Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Monday, Sept. 18, 2006 - 9:06 a.m.

Wiped out. Tons of walking on about 2 hours of sleep today. Really exhausted. Long weekend with lots and lots of walking and literally thousands of stairs. I probably climbed over 5,000 steps the last 4 days, counting today. Saturday I went to Hotel de Ville & Notre Dame, and climbed the tower at Notre Dame. Wanna know how many steps to the belfry? 396 regular sized and about a dozen little half steps. From the ground to the gift shop, where they make you wait for a few minutes while the group before you passes through, is 74 steps. The second stage of the climb, from the gift shop to the lower section of tower with gargoyles is 175. From there to the upper level of the tower with more gargoyles, is another 125, and the belfrey is 22 regular-sized steps and half a dozen small steps, plus there are small steps on the upper level of the tower. Weirdly, they take you down a set of stairs on the other side of the tower, and that staircase contains 10 more steps than the way up. It's a little odd, that difference. I counted steps on the way down just to doublecheck myself, but 10 steps is not a mistake, it's an actual difference in steps. I would have accepted a difference of 1 or 2; not 10. There are 71 total steps from the foyer of my building to my door; 4 to the lower landing, 4 flights of 16, and 3 more from the landing on my floor to my hallway. I climbed approximately another 50 at Hotel de Ville, and I don't know how many subway and other steps that day, but I know I can account for a minimum of 517 steps on Saturday. Whew!

The Hotel de Ville is pretty damn cool, btw. It's the Paris City Hall, but believe me when I tell you it does not serve quite the same function as American city halls do, and ho-lee crap, is it formal and grand and old. There's gold gilt and wood, marble, crystal, stained glass, tapestries, and every other damn thing you can think of that epitomizes Paris architecture. And it's only open to the general public once a year, in September, during the Patrimoine. If any of my pictures are good, I'll post them, so you guys can see what it's like, because, dayam.

Today, I went to La Madeleine, and I'm sad to say it was actually kinda boring. I did like the Greek temple design, and it's pretty, but the inside is not well-lit, so you can't really see much, which is where the boring part comes in. I couldn't take pictures there. They wouldn't have come out anyway, because I'm not about to use flash in a place where people are praying, but they have signs up when you first come in that call for silence and forbid photography. At Notre Dame, you can speak quietly if there's no service, and take pictures. It's better lit inside too, having more windows. La Madeleine has only 3 small oval skylights, and the rest is rather dimmish electric spotlights on the figurines. The coolest part of the church is the altar figures and the mural behind that statuary. It's a figure I think was Mary Magdelene, with angels kneeling on either side, their wings unfurled around her and another figure standing behind each of the angels. It's really pretty striking.

And I walked a helluva lot.

And now, for something completely different...
There are certain movies that are de rigeur to have seen if one is an actor or works in television. Sometimes those films overlap, but more often than not, they don't, since acting is about the performances and writing more than the subject matter, which is what the stuff you're supposed to have seen if you work in television tends to be big on. One of the few films that overlaps is Network, which is supposed to be THE seminal film about the business of television.

It's been on here a few times, on TCM, and since I'd never seen it and everyone keeps harping on it and looking at me aghast when I answer them no I never have, and then insisting I run right out and rent it on the way home from work that very evening, I thought, oh cool, I can finally see Network.

God, what a piece of tripe. Seriously, what a piece of nihilist bullshit. I will tolerate a lot of crap in a movie. I love movies so much, I will watch even bad ones all the way through because I have managed to find something tolerable about them. And sometimes, as in the case of Van Helsing, the very bad parts are what make me love the movie - the flaws, the bloopers, the chewed scenery, the ridiculously bad lines, all of that conspires to just make the movie fun in it's very horrendousness. So believe me when I tell you it takes a helluva lot to make me absolutely despise a movie. There are very few on my list of movies that when I finished watching them, I wanted to find the screenwriter and director and beat the everlovin' crap out of them for stealing hours of my life I can never get back. In fact, there are two on the list, and if it tells you anything, I hated neither "A Clockwork Orange" nor "Apocalypse Now" quite enough for them to make it onto the list, although to be fair, had I not fallen asleep from sometime after "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" until somewhere before Martin Sheen decides Marlon Brando is flatout balls to the wall Insane and needs to be put down, it might be on there too. But I did fall asleep, so as it is, I merely hate Apocalypse Now with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns and know better than to ever waste my time on it again. The first film to make the list was The Player. And I still might beat the crap out of Robert Altman and Michael Tolkin, should I ever come across them. The other is Network. And believe me, had I realized it was written by Paddy Chayefski, I would not have bothered. I fucking hate Paddy Chayefski, and the only reason I didn't seek him out after the crime he perpetrated on humanity with Altered States is because I was in high school when I saw it, and had not yet learned that time is precious and you don't necessarily have tons of it to burn. Come to think of it, that's probably why A Clockwork Orange isn't on the list, either. That, and I saw it with a guy I had a gigantic crush on, and it was his favorite movie...which really shoulda told me something. Needless to say, that relationship lasted all of 2 months.

Which is neither here, nor there. Let's just say I hated every single thing there was to hate about Network, from the pretentiously verbose dialogue and overwrought plot to the dislikable characters, histrionic overacting by Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch, the pat ending and William Holden going back to his oh-so-understanding suffering wife, and the complete and utter ring of ::coughbullshitcough:: about every situation in it, satire or no. I can not tell you how much I hated it, because words and coherent thought fail me.

Whew. Good to get that off my chest.

I had some stuff about depression, because frankly, I'm shocked at how few people actually know what real depression is, and sometimes those of you* who don't know and haven't bothered to learn tend to mouth off about it, which pisses the ever-livin' daylights outta me, but I just don't feel like going into it at the moment. Too damn tired. And it's...depressing. So um, no.

* the generic you, not the specific you; no one who reads this blog has ever mouthed off to me about depression - it's the yahoos I know in my more immediate personal life who tend to do that, and usually at an inopportune time when it's hard to hide the fact that I have involuntarily clenched my fists and am breathing deeply and silently counting to 10 in greek, latin, german, french, and japanese, in an effort to keep calm and not commit violence. and the thing that kills me is, it's usually someone who knows i have been diagnosed with major clinical depression who does the mouthing off, when they really should fucking know better, because i'm sorry, but if you know me in real life, you know i do not suffer fools well and that i have a very short fuse when it comes to people offering unsolicited advice and making judgements about my personal life or how i choose to handle my blue periods, and telling me that i should go for a run and that that will solve everything pretty much falls directly into the category of flatout stupidity and Things Katie Will Actually Kill You For, so you'd think they would know better. apparently, though, i roll with the slow-learners.

Peace out,
Katie

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