Midweek Geekiness: Bringing Home The Avengers and Writing Outside the Blog

Unless someone lives under a rock,  The Avengers came out on DVD yesterday.  I decided to purchase the DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack with plans to purchase a Blu-Ray player next month.  The gag reels and other extra goodies remain in the Blu-Ray disc, but I have a Joss Whedon commentary on the DVD side.  Fine by me for now.

After getting home from work, I prepped my lunch for tomorrow, then I sat down with a glass of white wine and my head phones.  When I moved into the condo, I bought a good pair of head phones for my TV in case I wanted to watch something late at night without worry my volume will wake up the neighbours.  I made my way through the movie, this time with Whedon taking audiences through the process.  Some things I learned:

• The movie was actually converted by a company to 3D.  Whedon tried to film the movie using 3D cameras, but abandoned the process early on.
• Mark Ruffalo was on a very, short list for Bruce Banner/The Hulk.  How short?  How about his name as the ONLY name on the list.  Sorry Edward Norton you chewed the scenery in some of your films, but Ruffalo makes a better Hulk.
• Gwyneth Paltrow’s inclusion was Robert Downey, Jr’s idea.  He wanted to show Tony’s  progression from the second Iron Man to The Avengers.  Personally, having Iron Man 3 be better than Iron Man 2 makes for a better progression.  However, Paltrow’s appearance does show Stark growing up just a tad in his hero role.
• *BIG,FAT, HUGE, TURN-BACK-NOW, SPOILER ALERT* Phil Coulson’s death was Marvel Producer’s Kevin Feige’s idea, a fact I found a little shocking.  What’s a Whedon project without some character getting killed?  Whedon thought he would ‘catch guff’ for the action, but did acknowledge people knew enough about his stuff to not feel saddened but not alarmed.
• Last but not least…Whedon mentioned a couple of times how Jeremy Renner made Hawkeye’s look-away arrow shots looked ‘bad ass’.  Response number 1:  No surprise here about Renner and his bad-ass ways.  Response number 2:  I’ll be in my bunk.

Buying the DVD represented a reward of sorts.  Since starting this blog, many people have come to me either asking me permission to republish posts in newsletters, or to write an article for one.  Fantastic! my brain would say before a boulder, not a block, rolls in to render me paralyzed.  Yesterday I managed to outwit the writer’s boulder by doing up a draft of a Book Talk for the MALT newsletter.  (MALT stands for Manitoba Association of Library Technicians.) I happily purchased my DVD as a little reward to myself.  Knowing about this obstacle represents a victory of sorts.  Once the boulder rolls in as soon as I sit down to write anything, even this blog, a few short moments unrolls the boulder from my mind.

Seriously, it’s like this HUGE thing in my head.  This heavy, anxious feeling comes in unawares, each keyboard stroke a burden.  I remember trying to write a report as part of my Career Writing course during school.  I absolutely could not understand what’s going on.  It felt like moving through sludge while I wrote if I didn’t stand still in fear before a typing single word.  Once the feeling turned into a visual image, a boulder, I imagined myself taking out a hammer and pick to chip away at it.  *POOF!* heavy feeling lifted and Book Talk draft done.  I hope one of these days the boulder gets chipped away at the same time something gets written.  Call it the writer’s version of the Hawkeye look-away shot.