I’m feeling morose today for some reason, so I’m listening to the “Coffee House” station on Sirius. They’re playing “Baby Can I Hold You,” by Tracy Chapman. Ugh. Up next: fetal position and quiet weeping.
But it works because No Country for Old Men comes out on DVD today, so I can revel in the Cormac McCarthyism of it all.
Broken in a good way. It’s officially spring break! Ugh, such a relief.
Last night, we watched the first episode of this new show called New Amsterdam that we DVR’ed the other day. It sounded pretty intriguing in the CNN article.
About ten minutes into it, I realized something interesting: I fucking hate that show. It’s just so corny and melodramatic and embodies everything I hate about network TV. And I started ranting about, “What the hell am I going to enjoy watching after Sunday when The Wire ends? Seriously. How will anything ever compare to that show?”
Obviously, nothing ever will. The Wire really is sort of a freak of art and television. Something that monumentally wonderful and tragic and god damned true only comes along maybe once in a lifetime. But it got me thinking, and I was still rolling around some thoughts from an interview I did last night with the guy behind Tiger Lou, Rasmus Kellerman. His music is fairly upbeat but still kind of dark and he noted that some of the things that are inspiring him lately are the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the movie Wonder Boys, which is one of his favorites.
Think of some of the best movies that came out this past year…There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. Radiohead released In Rainbows. And I’ve been gravitating to art that can only be described as bleak. Nearly everyone I know and read describes feeling a nagging blueness. Even with the upcoming election, which will finally free us from the shameful Bush administration and possibly give us a president who is black or a woman, something I never would have expected to see in my lifetime, there isn’t much optimism to be had. I fear that the change that we all crave is still years away, if it’s there at all.
I think we’re heading into an age that pop-historians might later call The Great Melancholy. Translation: everyone is fucking bummed out and disgusted. And I think we’re starting to see this in the art that we create. The only genuine feelings seem to be those of cynicism, especially since the people chosen to give us hope (memoirists of survival come to mind) turn out to be complete liars. We’re being sold fake hope, fake perseverance. And we’re so congested with bullshit that our resistance is low. Bring it on. We’ll buy it. Then we’ll get pissed for being duped because we’re idiots.
Am I getting too deep and morose for a Friday? Sorry. Here, have some Izzard (who we’re going to see on May 21st! EEEEEE!)
I watched: Waitress, which was cute and I really liked all of the actors, but the plot felt uh, half-baked (snicker); The Darjeeling Limited, which I really liked…”We went on a spiritual journey, but that didn’t really pan out…”; Re-Animator, which The Prestige ripped off hardcore for its cat scenes; the latest episode of The Wire, which just blew my mind and made me cry about three different times.
I made: banana cupcakes with honey-cinnamon frosting. They were very good, though I thought the frosting was a tad too sweet. I’ll probably add more cinnamon next time.
I slept: a total of 18 hours between Friday night and Sunday morning. It was so needed. I actually feel not like death today.
Someone left a box of that new Orville Redenbacher’s Naturals popcorn here. I just tried some of the Buttery Salt and Cracked Pepper variety. It’s pretty good, even if most of the pepper sticks to the inside of the bag.
Which reminds me of reason #65 why my hair is awesome (in that sarcastic sense): when I eat stuff like popcorn or anything that can produce light crumbs, that stuff sometimes falls in my hair, where I fail to notice it. And I will blissfully walk around with half of my lunch in my hair like some crazy slob. Usually nobody points this out to me and I can’t really blame them. I mean, who wants to have a conversation that starts out, “Um, did you mean to put ham in your hair?” which is a statement only a short hop away from, “Are you aware that you just shit your pants?”
Also good: the new Erykah Badu album.
My mushy and idol-rific review of Be Kind, Rewind will be up on MamaPop later today, but there’s a small story to go along with it.
When we pulled into the parking lot of the movie theater, we parked next to a small pick up truck that was slightly askew in its space. I unbuckled my seat belt and as I did so I heard some hearty chuckling. As I went to open my door, I saw the driver’s side door of the truck open and realized that the chuckling was coming from the driver. And the driver was not wearing any clothes.
The driver made the universal motion for us to roll down our window, which the husband did because he has no sense. The driver explained that he had been at work and some friends were bringing him a change of clothes and he was trying to hold that spot for them.
We parked somewhere else and the friends showed up a few seconds later. The driver told them that we were the only people who tried to park next to him the whole time he was sitting there. As we walked past, he shouted out another apology and the husband responded, “It’s cool. But keep clothes with you!” I wondered why it was necessary to sit in his truck without clothes. Were his friends like, “We’ll be there soon. BE NAKED!”
…
So, how about them Oscars, huh? I hung out on MamaPopTalk for the most part. I was really pleased the Javier Bardem and Daniel Day-Lewis won and that the Coen brothers won for both directing and best picture. No Country for Old Men really does own. And There Will Be Blood won for best cinematography which was well-deserved. The scene where the well explodes and the boy goes deaf was just amazingly well shot and composed.
But the whole show was really dull. I think they need to let Gary Busey host, since he was the source of the most excitement the whole night. Or Helen Mirren. Helen Mirren rocks my world. That dress was amazing and she actually had the balls to say that AT THE OSCARS that the roles for men are always better than the roles for women.
…is amazing. Why can’t Michel Gondry direct everything?
The baby’s school is killing me with these two-hour delays. And how is it that the weather only gets really crappy on Friday mornings, when I have a 9 a.m. lab? I wasn’t that late this morning, only about 10 minutes. But I had to rush to get set up in Dreamweaver, which I’d never used before, with the help of one of the assistants and then I missed some crucial step so that uploading my edits to the page just wasn’t happening. Or something. And I didn’t know how to explain this problem other than, “Ur doin’ it wrong. No, actually, I’m doin’ it wrong. Halp!”
Also, the rain and cold are making my knees ache so bad. I’m feeling about 300 years old here.
The husband and I are going to go see Be Kind, Rewind tonight. I’m so excited! I kind of hate Jack Black but I feel like the presence of Mos Def and the direction of Michel Gondry will help balance him out.
We were going to make a whole date out of the evening and use these gift cards for Morton’s that my grandparents gave us. But the husband has this disgusting cold and can’t smell anything. And there’s really no point in getting a steak if you can’t taste it.
Besides, we’re getting our taxes done right after work and I’m sure after all of that excitement we won’t have much of an appetite.
Speaking of movies, we watched Basket Case the other night. Oh my god, so awesomely wonderfully bad. There’s claymation AND full-frontal wang. And that, my friends, is what makes America great.
Almost forgot: MamaPop is having an Oscars extravaganza on Sunday night. Come hang out n’at.
The baby is doing much better today and is just thrilled to be doing shots of that pink, bubble-gum-flavored amoxicillin. I believe his exact words were, “God, I LOVE this stuff!”
It is good and I don’t see why all medicine can’t be flavored that way.
I am also feeling a little bit better. I scolded myself this morning for phoning it in as far as school goes the past few weeks. I know I’m behind, but I don’t know exactly how far behind because I don’t want to look and face the facts. Mature, no? But I’m doing some reading and stuff now…well, aside from this short break to write about how studious I am.
I’m just really burnt out on my bloated schedule. The past few days I had tossed around the idea of dropping a class, but realized that would be pretty stupid since I’m practically halfway through the semester now.
In the fall I’m only taking one “real” class and that will be such a huge relief. Then I’ll take two courses in spring 09, probably another required course in summer 09, one more elective in fall 09 and then I’ll be done. Somewhere in there I have to squeeze in an internship, which will probably end up being some kind of project through my job since my grad program knows that I can’t exactly do an unpaid internship for 3 months. I have a taste for the finer things in life, like eating and having a roof over my head.
The husband and I watched The Crazies last night, which is a George Romero flick from 1973. It’s set and was filmed in Evans City, which is also where he filmed Night of the Living Dead. I’ve always loved NotLD and Dawn of the Dead, but I’m really starting to get into the look and feel of Romero. We watched Martin a few weeks ago, though admittedly I didn’t make it to the end. It was getting late and I find that I get panicked watching movies in which someone breaks into a house because, uh, someone broke into our house. But anyway, that’s not the point. Romero’s films that are set in and around Pittsburgh are so very Pittsburgh. The actors all seem to be fairly local and there doesn’t seem to be any alterations made to the sets.
What is so striking about the films from that time period is that they seem to be plucked from my memories of what Pittsburgh looked and felt like around the time that I was born, when the steel industry was gasping its last breaths and the city was depressed and kind of…stale. Watching those movies I can almost recall the smell. Beer and work boots, metal lunchboxes, and the scent that men have when they’ve been outside. It’s uncomfortable but at the same time pleasingly nostalgic. It’s really hard to describe.
Grunt. I should get back to being a hardcore student.
1) Procure DVDs of The L Word. I left off early in season 3, right around the time Jenny started shooting people with a Taser. And I just saw a MAJOR spoiler in a friends’ LJ and I realize that I need to get up to speed.
2) Get belligerent at my TV screen during the Super Bowl.
3) parent, do laundry, get caught up on grad skool and whatever.
