When I saw the previews for “Shoot ‘Em Up”, I thought it might make a fun movie to rent on DVD — to watch while munching on popcorn and drinking a frosty tall glass of skim milk. Then I read a review of the film in today’s The Baltimore Sun, and what caught my eye was “[Mr. Smith's] overreaction to inelegant or thoughtless behavior - from slurping coffee to changing lanes without a turn signal - is the film’s richest source of humor.” So here I am imagining Clive Owen (Smith) grabbing some ya-hoo-boy driver out of his car and jamming a carrot through the idiot’s eye socket so that his brain drains out. Rockin’!

However, I’m still not willing to spend nine bucks for the pleasure of seeing it on DVD. I’m sure it’ll be available on Netflix before Christmas so that the male viewing audience craving a little cartoonish violence after spending many days in the close proximity of family will have a safe outlet.

In any case, I don’t really mean to be writing about Shoot ‘Em Up, but, rather, about a shoot ‘em up.

Right now, I’m trying to remember the first western I saw — not the first western I half-watched in the background as a kid while building castles in my parents’ basement — but the first western I ever saw that I actually paid attention to. I think it must’ve been “Silverado”, although my memory is being over at my friend Nate Naddell’s house, watching TV, and he stopped flipping channels when we came to the end of that movie, a western he’d seen several times. I must’ve been working at Blockbuster, as I remember renting it and getting caught up on it. I think that movie — Kevin Costner’s second film (technically), also with Scott Glenn and Kevin Kline and Daniel Glover (and John Cleese as a sheriff!!!!) — remains my favorite film of the genre (I’ve even got the Criterion Collection Laserdisc, even though my player has long since failed to function).

I’ve never seen Unforgiven (it’s on my queue, somewhere), but The Quick and the Dead is a favorite of mine. Blazing Saddles, of course. A year or so ago I rented one with Henry Fonda as a brutal thug (can’t think of the name), and High Noon I saw in a high school film class — what a great movie! Who can forget Young Guns? (I wish I could). The Magnificent Seven was magnificent, although I can’t bring myself to watch any of the sequels. One of my favorite television shows is a western with a sci-fi twist: Brisco County Jr. Another of my favorite shows is sci-fi with a western twist: Firefly.

I think the only western I’ve seen on the big screen was “Dances With Wolves”, with my parents, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC. Beautiful theater (saw Contact there), boring film. Well, to a young’un like me, anyway — I was, what, twelve? — although I’ve found an appreciation for it as I’ve aged. (Costner’s recent “Open Range” wasn’t too bad).

There are two high profile westerns coming to an overpriced cinema near you this autumn: the first opened today: 3:10 To Yuma, with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. The second, The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, opens next month.

Meanwhile, I’m off work at 4pm Sunday, and I think I’d like to see a western on the big screen. There’s a 4:20 at the Regal in Hunt Valley … but I’ll miss the cut off time for a matinee by a little over an hour. Whatever, I’ve got faith that I’ll be paying my nine bucks for a good story, great cinematography, and a killer shoot ‘em up.

I’ve got a train to catch, and a six-shooter to load.

First, Ayn Rand stopped me reading like a brick wall stops an accelerating sports car (ever see Bad Boys?). I’ve been digging into my Stephen King collection, instead.

It’s funny, how “into” blogging I was just three or four months ago — not just writing blog entries, but surfing to other blogs and commenting. I think it’s pretty clear to anyone that blogging hasn’t been a top priority this summer — truthfully, not much has. After a year spent working full time and taking 12-credit hours worth of classes a semester, I was pretty much completely burnt out by the time finals rolled around. This blog has certainly been a victim of that burn out.

I’m finally starting to pull myself out of the burn out, however. I’ve been spending time on my job search — I sent out two resumes and cover letters today. That might not sound like a lot, but cover letters can be a real bitch to write. The other thing that this means is that my job search has officially kicked off … today. Or, I should say, “my renewed” job search has kicked back off, as the original essentially died back in May or June with a couple of half-hearted attempts between then and, er, now. (Note to self: the cats have been sleeping on the dress shirts, get those to the dry cleaners).

I registered myself on a dating site I heard about on the Ed Norris show yesterday morning: something about being a geek. I’ve got it bookmarked on my laptop, and need to decide if I want to go back and actually fill in my profile and upload a photo. I’m thinking “yes”, because god knows I’m getting zero dates from the blog (and, really, after reading this blog, why would anyone want to?)

I also need to lose weight. More rice cakes, less pizza. Too bad rice cakes aren’t free.

In addition, I’ve been writing a “novel” — I’d like to say it’s a “coming of age”, but the main character is, like me, in his late twenties, delivering pizzas, trying to get ahead in life, and, oh yes, the unwitting target of a murder scheme after he stumbles on a scheme involving pizza-sponsored school nights and the local board of education. After reading that description, you’ll be happy to know the last few items are being written out in the second draft — second draft? I’ve got ten pages written, I mean second draft of the outline — and I completely blame their inclusion as the fault of a free “Writing Mysteries” book I found in a “TAKE ‘EM OR WE’LL PITCH ‘EM!” book donation box at Towson University last winter. With luck, I’ll be returning to West Virginia sometime later this month or early October for a five-day writing-intensive vacation.

So, between the job search, and the pizza jobs, and the “novel” (I’ll stop quotation-marking it when I broach 100 pages), the blog remains a low priority. I’m going to try to update more frequently. It’s interesting to look back when I was posting five or six times a day. Now, posting that much in a week seems like a lot. Every now and then I talk to people who sit in front of a computer for a living — they often remark that after spending eight hours a day in front of a computer, the last thing they want to do at night is spend more time in front of the computer. But, without a computer, how could I write? And I do, in fact, love to write.

(Yes, I know I could write long-handed, or buy a typewriter, but I’ve written on computers for as long as I can remember — and I can remember way back to when I was a kid and my family lived in Adelphi — right off Riggs Road — and we had a bulky old IBM and a dot-matrix printer and my friend Russ and I would write bad Star Wars/Trek stories — me at the keyboard, him, frequently, on the phone dictating his parts of the stories to me).

Meanwhile, speaking of mysteries — if you’ve never seen 2005’s “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang“, you really should take the time to add it to your Netflix. It’s a spin on the classic old film noire, with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. If you’re not a fan of either of those two actors, or if you’re not a fan of movies with a narrator who is self-aware, or main characters who spend the bulk of one scene dissing Baltimore (the film itself is set in New York and L.A.), you might be a fan of Michelle Monaghan’s boobs (especially if you’re a straight male or a lesbian): in that case, good news, there’s a topless scene. Meanwhile, here’s a sneak peek:

No, see, sneak peek of the movie, not of Michelle Monaghan’s very lovely and natural breasts. And, y’know, frankly, if the only reason you want to see “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” a second time is to see her upper chest again, you’ve got strange taste in cinema.