In order to escape the life-sucking monotony of constant work, I managed to break away for the late showing of a few movies. Sadly, most were so unmemorable as to not even warrant the time to review in full. So I’m going to just lump them together here.

IMMORTALS (2011) — Rating:

They should have named this one “Immordulls.” It’s as if someone said: “Hey, lets make a bigger-budget version of ’300′ – people will pay to see that.” Because that’s all this flick really is. It has the same ambiance of ’300′, without the script, acting, or direction. When Mickey Roarke (who plays the evil king) is the best actor in a movie, you have a problem. He does a good job, actually but … come on … it’s Mickey Roarke.Technically, it’s a gorgeous piece of work. So I’m giving it a decent rating more on technical merit than on entertainment value. The ending is kind of…

My best friend passed away last month.

Actually she was murdered.

She had moved to New York in the spring to work on her music career. On September 19 she got into an argument with the man she was living with, and he shot her twice. She died on the scene.

Penna and I met in 2007 and became instant best friends. Within a year we were referring to each other as “brother and sister.” That’s how close we were – the 20-year age difference also made it quite easy for me to see her as a little sister.

She was one of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen or known. She was also remarkably bright and talented. Her death is a tragedy on many levels.

I have set up a memorial web site for her at http://pennapiererra.com/.

The weather reports are saying Hurricane Irene is “the worst since Gloria”, back in 1985.

I was in Boston for Gloria. Actually in a small town in Eastern Mass., just outside of Concord. The town had a total of 4 traffic lights. Understand that in 1985 no one had cell-phones or smart-phones or broad-band. Dial-up Internet was all there was at best – at 1200 baud if you could afford a “good” modem. So if you lost power or your land-line telephone, you were cut off from the world.

Despite this, and the warnings on TV, everyone went to work as usual on the day of the storm. Most people left a little early, though. The rain started to pick up around mid-afternoon and I went down to the grocery store. By now the skies were darkening and the light outside was kind of eerie. The store had hired a fiddler, dressed in maritime garb – pea-coat, hat, and so on.…

I’m just speechless watching this thing:

This song by Cee-Lo Green is awesome. Not only does it express a sentiment that most people can connect with, but the Motown beat is amazingly well done. (Uh … just don’t play this with kids in the room …)

What also makes it funny to me is that a month ago a record producer told a friend of mine that the old-school sound “doesn’t work anymore” and he ended up mixing her song with the typical 900 layers of noise that gets (0ver-)produced these days. Sorry, dude, Motown is a great sound – clear, distinct, every instrument discernible.