It's 2 o'clock in the morning where I am, and I hear the freezing rain outside. It doesn't sound very nice. In fact, it sounds rather angry.
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My wife and I watched Red tonight. Not the movie based on the Jack Ketchum novel (though that's one on my instant queue, and both star Brian Cox, who is always great in everything he does), but the one starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich and a bunch of other well-known actors. It's a fun action-packed movie that is what it is. Definitely worth my $1 from the Blockbuster kiosk.
The movie is based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, though I don't know how faithful the movie is to the original story. Either way, I like that Hollywood is realizing they don't have to remake everything and are taking graphic novels more seriously.
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Speaking of graphic novels, tonight I just finished reading American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Stephen King, and Rafael Albuquereque. I've had the first volume since November and just started it yesterday. I don't know what took me so long. I loved it. Each chapter is broken up into two interconnecting stories, one that takes place in 1925, the other in 1880. Scott Snyder -- the series creator -- does the 1925 storyline, while Stephen King takes up the 1880 storyline. At the back of the book is a section that includes two pages from each writer's script with the corresponding art to show the differences between the two writing styles. It's really interesting, especially if you, like me, are fascinated by the world of graphic novels. It's a medium I'd love to try my hand at someday, but for some reason it seems so intimidating. I'm definitely looking forward to the second volume, scripted solely by Snyder, which comes out in May.
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Do any of you writers out there carry business cards? I was at a party a few weeks ago where someone found out I was a writer and, as the conversation came to an end, asked for my business card. It felt weird. I've never seen the need for them, but maybe that's because I normally don't attend big conferences and conventions. Yes, I'm on Twitter and Facebook, but that's as far as my networking goes. Still, my wife has been pressing me to get some, especially with AWP coming up, and while it's now way too late to have some professionally made, I broke down and did a few myself. I did two versions, a serious one and a not-so-serious one. Can you guess which one this is?
Who knows, maybe in the future I'll have some "real" business cards made up. Ones that would even impress Patrick Bateman. Though, you know, I wouldn't want to piss him off too badly. (Below I would have embedded the "business card" scene from American Psycho, but YouTube won't let me. So instead, I have embedded a different kind of psycho.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk
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I still hear that freezing rain outside. It's taunting me. Tomorrow hopefully the sun will come out and melt some of the ice, as I have to drive down to D.C. and would prefer not to skid off the highway into a tree. I'll try, as always, to tweet my adventures. Hopefully there won't be any tweets about an accident. Wish me luck.