Well, here it is, up and running now. Will have to start learning how to drive this app. Guess I'll be experimenting for a long time before posting something worthwhile. But that's not the point, anyhow. Not for now, at least.
{Later...}
Found out it wasn't such a hot idea trying to install a second copy of the UserLand software at work. After accepting my usernum and password, the page loaded without the Salon theme and my previous post was unavailable to edit. Decided to unistall the software. Oh, well... At least my current copy is running on my laptop, so I'll be able to post if I ever go on the road.
Thanks to ct who offered their comments on the log's name. As they point out, "Driver 8" may be one of the best songs from pre-Out of Time R.E.M., but when I took that name I was thinking instead of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. That's where the whole "driving the train of thought" thing came from. They also suggest to "read a good book and write about that." Current reading is advancing at eyedropper pace, so don't hold your breath.
On to something else:
Found some very interesting movie articles at MetroActive. First off is a write-up of The Big Lebowski describing it as "the last great cult film of the 20th century or the first great cult film of the 21st, depending on how you look at it." Apparently, some movie buffs have re-discovered this Coen Bros. film and grokked its whole mystique, hitting the bowl lanes and drinking White Russians. The article ascribes the film a true cult status based on the fact that it was panned by critics and barely made its money back in the box office: the fact that it wasn't widely embraced by the masses makes its current appropriation by its fans an honest grass-roots event. Only saw this film once when it came out, and have never rented it, but found it really funny and ingenious. No matter if the reviewers thought the Coens were too clever for their own good, I enjoyed it. But won't go bowling and start drinking milk and vodka.
Second is a retrospective of spider attack movies apropos of (what else?) Eight Legged Freaks. As it should be, the title of daddy-long-legs of all spider movies goes to Tarantula. Though Freaks uses a scene of Them! as reference to previous giant bug movies, the film is obviously more akin to Tarantula and quotes in at least three ways:
- One of the giant arachnids is a furry tarantula, natch, that overturns a trailer and rips open a mall's iron gate.
- After attacking a tanker truck which promptly bursts into flame, a group of spiders burns to a crisp. Very much like when the fiendish Tarantula is napalmed by a young, uncredited Clint Eastwood.
- An ostrich pen is attacked by trap-door spiders. The scene is set up in the same fashion as Tarantula's attack on a horse pen: We get an establishing shot of the pen, then a close up of the animals as they look nervously to some undetermined point in the horizon, then they start running away.
The round-up didn't include a personal favorite, though: Kingdom of the Spiders, with first class ham William Shatner. It includes one of the scariest endings I can remember: the few survivors of the spider attack take cover at a local lodge; after a night of fending off spiders, they take a peek outside and find the lodge and the whole town covered by the spiders' web. No doubt nobody survives afterwards.
7:48:20 AM 
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