it’s amazing how much total and utter shit is playing at the high point of the movie season. I think the only reason the movie industry is making any money is because the theatres are air conditioned. I’m sick of this formulaic thing where they make a sequel of a movie and then expect us to pay for it. I thought the first Austin Powers was moderately funny, but I thought the joke wore too thin to see the second one. And there’s no way in hell the third one would keep my interest. I also didn’t think Men in Black 2 would be worth paying $10 to see. I saw K-29 already, and that’s about it. I think I almost seriously considered seeing that new Halloween movie, even though I don’t like that genre at all and this is like the 68th sequel, and it has  Jamie Lee Curtis in it. But I didn’t.

I spent most of the weekend watching DVDs, although the lack of AC in my living room makes this a losing proposition. I got a 2-DVD set of all the Mr. Show episodes from the first two seasons. I think I saw one episode of this back in 1997, so I’m glad they got the DVDs out. They remind me of the old UCB show, but slightly earlier and it was on HBO, so there’s more general obscenity. It’s always weird to see something like this or the Chris Rock Show DVDs and expect the general network TV level of dialogue, but then get all of the fucks and shits and everything else thrown in on top of it. I like the general format of their show too, the jumps into randomness. It reminds me a little bit of what I was trying to do in Rumored to Exist, which is also like what they did in Kentucky Fried Movie.

I am hell-bent on changing the “related books” fields in Barnes and Noble by buying some really stupid books and then buying a copy of Rumored in the same basket. I’m slightly amused that a bunch of Oprah books ended up under Summer Rain for the same reason. So I just ordered some stuff to test my theory. I’m still waiting on Amazon, and I have no idea when the book will show up there. I also wish I had more copies with me to take back to Indiana, because I know I could get rid of them if I had more. I think I have 3 or 4 spare copies around the house.

And yes, I am going back to Indiana on Thursday, for my sister’s wedding. This will be a tightly booked trip, and I have no idea if I will have any time to do anything other than the wedding and other family stuff. I will go to Bloomington maybe for an afternoon, to have lunch and take some photos. It has been ten years since the stuff from Summer Rain happened, so I need to get some kind of story out of this, and it would help to have some pictures, too. I’d like to redo the Summer Rain site, but I also need to redo this journal site, and I’m not happy with the Rumored book site, either. And that’s on top of about ten million other things I need to do.

Oh well. Waiting for lunch. It’s too hot to go outside, something like 95 out, maybe over 100 with the heat index. I need to figure out a way to rig my air conditioner so the humidity tank doesn’t fill up and shut off the AC in the middle of the night. I’ve got a hose, I just need to do some Rube Goldberg thing to rig a secondary tank. But first, I need to find out what the hell is up with lunch.