breakdown

so, i watched taking woodstock a few days ago. it was pretty good. there was a tripping scene that was way to long. ang lee is all about not saying what you mean. at least the ice storm and brokeback mountain are. this movie had a lot of that. i guess it was nice because there were the hippies who said everything they meant and the parents and son who don't know each other. demetri martin sure has an amazing nose.

yesterday my sister and i watched spring breakdown. i read an interview between amy poehler and rachel dratch in bust magazine in the record store the other day and they made that movie together. they said the staff of bust are all in love with that movie, so i wanted to check it out. it was funny but not mind blowingly funny. liz at one point that they were us in a few more years, which might be right. i love lady comedy, but it's so hard to find.

hill of oblivion

gosh, it's so warm in portland right now. even in buffalo it was warm and rainy. global warming blah blah, but you've had some weather over there, huh? anyway, i've got some sleepy tea and herbal cigarettes so i'm ready to talk about what i've seen over the past few days, as i descend into herbal overload.

so, on xmas morning, my father, brother and I went to see avatar in 3d. you know, everyone's talking about avatar cos it's so expensive and amazing or whatever but i might not have gone had my dad not been so gung ho. he's a very, very mellow person, so for him to be gung ho about something is a big deal. so we went. it was nearly three hours long and totally beautiful. the fakeness of it was really smooth and i do love odd plantlife and make believe animals and matriarchal, peaceful societies, so even though the story was pretty lame, i really enjoyed it. i don't think my dad hits the movies that often, and he's either going deaf or losing all tendency to give a crap when in public, but he kept leaning over to me and loudly verbalizing his plot predictions which were almost always wrong (he got the end right) but actually way more interesting than what actually happened.

then for xmas my brother pulled a total miracle. when we were little we were obsessed with this movie that played on the disney channel but as far as finding it as adults, we didn't have a title or really more to go on except some vague images like block people and an evil magician that may or may not have been a ball of angry light. these are some images i've been asking people about every few years with no results. anyway, he somehow figured it out and bought me the dvd for xmas. it's called unico and it's an adorable japanese thing from the 70s about a baby unicorn thing whose superpower is to make everyone he comes in contact with happy which pisses off the gods (and now i'm just plagiarizing the youtube description) so they banish him to the hill of oblivion (so great!) until the west wind lady decides that's too cruel a fate and whisks him off to different places where he gets into different adventures. here's a taste:


so it's totally exciting and mindblowing to watch this! it's been 22 years! it looks like you can watch the whole thing on youtube. it's pretty sweet.

lastly, my mom is obsessed with bored to death and was extremely disappointed that it was no longer available on hbo ondemand so she couldn't play me her favorite episode. but she kind of described it to me and that was good too.

blogging from an airport like a good blogger

the secret of roan inish (1994) is the secret of this blog post. folksy irish stories of seals, selkies, babies and cradles as vessels are some things you will find in this movie. also, fish guts. and crazy cousins. but if you're looking for a cute, precocious kid movie with some neat myths and long narrated stories that take you out of but give you some kind of background on the actual story, you might consider watching the secret of roan inish. basically what happens is, in ireland, on an island called roan inish where the people and the seals lived in harmony together, the people who lived there had to leave, i don't think i heard why, and the main character's little baby brother was put in his cradle on the shore while everyone loaded up boats with furniture and relatives, anyway, the sea took the baby, presumably because it was pissy for the people to leave. i mean, it didn't want the people to leave. but word is this baby possibly has some seal blood anyway since he is the one in his generation born with dark hair and eyes (aka a dark one--- the rest of em are blondish and there's a dark one in every litter, we learn) and their great-grandmother (i think) was a selkie (aka half woman half seal, and this i know for sure, that they have a selkie in the family's not too distant past, and anyway, it's ireland so sometimes it's hard to tell what period we're really talking about since they're on sort of a different plane. i guess every country is on a different plane. i'm not trying to be a jerk to ireland, i really like ireland.) so the little girl keeps sneaking back to roan inish with the help of her cousin and they notice that their old house is lived in and one day they see the baby brother (it's been a few years, so he's a toddler) having tea with a seal, which the cousin and girl know their grandparents will never believe because there are just too many superstitions and stories about the sea and about roan inish for the grandmother to bear, but you can tell the grandfather believes them all. would you believe, then, that when the little girl gets her defiant face on and tells the elders, the grandmother packs them all up toooot sweeeeet and off to the island they go in search of that baby toddler pouring tea for two with water mammals! in what i think is supposed to be a really poignant scene, the seals bring the baby back and chase him onto land. he really wants to be a seal, i mean, who wouldn't? but he has to live with his human family for now. i think if he stayed a part of both worlds that would've been a better ending but then again when i think about a baby living as a seal, it does seem morbid. i'll trust the mythmakers.

the thing is, though, about this scene, the seals got pretty far onto the shore so they had to sort of hop/bounce back to the sea and it wasn't sad at all anymore, it looked really silly. maybe that's sealophobic. have you seen the bridge? the one about people jumping off the golden gate bridge? there's a story about a guy not dying when he hits the water and some seals keeping him afloat and kind of warm until the coast guard or a barge or something notices him. seals are so amazing for that, right? so i was thinking maybe it's behavior like that that makes selkie myths. and then what about the way they get those seals in the first place? it's terrible. have you seen the cove or heard about it on npr? it's terrible. i can't watch it, i don't think.

i'm in logan airport, the jetblue terminal, and thinking about all the good junkfood that you can only get in western new york and maybe parts of ohio, pennsylvannia and canada that i'm gonna eat.

bored to death and in love

so, i've been having really strong fantasy feelings. i mean, strong for feelings about people on the tv. but, jason schwartzman has my heart. he always plays the same person, but i'm in love with that person. and, he's group coconut records is pretty cute too. they do the theme song for bored to death.

i don't want to talk about the plot the show because it's not the important. what is important is that it made me laugh several times. and, ted danson is so funny. he does this thing where he's jealous of what other people are doing. "i want a colonic." "i want to go to brighton beach." but, it's not in an annoying way. it's not like they didn't invite him because he's no fun. basically it's about three very different guys who are good friends and it's nice to see.

this business is on the fringes

now I watched Saleman, the Maysles documentary about the bible salemen in the 60s. they follow four around: the gipper, the badger, the rabbit and the bull. the badger seems to be the loser but he's also sort of the narrator, and he's got the best sense of humor and he's the least jerky to the other guys, of course he is the one who sells the least and i don't like how they're all so pushy trying to get people to buy things. i hate sales. what bullshit. especially when people say they don't have any money, and the salester keeps pushing. yuck! but maybe that's the point. actually, i'm not sure what the point is. are we supposed to be sad for these guys and this dying business? are we supposed to be appalled at the commercialization of religion? or admire the man out on his own type of thing? i know the Maysles do good work so maybe they're not really pushing anything. i think i'm just really crabby and tired today and i feel like my heart, body and soul and mind are all pounding fists and demanding answers. pretty silly, right?

anyway, the copy i have of this freezes sometimes and it's b&w so it's nice when it freezes cos then it's a nice little b&w photo. i'm not done with it yet but i wanted to write in the blog cos i love to. and that's all! i think you should watch this. i wonder what you'd think about it.

so magnificent

liz and i watched the magnificent seven. i've always been meaning to see it, although westerns are tied with horror for my least favorite. but, i love steve mcqueen and wanted to see yul brynner in something other then the king and i. and, we saw a preview for one of the sequels on tv, so that got us interested.

it did not disappoint. those mens are totally hot and awesome and bad ass. the plot is there is a town in mexico that keeps having all their crops and food stolen by bandits. three men come up to the boarder town to buy guns so they can fight. they see yul brynner and steve mcqueen drive a hurst with an indian up a hill. see, everyone are asshole racists, so they didn't want to bury the indian in the white cemetery. the three mexicans pretty much fall in love with yul after that and ask him to help buy guns. he says it would be better to buy men and they set about rounding guys up.

everyone buy three of the seven die, everyone gets their moment of truth and their i-have-a-soul speech. it was good, although i don't think you have to die a hero to be a hero, or something.

i had to look up all these guys while i was watching and i learned to yul is russian, maybe 1/8 mongolian and total beefcake.

30 and lost

i got julie and julia because my sister hadn't seen it. it's really great. julie's annoying, but i can relate. but julia is simply amazing. it's not just that meryl stripe really brings it, but taht julia child is such an inspiring person. i like to be inspired some times. now i'm watching the ugly truth because i love romantic comedy. we'll see how that goes.

long in austen

i was all headachetastic last night so i took an allergy pill around 9:30 and called it a night. i wanted something good to watch in bed and i settled on lost in austen (2008) without realizing that it was a miniseries, so i fell asleep and had to finish it up this morning. the plot is that a modern londoner who loves pride and prejudice is visited by elizabeth bennet through a surprise door in her bathroom. they trade places and amanda preceded to fuck everything up by trying to force it. everyone married the wrong people, mr. darcy falls in love with her, all kinds of stuff.

i've read pride and prejudice and seen the colin firth mini series, but it was all for school and i don't love jane austen. but, this was pretty good. i liked it because you can't force things and when you try, the don't really work out the way you wanted.

and, she discovered new things about the characters. there's this guy who is a cad and maybe raped mr. darcy's little sister and stuff. but, he ends up because really helpful and kind and not a rapist at all. i really loved him. i would have gone with him, fuck mr. darcy. although darcy was charming in his way and a total fox.

get ready to rock

so, i watched the rock tonight. did you know it's a criterion collection? i'm so excited for the entire second disc of extra features, including breakdowns of the craziest scenes and lots of talk about what makes a good action movie. i love the rock so much! i can't tell if it's one of those ones that everyone's obviously seen or not, but anyway, ed harris plays a pissed off marine who decided he hates the military cos they never acknowledge the dudes under his command who die on secret missions so he gets some really ugly lethal skin-melting gas and takes it to alcatraz, where he holds a bunch of tourists hostage and threatens to launch rockets with the yuck gas onto San Fran. he wants money i think, and he's not alone, he has a whole crew. so nick cage is an fbi biochemist who knows about the gas, and sean connery is a superspy who's been locked away in jail forever because he knows all the u.s. secrets but he's also the only dude to ever escape from the rock aka alcatraz (what a sweet nickname) so the gov needs his help getting nick cage in so he can make the yuck gas go away. he and nick cage get pretty tight so it's a buddy movie with a lot of beautifully done action scenes. pretty bloody and sometimes the dialogue is cheesy but maybe when i was getting bored with other stuff i should've turned to action sooner.

anyway, i recommend it. the music is a total up-pumper, too.

hitchhiker's guide to the world's greatest godfather always rings twice

Well, I haven't been to the movie theater in quite a while. This is partly because I got too poor even for $5 Tuesdays and partly because I saw FMF twice and maybe that was too much. Also, could partly be because there's nothing up I really want to see. I can't wait to see Precious. I am so ready for Mariah Carey to play a social worker. But I miss the summer/fall version of myself that would go see anything on $5 tuesday that started as close to 4:30pm as possible b/c that's when my workday ended and I worked just down the street. I did go to the real theater last weekend to see the Portland Ballet perform the Nutcracker. It was sweet but really sloppy and hard to believe it's a company that dances together regularly. But yeah, it was great cos it was Xmas-y and I got dressed up in a clingy vintage red sweater dress that made my body look like one of those sexy 1950s bosomy bodies with the stomach pooch and the round butt.

As for actual things worth talking about, I've been into the British Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV show, which I mentioned to you on text, right? What it has in it's corner as far as I'm concerned is that it's low-fi sci-fi and good British humor: snark and nonsense and terrible special effects. Did you ever read the books? I never did. I'm glad too cos I prefer having discovered this great format. I did see a few minutes of the Zooey Deschanel one that came out a few years ago and that was alright but maybe too slick. What have I got against slick? Maybe I'm cranky cos I want baked eggs without talking to anyone and the path to the kitchen is littered with bodies.

I also watched The Godfather last night with someone who has never seen it. Of course, it's one of my favorites and just the theme song brings up a lot of excitement for me. But the first timer was not a fan, judging it too confusing and that was disappointing but I can sort of see that point, but mostly I just think that sometimes with older movies you need to pay more attention and it's easy to forget that. I love it though. I think it's aged really well and is a beautiful looking movie. Diane Keaton looks like a kid. Marlon Brando might be the most masculine dude ever. And all the other stuff, like take the gun, leave the cannoli, it drives me kooky, it's great.

At the videostore the other day, I caught about 20 minutes of World's Greatest Dad with Robin Williams. It's supposed to be like the serious indie that rejuvenates or legitimizes his career or whatever. He plays a mousey English teacher whose son accidentally dies from autoerotic asphyxiation but he fusses with the scene to make it look like a suicide after the son is dead. And he goes through a lot of grief and is dating another really flakey teacher, is all I got. I can't wait to see the rest. It seems really sad but also the son was such a jerk to this guy and he seems so nice, I guess the whole thing is full of conflict and giving conflicting emotions.

And then tonight I saw about 8 minutes of The Postman Always Rings Twice before I started to feel sick for some reason and had to go to bed. I know I like it and I just read the book last weekend, and I love those looks people give each other in those noirs. So smoldery.

Now I'm up late and wanting baked eggs and waiting for people to settle in for the night and hoping that tomorrow is a nice day so that they won't call me in to work in the videostore due to shit weather. I love working at the videostore more than I love most things about living in Portland, and I know if I do go in, I'll be really psyched to be there, but it's hard to imagine being psyched about anything when yr anticipating being exhausted and sick.

stubborn heart

my sister and i just watched paper heart. it's kind of a documentary, but also not. it's by this performer charlyne yi and how she doesn't believe in love. but, while making the movie, she meets michael cera and starts dating him. it was a cute movie. charlyne's friend described her as really stubborn and i can see that. my friend emily is like that and she's kind of not in love, blah, blah, blah.

in the beginning, charlyne and the director go to a house party and there are all these fringe famous people there. all the cute indie boys. that's where she meets michael. it just made me wish that i went to parties like that. it looked like a normal party but filled with famous but regular boys.

cougartown for real

liz and i watched moonstruck on tv last night. i really love that movie. i saw it when i was young and it's stuck with me. because we love to know how old people are, we learned that cher was about 40 and nic cage was about 24. HOTTT! and, he looks hot. i hate all those haters who think that nic cage only makes the worst of the worst movies. moonstruck's a great example.

tonight was the biggest loser finale. i cried like crazy. it was amazing what some of the people look like. their faces look so different sometimes. the new season starts in january, which is crazy. i can't decide if it's crazy good or crazy bad. but, i'll have school on tuesday nights, so it won't be as easy for me to get involved.

the french sea

i learned from the diving bell and the butterfly that everyone has to reach a point when they decide to stop feeling sorry for themselves. have you seen it? it's the story of a writer who has a stroke and ends up only able to move one eye and eye lid. it made me want to read the book. and, i cried, which is good. liz and i had to decide whether we could handle a movie with subtitles, but i'm glad we did. it's always nice to see people who are worse shape than me.

no sleep till season 4

i've been up till 4am two nights in a row watching the second season of friday night lights. it's pretty awesome. seriously, i love it. i live how close the camera is and how cute everyone is. i'll have to reread your posts about them so i can see how our opinions line up. the mom is driving me totally nuts. she needs to chill the fuck out. and, i'm really glad that the coach is back. that guy is really awesome. i love listening to him talk and what he says.

but, as always, mostly i love the dudes with their hot bodies and sexy eyes

sleepy eyes watchin stuff sometimes

oh my gosh, i've had the sleepiest eyes lately. I've been watching stuff sometimes but very casually. More Art21. That's my new go-to-sleep show. At first I thought the listening with my eyes closed would be annoying and that I wouldn't be able to sleep at all, but it turns out that artists talking about their work is really soothing. I agree that art has it's own language and that it's hard to get back into it or want to, but I can say that once I did, I'm really hooked and now I want to talk about it all the time, which is great cos I was worried that part of my brain may have morphed into something else. But yeah, back and strong as ever.

The other night I brought home a video I found in the kids section. It's called Puppies! And it's footage of puppies! It must be from the 80s and the breeders they talk to are kind of creepy. I really hate that some dogs, like german shepherds, have their ears clipped or bound so they'll stand up straight instead of flop. So, puppies are cute and adorable but people forcing certain characteristics on them is gross and sad. My favorite might have been the Chinese crested:


Kind of ugly, or, at least punky, but what you can't see in this picture is that when they're in a puppy group, they run around and jump over each other like weird little acrobats, and the other puppies didn't do anything that cute.

I alway watched the first ten minutes of a movie called The Women, recommended to me after I whined about old movies being mostly about dudes. This one has Joan Crawford and someone else famous, and all the main characters are women. Snappy dialogue and all that good stuff.

And still with the Home Movies. Always with that.

all football is not created equal

the movie of friday night lights is just not as good as the tv show. maybe i should try to book next. the movie takes place in 1988, which means ugly hair. and, the coach is mean and not with a heart of gold. it's a true story, so at the end they talk about what happened to the kids, which is not that depressing. but, just not as good.

on a football note, i was at the bar eating wings today and tom brady kept coming on the screen walking across the field in a blue velvet suit. it was so hot. that guy's a stone fox.

foxes and guns and art, oh man

so, i finally saw fantastic mr fox and it was like dreams of wes anderson movies coming true. it was really clever and labeled a lot like the tennenbaums and good coloring and great adorable characters. jason schwartzman annoys me lately even though he was pretty much the only good thing about funny people and he was really awesome in this so i don't know what my problem is. anyway, my favorite parts were the closeups of characters and how the faces moved. it's exciting to see some stop motion. i'm gonna go see it again on $5 tuesday and i expect to love it even more!

i've also been on a mission to get back into art. so there's this lovely series on instant netflix, a pbs show, called art21. i recommend giving it yr eye time. in the beginning they have celebrity introducing and narrating, and they usually cover about three artists a show, and there's a theme, like fantasy or place. stuff like that. anyway at some point they ditch the celebrities which i like better because there's no cheesy stagey intro with the celebrity sitting somewhere reading something canned about art. it's people you know and maybe don't know. i watched a few this morning after waking up way way earling and cleaning and having TG dinner for breakfast. fantasy is a good one. it starts off with jeff coons but i had to FF through his part once it became shot upon shot of legions of art students sitting in front of macs with him talking about making art over it. he did say that he's trying to draw people in, which made me like his art more. i'm so cynical, i thought it was all irony, all the time. also, i'm not sure which theme carrie mae weems is on, but she's a really intense, beautiful amazing person. she talked about recreating sixities photos (like the one of the vietnamese dude getting shot?) with students and that was a great one to see. somewhere near portland some gallery or museum is showing kara walker's animation. i can't wait to go check it out.

and then today i watched a pretty bad barbara stanwyck movie at my friend edie's. she has a projector and she painted a big white block on her brown wall so it's great to watch movies there. the movie was called forty guns and i had the problem with black and white movies where all the men look the same until about a half hour in. it was really confusing anyway- too many characters and a pretty thin story. so, barbara stanwyck is a ranch tycoon, they call her the high ridin lady with a whip. she runs a tight ship. she employs tons of people who she eats dinner with at a huge table that must seat about 40 people, all dudes besides her, in her big fancy house on the ranch. the best moment was during dinner, her big crush (a dude who used to be a top gun in the west but then went straight to become a us marshall and get some morals) comes in and she says, "Boys, give us a minute." so there's this scene where all these dudes get up from the dinner table. it was pretty badass. but then, again with the getting lame, love makes her a total wuss and she admits tax evasion and loses her ranch but gets the man. it didn't seem worth it to me.

i think i'm gonna watch more art 21.

rob-o-rama

liz and i really got it done yesterday by going to a matinee of the new twilight movie, new moon, at our adorable local theater. i was only a little excited for it, but it was pretty great. what made it even better is audience hooting and hollering when the boys came on screen. the first time edward is shown, it's this slow motion walk towards the camera and at one point he looks a little shy about the (mostly adult) women in the audience cheering him on. and i was warned in an NPR review that there would be appreciation when jacob takes off his shirt the first time, but it still made me smile.

the movie kept moving. new moon is my least favorite because a lot of the book is bella being really sad because edward said he didn't love her and he'd never see her again. but, of course he was lying and just trying to protect her. my favorite part of the twilight books is that bella has this big love (edward) and this other guy (jacob) who she loves but isn't in love with her. but, she wonders if she could be and jacob really wants her to be. i feel like the love but not in love theme is a good one and i like it explored.

after, we watched how to be, which is an indie robert patterson (edward) movie. i think that when i put in on the netflix list, i didn't even know it was him, but maybe not. rob is a depressed kid in a quarter life crisis with shitty, busy parents and stupid friends not giving him any help. he buys a self help book and gives the author a ton of money to follow him around and fix him. bad news, nothing fixes him. but, it was pretty funny although silly.

i also finished the first season of monarch of the glenn. it's a bbc series about a london restaurant guy who is too cute for words. he's also the laaard of a castle and estate in scotland, but has run away from it and is now forced to live there and try to get the family out of debt. it's maybe too cheesy sometimes, but pretty good and plenty of kilts, which i love.

three movie day

after seeing where the wild things are, liz and i wanted more and we started with Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). Netflix got me to get this one. i don't even know why it was recommended to me, but i really love terence stamp and on the cover he looked really hot when he was young, so i went for it. it's 2 hours and 45 minutes, which is crazy. there's an intermission, and the movie could have been done there, but it wasn't. but, it was good and interesting and kept moving. it's about a woman (julie christie) who inherits a her uncle's giant, british farm and runs it herself. there are three men who love her: the foxy shepard who proposed to her before she got her farm and is a kind, good man, the older man married to his farm next door until he laid eyes on her, and the slimball solider who was raised on the farm she now owns. she marries the solider even though she knows he's no good because she really, really loves him.

the action was good and the men are good looking, which surprised me because it's the 60s, but i didn't like that she was strong, independent and funny, but lost that all when she feel in love. lame.

then, we moved on to the namesake (2006) which i got because the preview looked good and i just love love love kal penn. it's the story of two arranged marriage indian parents and their american kids. it's the story of kal penn becoming comfortable with his indianness, but also of his mother finding her way. it was too slow for me sometimes, but liz said maybe because it was the third movie of the day. kal penn playing a 18-year-old for a few scene was worth it for me.

wild thing

so, when it comes down to writing, i feel like i wouldn't remember all the reason i liked where the wild things are, but here goes.

1. the sets: how awesome was that fort? and the sea and desert? even the suburban neighborhood felt right to me.

2. catherine keener: i loved that she was a good mom. that when she asked max to tell her a story, she was paying attention and typing it up. i thought she was working, but she was listening.

3. that kid: max (real and character name) is just so great to look at. and he's brave in a way i'm not, which is nice.

4. recurring topics: i loved that the wild things would talk about things in max's life. like when one of them talked about teeth and max had told that story about teeth. and how judith yelled at him about yelling at her when he's king and she should be able to do anything and he should just agree and let her do anything she wanted. it was a little crazy when max's mom yelled at him, but also understandable.

5. camera angles: like when max would go into tunnels and how the night and day looked. it was just thought out and perfect.

5.6: that the soundtrack was all crazy songs that i don't know. the preview had this great arcade fire song, but i felt good that the soundtrack was all new and almost not words. sometimes hearing a song i love takes me out of the movie. liz pointed out that the wild things live in a world not our own and it was nice that it wasn't music in our world.

6. i guess mostly i loved that the monsters are all part of each of us. and how you can't only listen to just one and you can't make all of them happy. i've felt better after fucking up my friendship with hannah and it made me think about how sometimes it's nice to explode. it's nice to lash out and hurt someone, even though i didn't do it on purpose. and, to me, that was the theme of the movie. that lashing out and acting crazy is a part of all of us and it can't be ignored all the time, but you also can't act that way all the time.

i don't really know the book, but that's what i got from the movie. i feel like the characters developed because i know them all already. but also that it's true that being a part of a family is hard sometimes, but it's worth it.

I love sad, I know I do

So, here is a story of filmlove death.

I watched Twin Peaks all the way through and was pretty nonplussed. Then WTWTA disillusioned me so I vowed to rewatch Magnolia.

I watched Magnolia a few nights ago and-- maybe first I should say that the summer I lived at Albert's house in Buffalo and waitressed at a Mexican restaurant, I put Magnolia on every morning while I drank coffee and chainsmoked and puttered around, just as background audio/visual, I could never get enough, was pretty obsessed, talked about it a lot, etc blah blah-- but this time it drove me up the walls of our living room. I couldn't stand the bleakness and the melodrama and it all seemed pretty pointless: why make a movie this unrelentingly sad? And that event disturbs me because I know I love this movie. Or did? I know tastes change but, well, I dunno, it weirds me out to feel so blech and yech about something I was a big fat advocate of, even if it's just a cultural product. Can you think of any you once loved so much but rewatched and stopped loving as much?

One thing that can really take the bummer off of anything, though, is Home Movies. God knew what he was doing when he made that show, I'll tell you hwhat.

this is serious

it never stops. i'm always always watching something. yesterday we had a big day long rainstorm so today i got out to the rocky part of the coast and watched the ocean get big and fierce and scary and all crash up on rocks. then i went to walmart and watched a lot of tv commercials in the aisles.

but before all that, on friday night, i watched a serious man. again with the sucking at talking about things i really like. overall, though, it was dark and funny and excellent. probably my favorite movie this year so far. you know, it's about a nice but maybe meak physics professor and his crummy life, and his being jewish is a big part of it. the kids are really great, especially the son, and the wife's friend looks like a taller, fatter allen ginsberg. and lots of rabbis, and religion's and people's kind but useless advice to someone in a shitstorm. and natural disaster and funny strange parts. man vs man, self, kids, wife, nature, students and all that jazz. plus it's all 60s suburban minneapolis-- so cute! also! a brother who drains a cyst on his neck a lot. and some jefferson airplane and pot. i just really liked it.

also now the twin peaks festival is over. and good riddance. i've moved on to cartoons. do you like king of the hill? the first season is some of the best stuff. i have to watch some of the critic and some home movies. i also rented creature comforts, by the wallace and gromit dude(s) i think. this is the one where they take interviews with people all over america and then use that as audio and the visual is some animals. does that make sense? it's great. here's some:

ski masquerade

so, i decided i want to start wearing a ski mask. i don't like the wind on my face. i hate it.

speaking of hating it, i am totally amazed at how great office killer, directorial debut of the cindy sherman, was! have you seen it? it came out in 1997, and it's out on dvd. killer (haha, pun not intended, although it is fitting, which i guess that's what a pun is, right?) cast: molly ringwald, jeanne triplethorn (love her), carol kane (love, love, love her), chris from the sopranos, and some good people whose names i don't know. the whole thing is just perfectly designed, colored like a polaroid, flickering flourescent lights, an office setting like probably what offices were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. i can only speculate since i've just been an office bee for just maybe 10. carol kane is the villain, and she's so whacko! sometimes she looks like the mother from 6 feet under but with drawn on eyebrows. she totally slaughters it. the rest of the cast is great, i guess i just keep saying the same thing over and over again. it's hard for me to write about things i just love, and especially fresh love, maybe. which doesn't make this blog too hard, it makes it a good exercise. i have a lot to get better at, and talking about movies or tv shows i love seems like a good start. so! also, some good cats and nails being pulled off fingers!

it's grim, fay grim

so, i haven't started the second season of friday night lights. i watched the first in two days. two sunny, warm, beautiful days, by the way. but, i'm forcing myself to take a little break and i know that's for the best.

i did watch fay grim (2006) today. it's the sequel to henry fool. henry fool was the first hal hartley movie i saw and it made me love hal hartley. plus, it's very epic. fay grim was pretty good. things sure happened, but it's hard to talk about what happened. it's funny because people keep falling a little in love with fay and she likes it. it's also funny because i'm sure that hal hartley didn't have any of it in mind when he wrote the first movie. it's nice he took something and reinvented it.

the movie is shot at an angle a lot, which i didn't like. i was laying down and sleepy, so in some ways i couldn't tell if it was the movie or the angle of my head that was off, but i feel like that's a lame thing to do. at least it's lame to do all the time.

total win(s)

it's almost 1pm and already it's been a marathon movie day. i woke up sunrise early, opened my laptop and went straight to netflix instant before the crust was even out of my eyes. it's a killer beautiful sunny warm day, so i should be outside, but yesterday i was hiking and outdoor shit like that, and i had a deeply terrible dream where an ex-boyfriend died and i had to go through all of his stuff and read all this horrible stuff he wrote about me, ugh, it was so sad and weird. so, movies are good bad dream cures for me. by the way, i got a little guff at the videostore yesterday for having netflix. i explained "i need tv" and even though i'm not sure that flew, it made me feel more righteous about it. enough about me, right?

well, so first off i finished you're gonna miss me, which i fell asleep to last nitey nite. i love it of course. roky erikson sure can sing, and although his mother was a narcissist, i did feel sorry for her when she told the judge she thinks roky should do yoga instead of taking medicine, because i want to believe stuff like that works better than drugs but a dude like that dude and his messy life, it's a tough call. speaking of call, i missed your call yesterday so i need to call you to hear about this fuckup business.

next i watched 30 century man, the one about scott walker. he's a crooner, alright, and i love that thurston moore has a perfect attendance record when it comes to being on these rockumentaries. johnny marr is in this one, too. and of course, scott walker is prettty great, and i always enjoy watching musicians gush about one great musician, so it was a total win.

after that i watched about 30 seconds each of gigantic (with paul dano and zooey deschanel) and then palindromes. i had to shut off gigantic because you know how sometimes the volume on netflix instant is just too too low? i thought i might like it though. paul dano is a mattress salesman who wants to adopt a baby from China and zd plays the classic quirky girl, but also john goodman plays her dad and lester from the wire is dano's boss. maybe some other time. and palindromes i had to shut off because no matter what i do, i hate todd solodnz. just can't do it with that guy, you know?

last but not least, we have the cake eaters, the directorial debut of mary stuart masterson, who's in one of my favorite ever movies: fried green tomatoes. classic small town indie character study family drama, with the girl from twilight and a bunch of other people. i have to say, it was everything i wanted it to be: sleepy acoustic sdtrk, old people having extramarital affairs, a lunch lady dude and a high school girl with a degenerative muscular disease having a devirginizing affair, prodigal-son-back-home-from-nyc-after-his-mom-died-type stuff, and adults learning to let go. plus some art. oh! i almost forgot about the terrible tattoos! a few characters have some pretty bad tattoos. not incredibly bad, but quietly bad.

burning bridges, taking names

so, after totally fucking up yesterday, i laid in bed and watched 7 episodes of friday night lights. and i'm pretty hooked. there are so many cute boys on it. first off, the coach is a fox. he did an arch on gray's anatomy where he played a bossy asshole and he was fox then. and, of course all the high school boys. oh baby. it makes me a little sorry that i didn't play team sports. that i never had that family around me and that pressure to do well. i think that choir was like that and we were a great choir, so that helps.

movies, 21 and blades of glory. 21 is about MIT card counters. it wasn't that great, but since i'm a rock star at community college, i can really relate to those MIT kids.

blades of glory made me laugh out loud a couple times, but i wasn't bored. will ferrel's kind of good looking with long brown hair. strange.

time of the season

Something about November is always a little weirdy in my life. Whatever, maybe I'm just a baby, but if things are gonna get weird in a year, it'll usually get weird in November. So, that's why I'm glad I went to see Where the Wild Things Are in November and not in October or December. I may not have been prepared. I saw it at the Somerville Theatre, I didn't even know they showed movies, I'm so out of touch. Remember we saw the magnetic fields there? Man, if it weren't for you, there are so many good good things I wouldn't have done. But anyway, I hated it. I wonder if you've seen it and how you feel about it, and I don't want to ruin it for you, but really there's not much to ruin. I just mean, it seems like the kind of movie people are either hardwired to like or not like, and no amount of someone telling them about it will change that. Writing all that, though, I'm starting to not want to say more. Let's just say that although I generally like Spike Jones, I wish Wes Anderson made it instead. I think it needed more hardcore hipster quirk and less depressing dialogue. And more Catherine Keener, but I guess that can't be helped with the story and all. When was the last time I was so disappointed by a movie? Maybe it's the high expectations that are screwing me over. I just kept wanting to leave the theatre, like, get away from the movie. What I really want is to talk to someone who loved it so I can ask them why and maybe get in touch with something redeeming about it. I also want to watch some of my classic favorites (I keep thinking of Magnolia) and try to figure out why I like them so much and how movies I love develop characters in subtle, acceptable ways so I can find the deficit in this movie. Sounds like a lot of homework for hating one movie, huh?

I also caught up on the office today and it's not making me laugh. Neither is 30 rock. Has my heart grown cold? Well, I have a lot of questions today.

broken heart and broken head

my sister didn't get promoted and for some reason it's really bumming me out. maybe because i'm totally unsuccessful in most things so i look to her to be the success. and i'm still sick with a monster headache and a shitty cough.

so, that just means that for monday and tuesday i just watched crap on tv. also, i haven't gotten the new netflix movies yet and i watched all of the old ones over the weekend. the biggest loser was awesome, of course, and the woman that totally sucked got kicked off so it was a great day.

and there's this channel ion, does everyone have that? anyway, it shows reruns and movies and two hours for ghost whisperer, which i've avoided, but i did get sucked into two hours of criminal minds yesterday. this show is interesting to me because it'd mysteries and because it has the Alaskan intern from the life aquatic and he's adorable. he was in 500 days of summer and i couldn't figure out what he was from. he has this great voice that's sort of biting. like it has a hard edge or something. he has maybe two lines in the life aquatic, so you can't tell from that. but maybe watch a little criminal minds and let me know.

every night is friday night

Whelp, I'm finally all caught up with Friday Night Lights on instant. I was thinking about it, and I think what you might need is some Tim Riggins. I think you should check it out just for Tim Riggins. He's a pretty like a girl, superhot, mess of a drunk, high school football player, just about as TV texas as anyone could be, and I think you need some. Go for it.

Anyway, FNL is alright. The third season gets kind of whacky cos everyone's trying to figure out how to go to college, or art school (that was the quarterback, nice touch) and some people flip houses, or move to nyc to become a sports agent at 19 to live closer to their son and girlfriend in jersey and live a full life, or get fired and get moved to another high school. There's lots of parent-child and parent-parent bonding and someone even calls CPS on a shitty, overbearing dad. Good stuff. What I said about the coach's wife going batshit, well, she becomes the principal of the school, after being the guidance counseler, and her life is just hell hell hell and she's kind of a bitch but she's really close with the slut who has an affair with the nerd because she, the wife principal, believes the slut should be the first girl in slut's family to go to college and so the slut gets really motivated after her rodeo boyfriend turns out to be a gambler and eventually gets into the state school of her dreams and overall it's a great story arc.

But now I'm officially done. The 4th season can go get screwed.

you give me fever

ok, not you as much as the world. my fever only lasted one day, which means it might not be the swine flu. but i'm hoping it was because i don't want to be sick twice.

anyway, i used my halloween sick day to watch two movies, some mad men season two and the third season of 30 rock.

liz and i started off with Push (2009) and sci-fi, superpower, action-thriller that some preview sold me on a while ago. it's about a parallel world where some people have different powers like future seeing (watchers), mind control (pushers), changing the appearance of objects (shifters, healing (stitches) and so on. i'm kind of a sucker for those kinds of movies. this one's set in china, which helps and there are these two super hip, side-burned twins badies who can scream really loudly that are hard not to love. dakota fanning's in it and that's the first whole movie i've seen with her. i watched some of man on fire in the kz, not that good. the ending was really opened ended, but i don't think it did that well, so i'm not sure it's going to continue.

then i watched the good shepard (2006) which i think got on my list because i love lee pace and wanted more after the fall (2006), which is kind of great, but the way. the good shepard is not that great. it's a kind of slow CIA thriller set in the 40s through 60s. as so many things set in that time period, mad men included, this movie was pretty much about being unhappy with the life you have and not taking the power to change it. matt damen is a Yale then CIA guy who hardly talks, is respected and marries angelina jolie instead of the cute, deaf girl he loves because she's pregnant. lee pace is a total ass in it and not around much. it was one of the movies that was confusing because of the lingo and complicated plot with a lot of men in the same haircut. but, it's mostly confusing because i'm not interested in the outcome enough to pay really close attention.

so, i guess over all i'm saying that you should watch the fall.

wait until dark and you'll be 17 again

yesterday was a day off and a two movie day. first off was wait until dark, which i watched during the day. it's a 1968 audrey hepburn movie and netflix picked out for me because i watched the heart is a lonely hunter with alan arkin and it thought i'd like some more alan arkin, which i did. i'm pretty in love with him and it's great to see him young. although he hasn't changed that much. men are tricky like that.

but, wait until dark wasn't that good. it was a play and it's about this crazy, beatnik drug guy who is looking a doll stuffed with heroine that ended up in this couple's apartment. arkin enlists two guys to help him and they have all these crazy characters and stuff to trick audrey, who's freshly blind, into giving them the doll. the sneaking around stuff is cool, but in the beginning she has some really cheesy lines to her husband about how much she loves him and stuff. really bad stuff. i couldn't tell if she was suppose to sound like the most pathetic, desperate pushover that ever lived or if something got lost in time. but, it was better once we got past all that lameness.

and last night it was time for 17 again. it's the one were a middle-aged guy unhappy with his life wakes up in his 17-year-old body. i haven't seen any of the high school musical movies, but sometimes it kills me not to know about all that teenage, pop culture stuff, so i got 17 again. zac efron might be too young for me to be attracted to him, which is actually pretty reassuring. the movie was not very good and matthew perry is not aging well. i'd like to think that the movie addressed some interesting social issues about pedophilia when the adult wife is kind of hot for her husband who is now her teenage husband but she doesn't know it's him. but, i don't think that's what it was all about. the best part was really that at the end when they have the credits, they have those people's high school pictures with their names and the director was a total fox. maybe the hottest guy in the movie. so, maybe i can be attracted to 18-year-olds. oh shit.

sunday night movies, friday night lights, and still yet every night with agent cooper

You've seen a few foreign languages movies that don't have English subtitles, right? I don't think I ever really had until Sunday night in New Hampshire, in Concord, with Avishay and his bookclub. We watched a Norwegian horror about Nazi zombies in ski country. It's called Dead Snow. Watching it without really knowing what the characters were saying was a-o-k. And fun because people were big on calling out with their guesses and witticisms, and also, with Nazi zombies and Norwegian skiers, do we really need to know the details? There were lots of zombie and human intestines and blood coming out of mouths and snow and references to other horror and squished eyes and other body parts. Not too much sex but some, and that in an outhouse. Some of the state parks here have these great outhouses, all wood and really tasteful but not completely enclosed, so some good pseudo-outdoor peeing. Anyway, one character, a girl with dreadlocks, was really killer, she survived on her own so hardcore, like, hanging off a cliff fight off a zombie and hanging on only to the intestines of a disemboweled zombie wedged in some tree branches at the top of the cliff-- I was pretty entralled with all the intestines work. Do special effects people major in things? If so, these ones majored in guts, for sure. So, that was fun. Concord is a good town, even if they don't have a coffeeshop that stays open past 6 and isn't in a chain bookstore. And every place I ever visit, I want to move there. I'm good at daydreaming up alternate lives in places I'm a stranger to. On the ride home, which was about two hours, I also daydreamed up another tattoo. I'm gonna get a bison on my left arm, on the inside between my elbow and wrist, for Buffalo, you know. Hometown pride.

So, on to the television. I never watch the Biggest Loser but I've heard good things. Anyway, I have four housemates: Ezra, Stephanie and Xander. Stephanie and Xander have never seen Twin Peaks before but Ezra and I have. So we're all kind of going through the series, sometimes with other people around, but at different times since we all have different schedules and there have been some rare but fun days where three or four of us altogether catch an episode and that's nice and cozy because I really like my housemates. I was bored at first with the show, especially the Log Lady intros on the DVD which are cool in theory but are mostly poorly written, but it really picks up when things start to get weird with Killer Bob and the one-armed man, so I'm into it like always before and again. And I like that it's on the TV at lots of random times in the living room.

A girl at the videostore is really into Hoarders and Intervention, two shows I would totally watch if I had cable. I should see if those shows are online. I can relate to hoarders, and I think my grandmother might have been one because she could never throw away National Geographics or newspapers. She also never left the house, so there's some historical precendent for my sometimes shut-in behavior.

Which brings us to Friday Night Lights, which is my fall-asleep-to show. I thought I was done after the first season. No dice. I like that the coach's wife is a strong and good character, but in the second season she kind of loses it because she has a teenage daughter and a new baby and her husband moves away to be a college football coach. The second season also features a murder (!) and a weird love story between a slut and a nerd. I like the show overall because the teenagers are all really strong but also confused and they go into their complicated lives in good ways. It's unrealistic maybe, I guess I don't really know, or wait, I was going to say, these kids get away with a lot of drinking and stuff that doesn't seem realistic but oh I must be too old to imagine how they do it. When I really think about it, which I just did, it's not so hard to pull ones over on adults. So I guess it's helping me get in touch with the teens. But maybe only the melodramatic, murdering, football-obsessed or -hating, murdering ones.

i'm the biggest loser

liz's adorable coworker tom said that he heard people who watch the biggest loser are the biggest loser, so that's me. this episode wasn't as emotional, which means i lonely cried a couple times.

we got all new netflix movies today, so i'm going to have better things to tell you about. like 17 again.

tv for dinner

so liz's friend karen (your mix exchangee) had a seven person dinner party last night and i talked about tv a lot. afterward, i was a little embarrassed but liz said it's fine. i talked a little about our blog and how it's sweet.

i talked about psych, which i also watched yesterday. psych is on usa and it's my show. liz and i started watching it because when she was in the hospital last december, we watched a lot of usa and although psych wasn't on at the time, we kept seeing the same preview and i was sold. i downloaded the first two seasons and it wasn't that funny at first, but it worked its way in. now, i just love it. and, this summer, i fell asleep to an episode a night so i pretty much have them all memorized.

one of the guests, the only guy, husband paul, has watched it once or twice and didn't like it. i don't think i sold him, but he likes shows like rescue me, sons of anarchy and the shield. i haven't seen any of those but have heard a lot about all of them and they're different than the formula i love.

today i watched white collar, which is the new show on usa. it got talked about last night and has the really beautiful man from chuck. it was pretty good. it's a man/man team, which is a nice change.

holy three day movie robin

Finally finished DiG! last night. Took me about three or four days to get through it. I kept falling asleep or getting bored but by the time I finished it, I had to start it again with the commentary cos I got so into it and ultimately really like it. I love when they get busted in Georgia and David LaChapelle and watching a bunch of people in Oregon or wherever fight like little children. All in all, everyone in the film comes off as ridiculous and sometimes mean or egotistical but all total characters, so good film fodder. In a way, I started to miss Boston and being around a bunch of music snobs and drugs and stuff. That might be odd because I wasn't always a fan at the time, but odd is what things are sometimes. Anyway, I never thought much about either band before but I think I like the Brian Jonestown Massacre better. It's good to know I can still pick favorites, although that's something I'm trying to change. Bittersweet to know, I guess.

When I came out on the porch this morning, there was a cat crawled up on one of the camping chairs. I tried to explain to it that it could stay, but it couldn't understand. I was harboring big dreams of getting a foster dog because we have a big huge dogless yard and it would be nice to keep the strays away and dogs are so great but now I worry it would keep the cats away and what if they don't have another nice big dogless yard to hang out in?

siamese lazy boy

This is the new-to-me couch I bought at a thrift store a few weeks ago and what I sit on usually when I watch tv/movies not on my laptop. Although it's not necessarily comfortable or uncomfortable to lie on, it is very very comfortable recline with. See photo of recliner lever below or to the left or right, not sure where it's gonna be.



Pretty nice. I fell asleep on this watching Twin Peaks last night. Is it rude to fall asleep watching tv with a group of people? Remember when someone shoots a bird at the police station? Anyway, that's the disc we watched.

holy three movie day batman

i don't know what came over me. part of it was that i've had tulpan for almost a month and need to get it out of the house. it's a kazakh movie by a kazakhstani russian. david and i had to look for pictures of him on the internet to find out if he's white or brown. the movies in russian and kazakh, which i think is really cool. the men are silent pigs, the women are silent but strong willed, the dudes are idiots, the wind is strong and the steppe is vast. all about right.

i guess that i liked that he wanted the life of a shepard on the steppe. it's possible that was cheezy and nationalistic, but it's kind of nice that the simple life was his dream.

i also watched disturbia (2007) with shea lebeouf. i'm not sure why i picked this movie. i have loved shea since the days of even stevens and rear window is my favorite hitchcock, so that's probably why. it was alright. it got kind of scary at the end.

in the beginning when the rating is posted and there is an explanation for why the film received that rating, it said for sensuality. not sexuality. i never paid attention to those, but aaron would notice and comment when nudity and sexuality was promised. sensuality?? seriously?

why oh why

so, i'm continuing to just watch stupid tv, so i'm not going to name it. i did watch daria: is it college yet? it was pretty good. i might be over daria, but i was nice to go back to that time a little.

i've attached a picture of my viewing set up lately. i moved my computer from a table next to my bed to the floor in the tv room because i spend most of my time lying on the floor. although it's a laptop, the power cord port is messed up so that it has to be in a very specific position to work, so i can't move my laptop very often. someday it'll stop working all together and i'll die of saddness.

so fresh and so clean clean

I've only watched the lastest gray's anatomy. it was a good one but nothing special. i'm busy this week with pumpkin carving yesterday, michael chabon talking at the main library today and sherman alexie tomorrow. but that's ok because my thursday fox shows are on vacation for two weeks.

i did watch some of the latin music USA on pbs maybe monday night. it was kind of interesting. i've seen some juanes videos on french and russian music tv and he always sings in spanish so i thought that he didn't speak english. but he totally does. and he's hot. i'm not a big latin music girl, but i do love music.

eastbound and down (2009, hbo)

Have you seen eastbound and down ? It's a newish half hour comedy on HBO. Before I go on, have you seen the other one with Max Fisher? One of my favorite comedians Zack ReallyLongGreekName is in it, and it's about a writer in NYC who becomes a private detective. I've only seen a few minutes but it seems alright. Anyway, I don't have cable so I watched Eastbound and Down on DVD. If you've seen Pineapple Express, then you'd recognize some of the people in it. It's kind of like, whoa aren't rednecks ridiculous? With lots of that Sarah Silverman racism/sexism/homophobic type comedy. Shocking, I guess. Like, laughing a lot but also saying "Oh, man" or "Oh my god" a lot too. I can't remember if you like this type of comedy so I'm not 100% recommending it, but lord, did it make the crowd laugh. Then more Friday Night Lights which I'm not as into anymore, but TV habits die hard. Tonight I'm going to see Where The Wild Things Are. At work today I listened to all the little snippets and interviews and reviews about it on NPR. You know you can stream NPR and make your own playlist with just the segments you want to listen to? I can't decide if this is a blessing or a curse? But I did it. I mean, I do it.

me painted tired

We finished off the first season of wire in the blood with justice painted blind yesterday. i like the show. i like to guess who did it, but that's not as important on this show. sometimes we don't even get to know who did it.

i'm excited for the lead female change, although i do like her.

sleeping on the blog

so, i haven't posted in a few days, but not for lack of watching anything. once again, i have some movies and some tv to report on.

yesterday i had my third training at the videostore. it went pretty well, i think, and i can tell it's going to remind me of being a librarian, which is totally positive. i was feeling like spending some time with curmudgeons on the box so i brought home these: crumb and american splendor. crumb is a documentary about r. crumb, and american splendor is the harvey pekar one, in which crumb is a character. you must have seen american splendor but have you seen crumb? what i liked about it was how it's sort of a portrait of middle america nutso. crumb's family is pretty out there, lotsa cultural snobbery and recluses and anxiety medication and even some sitting on a bed of nails. of course, this behavior by himself and brothers (the sisters wouldn't have anything to do with the movie) is all because their dad was superabusive and their mom was a 50s amphetamine addict. not in the way of the warhol superstars, more like in the way of a todd haynes character. there's oodles of sex weirdness and crumb might be hostile towards women which works out well because his wife is a self-proclaimed self-loather. it made me want to revisit ghost world and read more comics. the only comic i'm into right now is sweet tooth. the gothgirl comic phase is over. this one's about a half-boy half-deer. it's great. and then american splendor, which i love the misery of and i love how the people who are characters played by actors show up as themselves. i also like how they adopt an illustrator's daughter. love the forming of an unconventional family story.

after that, i watched empire records with my roommate. i haven't seen it in years but it was a high school favorite. i had the same experience watching this as i did watching reality bites recently and realizing how much of these movies informed what i thought my 20s would be like. outside of using toilet paper as a coffee filter and knowing a prescription drug addict, none of it panned out.

then today i watched some friday night lights on instant after my friend matt, a very trusted source, recommended it. i love war movies even though they're always about men. or because of? anyway, i feel the same way about this one. it's all football, but high school texas football. i'm learning things about football that i wouldn't get anywhere else or really care to, but i like knowing more about it since sports are suddenly appealing to me.

because i couldn't watch anything any more, i went to the community radio station where i practiced switching between songs and also banter, and then target where i got cheap jeans and some bras, and now i have to go watch a 1980s customer service training video for the videostore job. the star of the CSTV is southern and wears colorful scarves pinned in ways you'd expect. it's so cold in maine, snow and rain type cold. that means allergy season is over, right?

also, buying bras at target made me miss the bra wizard. i hope he lives forever.

this blog is working

so, on your advice, i downloaded the first season of Wire in the Blood and liz, stacie and i watched the first two episodes tonight, The Mermaid Singing and Shadows Rising. the title of the show and the titles of the episodes don't make sense, by the way.

I like the show. it follows a formula i enjoy, cop and crazy person solve crimes together. After the first half of The Mermaid Singing, I declared that if Carol Jordan and Tony Hill don't do it soon, i'm not watching the show anymore. But, after watching and them not doing it, i decided it was ok because it's normal to have some sexual tension between adults but not act on them, right?

and, i like the show because there is no super computer that gives amazing answers and the killers are not regular people pushed too far, but crazy people with deep problems. the mentalist has a lot of regular people pushed to murder once and after watching some episodes, it makes me feel like anyone could murder anyone else at any time.

flat on my back

it really helped to lay on my back. or maybe it was the codine. anyway, 3 hours of awesome tv. thursdays are hard because i want to watch gray's anatomy, but my sister wants to watch fringe and i want to watch that too. but abc puts their shows online the next day and fox waits a week, for fringe wins. the line up tonight, bones, fringe and the mentalist.

bones was not a favorite, but now i've watched all three seasons and i kind of love it. it's stupid.

fringe is creepy and joshua jackson makes me wet.

the mentalist is funnyish and today all i could think about was how hot on of the guys would be naked.

my sister's watching the proposal now and i might have to join her. man, i'm full of shit viewing today, sorry.

but, in other news, i went out to the cvs to buy my sister refried beans tonight at 10 and as i was walking, i saw my hat which i guess i dropped down the street in the rain at 4:30 on my walk home from school. and, cvs doesn't have refried beans, but there's a mexican place across the street and everything worked out great.

the double feature and a trio of tv shows

First, I watched The 'Burbs (1989) and ate onion soup and biscuits. Then I watched the first half of The Rules of the Game (1939) and ate some Soy Delicious. Then I watched the new episodes of Glee, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on hulu while drinking as much water as I could handle. The only thing I really paid attention to was the first movie. Remember how I was talking about a female director kick? I think first I'd like to become a bizarre 80s movie expert. I wish I had two paths I could follow... Anyway, I'm so glad I rented The 'Burbs. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen it since the era of slumber parties. Tom Hanks is young, and it's all about a cul de sac full of neighbors that can only communicate by yelling at each other. They're yelling at each other mostly about a new neighbor family that is creepy, messy and nocturnal. It all ends in disaster, of course. Plus, one of the Coreys-- and he's wearing a leather jacket with a tie dye shirt. The Rules of the Game is so snarky and mean to middle class slash rich people, and I like that sending up of the bourgeoisie business, and pre-WWII France, but I couldn't get all the way through it. More yelling. Why is everyone yelling? At least with Glee there's some singing, but even that seems like yelling. I'm old and it's too loud, I guess. But I love Jane Lynch. It seemed like she was getting beaten at her own game by the teacher, who I hate because he's so dumb. I just want her to always have great lines like:“Here I am about to turn 30 and I’ve sacrificed everything, only to be shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy misshapen teens."The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are the same show every night, but dependable is nice. So that's a little of both and a lot of watching.

full body tattoos?

i really watched some bad tv today. my sister's spending the night in the hospital and my mom went back to ohio today, so i went to the hospital this evening and laid in moving hospital bed with my sister and watched the worst tv. they have basic cable, but it seemed to be all NCIS, which isn't good. We watched some so you think you can dance and america's next top model and some new sitcoms.

oh, and the second half of a show on national geographic channel about tattoos. we saw the parts about the Japanese mobster tattoos.

the best thing to watch is the chapel channel. liz is in a catholic hospital and there's a channel that just shows the chapel. nothing happened while i was there, but spooky.

Twin Peaks (1991) and about uniforms

So, it's fall and I've started watching Twin Peaks again. This must be the dozenth time. Which started me thinking about how into repeating things I can be, how I like to start a book again right after finishing it, or how I can always imagine falling in love with people I've fallen in love with before, or how I like to pick a uniform and wear it out for the season. Right now I only have a bottom uniform: grey jeans and beige furry-inside pointy-ish little boots. If I had a sweater I could love more than any other sweater, I'd really have a uniform going. Which brings me to the Andy Warhol uniform, and the Patti Smith uniform, and the 60s Don't Look Back Dylan uniform, and those are all really great uniforms. The wardrobe in Twin Peaks is equally amazing. The plaid skirts and tight sweaters and leather jackets and flannel and flat shoes and waitress dresses-- can you beat that? Anyway, I'm glad to be back to Twin Peaks and cherry pie. I do feel a little less amazed by it this time. I guess I'll get obsessed again no matter what, though, since that's what always happens.

tuesday, my cryfest and some funny haha

this started last season when i was usually home alone on tuesdays because peter had class and mom worked, but i'm totally hooked on the biggest loser. i don't think it hurts that i've also been losing and gaining weight lately. and, it's interesting to see different kinds of bodies naked or almost naked, and this show totally brings that.

it was a little annoying watching with my mom because she drives me crazy lately and she so negative. there's this crazy bitch on the show, tracey, and she did some crazy bitch things this week and my mom keep saying how they have to have someone like that because it's all about drama. but i don't really think that's true. the show's good when there aren't stupid, obvious conflicts. it's totally all about everyone winning and learning and changing their lives. the show focused more on that and less on the bitchyness, so that was nice. i cried on and off the whole time and i don't even know why. i'm just easy like that. but, at one time i sat up from the floor where i was laying because my back's trying to kill me, and i noticed liz had some eye wetness too.

after, we watched the one hour mitch hedbergh dvd that you and netflix talked me into. pretty awesome, i have to say. he has great delivery. there was an edited half hour special that we watched first and then the unedit one because we didn't realize it at first. it was funny to see the difference and some jokes are still funny even when i just saw them 15 minutes before. i really want to be in love.

Sweetie (1989)

Tonight I watched Sweetie, Jane Campion's first feature. It's a Criterion so some early short films by the director are included. I watched those yesterday. They were funny, odd and sad, which I guess is a popular combination. I think I liked them better than Sweetie. She did a movie recently with Meg Ryan, maybe. I feel like my paragraphs are full of uncertainty. Oh well. So, anyway, this movie is about a woman living with her boyfriend and her very literally crazy sister and her parents and how they all deal with each other and the crazy sister. It's funny, sad and odd, too, like the shorts. The characters are all pretty unlikable-- a plus in my book. I was distracted by finishing up my mix for the trade. It must be no surprise that I'm a little late with it too. But okay, Sweetie is short but feels long. The colors are great and it's Australia (or New Zealand?), so what people are wearing and what their houses look like score high with me. There's some tree fear and some tea leaf readings, so you've got your metaphors and whatnot. Even though I didn't love it, I still think you should watch it if you're ever in the mood for one of those sad crazy family dramas that looks really great. I'm hoping this will lead to a female directors kick.

monday tv

I've been listening to NPR all day and it's fund-raising time, so I also set a goal. I wanted to complete all 18 tie shirts that i had picked out ties for and had ready to get sewn. I had to do this before seven because that's when good tv starts and I made my goal!

I started with House. The episode was fine, the usual. Since I saw Hugh Laurie on a talk show and he looked pretty bald, I pretty much just watch his hair. I also miss the sexual tension between him and Cuddy. House needs something, but I'm not sure what it is.

Next was Lie to Me. This was also only ok. But, my back has been really hurting me lately and it was super bad today because I was sewing all day and Tim Roth walks really hunched, which made me feel like we were friends. And, there was a guy who gets turned on by blood and injury, but the lie detectors figured out pretty quickly that he didn't have anything to do with the crime and moved on. I think it's good when tv shows mention sexual strangeness but just to put it out there. Or is the exploitative?

Then on to Castle, although I forgot and we watched 15 minutes of My Name is Earl before I realized there was something better out there. The episode was not that great. I'm not sure I like Castle, but I like detectives and it fits into my tv viewing habits, so what's the harm. Both Kate Beckett and another woman had really ugly, straightened hair. That show needs some work.

the warriors (1979)

i watched the warriors for the first time last night. it was the director's cut, which may be the only version out on dvd- i'm not sure. it's about one gang with leather vests fighting its way through rival territories and gangs all the way from the bronx to coney island, all in a post-apocalyptic, or maybe during-apocalytic, future. all of the gangs have names and uniforms, so that's great even when the names and uniforms aren't that great. as i said before, the warriors wear leather vests, and they pick up a decent female lead along the way. all that, and there's a greek chorus-type dj on the radio. it takes place in one night, and mercedes ruehl has a small part. if memory of the director's intro is correct, the movie is based on a comic book, so there could be more to look into, which is always nice.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080120/