From the divine New York Times today comes a story about alien abduction. Now I've never been abducted by aliens, but I have had that sleep paralysis thing happen three times in my life.
While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders.
I didn't have any of that stuff, but I did wake up unable to move. Each of the three times, someone was standing there. Scared the hell out of me, and then I woke up fully to an obviously empty room, so I knew it was sort of a state between sleep and complete wakefulness. But imagine that happening to you in the sort of detail the article describes! And then your mind, already at work on War of the Worlds, tosses some aliens into the mix. Yeesh. I'd be a basket case.
Also from the NYT, an article that makes you mad.
More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.
And no one did anything about this why?
Oh my goodness! You didn’t experience this paralysis after consuming my cooking, did you? I hope your cold is gone and good health returned. Switching topics: his condescending, “man-tone” aside, I decided McKee’s points about fiction and culture to be (unfortunately) correct. I still refuse to believe that “…Hollywood cannot find better material than it produces. The hard-to-believe truth is that what we see on the screen each year is a reasonable reflection of the best writing of the last few years (pg. 14).” OH MY GOSH!!!! By the way: I can’t use Blogger. I could, but Safari doesn’t totally support Blogger functions, and although I have Netscape, I prefer Safari. I also want to publish a blog to my iDisk at .Mac. Your site looks fantastic. Hope you feel better. P.
I can’t wait for you to launch and then I will link to you and the entire contingent of 3 people who read my blog will then be able to read yours. Ha! I was discussing the sleep paralysis thing with Mike last night, and he says he’s experienced it too. But he had the levitation thing once, and once he thought he was dead. Eeew! I didn’t like that idea at all. Fortunately, neither of us is predisposed to believe in aliens or we might be hanging out at alien abduction blogs or something.
Margaret South (All Girl Productions) said last year when she spoke to the Aloha Chapter that Hollywood made movies for teenage boys because teenage boys had a) pocket money, b) friends, and c) they went to the movie twenty times, took all their friends, and bought all the cheesy merchandise. People like us refuse to pay high prices for movies, are patient enough to wait for DVDs, and won’t buy cheesy movie merchandise. Therefore, we don’t have a voice in what gets made, even though we tend to make the occasional movie about relationships, like Sideways, into hits. Indy films do make it big from time to time, but of course they aren’t made by the big Hollywood companies. Or so Margaret said, and I don’t think I’m mis-remembering (is that a word?). I remember when Sideways came out and I wanted to see it. It was only at art house theaters (the Varsity near UH Manoa was the only one showing it). When it got nominated for the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, it suddenly popped up at all the theaters in town (but only on one screen, of course).
Did you see my post about Carpe Demon? It’s a fun book, and the movie rights have been sold (not optioned, which is apparently much more common). I seem to recall McKee talking about turning books into movies. This book will probably adapt well, but if Hollywood has their way, it’ll be too gory for me I’m sure. (The only way to kill a demon, apparently, is to stab it in the eye–can’t you just see the FX people with that?)
Anywho, I’m glad you commented! Now I don’t feel so alone in the blogosphere (a place in which I spend entirely too much time these days….). 🙂
Darn it, I forgot to mention Being Julia, which I just rented. LOVED IT! Annette Bening is fabulous. And wasn’t that a film that only appeared widely after nominations? Same with Million Dollar Baby (haven’t seen that one yet, mostly because I know it’s gonna be depressing). Annette was so much fun, though. I was afraid the movie was going to be this predictable thing about an older actress, blah blah, but not at all.