I celebrated by sleeping until 11:30 and eating breakfast ten minutes ago at 2:30. Have enough ale and stout from Ireland in my fridge to make two people sick and movie tickets to the four o’clock showing of Black Snake Moan at the Rotunda in my pocket. Green clothes, including undies and socks. A big mug of Barry’s Tea right in front of me. And the supplies to make pizza from scratch in my kitchen. It’s going to be a good St. Patty’s Day.
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Got finished working early today and caught the 4:15 showing of The Good Shepherd at the Rotunda before it’s gone after next week. I’m a sucker for spy flicks. Don’t worry. I won’t give anything away. Some notes:
1) Angelina Jolie absolutely cannot play a twenty-year-old.
2) Neither can Matt Damon, though he comes close.
3) Billy Crudup is a convincing Brit, though I’m American, so maybe he’s horrible. Maybe I just like Big Fish.
4) Whenever Michael Gambon’s character talked, all I could hear was, “You must swear — legally swear — that you’ll not kill that shark.”
5) One would think they would have had Stellan Skarsgård play the character of Ulysses, but I’m glad they got the guy from that “Frasier” episode about the expensive fish eggs.
This year is already pretty nice. Got to hang out at my new favorite coffee shop last week, did some travelling, stayed home all weekend, finally saw Little Miss Sunshine. Get to have breakfast at said coffee shop tomorrow, as we get back to work from the holiday.
The Mrs. and I caught a short bug this weekend, though. The kind that makes you puke your guts out exactly once and then leaves you feeling crappy — but doesn’t last very long. Much better than week-long colds.
Finally got to see Blood Diamond yesterday. I realize that it is a work of fiction, but it kind of made me sick. There I was in the county surrounded by white people pushing each other to get out of the auditorium, and I wanted to sell the Mrs.’s ring and donate the money. I have never seen a herd of people pushing each other out of a movie theater like that. The skinny b!tch next to me in the crowd smacked me three times putting her coat on and didn’t even say anything to the dirty look I was giving her. We were literally next to the bathroom, and the movie wasn’t exactly very long. So it was not a mad rush for the pisser or the crapper, confirmed by my watching everyone run out the door of Hunt Valley and into their big SUVs and back to whatever housing development with $1.2 million plywood houses they live in.
No, everyone ran out of that movie because for at least a minute or two, they felt badly that their buying habits might hurt people. That their lifestyles are conducive to suffering. Everyone had their hands thrust into their pockets to hide their bling, and they just wanted to get back to the land of whitey to think about something else.
And I know because I felt badly about the diamond on my wife’s hand and the fact that I bought it without knowing where it came from and that I spent money on a new Vera Bradley purse for her for Christmas when people are starving, dying, killing each other all over the planet. I know how these whities felt because of the whitey in me, the jackass who buys stuff he doesn’t need with no regard for where it comes from, what it does to the planet.
My wife wondered, “Do you think this movie will change people?”
I am inclined to say that it will not, unfortunately. But I’d love to be proven wrong about that.
I usually score schwag of the utmost awesomeness for Christmas, with this year being no exception. Santa and family members gave me:
Clerks II with the hat and other gear
A “What Would Nietzsche Do?” T-shirt
Blue silk Moleskine
Gnome soap
Shaving set from Burt’s Bees for when I eventually shave the monster beard
A journal for recording books read, opinions, etc.
Hemp wallet
Hankies with my initial on them
Today we are headed to catch Night at the Museum to feed the kid in me. The Rotunda is rocking the two films I want to see most right now. Glory. I hope you all had a nice holiday of your choice. I want to start celebrating Boxing Day next year. For sure.
Proving that I am not entirely just a bastard full of hate, here’s a photo of a turtle. A tewwdul. Say it. Like that.
There is a pond just outside of my parents’ house, and in there live some very very large goldfish, large enough that the local falcon in Hampden ate one once. This falcon was devouring a pigeon in my parents’ yard on this part very rainy Christmas day. Freaky. Reminds me a Mordecai from The Royal Tenenbaums, except Mordecai never ate any other birds (say bewds) in that film. Anyway, peacefully co-existing with the fish is a painted turtle named Slider. He’s very old. This is him.
So my relationship with the Catholic church and the faith that I usually ignore is now a long one, and a strange one. If you are a long-time reader, you know how I almost went into the seminary once when I went to a shindig with the Cardinal and that I went militant atheist for a while (like most philosophy majors) but then cooled down into a mild Transcendentalist who never goes outside. I mean, I don’t read the Good Book for solice, but I can read St. Augustine and find some very useful things. Nice way to be.
We went to see The Exorcism of Emily Rose last weekend. I think Tom Wilkinson is awesome (”I’m the money.”). It even has Laura Linney, who played The One on “Frasier” before NBC yanked it — a year too soon, if you ask me. Now, this is a movie that is definitely worth seeing, if you like thrillers or if you like movies that are decidedly Catholic (like Constantine or Dogma). So I will try not to give anything away.
There is an element in the film where Linney’s character is walking outside in the snow and finds a locket on a chain. The locket has her initials. She talks to the priest and tells him, and they agree that this cannot be a coincidence, or it can be. She can look at it either way. She takes it as a sign that she’s on “the right path.”
Well, we leave the theatre, get some caffeine in the adjoining mall, etc. and head back to the car. What do I find on the ground in my way but a wooden cross on a string. I’m not in the habit of pocketing what I find on the ground, but I did this time. It was too…weird not to. I’ve been avoiding thinking about what this could mean, if anything. Calling me back to Catholicism, even though I really have issues with their more politically-oriented teachings (birth-control, gay marriage, priests marrying)? Telling me I’m Okay going the way I’m going? Warning me that the Mrs. will leave me and render me fit for the priesthood?
I know it’s the coward’s way out, but I really don’t want to think about it right now.
Well, I know what you’re thinking: “Johnny rarely blogs on weekends, and it’s a holiday in the US. That lazy Johnny is surely not doing anything on Labor Day!” So, yeah, you’d be correct. I’m going to the market, and then I’m going to read and lounge all day. And night. So you’d get a cookie.
At this point, Johnny gets defensive and says, “What the hell are you doing reading blogs on Labor Day?” You get angry with Johnny for his gumption. But you have no answer, other than that you are bored. “Cookouts get old, and I don’t want to drink today, since I have to go back to my boring job tomorrow. I’m bored, so I’m reading blogs, especially the most kick-ass of blogs. I just finished reading that one about pencils,” you say to Johnny.
Johnny says that he feels for you. Take away work, and most of us don’t know what do to with ourselves. Well, I should say yourselves, since Johnny is a master of relaxing. So you’re bored.
Since you’re bored, go see The Constant Gardener, not that you have to be bored to enjoy it or that you will be bored watching it. I didn’t read the book (never heard of it). I didn’t know anything about the movie, other than that it is set in Africa and stars a very sad Ralph Fiennes. That’s more than you need to know. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about or hint at the ending. That would ruin it. But trust your lovable blogging philosopher, and go check out the film. And tell me what you think of it.
(Hopefully, the link works to view the rest of the comic here.)
So I ditched my nearing the end of the term work yesterday afternoon to watch Fight Club. Near the end of the scene where Tyler and the Narrator have their first fight, when they are sitting on the curb passing a bottle of beer, I wanted one. So I went on to drink all of the beer in my fridge. Can’t say how much or how many. So I guess that’s quite a bit of beers. But that’s Okay. Getting drunk on a Sunday afternoon is a luxury we don’t always have. It’s not the most evil thing to give in to it. I suppose.
Now khakis on the other hand…
I have always been a huge fan of the band Tool. However, the typical Tool fan is generally perceived as an intentional misfit (as opposed to a genuinely unusual or unique person) and as someone who feigns depression and darkness and the like (my own occasional depressions are in fact not voluntary, to be sure, and I’d trade them for sunshine if I could). As such, I am usually not gigantically vocal about my appreciation of and affection for the very few albums that Tool has actually given us over the years and for the band itself. Anyway, I decided to check out the Tool site today to see if there was any news about a new album, the last one being released in May 2001, just before I graduated from college. The site has not been updated in some time, because there is not much going with Tool these days, they say.
This is my very round-about way of explaining my web-absence lately. Not much interesting has been going on.
We bought a front cover for the car and had splash-guards installed, since the amount of gravel and stones on the roads around here is nauseating. The cover (”bra”) itself caused a small and very easy to repair chip in a joint where the fender and bumper meet, but the weather is too cold this week to apply the little dab of paint and have it actually dry properly. I’m kind of excited about being able to fix something on the car myself, after we had to pay the dealership to install the splash-guards. I did put on the bra on myself, which was not easy for someone as out of shape and technically-challenged as myself.
I bought a pack of Uni-Ball Vision Exact pens on sale and three packs of some sweet and delicious Faber-Castell Grip 2001 pencils on sale at OfficeMax for a mere $0.70 — a steal for such precisely engineered German pencils, which usually run for a buck each in the States.
I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time in at least five or six years, and it was good to remember what I loved about that film in the first place. What that was exactly escapes me now.
I have been drinking entirely too much coffee and have not been to bed before 3:00 a.m. in a few days. That’s good. I’m also getting work done, as a result of drinking all that coffee. My current favorite morning drug is Sumatra. Darkly earthly to wake me up from not enough sleep. Lovely.
Etc. Etc. Etc. Told you life has been boring lately. But with three sets of house-guests coming in the next few weeks, tons of work to get done, and tons of good non-school books to read, I have a feeling that things will get interesting this week. And that posting will become more frequent again.
I leave you with some nice pencil links, via Faber-Castell: the history of the pencil and famous Faber-Castell pencil users. I hope the links work.
You heard it here first. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou will be released on DVD May 10th, in two formats: a normal disc and a two-disc special edition with all of the goodies we Wes Anderson fans savor.
I heard a rumor that it’s another Criterion Collection edition (which Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums both were, along with Kevin Smith’s underestimated Chasing Amy, definitely my favorite Kevin Smith film).
Which would be even better. Of course, this is only if you are one of those people who watched the “DVD extras” for films you really like.
Which I am.
I know, I watch too many movies.
And now I’m off to see Constantine.
Finally saw Sideways, which is up for best picture this year, I believe. I don’t really feel like waxxxxxing intellectual or philosophical or critical about it. I think that would certainly cheapen what the film was trying to do and trying to be, and really you should just go see it because it’s more than worth it, and what the hell else are you going to go see this time of year anyway?
Really, the only bad effect was that I really don’t want to have any wine anytime soon, because I would really feel like a moron after the wine expertise displayed in this film. I should get my friend Chris (from Blog Collective) to teach me about wine sometime, or maybe he can guest-blog about wine here sometime or some such, etc.
I hope you’re not last-minute V-Day shopping, since that’s less fun than last-minute Christmas shopping although I don’t know why. I get homemade cookies and coffee and maybe some Asti, and that’s pretty damned nice for a Monday.
I finally saw the new Wes Anderson film: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. If you liked The Royal Tenenbaums, definitely go see it. If not, but if you like good films, go see it.
If neither, save your $8. After all, the annoying teenager out with his girly-girl (I assume his mom drove them) sitting behind me complained, “This movie’s so gay. It’s so gay. I don’t like this shit. It’s so gay.”
Let’s put aside the stupidity involved in calling something you don’t like “gay” for now.
Three-fourths of the way through the movie, the film caught fire. Yup, boil and bubble. I was worried that we would be issued free passes but would have to catch the rest of the movie at a later date. Luckily, the perplexed teeny-boy left — despite his girlfriend’s pleas that the movie was in fact not “gay” and that she really was enjoying it — and took his annoying chatter with him. Even more luckily, not ten minutes went by before the flick resumed and finished without further melted film or that gross gurgling sound it makes.
I suppose you could call the film a character study, much in the same way that The Royal Tenenbaums is a character study of Royal Tenenbaum and his family. But I suppose that could also be truly said about the rest of Anderson’s movies. The music is great, comprised largely of David Bowie songs arranged for acoustic guitar and translated into Portuguese. The colors are…quirky. Despite its other-worldly setting, the film is very very Wes Anderson. And I mean that in a good way.
I have somewhere to go, so I can’t ramble about this film anymore. Go see it. And, as a reminder, don’t waste money or time on that trite wannaba thriller The Village, which is about to come out on DVD. Instead, check out the trailer of Steve Zissou’s adventure.
Go see it. It’s worth your time and money, and there’s a Moleskine in it. You heard it here first. I heart I Heart Huckabees.
Panoramic of the Ohio River, Paducah, Kentucky.
Have had a very busy week. We played hooky from the university last Monday to trek to Paducah, Kentucky — a quiet little river town in northwestern Kentucky that is across the river from Illinois and is the place where three large rivers meet. I found a copy of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines at a shop there for a mere $4 that I hope I will get to read soon. Despite the legends of “Kentucky rednecks” and such, the folks of northwestern Kentucky are very nice and some of the friendliest people I’ve come across. And so polite!
I otherwise had a busy week and didn’t get to post much, not that I got any work done at all.
On Thursday night, we drove all of the way to and through St. Louis, Missouri to pick up a Harvard historian from the airport for a talk she was giving Friday at SIU. She really is a lovely person, and her talk was excellent. My wife knows her from her years at the Crimson Stain (my term, thanks), so she spent several hours with us at our home Friday night, over numerous cups of coffee, talking about history, academia and reading. A wonderful person, really. She’s as un-Harvard as they come, and I mean that as a very high compliment.
I’m re-committing to getting more work done this week, damn it. And I have the perfect film as inspiration: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s such a lucid depiction of frenzied studying and genius at work that it gives me, at least, something to strive to. None of that “playing god” business, though. Really, I have no talents for science, and I’m certainly no genius.
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