Orson and Kumar

Sunday is often a day for really vegging out and not getting a lot done. Usually I do have a few things I want to do and they inevitably get put off until it's too late. In fact, I still have to work on a couple of files before going up to read for a while before bed.

Last night I had a incredible meal that began with calamari in a kind of soup with garlic, onions, tomatoes and huge caper berries and ended with a huge place of veal osso bucco over saffron rice. Yes, it's very decadent, and I respect anyone who's given up red meat, but veal is awesome. My stomach really bothered me after all that meat, the garlic, the gin and tonics and the capuccino, though.

Today after breakfast with the kids and dropping them off, I went back to bed with the intention of taking a very rare nap, but it didn't happen. Instead I finished a book I'd set down months ago, Simon Callow's Orson Welles: Hello Americans, which covers Orson's film, radio, newspaper and political career from post-Citizen Kane to Macbeth. It's a very good book, though I'm sure some of the more ardent Welles admirers will find fault with the tone of it. It's hard not to come away from the book with the feeling that Welles film woes often are at least partly due to his moving onto other projects before the editing of a film was completed. There are several cases here where Welles didn't closely supervise the editing of his films even when he would have been welcome, even required, to do so. One thing that does shine through is Welles' social conscience and great efforts for racial equality, with the career damage and personal danger that entailed.

After finishing that, I finally began Absolute Sandman Vol. 1. I probably haven't read those stories in a decade or more. I was struck by how fully Gaiman had thought about this world, with references to several stories dropped in just the first few issues that would play out over the next several years. I also realized that I was unfairly criticizing Mike Dringenberg's work all this time when it was Sam Kieth who, in my opinion, wasn't the right choice as co-artist at the beginning of the series. There's a certain amusement to Kieth's work here, in that it resembles Basil Wolverton's work on PLOP!, which also featured Cain and Abel, I think, or at least it brings one a step closer to another '60s comic, House of Mystery, but I just find his stuff too cartoony here, his faces too Basset Houndy. Dringenberg holds up better as crisp, representative '90s mature comics art, I think.

Continuing the theme of trying to catch up on some things, I finally watched a movie I borrowed from a coworker months ago, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. I laughed a few times and would say it's all right, but I can't give it high marks. I dunno, with the cheetah and the hang glider and the rest, it was like the writers would just throw absolutely anything in if it seemed amusing and killed a frew minutes of screen time. There's not much momentum to the movie and the plot was so familiar it was pretty boring--uptight guy finally gets some guts and goes about making his life better. The movie was fine but I can't see watching it again. I will say that Kal Penn has a lot of charisma, and John Cho doesn't.