Hancock surprise

The surgical procedure on an old short story has turned radical. It started at 6200 words, ended up at 4600 words after the first edit and is currently at 3600 words in the midst of the next editing round. What’s most amazing is that the soul of the story is still there, which goes to show how much extraneous material there was in the earlier version. I suspect it will get whittled down a little more before I start putting it back together again, and it might end up at close to where it is now in the final word count.

It’s a balmy 77° today. I took down the Christmas lights wearing shorts. They come down a lot faster than the go up. The tree goes next.

Did you hear about the twins in Michigan who were born 26 minutes apart? One was born in December ’08 and the other in January ’09.

We watched Hancock last night. I remember seeing unflattering reviews at the time of its original release, but we like Will Smith and the trailer looked promising. We were pleasantly surprised by the film. Smith plays derelict with conviction. He only winked at the camera a couple of times and seemed otherwise completely immersed in the role. There were times when I was almost convinced that the actress playing the Justin Bateman’s wife wasn’t Charlize Theron. The surprise plot twist midway through the film caught up both off guard—I’m really glad I hadn’t read about it beforehand. The plot twist did lead, in retrospect, to the realization that there was a hell of a coincidence at play, but there was enough handwaving about Hancock’s true history to get past it. I thought the line delivered by the guy with the hook hand after Bateman’s character does to him what he does was one of the funniest in the film. “Oh no you didn’t.” The film was relatively brief, at 91 minutes, and it was fun. No complaints here.

The new Doctor Who is about to be announced at any moment. It doesn’t much matter to me who it is, because I’d never heard of Eccleston or Tennant before they took over, so I’m willing to give anyone a shot at it.