swimming song

today i took a break from watching futurama to watch the big bad swim. it's on instant and i'm not even sure why i noticed it originally. that's a really dumb title.

it's about a class of adults learning to swim and follows two of the women in the class and the instructor more closely. one of the women, she's also on my favorite bad tv show criminal minds, is a high school calculus teacher who's getting divorced. she starts sleeping with a young gambler who was on scrubs this season before it got canceled and i'm pretty in love with him. that woman (amy) befriends this young blond in the class who's also a dealer at the casino and a stripper.

the instructor used to be a great diver but he got hurt and is not going to therapy and is generally unhappy. he's really cute and a good instructor. it's interesting to see him therapy and to try to figure out what happened to him.

over all, it's a quiet, nice movie about people living their lives and overcoming their problems. or at least working through them, and building friendships. i liked it.

i love veronica all the way to mars

so, i'm done with the series and i'm sad. the third one was even good, although not as good.

the set up is that veronica mars lives in neptune CA, which is richie rich. she was a normal, popular girl who wasn't rich but her dad was the sheriff, but then her best friend is murdered and her dad gets booted out for accusing the girls dad, who is also veronica's boyfriend's dad and a super rich guy. the series starts with veronica as a junior, an outcast and working for her dad, the private eye.

there's so much great stuff with humor and gays and rape and being a teenager. part of what i like about the whole show is that veronica acts like a teenager. she's impulsive and lies, sometimes for no reason, and gets in trouble.

what i don't like is that she's an outcast because she was forced out and at one point she's dreaming about her life if her friend hadn't been murdered and she's all dumb and popular. i don't like that she'd be dumb, but it does reinforce my belief that pretty girls don't have to develop their personalities and although veronica's still pretty, she's not treated as a pretty girl, so she has to develop other talents.

the show was created by rob thomas and he also created party down and pretty much everyone from party down is in veronica mars at least once. i really love that, because they're my tv friends. and, they're funny.

it's a soap opera, but witty and outrageous with some great insight into relationships, men and rich people.

dress yr feminist subtext in wolf shirts and flannel

My friend Matt from Buffalo and now from Brooklyn was in town this past weekend. He's the funniest person. We were talking about good date spots for him to take all the girls he's gonna date, and when I suggest a picnic, he said, "Picnic? I haven't heard of that place, is it in Williamsburg?" Like, dead serious. I can't get over how funny that is. It sums the whole thing up. I'm the cheesehead that said, "New York is so, um, like, i dunno...consumerist?" So we all have silly things to say.

What was great was that we got to see a movie the night before he left. Going to see movies has been a big part of our friendship. The toss up was between I Am Love, the Italian movie with Tilda Swinton the alien muse of that go fug yourself blog, and Winter's Bone. I always prefer the stark and violent over the love and sex. Winter's Bone has the guy from Me and You and etc Miranda July and also Deadwood and something else that I can't recall. Laura Palmer is in it for two shakes, and she has aged very well.

Winter's Bone is all in the rural poor Missouri, squirrel eating and teaching little kids to shoot guns for survival. An amazing seventeen year old girl has to track down her methhead dad so that her family (totally shut down mom, little bro and sis, a million cats and dogs) doesn't lose the land and become homeless. She has to slog through all sorts of family and community crap and violence to get her information. If you like noir films, I think this is a good one.

There is a chainsaw scene that will blow your mind. If you don't mind, I'll tell you about it in the comments. It's amazing. That seventeeen year old girl is amazing.

the kids love mark ruffalo (who doesn't?)

a few weeks ago (i haven't blogged in forever), i saw the kids are alright. this is the lisa cholodenko (high art, laurel canyon) movie with annette benning and julianne moore as a middle-aged lesbian couple with two teenagers (one for one) who find the dude who donated sperm. that's mark ruffalo. he's this really cool guy who owns a cool restaurant and is big on organic farming. he also ends up totally sleeping with one of the moms. the kids like him at first and then hate him after he tests their parents marriage. it's julianne moore that he sleeps with, there's really no need to keep that from you. they have an affair while she's doing landscape design at his house. he wants her and the kids and to make a life and she's all, dude, i'm f'ing gay. he gets rejected by everyone, and it's sad for him. he wasn't the only one making the mistake. it's like when oz kills veruca in buffy. why does veruca have to die because oz couldn't keep his wolfpants on? i guess he doesn't have wolfpants but you know what i mean. anyway, i hate that mark ruffalo is left out in the cold. he's like this hot swinger hip dude and then when he meets his biokids he gets all gooey and wants a family of his own. but he doesn't get it by the end of the movie. he's just standing outside with his motorcycle, being hated by the moms and the kids. but what i did like and what's sort of helping me now is julianne moore's speech about people making mistakes and relationships being hard. it's easy to hear it from her because she's beautiful and not my wife so what do i care if she sleeps with mark ruffalo? i guess i care because she stays gay. does any of this make any sense? anyway, i am totally jealous of middle aged, middle class people.