No, Nigerian scammers have not assassinated me. (Or responded to my response to them, as penned by thefirethorn.) I've just been busy. Oddly, I have no plans for this weekend — it's particularly weird since next weekend is booked solid. I'm doing my usual wibbling between "throw together big social plans" and "blow off everyone and get caught up on stuff." I spent the morning eyeing projects I could tackle, from the picture frame I bought weeks ago that still has no pictures in it to the front garden, which needs to be weeded and generally set in order. We'll see.

Meanwhile, it's catch-up time.

• So did any of you actually go see The Happening? It's tanked at the box office at this point, but its first weekend was strong enough that it's made back production costs, and DVD sales will no doubt help, so Shyamalan will live to make another movie. I'm still boggling, though, at the idea of him making a live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender. ALL of his movies, even the ones I like, have the same slow, portentious, airless, hushed tone. How is he going to handle lively, funny, character-rich action?
  
  That aside, I thought The Happening was an almost impossibly terrible movie. Bad performances, clumsy writing, and eye-rolling ridiculous situations all completely got in the way of a pulpy but potentially interesting story. It felt more like the outline of a movie than like a movie. Virtually the entire Chicago branch of the A.V. Club went to the critics' screening together — seven people total — and we all came out tharn, blinking and half-smiling in a puzzled sort of way. Which I think is about the only proper reaction to the film. That or throwing things at the screen.
  
  
• If you need a cheap and easy laugh, you could do worse than to check out the slideshow of John Galliano's 2009 men's fashion show. I'm used to fashion shows featuring sullen stick-women wearing things that looked like a loom dropped acid and threw up on them, but haute couture menswear at this level of ridiculousness is new for me. Check out the guys with the painted-on angry-eyebrows. Or the ones with scimitars braided into their hair. Or the guy with the giant elephant sewn onto his yellow pants. Or… oh, the whole thing is just one big entertaining laugh-fest. Have fun.
  
  
• If I get an email from someone I don't know, pointing out for no reason I'm aware of that she's excited over an Obama "siting" over the weekend and that she "cited" him at Six Flags and she's really excited, is it mean to send her back an email saying "I'm not sure why you're telling me this, but you misspelled "sighting" three times in two ways?" I feel like I was mean about it. Then again, I also feel annoyed about it.
  
  
• Speaking of dumb-ass email, of all the many self-promoting press releases I get, the ones that most make me roll my eyes are the ones proclaiming that so-and-so is "available to discuss" current affairs or possible issues or whatever. My favorite was last year, when a self-proclaimed children's expert sent out a press release offering her services to the media to discuss — on TV, in the newspaper, over the radio, whatever, she wasn't picky — the potential trauma that children might potentially go through if Harry Potter died in the at-the-time-unpublished final Harry Potter book. But second place goes to the one I just recieved, from someone who would like the media to know that he's available to discuss his website's picks for the most patriotic movies of all time. In fact, he's available all weekend. Good to know! I also am available to the media to talk about things I like! But not all weekend, ’cause I got stuff to do.
  
  
• We're doing short podcast movie reviews now over at The A.V. Club. In this one, Keith and I talk about Wanted, both the movie and the comic it's based on. And today, Nathan Rabin and I hash out Hancock, which Cass and I both really enjoyed, though critical opinion is heavily against us. More to come.

I'm-a feelin': busy