Various happenings
Last night, my friend, Sarah, and I went to see the spectacular foreign vampire film, Let The Right One In. It’s playing at the very old, and very gorgeous Tampa Theatre. I’d been there plenty of times for concerts, but last night was my first movie. It was a rather beautiful movie, but I want to see it one more time before I really write about it.
For Christmas, a friend, Jayleen, got me an Amazon gift certificate which I promptly used to buy Incesticde, the only Nirvana CD I didn’t own. I totally love it, particularly Stain, Big Long Now and Downer (Downer being originally found on their first album, Bleach). Obviously, I only like the happy music. Though, lately I’m really digging Tracy Shedd’s Cigarettes & Smoke Machines. It’s music that sounds sad, but her lyrics are actually pretty “up,” as “up” as I like to hear. Also, Cigarettes & Smoke Machines is just a fucking cool album name.
I’ve been to see Doubt four times now. Honestly, that movie is as relaxing as any drink for me. It’s so compelling and brilliantly acted that I just kind of lose myself in it. Also, I have decided that I want to become a nun.
Yesterday, my allergist said I’m “an inspiration,” which is interesting, as I’d only known him for fifteen minutes. I’m not really sure what I did in that amount of time to be inspirational, aside from breathing and moving my eyes. That label is always weird to me. I mean, I understand it, but I don’t think it’s right. I’m nothing spectacular. I do good things sometimes, I totally fuck up sometimes, just like almost anyone.
7 commentsThings to Do
A few days ago I saw a fantastic and hilarious movie called, Things to Do. It’s about a guy who, for reasons we learn later, leaves his spirit breaking office job in the big city to return to his parents’ small-town home, which is depressing in its own way. One day he’s watching some “teens gone wrong” day-time talk show and the host says that to be happy in life a person has to be organized and have goals, advice our protag closely follows. He creates a Things to Do list, a list of anything he wants to do, but has never done. Then he tackles the list with the idea that it will help him find his place. I’ve been seriously thinking about the same issues, so I’ve also begun a Things to Do list page, linked at the top right corner of the blog. My list is public and dynamic. I will add things as I think them up and cross them off as I do them. I’m making it public because of a post I read on Ecstatic Days by Catherynne M. Valente. She posted about writing a novel in 30 days, but the part that really struck me was about how it’s important to make goals public because it’s so much easier to quietly fail in private. People are welcome to join me in tackling the list.
6 commentsHere’s the list so far:
Spend a day theater hopping at the movies
Go sailing
Have a home and a family of my own
Stay in a dive hotel in a city like New Orleans or New York
Go on a post-trache trip without my family
Ride a riverboat
Visit the Canadian side of Niagara Falls
Visit a New Orleans cemetery
Ride a Greyhound bus
Write a novella
Go to a shooting range
Fire a gun with a switch
Camp at the Grand Canyon
Spend an entire night on a beach with a woman I love
Sleep at a New England bed and breakfast
I want to believe
I desperately want to believe that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be good, but I can’t. I just… can’t. Waiting for Lucas to do something good is like waiting for Godot.
6 commentsPlease, stop
Something in the world has gone horribly wrong. We barely needed Hostel: Part II, we definitely don’t need a direct-to-DVD Hostel: Part III.
2 commentsVarious things
I’m fairly behind on things I mean to write, thoughts back up fairly quickly.
Apparently, I blacked out or something because Aimee Mann released a new album at the beginning of June and I totally missed it! Sara and I were hanging out and listening to music during which she asked, “hey, have you heard Aimee’s new stuff?” To which I typed, “omg! is it out???” Her new album, @#%&*! Smilers, is out and it’s fucking awesome. It’s full of pianos and keyboards, incredibly sad songs that often sound very happy. I kind of can’t stop listening to it, for a few reasons. First, it’s just amazing. It also makes me feel a little closer to my Sara. I haven’t written about it, I don’t really feel like writing about it. Sara’s in Boston for work, I’m here in Tampa until I can go North. It’s weird being so far apart, it’s definitely not something I like. I miss her more than Fentanyl, more than my own voice. I’m not exaggerating for affect, I mean it entirely. At some point, every single day, I miss the spectacular emptiness found in Fentanyl and I miss talking. Not all day, mind you. Just a moment or two. I just miss Sara more. We broke up once, which was bad, but it wasn’t because we didn’t love each other, and she still lived five minutes away. We weren’t “together,” but she wasn’t so far away that geography kept us apart. This is very different. Anyway, she visited last week, it was great. We laid in bed, listening to Aimee, just like I’m listening right now.
Wanted was an astonishingly bad movie. I mourn for my $9, I mourn for my 2 hours, I mourn that the movie exists at all. Honestly, I like crazy over-the-top violence. I loved Shoot’Em Up! I just could not buy Wanted. The dialogue was flat, the characters boring, and the film’s world was NOT conceived well enough to make me believe that bullets can curve. I don’t give a fuck how you flick your wrist, a bullet will not travel in a 360 degree angle outside The Matrix.
WALL•E was a beautiful movie. I thought Pixar might have peaked after Finding Nemo, but I was wrong. WALL•E is gorgeous and melancholy, but hopeful at heart. That pretty much sums me up, melancholy and hopeful.
2 comments$9.99 now
I just want to say that everyone involved with the film, Rise: Blood Hunter, owes me $9.99 right now. Obviously, I take some responsibility for the loss of my $9.99, I was bored and a little muddle-headed, but the fact remains that Rise: Blood Hunter is the absolute most boring vampire movie ever made. At least BloodRayne was so astonishingly bad that it was hilarious. I’d take hysterically awful over mind-numbingly dull any day.
1 commentNot for Michaels
Whenever Sara’s cat gets into something he shouldn’t she says, “no, not for kitties.” So, whenever I see a movie, particularly horror, that I know she wouldn’t like, I say, “no, that’s definitely not for Saras.” Normally, that phrase isn’t necessary for me. Movies and books don’t scare me, they don’t bother me at all. However, I wish to God somebody had said that to me before I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. At this point, anyone who hasn’t seen the movie and doesn’t want to know the ending should stop reading right now.
To put it bluntly, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly fucked me up like nobody’s business. Diving Bell is the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, a man entirely paralyzed save for his left eye after a stroke. Much of the film is shot in the first-person, looking at the world through his eyes. Waking up in the hospital, the initial sense of confusion and utter disconnect, the realization that he can’t speak, the frustration of not being able to communicate, the loneliness and isolation, it’s all there and it’s captured perfectly. Too Goddamn fucking perfectly. It was like watching a gag-reel of the spectacularly worst moments of my entire life. It’s amazing how I’ve thought the exact same things as him in certain situations. I’m better off than him in that I can use a computer and when I woke up two Januarys ago, I definitely wasn’t surprised I couldn’t walk. Still, we share so many other experiences. Of course, there’s one experience we haven’t yet shared, he’s dead and I’m not. Right when he starts to get a little bit comfortable, right when he’s perfected the use of eye movements and the alphabet to communicate, he’s hit with pneumonia and dies. One evening he wakes up coughing, mucus pouring from his trach site. It’s such a disturbing image and I can’t seem to shake it. I actually started coughing while writing this, needed a suction really badly and immediately saw that image. It was like watching how I’m almost certainly going to die. I’m going to have some kind of acute respiratory failure and no vent or medicine will be able to help me. I’ll drown, I’ll suffocate, I’ll die. That movie gave me a bunch of images to go along with things I already worry over.
Obviously, I’ll get over it, Diving Bell will fade some, but not yet. I wanted to drown it out with brandy, but I know that is the worst possible thing to do. I’m better off writing and getting things done. That is exactly what what I’m doing.
5 commentsBetter late than…
So, I’m a little late on this, but I wanted to write about it anyway. As it turns out, and I’m quite surprised, Iron Man was pretty spectacular. I expected it to be a ridiculous CGI nightmare, but no, the film was solid. I guess I underestimated the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is a total badass. Sara and I went to see it at the drive-in, which also tends to make any movie just a little bit better.
6 commentsA stroke?
Did I have a stroke earlier? I was watching Indiana Jones, but he was really old and a little heavy. Then there were aliens that looked recycled from Artificial Intelligence: AI and CG monkeys. I obviously went to see a good movie and stroked out, right? I made all of this up, right? God, I’m scared…
4 commentsDisaster
Understand, I don’t want anything terrible to happen to anyone. That said, watching films like Cloverfield and Dawn of the Dead (2004), I know that a small, growing part of me, would enjoy a disaster of some sort. The basic idea is that catastrophic society crushing disaster also offers certain freedoms. Money doesn’t matter, schedules don’t matter, careers don’t matter, not when giant monsters and zombies are laying waste to our cities. We get to truly remember that all that really matters is survival and the people we love. I could live like that for awhile, it doesn’t seem like a bad life. Does it?
7 comments