Taken a DEEP Breath, Breathe

Ahhhh.....
What a sledgehammer and some unnecessary wall can't solve.
Thanks to a cosmic meeting between me and my sister's friend Jen, I got to break things this weekend, thus bringing me to a state of inner Zen. Ohh it feels goooooood.
Here is the room full of my quelled rage:



I love half-finished houses. And the idea of smashing up the old and pasting over it clean, new slates.



And physical labor is so much more infinitely satisfying that so many other kinds of work. I need to remember to make things with my hands more often.

Anyway, Jen also introduced me to a cafe that I've been missing out on, like, forever. Progress! I need to remember to explore more, too.
Everything is biodegradable and environmentally friendly and the sun shines in the windows and on the deck. Everything I could possibly want, plus Dublin Dr. Pepper and Mexican Coke. LOVE



Also this week,
My dad hosted a cheesecake get-together thing and was doubtless ecstatic to learn that Frances plays the piano. Many duets ensued.



I'm pretty satisfied at this juncture. I started a really good Murakami book, and realized I need to remember to READ. It always makes me feel so much smarter. Makes me have ideas and think. Fancy that. But seriously, it's so necessary.

Also, I'm totally in love with this song and this music video. Someday, I'm going to learn how to do this sort of thing.
I promise.

Wump Wump, or, Varmints

I'm not sure how good I was at throwing tantrums when I was little, but right now I feel like I could really do some damage. In particular, I want to punch through a wall of glass, rip up carpet, tear something alive into little pieces, in general just AAARRRRRRGHHH.
I heard about this place in California this lady started where you can go and smash things. You can bring your own things to destroy or they have plates there you can write on and break. You can even have them play a cd in the room while you destruct! Why isn't there one here?

OK. I just bit the hell out of my tongue. Seriously?
Anyway.

I guess in the theme of recent posts I should talk about the movies I've seen lately.
Let's see.....

There's Trainspotting, which I did really enjoy, even though it took me a good half hour to begin to comprehend what the characters were saying through their Scottish accents. But definitely very visually appealing and imaginative and creepy where it needed to be. Unfortunately, you could totally tell that baby was a robot. But I guess a dead robot zombie baby is even scarier in its own way. Awesome soundtrack, as well. Ewan McGregor is surprisingly attractive as an undernourished drug addict with dark circles under his soulful eyes. MMmmmm.



This is him coming out of the dirtiest toilet ever.

What with this and Requiem for a Dream I think I can safely say I'm never taking heroin. Whew.

On Valentine's, I, oddly enough, ventured beyond the walls of my apartment to go with my friends to see a series of animated shorts all nominated for Academy Awards this year at the Alamo. If it's still playing, I highly recommend it. It's so rare that there's a chance to see short film in a theater, and these are particularly good (duh...). I think it's a much under-appreciated medium. There's a real art to being able to tell a story that's powerful, moving, and satisfying in five minutes. Not that they're all five minutes. They just have to be under 30. But jesus, I cried during one of them. CRIED. That never happens. During a short animated film? What? I don't know.

A lot of them are really cute or funny and just make you giggly or squirmy, but there are a couple that are really just beautifully sad. Then there's a couple weird ones. And this one bad one. But just ignore that.
I think my favorite was (let's just disregard the one I cried during) "Octopadi" which was just incredibly fun and fast-paced and about OCTOPUSSES! Yes.



Lastly, I rented Showgirls the other day, which was... interesting. Totally ridiculous. I was just looking for some nice pole-dancing shots and maybe some obligatory sex and violence. But wow. Along came some really ramped up dialogue and strange lesbian innuendos. And when Elizabeth Berkley's dancing, it's really not so much seductive as violently homicidal. Or suicidal? Either way it looks painful and not at all attractive. The point where I was pretty much disengaged was when she gives her employer a whip-lash inducing lap dance that climaxes in her flopping around like a giant trout fighting for life out of water and him jizzing his pants. Charming.



If you had to miss out on one of these three movie events, I think you should opt out of the third.

Sigh.
Back to real life.

8 & a Little More Than Half

I've had a really sort of unfair prejudice against old Italian films for quite a while, which I've been trying to get over. I think it all started with 8 1/2, which I saw in high school at the Underground Film Organization screening. (dude, what awesome shirts we had....) I don't think a group high school setting is the best to try and receive that film. I decided to give it another chance a couple days ago, and it was actually really enjoyable. It did help that I understood a lot of the Italian under the subtitles and I watched the intro by Terry Gilliam, with whom I am in love...and he persuaded me to like it. I never noticed, but he does emulate scenes from that film a LOT.

Brazil, the guy flying with a chain bolting him to the ground? Hmmm....

The thing is, Gilliam's film is so much more colorful and easily engaging to me, being a product of the technicolor culture that raised me. Brazil is one of my favorite movies. Oh shit, I didn't even notice this, but an alternate title for it is "1984 and 1/2" Dur.
Actually, I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge how incredible that movie is. I was always in love with it for its great visual imagery and that wonderful fantastical metaphor running through the whole thing. Also, the ducts. I think Gilliam has a real knack for pinpointing everything that's already a bit grotesque or suppressive in our society and blowing it up into a gruesome picture that is awful but undeniably right on the mark, and also sort of evilly funny.
Not only that, but it's full of all kinds of secret messages to people who are looking, like the almost exact recreation of the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin with a vacuum cleaner and that lady being shot in the eye.

AAAHHHH soooo cool.

But anyway, 8 1/2 addressed a lot of things that interest me a lot about films and filmmaking. It's very self-aware, and while I used to complain about its pretentiousness, I now feel really really dumb because of course that's the fucking point. But then, isn't every film just a little pretentious even in that it is being made because people expect you want to see it? Anyway, this particular film went way more in depth into that exploration of creation and the links it has to human experience and memory. It's actually a little scary almost, how you can become the films you make. Or is it vice-versa?
Anyway, if one evening you're feeling very patient and a bit existential, run on down to I Luv and GET THAT SHIT. You'll feel infinitely smarter after having watched it and paid attention. Yeah, you can sort of tune out for the last like ten minutes of people dancing around in a circle. Italians like their films long and long. LLoooooooooonnng. But not as long as Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Can Movie Move, Move

My blog is feeling rather lonely. I think maybe it needs to find some new hobbies or something. Get up off its ass and DO some LIFE.
But that's just my opinion.

Aside from that, I think I've taken probably 100+ pictures of clouds in the past two days, which is a personal record. So. Cool.
Wow.

Every time I listen to Sebastien Tellier's Roche, I'm totally inspired to make the world's sexiest beautifulest music video.
Maybe I'll get around to that.



I went to see He's Just Not That Into You last night with pretty low expectations, but surprisingly, it was actually very good. First of all, I really really really do NOT like Jennifer Aniston. But I can honestly say I liked her in this film. Either she's mellowing out in her older age or she just consciously made the decision to take horrible roles and act horribly in them for the past decade, and finally realized she was being stupid. Anyway, the film is verging on being creatively different from other chick flicks with its relative honesty and refreshing criticism of prevailing female logic. Sort of empowering in a way. I'm not so much for the overall "everybody eventually finds somebody and is a happybody" idea at the end (though there are three characters left single at the end) as I am for the whole "it's really simple, if he's not calling and making things happen he doesn't like you." Dur. But I guess a lot of us sort of need a smack in the face to bring us back to logic sometimes. In the form of an entertaining romantic comedy. If for no other reason, see it because Scarlett Johansson is the most beautiful person I have ever seen and she's IN THIS MOVIE.

Also, I finally watched Old Boy with Frances. Or rather, I watched it while Frances sat near me and snoooozed.
And I do see the similarities between it and Kill Bill, but I don't feel so much as Tarantino ripped it off as much as he was referencing it. There were definitely a couple scenes that were unmistakeable nods to Old Boy, like taking 70 steps to die. I thought that was a really clever reference. Anyway, they're both really good movies, though I must say that I think Old Boy was a lot more painful. Ow.



If you're at all into this kind of stuff, I think DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation at the Alamo on the 15th looks really awesome. The original film is so frustratingly miopic that I'd be really interested in seeing what sort of direction Spooky takes it in. Plus, I love the idea of mixing media. The more senses involved in art, the better. Taste, anyone? Scratch and lick art?
YEAH

Snapperoptipus

So, the Batman soundtrack is just determined to keep coming up on shuffle, damnit. Whatever.
I was just reading up on Capricorn on www.astrologyindepth.com and jesus it scares me sometimes how right it is. I mean yeah, sometimes things are sort of a stretch, but I'm totally a dope for that shit. Anyway, I sort of see the sign as like a starting point and you can sort of bend the edges in different directions, ending up with some sort of bizzare amorphous shape uniquely your own. Thus, everyone is different.
But I think it's safe to say that me and Cancers were meant to be life-long lovers and Scorpios have a soft little place in my heart reserved just for them.
Also, I was happy to discover my old friend, Limber Louie, in my mom's storage unit when we were clearing it out. He's a sort of ostrich/llama/muppet thing that is undeniably the coolest giant puppet that I have ever owned.
I also ran into lots of other old relics from my childhood, like my extensive collection of stuffed animals, plastic animals, and other animal paraphernalia. There was some spray-paint poster thing I made in 7th grade that's a depiction of Orthanc and Shadowfax, and a collage of arbitrary pictures and movie quotes. Also some very, very dead Converse shoes. I've thus found myself reflecting a lot on my younger years. I seriously SERIOUSLY wanted to be a wolf. Also, I had a really stupid, cheeky sense of humor that drives me crazy now, but I'm sure I thought was terribly clever then. I also sort of had a tendency to try to cultivate eccentricity and artisticness in myself that only resulted in me being a huge phony.
It's funny how little I've changed...
Anyway, now all the artifacts of my past are traveling around with me, stashed in my van. And I kind of like showing people. It's strange connecting the past to the present, sort of experimenting and seeing how you can draw diagonal lines through years. Then how each line takes on a form itself in the present... I think I could spend forever just thinking about life. Good thing I have a low tolerance for attending to deep thought for a long period of time. Haha
I feel like my world is expanding. And I like it. I want to follow it out to the borders, keep pushing it. I want to start going places. Shake up the kaleidoscope.
Here are some pictures from my beautiful day: