No Commencement for Tired Men

I'm wiped clean. Today was a day of killing time. Two hours after the ROTC commissioning. Four after rehearsal.

BOOKS

I finished "No Country for Old Men". Don't even start it if you're not in for an odd trip. You gotta walk in there with no pre-conceived notions about what's gonna go down or even how things are going to be presented to you. Even if you have seen the movie and know the story and know how abrupt the ending is, you're still in for some interesting things along the way.

I think the reason that so many people got thrown off by the ending of the flick isn't the ending itself. It is the fact that this movie, this film, was publicized, from day one as kind of a modern cat and mouse tale with awesome actors and directors. But, really, it's about Tommy Lee Jones' character, Sherrif Bell. Forget creepy Bardem and awesomely apathetic Brolin. It's about what is happening to this guy who, going into this series of events, truly believes he has seen it all and is very content (not happy) with the way the world is, especially in his little corner of it.

But, then Chigurh enters the picture. And Bell sees an evil that, until this point, he wasn't even sure could exist. So what happens to this man who is getting on in years and is experiencing something so earth-shattering as the devil incarnate (or the closest earthly thing to it, anyway.) That's what "No Country" is about, in any medium you can consume it. It's not about the young. It truly is, like the title, about the old and how life is passing them by.

I started the book "Slam" by one of my favorite writers, Nick Hornby. It's not Hornby's best. That would be "About a Boy". But, it's definitely not his worst, at least from what I've read so far. There are few things, book wise, that could have disappointed me more than "How to Be Good." It just seemed tawdry and beneath him. But, he found his way back with "A Long Way Down," which really needs to be a movie at some point. Great injustice that it isn't being worked on right now.

"Slam" is honestly meant for "Young Adults", but in the world of all ages reading all types of books, that bullshit is just for marketing anyway. It's about this kid who talks to Tony Hawk. Not in real life. A poster. That talks back. But, it doesn't really talk back. The kid just fills in the spaces in the conversation with quotes from Hawk's autobiography, which he's read a billiondy times. Well, shit happens to this kid and, in typical Hornby fashion, we laugh and cry as he deals with him mum and the girl he just might love...as well as good ol' TH. Like I said, it's not earth-shattering yet, but it's definitely enjoyable and a good read.

Other than that, not a lot shaking. Got lost in the middle of Commissioning today thinking about Heather Graham. Goddamn.

Nothing in the way of anything else to report.

VID TIME

This is a video of Mike Rowe, now of "Dirty Jobs" and "The Deadliest Catch" fame shilling shit on QVC's graveyard shift back in the day. I have a handful of these videos and most of them are pretty funny. But, this, as well as the one I will show tomorrow, take the cake.