Home again... and NOT to work...
Apr. 30th, 2002 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpAlex K. looked up suddenly as I started to pack my stuff and asked "Are you done?" in a tone that conveyed incredulity.
"Yes," I answered.
"Outstanding!" he says, with a big grin breaking out on his face, "I thought we'd be here for another couple of hours. You're fast!"
He'd begun to get on my nerves during the day, by calling my attention to every change he was about to make to my translations. Far and away the greatest portion of those changes were not really necessary, in my opinion, and while I have no problem with his making them, I did start to have a problem with his calling them to my attention.
After all, there seemed to be a never-dwindling number of radiograms in the queue (two were added around 6 pm; go figure), and every time he diverted my attention to look at a change, I'd lose my train of thought. However, by 6 pm or so, I'd cooled off and channeled my efforts into the home stretch, to finish the job.
* * * Among the rest of the festivities of the day, I agreed to do a 16-page standards document by next Monday, and a 4-page job for my current client by Thursday morning. I am not lifting a finger to address these documents tonight...
Tomorrow, I'm working Loop 18 during another simulation, but this assignment parallels (approximately) the times I've been working on the Execute Package, so at least there's no effort involved there.
I need also to invoice my as-yet uninvoiced work for April (Execute Package and one sim plus three documents).
* * * I watched Kiss Me, Deadly last night. It's a 1955 film starring a bunch of people that - according to the IMDB - never went on to superstardom, including Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, Wesley Addy as Pat Chambers, and Maxine Carr as Velda. Robert Aldrich produced and directed the film, which is considered a classic of the film noir genre.
I think I see why. The cinematography is very clean; the sets are spare. I found the faces of the characters to be very expressive as they played out their roles. Sure, lots of the dialog was a bit on the corny side, but I did like the film, on the whole.
The thing that bothered me most about it, though, was that the characters of Hammer, Chambers, and girl-Friday-and-more Velda just didn't fit into the molds I'd created after having read (and reread) Spillane's stories. In the film, Hammer is described as the kind of private cop who specializes in divorce work and who, after getting evidence against an errant wife, would pitch Velda at the husband to get even more leverage. That's not the Hammer I came to know on the printed page; nor Velda, either.
Moreover, the character of Pat Chambers - supposedly one of Mike's closest friends - was about as friendly toward Hammer as one usually finds the D.A. to be in Spillane's tales (that is: not very). The only evidence of any kind of friendship between these two men was Hammer's reaching into Chambers' breast pocket to cadge a cigarette (big deal).
The DVD I watched made a big deal of the two different endings that the film had been distributed with, and though the shorter version is only about a minute shorter, it's easy to see how a completely different interpretation of the ending would result. I wonder what Spillane himself thought of the film?
In the end, I'll probably watch the film again, just to see the furniture of the period in Hammer's apartment. Nice film.
Cheers...
"Yes," I answered.
"Outstanding!" he says, with a big grin breaking out on his face, "I thought we'd be here for another couple of hours. You're fast!"
He'd begun to get on my nerves during the day, by calling my attention to every change he was about to make to my translations. Far and away the greatest portion of those changes were not really necessary, in my opinion, and while I have no problem with his making them, I did start to have a problem with his calling them to my attention.
After all, there seemed to be a never-dwindling number of radiograms in the queue (two were added around 6 pm; go figure), and every time he diverted my attention to look at a change, I'd lose my train of thought. However, by 6 pm or so, I'd cooled off and channeled my efforts into the home stretch, to finish the job.
Tomorrow, I'm working Loop 18 during another simulation, but this assignment parallels (approximately) the times I've been working on the Execute Package, so at least there's no effort involved there.
I need also to invoice my as-yet uninvoiced work for April (Execute Package and one sim plus three documents).
I think I see why. The cinematography is very clean; the sets are spare. I found the faces of the characters to be very expressive as they played out their roles. Sure, lots of the dialog was a bit on the corny side, but I did like the film, on the whole.
The thing that bothered me most about it, though, was that the characters of Hammer, Chambers, and girl-Friday-and-more Velda just didn't fit into the molds I'd created after having read (and reread) Spillane's stories. In the film, Hammer is described as the kind of private cop who specializes in divorce work and who, after getting evidence against an errant wife, would pitch Velda at the husband to get even more leverage. That's not the Hammer I came to know on the printed page; nor Velda, either.
Moreover, the character of Pat Chambers - supposedly one of Mike's closest friends - was about as friendly toward Hammer as one usually finds the D.A. to be in Spillane's tales (that is: not very). The only evidence of any kind of friendship between these two men was Hammer's reaching into Chambers' breast pocket to cadge a cigarette (big deal).
The DVD I watched made a big deal of the two different endings that the film had been distributed with, and though the shorter version is only about a minute shorter, it's easy to see how a completely different interpretation of the ending would result. I wonder what Spillane himself thought of the film?
In the end, I'll probably watch the film again, just to see the furniture of the period in Hammer's apartment. Nice film.
Cheers...
