The Monster of Florence

WOW. I'll tell you guys, this book was very interesting. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston & Mario Spezi was not my typical read. As you (my favorite people on earth) know I'm not a non-fiction type of guy except for some political(ish) books. But this book really affected me. Made me think, and I hate doing that as it give me lines. But let me tell you about it...

This book is about a serial killer in Italy from 1968 - 1985. In that time straight couples didn't live together, they lived at home until they were married. So on warm summer nights they went to remote parts of the countryside to "get their grove on." This killer would interrupt them in 'flagrante delecto' - shoot the guy in the head then the woman, drag her out onto the ground and cut off her left breast and cut out her vagina to take with him. Gross right? Anyway, this true story doesn't end with the killer it tells about the theories of who the killer(s) may be, the crooked and stupidity of the local Italian police and how superstitious the native Italians were. This is a very interesting read, but at times the book became very wordy without information flow. Which bores me personally to nodding off. That aside the facts and disaster that is the Italian judicial system was fascinating.

"ryan charisma, would I like this book?" Well, first let me say - eh, probably not but I would like to update that with the fact that the copy I read (thank you Geoffrey) had the new afterword in it and that was really interesting. This current case of Amanda Knox was being tried by the same crooked prosecutor that dealt with the Monster of Florence. And he was up to his old tricks with this poor American girl. So no, don't read the book as Tom Cruise bought the movie rights and will be in the movie. hmmmmm.

The September Issue

I was all artistical last weekend. Scott, Evan, Mr. Adam & myself went to see The September Issue last weekend. I'll admit, it wasn't first on my list of movies to see, but I did end up liking it.

The movie is a documentary about Vogue putting out their "September Issue" in 2007. I found Anna Wintour a complete ice bitch. There I said it. She is a bitch from the word go and all she has is sycophants who kiss her boney, badly dressed ass. Not only does she dress pauper-like and dowdy but her home is decorated in this "shabby chic" bullshit that was in style for about 3 years in the mid 90's. Ms. Wintour is a desperately lonely, crotchety, old woman who has been given her own way for far too long. Her own daughter thinks her job is laughable. Yet this whole Vogue/fashion world thinks she's something special. NEWSFLASH! She's not - her power over the magazine is. The world may end up a much prettier place once she kicks it.

"Should I see this documentary ryan charisma?" Well actually yes, yes you should see this for no other reason than to see that other employees of Vogue are actually good people who try very hard. Anna should just dry up into a ball of skinny grizzle and die though. Am I wishing her death? HELL YES! If I worked for that bitch, I'd be in prison for bludgeoning her with a paperweight. Wait for video kids, but do see it.

District 9

Two weeks ago I took Mr. Adam to go see District 9. Now I'm a sucker for a good sci-fi movie. But this moved beyond typical sci-fi lame story lines and acute action adventure. Let me 'splain to you...

First I really, really liked this movie. It was one of those films that the more you thought about it the next day - the more you liked it even more. It's a human story dropped in the setting of sci-fi. It comments on how we as humans treat outsiders and (in this case) aliens we don't understand. I found this movie really did hold a mirror up to humanity and showed us our very ugly side. How we choose to think we're superior. How we actually treat those different than us. And how we move from protecting ourselves to picking on the less fortunate. I could go on and on with the parallels of this movie to how we treat immigrants, gays or even animals. Just brutal.

See this movie. I really liked it.