A strange week

My wife has been pissy all week. We're going to a party tomorrow night. I plan on spending the whole time ignoring everyone else at the party. I hope that helps. And I wish I wasn't so delighted my wife is jealous. Not that this hasn't happened before. But I guess now it feels so stupid. My wife is hot to me. If you like Finnish chicks.

I got a call Tuesday from a friend from Portland. It started poorly when he said "How's it going with the fake wife?" I tried to correct him, but it went bad from there. He was critical of our relationship, partly because of reading this blog. And he reads this and I'm being critical of him, but my whole stance was "Look it's real now. It's real now."And we got into a fight, and then I have to come into the house where the wife is still upset with me.

Wednesday I get an Email out of the blue from an old coworker who tells me that someone we used to work with has died. I have had many mentors in my life, like any male of my generation who's felt his father was not the man he wished to emulate. Hal was a man of experience, and he definitely meant a lot to me. In rememberence I think of one of the things that made us friends. Early on, I did some thing stupid and he called me on it. I listened, and he did the gentlemanly "I'm going to heavily compliment for something else because I don't want you to feel bad." A couple days later we were doing the employee cake thing, and I had a slice, and he made a comment like "Well, having a second won't hurt you, tubby" (though perhaps more polite), and I said to him "Would it be impolite if I told you to go fuck yourself?" and he was proud of me. "You'll do just fine here, boy." We both had the habit of coming in on the weekends to work, so I saw him often, and like many older men, he would repeat anecdotes and jokes often enough that you knew when they were coming. And he was a Southern Gentleman so politics were a no no, and he was aghast with the annual pride parade, while occassionally his leanings steered into a direction that I would find offensive if I thought he wasn't so rooted in his way, and I felt they led to treating others in a less-than fashion. But the Pabst I drink I drink for you tonight. Hal. Cause, well, I loved you. And I miss you. Part of me knew, as Tarantino said in Kill Bill Vol.2, that one of the biggest killers is retirement. And when they laid you off, I figured you might have some problems adjusting. But this is tragic news. Hal. The last time I saw you was right before I moved to LA. You stopped by a lunch to see that I was doing all right (or was it a couple months before I left, dunno). You were brief but pleasant, a couple months later you were laid off.

Today I got a call from a friend who got into a car accident. Was okay, car totalled. Crazy story. He's one of my closest in and I hope the soreness just goes away and the insurance pays for everything. It's been a weird week. I hope my wife lets me fuck her tonight.

RZA presents: The Fallout (Parental Advisory: TMI ahead)

I came home today and the wife got home before me. The problem with my personal disconnectedness is that I often see things from above. Which sometimes has me contemplating the next move or the grand scheme when I should be in the moment. I can't say I think in chess, but maybe a little. Not good chess anyway. I think in bad chess. But somehow I knew when I got home, and I had a moment to peak, that Aili dumped her porn stash. Kept the vibrator, though. I'd ruminate on how odd I think it is that some girls like to watch porn, but whatever, I Was happy when she liked it, but I'm just as happy it's gone. I just hope she wasn't exposed to it the way I was. Finding your parents porn. The problem with kids is that you really can't hide that much from them. They're innately curious and will go through your drawers.

Part of me thinks I should never post stuff like this. But this is my hole in the ground to whisper stuff, and it may be embarassing or whatever, but I figure as long as I'm honest, then it's interesting, and meaningful. I hope I don't look at this in ten years and cringe. But maybe I'll just cringe because it was me. And if you can't be brutally honest with yourself, then what's the point.

Fight Night

So I made a mistake by telling the wife that I had a sex dream that didn't involve her. Especially after having sex with her in the morning. It's almost a cliche to suggest a pregnant woman is sensitive about certain things, but you throw in married, and the fact that girl told me in my dream that she was 17, I mean that shit pisses a woman off to no end. So she was supremely irritated with me, and like all married couples after the initial "I'm pissed off at you" moment, it moved towards the whole "finding faults with little things you do" style of domestic abuse. Complaints about my chorework (which is admittedly a problem), and that I spend too much time on the computer. Even after her walk she was still upset.

As I've grown older, I've learned some things that I didn't know as a youth. And one of them is that you don't bring up the subject that's annoying the person until they do (and often they want closure for themselves, so STFU if you can help it), and never put it on the level of "well, do you want out" until you need to press that button, but that button is an emergency setting and you better not be bluffing in those moments (also, bringing up "do you want out/is it over" can plant poisonous seeds). On that note the fact that I thought my wife wanted out when she was telling me she was pregnant has led to some profuse apologies, but I love giving them to her, because somehow that reminder strengthens our marriage. I mean, anyone who's had more than two relationships knows these things, but the sort of level of abuse grows when you're married (or so I've learned) because there is that sense of elasticity. That we are committed means that she can extract revenge at great length and with a level of malice heretofore unprecedented.

The problem with this sort of gameplaying is that often you can spot the mechanics of it, which you sort of have to, to know what sort of trouble you're in. But you should try to take it on like you don't know that it's something that must be flushed out the system. As a writer this level of the rules of the game is very amusing to me, but I know that I must play it, so I have to quiet the part of my brain that tells me the whole thing is show. Strangely enough this abuse and ritual reinforces that my wife really does love me - there's something to be said for the notion that you can only really get under the skin of the people you care about. I too sometimes feel the need to extract some punishment, but Aili tends to close the books faster then when the shoe's on the other foot. Also, it's hard to stay mad when your wife throws on some Broken Social Scene and puts on the lingerie after taking a bath. I'm not a fan of sexgames in general, but this sort of apology is a game to itself, and it creates a Pavlovian instinct in me. To that extent I think sometimes we fight to apologize. Again, the elasticity.

And then so after dinner, when things sort of settled down because I did all the prep work and cleaning, and also did some mopping today, and we got one of those clean stick things so I could dust away some corner cobwebs, anyway, that of course being my peace offering, and when it came up again at a more rational level, I realized how badly I fucked up.

I felt sort of faux-bad before, but here's the thing to which I cannot and try not to tell to my wife. I live in a sort of bubble. I can perceive certain things about interactions, etc. But often I am completely and totally oblivious. Some have told me that's a side effect of being a dude. But I never think of myself as super-covetable. And so for me, the idea of having a dream about a young girl desperate to fuck my brains out is amusing. It's not low self esteem, it's just I don't look like Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom. I look like Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And some women find that very attractive. But it's not Kobe Steak, if you know what I mean (though I should refrain from food analogies after mocking them in a recent review). So when a hot girl is flirting me up I find it amusing, but I don't always (and sometimes rather wrongly) take it seriously. Cause I flirt with everyone, and this is LA. The problem is when you're married, hopefully you are Kobe Steak to your partner. And when your partner is in an emotionally fragile position, as their bodies are starting to change, and their desire to know that they have someone they can emotionally, physically et al. count on...They don't want to know you got a boner from some young girl even if she is a figment of your imagination.

There's a level of emotional fragility that I had never seen before in my wife. She's feminine, believe me, she's got all the requisite requirements, but even her more feminine moments tend to have an edge. Perhaps it's the whole accent thing, the language barrier. And I've seen my wife cry before, but the dinner conversation opened a whole new floodgate of worries and concerns I never attached to her. And the only reason why I type this out, to commit such a memory to the world is wanting to hold on to the moment I found out I could love my wife more than I did before. There was a sense and an air before that she didn't need me. And I liked that when we were mostly just fake married. And now I know my wife wants me around. Aili needs me around. And so I've gayed up the blog again, and even mentioned sex. I told Aili that I didn't know until tonight that she needed me so much, and she told me I'm an idiot. She's right.

Mean Mr. Mustard-Houx-Livesly

I'm being mean
Also, mean

Variety said my Tcheky Karyo impression was phenomenal...

You think any athestists dig on modern country music? My guess is not.

I had a dream last night that I went back to college, and started fooling around with a girl, who told me after we had sex that she was seventeen. I woke up next to my pregnant wife with a boner. I'm still sort of fucked up by the whole thing.

Nuanced Self-Loathing

I just got an Irrate phone call from God. He basically chewed me out for my last entry.

Okay, here are the facts:
1) I do not know Puff Daddy. I have a friend named Paul who was asking about God. Not Sean Combs. I did appear on a TV show. And I have a couple of rapping friend, and I have met numerous rappers through my friendship with God, but Combs is notone of them.
2) God did not resurrect Pauline Kael. I was just being (or trying to be) clever. God does not and will not resurrect people no matter how much you ask him, or how drunk you get him.
3) God will cop to getting drunk and telling me about Lohan and my kid.
4) God wants me to transcribe this, though he's never been as commanding of a verbatim convo: "Look, you and your entire generation are way too self satisfied with your smug and slightly phony self-loathing. You like to spin plates too much. I thought you kids were down with Yoda, and the whole do or do not. You just wasted an hour of your life making fun of yourself, but in such a way that smacks of self aware cleverness. For what purpose did you do that, to show what exactly. It's twaty. Stop it, or you'll become Napoleon Dynamited."

My promise to God: I'll try. I'll try to stop doing the aware and affected faux shyness. I will strive for true humility. And hopefully I'll get to the do part.

Of Gods and Monsters

I was talking to Sean "Puffy" Combs today. Long story. One of the things I don't talk about much, my internship with him, like the TV show I was on for two years. It just doesn't come up all that often. Anyway, he hit me on my cell, and was like "You, dog, love your blog, why haven't you talked about God lately? Cause last time I hung with G-diddy, he was all like 'yo yo yo Damon's got the good blog, talking bout me all the time' and shit. What's up, you guys on the outs?" And we talked about my lady, and J-Lo, and the Cavs, and Kanye, and, well, stuff.

But actually, no I still talk to God all the time, but alas, having a preggers wife means carousing with the boys isn't as oft a possible, cause weekends are now prioritized as wife time. Which means when I can swing it after work I hang, but with LA traffic the way it is, that tends to mean an hour or two or a movie with the group on the weekends, and then maybe The Cat and Fiddle for a while (where it used to be we'd close that shit down). And even the evenings get to be shorter cause I like spend some QT with the wifey when I can.

But a couple days back I got some time to sit with the boys, and God resurrected Pauline Kael to review my blog. That's the problem with drinking with God, never mind the drive home - and it's hard to say no to God's wine cellar, and assorted pleasantries (I can only be so polite) - some shit comes up and it's exciting, and then frustrating at the same time. Moreso than watching Cheaper by the Dozen 2, which is simply torturesome. And then if God gets drunk enough he starts making promises, many of which he ends up keeping, and saying things you don't want to hear (like he told me where Lindsey Lohan's going to be in twenty years... and then he spoiled the sex of my first kid. But you can't get too mad at God. He's God, and he's some great verbal skills). So he brought back Pauline Kael from the dead to write a review of my blog. It was humbling, to say the least:

"It's interesting to note that the epistolary has come back into a new sort of bastardized vogue with E-mail. Though letter writing was dying as I was, the internet has allowed for instant communiques of varied length, to which the latest iteration being the Blog. But the Blog, like pop culture, is an emphemeral artform. It is fast food thoughts, with a shelf life as long as it is kept warm. It's sad to see so many of my colleagues drawn to them, but the advantages (space, lack of editors) are also their greatest shortcomings. There's a powerful sort of empty vouyerism to it all, the false honesty of a public diary. Artists may censor themselves more in personal writings than in art, and that is why an artist's art is usually more interesting than their reflections, even if grains of greatness and truth can be found in them. I doubt a great writer could perfect the art of the blog, but if they did, it'd be like mastering the Limerick.

Summoned as I was from the dead to write this, I was instructed to peruse Erratic Thriller. Immediately the blog is off-putting as the author feigns modesty with his header in an attempt at cleverness. And starting from the beginning as I did - which seems backwards - one senses the author (Damon Houx) finding his footing. Essentially, as two out of three items in his profile suggests, he is interested in two things, movies and sex (and sexuality), but his work is weighed down in the mundanity of his life. Which is the inherent disadvantage to the blogging form. His movie observations are occasionally clever if I am to be kind, though his reviews are often too brief and too stock. Like many of his contemporaries, he fetishizes films that don't deserve the sort of attention he gives them. Witness his latest entries, where he speaks more authoritatively and with greater interest about a shoddy remake of a horror film than of Ozu, whom I must admit I tended to find lacking (Houx does little but applaud an artist he seems to little understand) {Houx note: BULLSHIT}. Too often he is a status quo writer with brief bits of fancy, though too often he doesn't question the reputation of older features without giving them a curt dismissal.

Like any personal dialogue, it's cruel to disect and criticize someone for who they are - some people may just lead more interesting lives (but that too can be seen as a cop out, great artists tend to manage a sense of interest in life's small pleasures). But it's more unkind to the reader who has to slog through such pedestrian narratives. If writing were a protean artform this attention to the banal might have greater purpose, but all human beings eat, produce waste and sleep, while many if not most enjoy sex and culture, to which one wants to find insight into the human condition to make such observations of worth. Some artists have their diaries collected post humously, and one fears the bloggers who may find their works collected. If I were them, I'd make sure their blogs were wiped off the face of the earth."

You take the good, you take the bad...

I've been told I haven't gayed up my blog lately, so sorry about that. This week my wife got me an iPod, and I got her the Facts of Life box set. She got me the iPod as a gift for my new job, I got a promotion at work (I mean I applied for it, so it's sort of a new job). I think this was her way of smoothing things out... we got into a bit of a fight about it. Having me look after the baby is a real thing, and I think she resented me getting the job. I told her it wasn't necessarily permanent, and we're doing some tenative house hunting, and having a little bit of extra cash isn't the worst thing. But she read it as a possible passive-agressive attempt at asserting my masculinity. I know my wife makes more than me. I don't have a problem with it. Really, I don't.

Looking at houses... for a second time in my life. It's like we're looking at slightly larger places for ten times the cost of what I paid in Portland. If our jobs weren't so primarily located here, I think we'd both move. Aili's pretty cool about staying in America. She doesn't really miss Finland. There's been some other drama about the baby's birth. Her parents want to come but don't, and we're not traveling with the baby for the first year (I'd say). Not on a plane for some twelve hours or so. That just seems mean. To everyone. It's weird that I'm now seriously, for the first time since college seeing the schema of the next couple years of my life. Not in a major way, it's just the nature of the beast. We're already talking about schooling. This doesn't scare me, it's just what we have to do. Married for less than a year, it's a paradigm shift. There's a level of acceptance required, even if it's a positive change. I find it hard to put in words, I guess because there are great things about it, and bad things. Bad isn't the right word. It's like learning to use utensils. Or, as I already said, a paradigm shift.

My wife is an exercise junkie, and I don't know how she stands me. We went walking today, a five mile jag, and she told me it was a good way to test my iPod. Which I had a blast loading up with stuff, and choosing what to throw in, a mix of stuff I don't know but have been curious about (Girl Talk, Fisherspooner), and the classics (Talking Heads, London Calling, Notorious B.I.G.). I really did enjoy the walk because of the shuffle setting, but then I'd want to share with the wife, and then we did the shared headset thing, which lasted for about a block. So then I just abandoned the headphones and had to talk to the wife for a while. Heh.

And I'm told I get bonus points for not talking about fucking in this post.

Get More Scared

Ozu's Late Spring
Boo? Hiss.

I love putting words together. That I was able to put the title of this entry in my review of When a Stranger Calls just makes me happy. I love that it sounds bad. It's like blowing things up good. I'm watching Barcelona. So good.

I'll be here all week

So, Poseidon bombed. And the variety will run such headlines as "Poseidon tanks" "Poseidon goes under" "Poseidon waterlogged" "Poseidon sinks." etc. etc.

Here's my take: B.O. Pos(e)i(d)on. It is the bestest and most cleverest. FACE VARIETY!

God is alive and well and living in Sherman Oaks.

Such is the proof (thanks be to one Daniel Laugharn for the link).

I went shoe shopping with my wife today after we both got out of work. She's getting close to the four month mark.

(Parenthetical: I had a bedtime conversation that after the baby is born me and the wife are going to get a baby sitter after eight or so months after or whatever, and we're going to get a friend to watch our kid or something and we're going to go out and get really drunk and then have really drunken [and possibly other things] sex. I kinda feel like we missed our opportunity for that. It's a strange feeling. Then again my wife's response to "Hey, you know what? I wanna take you out some night and get really drunk and have sex." was "You mean Fridays?" We'll both be here all week.)

So the shopping, Aili, was amazed. It took me four minutes to buy shoes. Literally. We went and got dinner afterwards (the wife has to have Zankou Chicken, like five nights a week. Seriously. She doesn't care if it's cold either, sometimes I have to grab some on the way home), and she was still flummoxed at the speed of light shopping.
"If I see what I want, I get it."
"What does that say about me?"
"Everything it needs to."

Humanizing the ubermensch

A Great Movie
You're a Hooker!

1) United 93 is a great movie, I think. It opens in a very smartly banal way. Little happens. There are no movie moments to speak of (even the arrival of a late passanger is what it is), and for me I spent much of the front end thinking of what happened to me that day. I will share my 9/11/01 reminsces on the 5th anniversary later this year (shortly before my child is born). But then the shit hits the fan, and the you are there factor is pretty amazing. In some ways it's a horror film. Very intense, and well worth seeing.

2) I reviewed 400 Blows above. I took my copy to Amoeba. And got the box set of Doinel films. Yay for me.

3) Most blockbusters raise questions like "How'd they do that?" or "That's amazingly stupid!" The question M:I:III raises is "How did they spend 150 million and get so little?" The main special effects of the film are shots of Tom Cruise running. I mean, that shit costs NOTHING. Nothing. I had gone in hearing it wasn't so hot, and perhaps the elements of spinning plates, but for serious, for really reals, I didn't expect something so empty. The problem is that (as my title suggests) the film tries to humanize a character who isn't human by nature. And the fact that he wants to do his dangerous job and then have a girlfriend/wife... well it makes the character look like an ass. And without the sense of geography to the action scenes these sequences don't build at all. There's one amusing bit where Hunt is dressed as Phillip Seyomour Hoffman, and so it's obviously Hoffman running around. That amused. And so did Simon Pegg, who shows up for some quick scenes and kills. But bad exposition and funeral flashbacks really kill the thing. Hitchcock knew the MacGuffin was the thing that moved the plot but didn't matter, but you have to have interesting characters and other agendas to make it work. Not here. Just a rampant failure. And JJ Abrams doesn't know how to direct a movie.

My old job and me.

I still follow the numbers. Every Saturday I hit MCN or B.O. Mojo to see how much business the movies did. These numbers told the story of how my Monday was going to go. Sometimes I'd stop by the office and see exactly how my theaters did. I worked in exhibition for a theater chain for five years and had over a hundred screens under my belt. It wasn't a hard job, per se, but there were things to it. You don't get to add second prints on Monday normally, print buys were long done by then, so there was always a gambling aspect to the job. I sometimes think of one of the last gambles I took (and lost) and wonder if that reflected on me being let go. Sometimes I think it did, but mostly I figure the books were closed long before I got myself into a small hot spot.

Off topic, but just the same, I'm glad things have worked out how they have, and I'm glad to be in LA with my often glowing pregnant wife. We're more than three months down, with less than six to go. We're expecting in early October. Scary scary. The doctor's appointments have gone well. We've decided we're waiting until birth to find out the kid's sex.

But the old job is why I'm fascinated by M:I:III's 17 million dollar opening. It tells a story, because nowadays one day's number suggests the fate of a film. Word of Mouth has been successfully killed as a factor into long playdates for big films. Sure, word of mouth happens, but it's few (The Sixth Sense) and far between (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and isn't effective on what are considered easy sells. Most word of mouth goes now (thanks in some small part to AICN) to pictures before they open. They solidify the see/not see factor. And once you've studied the patterns of box office, you get a pretty concrete sense of what a number spells, because you've seen those numbers before.

And then also, the 17? Could be fictional. The film's reported budget of 150? More than likely made up. Cruise gets back end (hey now) percentage points. The film has been in development for years. The film was also probably shot in a lot of Paramount owned locations, so the studio paid itself money to make its own movie. Numbers are often fudged a little to make people happy.

Me, I'm going to see United 93 tonight.

Tired

Baby Doll
The Night of the Iguana
Tristan + Isolde

I went to bed around one lst night and woke up, stone cold up at four. I left the bedroom begrudingly around five, and watched some TV until eight when I finally crashed out for two hours. I'm dead right now, and I've been off all day. Which has made Aili kinda grumpy with me. She wanted to do our Sunday evening out, and I'm exausted and sweaty, and unhsaven, and dead to the world. I was doing okay until about four, and then the energy just left me. Now here I am trying to stay awake for a few more hours, so I don't totally screw up my sleeping patterns, while I also don't want the wife to know that it was her cooking that messed up my sleep. I'll hopefully konk out soon enough.

Celeb Sightings

The best of the last couple was seeing Kenneth Johnson of THE SHIELD a couple days after the finale of Season 5, but I just saw Jennifer Love Hewitt on Franklin in front of Birds. What does it matter? Nothing. There you go.

Film Criticism I Hate

getting it/not getting it: Sure, there are some instances of this, some I could draw easy links to, it's just films often are open to interpretation. If someone proves to understand a narative for what it is and then doesn't like it, then they get it.

overrated: The lamest criticism in the history of the world. It says nothing, other than it suggests (as the previous does) "others were fooled." Good not great is a better alternative, but suggesting that is the end of the discussion is frustrating beyond words.

Then again, she's half undressed...

Fists in the Pocket
It's Always Fair Weather

Went to a bachelor party last night. I was running late, as I barely had any time to watch what I had to watch, and showed at the dinner as it was wrapping up. I get there, and the man of Honor, Dave, was already drunk. He had called cause I was running late, and the thought of flaking had occurred as I still hadn't finished everything I needed to (sorry, Dave), but I showed and it was great. Dave's drunk and some guy shows up saying "Hey I saw you were looking at my wife's ass in the bathroom. Let's go." Dave, taking it in stride said "Okay, let's go." The dude kept pressing, and Dave said shit like "I'm looking at you and your wife can't be that hot, so let's go." As I was sitting next to him, all I could do was laugh. Dave stood up and the people there held him back, and the dude back, and then other friends of his, and the manager of the restaurant came over. The dude looked kind of familiar, but I didn't say anything, and as it turned out it was a practical joke on David. It was this guy who I kinda thought it was. And I said to the person sitting next to me, "A dildo, not your dildo." And as we found out later, I was right.

We went back and played poker, a little Texas Hold Them. Thirteen at the table, many drinking or amateurs. Not knowing the lay of Silverlake so well treated me right as I was unwilling to drink all that heavily, and knowing the game put me in a bit of an advantage. We were playing tournament style so top three we money winners, and knowing that I played fast and mostly tight. Getting a suited Ace Eight (DEAD MAN'S HAND), I pressed my luck, and pulled an all in win to get me into heavy chips, though I never got the lead (there was someone there who seemed the best of the lot). I knew that I had chips, and that with so many at the table it was simply a waiting game. People were going to and did take hot chances on okay cards, not waiting for the flop to press their luck, you get that many people going, the table had stages where it went from thirteen to eleven, and then to seven, and then five. There it got cutthroat, but being a chip leader I was able to do some bullying - when you have high chips (not that I'm saying anything new) you put people in positions where they feel the pressure. I had one bad lay where I had trip fives, and the river netted my opponent a flush, but otherwise, I played strong and steady. I had a Rounders moment where I told my fellow player exactly what he had and what I was doing. I could tell that riled some people, but it sort of worked to my advantage. Towards the end, I was running in second, and the chip leader and myself did what was best, which was let the two at the end fight amongst themselves. Doing so sort of tied me with the third best, so instead of splitting the pot 50/30/20, we went 50/25/25, because playing it out at 2 am was just getting wearisome. But that's poker. It's not how you start. So I went out and made a profit by going to a bachelor party. NICE.

I know I talk about fucking my wife too much...

Sorry. My life, as it has been since we got married, tends to revolve around me working from 10-12 hours a day during the week, coming home, watching a movie or some TV and having sex, sleeping, and then going back at it, with some time conceeded for eating. Weekends revolve around errands, watching whatever titles I got from the J, some down time/writing time, and more sex. Sometimes seeing friends, but not as oft as I'd like. Though it looks like I might be getting bumped up at work due the shuffles, so I might have some more free time. We shall see. Also, I'm desperately in love with my wife, so it sort of takes hold of things, and we're kinda cute together. We banter. I like it. There you go. Sorry, again, I'll try and cut it out. Especially since, as I've realized with the previous post, the underwear and the neighbors fucking thing, that essentially I like to present or think of myself as a hedonist, I'm actually rather boring and plain when it comes to this stuff. I like my married sex.

I've been doing this for a year?

And what have I gotten out of it? Nothing. No free toaster. Nothing. Mr. Pill popping rock star... Nothing.

My work situation, which I've chosen not to talk much about for various reasons, is in some tumult because (within the last two weeks) two people have quit to go on to bigger and better, another uncerimoniously resigned, while word is another will be leaving our department in the nearer of futures. All of whom had been with the company for much much longer than I have. Last night some coworkers went out to celebrate one of the happier leavings, and I finally showed around tenish. Mostly because I had just gotten out of work after pulling a sixty hour week. Things were wrapping up, and the person leaving was hammered in such a way that was very cute for a girl, though she was having balance and perception problems, and when I showed up she was happy to see me in that drunken way that immediately intrudes on your personal bubble. This isn't a good or bad thing, it just is, and it was interesting to me to note my reaction to it, which is that I kinda recoiled. What interests me about this is that I can be an outrageous flirt, so I guess I'm better at giving than taking this. The shoe was on the other hand, as it were. It also made me think that most of the people I tend to drink with don't get all cute drunk. Cause they're men and they tend to drink regular, and don't get all flittery. I drink with the wrong people, I guess.

I also did the farewell lunch. This is something I'm not that fond of when you get paid hourly. It's not that I don't want to wish the person well (though in other instances I could give a shit [in that I felt showing up would be a empty gesture as we hadn't worked together very long, etc. etc.], and it feels like the sort of thing best personified by the cake scene in Office Space), but that usually it costs me both time and money to have lunch at a huge table where everyone you work with is spread out and you find your niche and talk with the people talk with, who may or may not be the person who is going away. I ended up at a table with some friends, and that was cool, but I felt sort of bad because it kinda defeated the purpose. I guess, though, the purpose is showing that the majority of your coworkers who are available will sit next to you and think of you fondly. Like class pictures, I guess.

At the drinks setting it was fun, but I had spent the whole week essentially working and sleeping for the last couple days, and with the Tylennol PM I used a coupletimes that week (sore throat, congestion) by the time I got there I couldn't drink because I wouldn't want to drive after, too dangerous sounding, and of course, I'd have to come home to the wife, who was already annoyed I'd had such long days lately.

We got into a tif the other day. I caught her smoking. I didn't really say anything, and she was ashamed, but it pissed me off, and that sort of tension takes a while to disipate. So I'm a little annoyed and then later - when I'm mostly over it - the wife gets mad at me because I called her my Finnish Princess. "That's racist." "Being Finnish is a race?" "Would you call me your African Princess? Your Jewish Princess? Your Chinese Princess?" "No, because you aren't." "So you don't see how that could be offensive?" "Aili, are you fucking with me? I can't tell sometimes." "What do you think?" "I think I need to take your clothes off and have my way with you." "You think too much." "Too much... or not enough?"

And all the people were singin'

Okay, I watched SNL this morning. They had a digital sketch called "Laser Cats," which makes me wonder how long it's going to take SNL to getting around to parodying Snakes on a Plane. But they seem aware of what I think will be the next evolution of comedy films: intentionally bad movies. Take a ludicruous premise and flesh it out to feature length. And who wouldn't want to see a giant elephant do some bullet time kung fu again terrorist planes? "Laser Cats" was exactly like Ali G's "Spies" though PG rated, with the same sort of sloppy editing. Sadly, they copped out on the ending, which should have been Lorne Michaels (having watched the piece of shit) saying 'We gotta turn this into a feature!" and then showing the marquee. This, though, may have been too close to Lorne (producer of such great films as The Ladies Man and Lassie) Michaels hellashitty cinematic career, or the fact that Hollywood is now making these movies. Alas, it will take a leap of faith for a studio to really embrace bad filmmaking. Hopefully, SoaP will change all that.

And the bells were ringin'

The Black Belly of the Tarantula
The Complete Mr. Arkadin
The Damned Dirty Apes!

Aili's brother and his lover are staying with us. I haven't been on much bro-duty excepting yesterday, where we all went out and did some shopping and - smartly - the duo rented a car. As such they were out until three last night, and the wife and I got to have some "quality time" (or, that is, a chance to have sex by ourselves... which was completely obvious from the quotation marks, but I think overexplanation is funny). I've been put in a weird position because Aili can't drink or smoke (well, she can, but she shouldn't), and so I've been about 75% successful in matching her. Three months ago there wasn't a night we wouldn't add to the recycyling bin, and I wonder if this means we're settling down, because it's not like two days after she pops we're going to do some E and drink ourselves unconscious. It isn't painful at all, though, which is nice. And so anyway, I was stuck in a position where I felt I had to join Aili's brother and partner on Friday after our dinner out, because she really can't be tearing it up and I wanted to at least show hospitiableness. I got that weird uncomfortable feeling while out, and it's because I did and didn't want to dance without Aili. It felt sort of rude to her, you know. She's at home, catching up on the Hitchcock box set (it was great to come home and hear that she watched Marnie and loved it), and I'm out clubbing. It felt disrespectful. Which I didn't want to make obvious to her brother, because that would be doubly disrespectful. And of course, he was like "show us your moves, Houxy!" and so I'm dancing with Aili's bro and partner, and it was pretty fun. We got home around 2:30, and Aili was still up, and I was told I could be an honorary fag. So, at least that's something, if the marriage doesn't work out.

What amused to no end is that the moment Aili gets me alone, she starts in with the "honorary fag" business, which of course leads to other things (I've already made the obvious commentary joke once here, and so I'll meta-make the joke here by not making it, which by doing so has meta'd the meta-meta, and if you cook that at 400 degrees it should be ready in 30-35 minutes). And so my wife and I tried to quietly have sex as her brother and partner were obviously trying to do the exact same thing. Thankfully we have two bathrooms, though the water ran out after Aili got her turn. And I'd like to say we went longer. FACE, Aili's brother!

Watching Arkadin, as I did a lot of in the last week, the thing that I love about Welles is the joy he brought to his craft, even in his weaker efforts. He could never stop being Welles. And it's that love of form that I hope I bring to my writing in all its forms. I hope the reader giggles as much reading my stuff as I do writing it. That's the goal.

Something I wrote a long time ago...

I wrote this for the J back in the day, and the editor decided we didn't need the length on the film, and also, it was (what?) five years ago and I was still developing into the J style (my style for it might have been called the dishy style), and I was developing as a writer. Anywho, here it is, warts and all:

The summer action movie has no greater fathers than partners Jerry Bruckheimer and the late Don Simpson. Though the genre had it's earlier models, ranging from 1968's Bullit to 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (one could argue Edwin S. Porter's 1903 film The Great Train Robbery was the first), it was the release of Top Gun in 1986, which safely removed any political or philosophical underpinnings and modified action movies into the thoughtless visceral "Event Films" we know today. In comparison, a film like 1971's Dirty Harry is more a film noir, with its morally compromised main character, than a modern day action film (and one can see the effects of the Bruckheimer & Simpson style on the more recent James Bond films). As Star Wars revolutionized special effects, it was Tony Scott, and — perhaps more importantly — Bruckheimer & Simpson that made a film totally of the moment, with little to interfere with the visceral kick — never mind the homoeroticism.

Bruckheimer & Simpson found the perfect director to work with in Michael Bay, who made a name with the famous Aaron Burr "Got Milk?" ad. Bay is a Tony Scott without subtext (who'd a thunk it?), creating beautiful imagery free of meaning or relevance, meant to be consumed and forgotten. His first film was 1995's Bad Boys, a surprise hit for him and for Buckhiemer & Simpson, so the three followed up in a year later with The Rock , a more extravagant endeavor meant to fulfill all summer expectations. It was a hit and grossed more the $360 million worldwide, making sure Michael Bay could do whatever he wanted to — which became 1998's painful Armageddon.

The Rock was Don Simpson's last film after years of hard living, and the film — a monument to his work and life — is absurd from the get go: Frank Hummel (Ed Harris), a highly decorated Army General (and Black Bag operative), feels that too many of his men have died in vain and with no proper burial, so he gets a group of his loyal men to steal some deadly V-X poison (it kills you in strange and disgusting ways), and makes Alcatraz his base of operation using tourists as hostages. Hummel's demand: 100 million dollars from the Pentagon's slush fund to be distributed as he sees fit to the families of the men he's seen killed and his men, or he'll send out rockets filled with the nasty gas into the metro area of San Francisco.

To stop Hummel and his his top-notch trained killers from completing their mission, the government assembles Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage)- the FBI's best poison disarmer (or the rough equivalent thereof), John Mason (Sean Connery)- the only man to ever escape from the Rock, and a group of Navy Seals (headed by Michael Biehn) as the governments second to last resort — the last resort being blowing the island up with Thermite Plasma Bombs. Mason, a British spy, was incarcerated for stealing the FBI's microfilm on the answers to what happened at Roswell and who really killed JFK, and has since tried to escape every prison he was put in, so he's more than likely to try and escape rather than fight Hummel, but he's the only man alive with working knowledge of how to sneak around Alcatraz, so he's a reluctant hero. Stanley and John then become fast friends forced to work together as Hummel's deadline approaches, in the "too old for this shit" old cop-rookie cop fashion we've seen in many movies before.

Is it exciting? Sort of. Bay loves the quick cut style of commercials and he's a cinematographer's director, so the film has no substance but looks pretty; the plot is shopworn (it was written by 3 credited writers, at least four uncredited writers, the audio commentary mentions a polish by Robert Towne, and Nicholas Cage's takes credit for rewriting practically all his dialogue: it's amazing to think that this was the best all these people could come up with), and everything is so clearly telegraphed from the outset (do you really think they're going to kill everyone in San Francisco?) that the fun is in the delivery of what is expected. Jon Spencer, playing the head of FBI sums up the film best when he delivers a speech about how dangerous Mason is, and then has to close on the line: "And he's the best shot we've got!" It's a speech that always works well in film like this, and it points out the appeal of the film is based on our familiarity with the genre, the "last resort" films made popular by the likes of Escape From New York.

The themes of The Rock operate from two diametrically opposed positions: one is a that you can't trust the government as it does nasty unpatriotic things (cinematic backwash from JFK), and the other is the fetishizing of all things military, and the aggrandizing of military and governmental action, so one doubts that anyone connected to the film is opposed to the government for what it does in any way: this is the kind of film that questions the government in a way that the government would feel safe to endorse. The film doesn't have time to question politics (even if it suggests that the country does messed up things), it's too busy getting ready for the next set piece. That emptiness of purpose is the quintessential element of the Bruckheimer & Simpson partnership, and their ultimate achievement: it is all meaningless pop culturalisms, and therein lies its charm (because really, how many Oliver Stone's do we need?)

Everything in the film hinges on absurdity: at one point during the audio commentary Bay questions why Connery would have to roll through a giant furnace that's flames keep flickering on and off (designed by the Galaxy Quest people, one assumes) that would have no reason to be working, since the prison is just a tourist facility. Bay's suggestion is that "it's just entertainment folks, and it looks cool." My question is: why would Connery's character know the timing for something that he'd only have to roll through to get into the Rock, not out of? The Rock requires the viewer to believe that president would destroy Alcatraz with Thermite-Plasma bombs to save San Francisco, (and BTW kill all 81 hostages/tourists) instead of paying Hummel slush-fund money. One would think the Prez would happy to give up someone else's hidden money to hide the fact that one of his greatest military men had turned traitor, and not kill the 81 people with lives and family (like you could keep that a secret), but the Prez says it's one of the hardest decisions he's ever made (to send off the jets that will more than likely to be stopped in the nick of time by our hero), and since he's though long and hard we're supposed to be on his side — but never you mind, it's Entertainment! One, then, has to not only suspend one's disbelief, but forgo thinking for the entire course of the film to enjoy it. It's so hyper plotted that the film feels like a tale told by a fifteen year old after a Mad Magazine and Pixie-Stix binge.

If any one sequences captures this spirit and explain the appeal of the film, it's the chase scene where Mason steals a Humvee, and Goodspeed steals a Ferarri to catch him. The Humvee crunches through any thing in its way destroying cars, water trucks, and eventually a trolley — hey, it's San Francisco — that flies into the air from a fiery explosion (an electric powered trolley!), yet never manages to kill anyone. Basically, the "Fruit cart gag" is endless repeated (as Roger Ebert [who also wrote the liner notes] has sighted in almost all car chase scenes there's a "look out, fruit cart" moment), but it's the size of the cars, the explosions, the expense that makes it hard not to enjoy — as Nicholas Cage says — the "Oh well, why not" flavor of it all. The Bruckheimer & Simpson style is that things are destroyed, not people (though military in films like this are relegated to object roles — summed up by one of the nameless bad guys: "killing marines is one thing.") It's fitting that when Bay wants to show the danger of the rockets on San Francisco, he shows buildings to represent the threat, not people.

As in Top Gun, the real violence of warfare is kept to a minumum of impact, but explosions are kept at maximum. Does it make sense? Who cares? There are some tense moments and some good Spielberg steals, but everything in The Rock is meaningless, and any dramatic event is forgotten ten minutes after the fact, but the film is anchored by three good actors: Cage, Harris, and, of course, Connery. This film was the turning point for Nicholas Cage, as it turned him into the action star he's become (for better or worse). He brings some interesting moments to the film for it, since he's the comic relief character and he gives the film any depth it has. Ed Harris has the hardest role, and bespeaks the problems of action films in the 90's. He's a tragic villain, forced into villainy by the American government: he doesn't want to do what he's doing, but will gun down marines if need be. The idea that only the faceless grunts are killing machines makes him somewhat saintly in his fumbled quest, and that strangeness of his goals gives the film an energy that I don't even think Michael Bay understands. Connery, as always, makes a fun leading character, and he understands the silliness of it well enough to rise above it. If nothing else it's nice to see him return to Bond-mode, even if one wishes it were under better circumstances. The supporting players are also the kind one likes to see in films (to name a few: David Morse, Tony Todd, William Forsythe), and the women, though little used and little seen, are — bluntly — Hot.

Arguably, the film is junk, the writer also likes to drink beer, and likes it a lot. Though I wouldn't advocate the filmmaking style of Bay or Bruckheimer & Simpson (nor the drinking of beer while underage — unless, of course, at a real bitchin' party), I do like watching things explode, and this may be Bruckheimer & Simpson's ultimate achievement. On that level — and that level only — I appreciate the spectacle, as it's familiarity makes it an amusing ride, even though I'd probably argue the world would be a better place if Michael Bay were never born. We don't want to shake our indie credibility, but in terms of what it accomplishes, and what it set out to do The Rock succeeds better than Michael Bay's other films, and other films of its ilk.

Quick question

Is there a heirarchy of huffing? Do rubber cement huffers look down on spray paint huffers? Is the gasoline huff a cleaner high? The world wants to know. Or, that is to say, I do.

I just heard my neighbors fucking

I went outside to make a phone call, and then enjoy a cigar, and stood on the porch of our common area. The walls on this place seem thick enough, but the doors are not entirely sealed, so sound from the hallways can be monitored (our two bedroom has a master room [the second bedroom] and a bedroom bedroom, which has the most distance from the door, though it does have windows, and I've wondered on hot eve's if Aili and I have been heard). The building is quaint but the space is nice. I've always assumed that if people with one bedrooms and studios were fucking, eventually I would be in a postion to hear someone get their coitus on.

Well tonight was the night. As I read through The New Biographical Dictionary of film, I could hear the neighbors playing Green Day. As "Welcome to Paradise" kicked in, I heard arhythmic moaning. "Yup, that's fucking" I thought. But much like the "finding someone else's panties in our laundry moment," my amusement ended quickly. In some way it sort of makes me not want to have sex with the wife tonight. I think though my mood will change depending on what she's wearing to bed. I've become enraptured with my wife's flesh right under her belly, where I guess my kid is growing, but there's just something sexy about that area, and why belly shirts are so popular.

Aili and I are not drinking. I have mentioned that before, but it's weird. I've never been someone who likes to quit things, because it almost intonates a problem. But it's 11 and I kind of want a drink, but I'm not going to have one. And I hope I don't have that feeling tomorrow, but I might. And it's not that I have a problem (isn't that what they all say), but habits are addicting because routine is soothing. But also because of this break, I felt like I could treat myself last night, and woke up with a pounding headache. I binged, or I had as much as I might normally on a Saturday night, but it felt different. I feel very uncomfortable with the whole process, but mostly for what it says about me. I think the big war is that I don't think it's a problem, so it's hard for me to stop myself. The imaginary rule factor, which makes the thing become covetable. So 100% gay.

I'm young and healthy...

The Busby Berkeley Disc

In a year or two or three, maybe we will be too old.

Currently on the shelf

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season One (still unwatched)
Battlestar Galatica 2.0 (all)
La Bete Humaine
Big Train Season One (which I've finished) and Two (haven't started)
Election (To version)
The Great Yokai War
King Kong (05)
Last Days
The Lords of Discipline
The River
The Squid and The Whale

For review I've got two out of three versions of Mr. Arkadin (AKA Confidential Report) to watch.

High Five!

Three things would make me post more

1) working less and/or working nearer to my computer all day. Or that is to say, if I was sitting at a desk at least 50% of the time, I'd post about bullshit 100% of the time. SCIENCE!

2) having less good movies to watch when I get home. That also includes TV. Like Sports Night. And Battlestar Galatica. Today I got Brokeback Mountain and Quick Change, which goes on the stack with King Kong '05 (which I'm not crazy about, but I wanted to give it a second chance) and about ten other titles, and then stuff I have to review, like the three versions of Arkadin. Where the fuck do I start?
and

3) If I wasn't so seriously gay for my wife. You know that feeling you get when you talk to someone and you realize that you're crazy about them and that you can't remember what you were talking about? Generally this happens early on in a relationship and fades. But I get to have sex with that person. We've been getting stuff in order for Aili's brother, on top of my hectic sched, which has been gruelling, overlapped with losing an hour to Daylight Savings Time plus a newfound sobriety that points out that I have been a causal drinker for almost ten years now. Crazy. But the sex helps salve the wound, as it were.

I have no idea who your daddy is

Dames
Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Sports Night is good. Not as good as The Shield, but what is.

Best google search that's turned up my blog: "cavity search fantasy"

A Nice, Sweet Handjob

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I <3 Lying

And yet I don't like this holiday. Maybe because you can't get away with shit. I am thinking of seeing Basic Instinct 2 tonight, which seems to qualify as an April Fool's joke.

Aili's bro is coming to stay with us for a week. Why he's not doing this after the baby I don't know. The other problem is that Aili and I have been getting pretty clean and sober lately. She's pregnant and all, and I think its unfair for me to drink around her. Like Sam Jackson said it kind of makes me a vegetarian. So how hard can we party? And he's bringing his partner. They are also both chimneys when it comes to smoking. I forsee myself getting in some trouble with my girl over this one.

Negative attention is still attention, right?

Half the problems with the internet stem from people who learned this. Also this sentence could be rephrased and still be true if you change "the internet" to "my ex-girlfriends."

I'm not your beast of burden

The Children are Watching Us
The Fifth Cord
Gold Diggers of 1933
Gold Diggers of 1935
The Ten Commandments

Solitary viewings

My job, such as it is, revolves around watching movies. As such, as there are numerous regions and releases of certain titles, and modifactions to each versions that require repeated full length viewings, I have been inudated with watching the same shit over and over again, and it makes me think. I say this after I read this excellent piece on the movie site Collider, to which points out the Syssiphean strugle among my generation's cineastes, all of which I blame on cable.

For past generations, the power and privledge of watching a movie, and watching it repeatedly was something earned. Or that is to say, you had to go to the god damned theater. Or catch it on TV. Like all deviants, cineastes then fetishized these viewings, these brief encounters with the films they loved or affected them so deeply for good or bad reasons (think Spielberg and the car accident in The Greatest Show on Earth). For my generation, were I to speak for them, we grew up with HBO. Showtime. The Movie Channel. Cinemax. And as pre-adolescents, we fetishized the R rated movies we got away with watching. We also had video stores. There is no good reason I should have seen Wildcats once. The fact that I have seen the film over ten times doesn't exactly make me feel good about myself. And yet, we have become slaves to these bad movies. I bought DC Cab and Doctor Detroit. They both... sucked. Yeah, they sucked. So did Moving Violations. Etc. Etc. I have yet to purchase Wildcats, but I think I wouldn't mind watching it again. And, as was noted, I don't know if I'm totally done with these films. In ten or twenty year, I might have to scratch those itches again.

And we (side note: That MTV commercial about the guy who cheated death by watching MTV until it was over. He got grabbed, what, 1991? I loved that ad, and now even MTV2 can't make that claim. What happened to the art of music videoing? I have no idea, I don't watch videos, nor have I had cable in over ten years. Seriously.) are now driven by new release Tuesday. With sales the first week, I find myself buying things that I don't need because it's cheaper. I liked Good Night and Good Luck, it was my third favorite Best Picture nominee, but is it really worth owning? Will I ever throw on the audio commentary just cause? No, and yet it's in the collection (while The Wedding Crashers isn't. Who knows what I'll feel like chucking). And speaking of chucking I will probably grab The Weather Man at some point. I've seen the film over five times, and yet, I will probably grab it.

As such, I was thinking about Eyes Wide Shut, a film I've owned on DVD three times (though currently don't, somewhat in anticipation of the upcoming reissues) and the fact that I've only seen it once. And I was thinking I should just keep it that way. I'm thinking there are more and more films I should just watch once and let them simmer in my memory bank. I'm thinking it's better to do this. Granted, I still get piles of free DVDs, but just the same. I mean, shit, I used to own all the Harry Potter films. Why? I love the Pixar movies. How often do I throw them on? Never (though The incredibles is cold kicking it regardless, as are most of them, it's just). You see my point. In an era were overconsumption is more the rule than the exception, I'm going to make a concentrated effort to let certain memories of films linger.

Looking at the shelf....

42nd Street
Chicken Little
Footlight Parade

For this week. On the one and twos we've got these on the way:
The Black Belly of the Tarantula
The Busby Berkeley Collection
The Children are Watching Us
Dames
The Fifth Cord (which got rolled)
Gold Diggers of 1933
Gold Diggers of 1935
The Ten Commandments Triple Dip

On the personal shelf I have:
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season One (haven't watched any of)
Battlestar Galatica Season One Discs Four and Five
All of Battlestar Galatica 2.0
La Bete Humaine
Election (To version)
The Great Yokai War
A History of Violence
Last Days
The River

And I've got a very horny wife. Like, seriously, pregnant chicks be all up on it.

And that leads to the problem. I have no problem discussing embarassing things if I think there's a story in them, be it great or horrible experiences. The problem is that's so much more appealing when you're single. Married people who talk about their sex life are gross and I don't want to be one of those people. If you've got a story about a one night stand where the girl decided she wanted to lick your toes and get tied up, that's much more appealing than having someone tell you their wife likes to be choked. Not that my wife likes to be choked, mind you. People get freaky, shit happens, and I've done a lot of crazy sex shit both in and out of a relationship. But when it comes to marriage, nobody wants to hear it and that's ultimately for the best. Hell, even long term girlfriends you don't tell you boys what goes down. As a male. I guess women talk this shit up. Fuck you Sex and the City. Fuck you a lot.

I finally hung out with God for the first time in a long time last night. I asked him to make sure to refrain me from getting boring when the kid pops. As superficial as that sounds, it's a concern. I won't turn this place into "Katja just learned to giggle" or "Martin puked on me, but the smile made it all worth it." But it was funny. I'm not normally an emotional guy, nor do I like asking favors, but I turned to God as I walked him to his car, and said "Hey, you know, I don't like asking, or having you play favorites, but could you make sure that my baby's born healthy?" God smiled at/on me and his eyes twinkled.

You see how easy it is for me to gay up my blog? I'm going to have to tell stories about the worst head I ever got here just to even things out.

This is all Bullshit, isn't it?

I had my first "I'm going to be a daddy" freakout. Big time. I had a friend in from out of state for the weekend, and we went out Friday night. Being 30, being as how I have a kid on the way, well we went out to party. One's mental state best functions when one doesn't think about the infinite possibilties. For instance, I could die at any minute. Earthquake, heart attack, going like my dad, car accident, carjacking and/or theft gone wrong, etc. etc. Though I knew my wife was pregnant, the thought of how that would affect us/me hasn't been much of a priority, I accepted fatherhood like I accepted my cat, as if it was the most natural thing in the world with no thought of how it would change my day to day. But before I went out, Aili and had a brief back and forth over some chicken pesto tortellini. And she implied, though not with all seriousness, that she makes more than me, and if I wanted to I could be the stay at home dad. And I took it as what it was and I have entertained the notion. Seriously, I could do more writing, maybe.

But then I went out. And got drunk. And went to Cheetah's. And got a lap dance(not my thing, but when the friend paid, I couldn't say no). And then a second. And then we went out to the car and did some drugs. Expensive drugs. And the we went back inside. I felt like I was in college again, but I was also too drunk to care, and wasn't driving. And I think I got a little out of control because I knew there was a finite timeline to this sort of activity, even though I don't really like it. And then I got home. At three. And Aili was cool with it. But I was still fucked up. I slept on the couch. By my choice, because it took me so long to calm down.

And then Aili woke me up. By fellating me. And then we had sex, and it was okay, though I was hurting by the time I hit the shower. Yesterday I was totally useless, and miserable physically and spirtually. And it's at these times I think about all the things that could happen and lose my normal peace of mind. Because I realized I am like to have a little less than eight months to do stuff like that before I'm somebody's father. Hell, in five or six years our kid(s) may want to sleep with us at night, how doesn't that change everything? How do I feel about pounding a six pack on Fridays when I know my kid's next to me. Sometimes Aili likes to throw on a porno (I have a "don't ask don't tell" policy about this, I don't mind watching porn, but she has a thing for Jenna Jameson films, and when she's feeling dirty we'll throw one on and we'll see what happens [usually, fucking]) . Do I want pron around my house (New Pron - fine, though)? Do I want my kids to discover fucking the way I did, through my father's Playboys and video tapes?

This is all bullshit, isn't it? I remember having a fight with an ex, where I described a woman on a plane who was freaking out and every little thing. And I felt bad for her, but I thought she was being absolutely ridiculous, and used this as a tool to calm my ex down. There's some shit you have no control over, so you have to let it go. Were I to toot my own horn, I would say that one of the better things about me is my ability to accept that. You have no control over the flight. I have no idea if it'll be a boy or a girl. And I understand some things will need to be planned out, but planning for ten years in the future right now is retarded in that way (not in a 401K way, mind you). So this is all bullshit. But that's where my mind's been.

The first present I got for my 30th (besides sexin from the wife)

At the multiplex in my skull: NOW PLAYING

Takashi Miike's ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS (2008):

A man named David Seville is married and his wife is pregnant, but his life is irrevocably changed when his wife gives birth to triplets. These triplets are horribly deformed and resemble Chipmunks more than humans, which when the mother sees her infant children, promptly dies. Struggling to raise them on his own, the kids eventually learn to talk in high pitched voices, and Seville finds a way to turn it around by teaching the boys how to make music. For some reason, these deformed children and their rock stylings sweep the nation. Hilarity ensues.

The winner? Bad Taste.

Damn. What a fucking birthday present. Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Chicago. I should know better than expecting a reasonably good film to win best picture. Shoddy theses on race relations wins! Yay.

I'm ill. I've been ill for the last couple days. I'm gonna get me some sleep tonight (as I have the last couple of days), though my illness has me sleeping in the TV room. Don't want to get the wife sick and all.

Do you think you could, you know, love me for the rest of your life, if even only a little?

Here I am. Here I am. Two days (25 hours, actually) from turning thirty. I don't know how I feel about this. Scared maybe, hopeful. How old am I? How old is 30 these days? It's been a dramatic week. I spent some time thinking about my dad. What would he be like if he wasn't sick? I mentioned this to a friend and my voice started to tremble. And my thought is if he was normal... I think he'd be a dick. Then again it's hard to know when the sickness took hold, and what his employment record would be like.

I came home Tuesday night after a reasonable day of work, and crashed in front of the sofa to watch The Ice Harvest again, which this time its noir sensibilities seemed stronger than in the theater. Still a great picture. And then Aili came in. She'd been weird lately. In some ways we still have our own autonomous lives. She works long hours, I work long hours. I watch movies and have a couple beers, she makes herself a Manhattan and goes over some of her work and then throws on some music in the bedroom. Sometimes we have sex, sometimes we both come home and collapse into bed, sometimes she's just not in the mood (which I can't suggest I've ever felt the same). I go into work around noon, she goes in around nine, so I generally wake up a beat as she shuffles out, or I get up with her (rarely, if I've beered myself too much, I sleep through her alarm). Weekends I spend a lot of time working on reviews and every night I tend to spend some time writing. We go out together for at least one meal on Sundays (this is not enforced, but has become a habit that I don't think either of us want to break), and occasionally out dancing on Thursdays or Fridays, but it's like fuckingplus, often, maybe because we rarely eat together outside of weekends.

So, she came in my room, the TV room, and starts pacing. She seemed stressed. I asked her if she wanted a smoke, as she's been fighting the quitting for quite some time. She laughed me off. I didn't know why. I can't approximate the conversation, but my first instinct was that I was in trouble. And I said something along the lines of 'Is it over, is this what this is?" and she started to cry. I felt at a loss.
"No, you idiot." She said.
"I'm not an idiot."
"You are about this."
"So the exact opposite?"
"No. Damn it, this isn't how I wanted to start this conversation."
"What's this conversation."
"I need a drink."
"Okay, what do you want?"
"Nothing."
"Okay."
"Look, I, uh, love you."
"Are you sure?"
"How's that a response to what I just said?"
"I, uh, I. I don't know, it's not fair of me to say that. But when we entered into this union I didn't even know if I'd ever have sex with you, Aili, so I was taking it slow with the love thing."
"Do you think you could love me?"

And here, dear readers, is the thing I had been keeping from her and you for at least a month (to which the astute reader will surely say AHA! and then shout neener neener neener). I do love my wife. I think I've always been in love with her. I've definitely been crazy about her since we met, and yeah, I did marry her to get closer and maybe to get in her pants. But even though we've led separate lives the best part of my day is often when I wake up next to her. Or the times where I've woken up in the middle of the night and pulled her tighter, and at least once she woke up and softly kissed my hand. The conversations in bed. The laughs we've had during sex (our sex is often funny as we both have no problem saying what we like, and sometimes find ourselves talking about other things while we congress, often at some point near climax revolving around one of us putting our hands into the other's mouth to quiet us down). The times snuggling on the couch watching something I have to review, and her telling me what she's thought (sometimes we disagree, but more often we do, and sometimes I smuggle a fragment of her thoughts into my work). Her accent. The way she smoked a cigarette. The way she sometimes looks at me like I'm in the kind of trouble any man would want to be in. But it's not the carnality, even if I could write stanzas about the softness of her lips and the subtle warmth of her caress. God damnit, it's the fucking intimacy.

She repeated "Do you think you could, you know, love me for the rest of your life, if even only a little?"
"I, Aili, I'm pretty sure I love you. I don't know how you stop that."
"Cause I'm pregnant."
"Are you sure?"
"Duh."
"What?"
"I saw a doctor today, after taking a pee test."
"When were you going to tell me?"
"When it seemed realer."
"So the last couple?"
"Yeah."
"Oh."
"So, a kid."
"Yeah. Fuck."
"Fuck?"
"Just, just fuck, not fuck fuck, but fuck."
"Yeah, happy thirtieth birthday."
"That was exactly what I was thinking."

If all goes according to Hoyle [(c) Quentin Tarantino] I'll be a father in eight months. I didn't plan this. I didn't plan any of this. In fifth grade I wanted to be an astronaut. Throughout middle school I wanted to be an actor. By high school, a writer/director. Now, I'm a guy in Quality Control with a lawyer for a wife and a receding hairline, a light beer gut, a little athlete's foot, and a kid on the way.

"Aili. You know what?"
"What?"
"That sounds pretty cool."
She smiled.
"Martin Harrison Houx."
"You're fucking kidding me, he sounds like an 19th century president."
"It's the only name I've ever thought of."
"What if it's a girl?"
"You get to name her if she's a girl. Fair?"
"Katja Houx."
"After your mother? What about a middle name?"
"I haven't thought of it."
"We still have some time."

I stood up and grabbed my wife. Grabbed her. And something was different. I've been in relationships before, but for the first time I get it. The partnership. I'm going to have this woman's back for as long as the wheels stay on. And I know that if I need to lean on her for anything she's going to be there, because I know I would kill a man who'd try to harm her, I would do anything for this woman. And I held her and then we both began ripping at each other's clothes. As a bragging man, I would say that I've made a woman cry while having sex. But as an honest man, I must admit I've never cried during sex before. And there we were, a mess of each other, on the floor of our home. And we were both weeping and giddy. I tear up just thinking about it. I'm going to be a dad. I'm going to have a kid with the woman I love.

"You know, once we have this kid, your immigration papers are as good as gold."
My shoulder still hurts from that one.

Guess which movie I watched last night from this joke:

Note: This is the sort of thing better suited for a psuedonym of mine, but whatever

Q: What's the smartest thing to come out of Nora Ephron's mouth?
A: Carl Bernstein's semen.

Reviews of the Day, get them while they're fresh

Daddy Long Legs
NewsRadio Season 3

Uneventful weekend. Saw Crash (2005). Vomited. Saw Vice Squad. Vomited (in a good way). Watched the wrap up to Arrested Development. Great.

My Milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

I had a taste of the Shamrock shake yesterday. Probably for the first time in ten to twenty years.

That shit is gross.

Sometimes I have too much empathy

My mom told me a story yesterday that I can't shake. We were talking about our childhood neighbors, and the father who died of AIDS in the 80's (a story I recounted here) and it took on the subject of homosexuality, and how a man could live with a woman and know he was gay. My mom is friends with a gay couple on the East Coast and she recounted how one of them told her of his first homosexual experience, which was when his father asked him to perform fellatio. When he was 10. And then my mom added the capper by telling me that he said "He liked it." Blowing his dad. Liked it.

Stories like that get under my skin, perhaps because all evidence points to sexuality being more malleable than most give it credit for. Perhaps sexual preferences (like fetishes) are something we get in youth and are never able to abandon, as our earliest sexual experiences are the most resonant. And it's interesting because I've had many female friends tell tales of Sapphic trysts that occurred simply out of a boredom mixed with drug use. Many of whom are straightish these days. But men tend not to be as bisexual - but I think most because of the stigma attached. I've known some bisexual men, but they tend to be more hedonistic than bi-curious.

All of which makes me happy to married (until the wheels fall off, I guess), as my biggest problem as a dater is that I find it hard to close. I tend to fuck up the closing. I've had male friends (and in one instance a complete stranger) tell me that a girl was interested and I was halfway oblivious. I like to flirt outrageously and do nothing about it. Maybe because sex and relationships are messy, and I prefer the simplicity of an event. Dunno.

I shouldn't add this, but whatever, I got off work early tonight and Aili is getting home shortly. She expressly told me that she is H-O-R-N-Y, so that's rather good news... as long as she doesn't want to do it in the bed my mom slept in.

A High Seas Adventure featuring Dolphins and Fucking

Yesterday was classic. After a couple hours of puttering (to which my mom got antsy), we decided to head out for some LA sightseeing and stuffdoing. The two (out of three, if my cat counts) women in my life joined me in going to In and Out Burger and then the plan was to go to the Getty Museum. Aili sat in the back seat and I constantly checked on her in the backseat, so much so that she started making faces at me, which - honestly - was getting me kind of horny, something we're going to have to wait until tonight to do something about. The ride was slightly tense as Aili wanted to smoke, but my mom said she'd prefer if she didn't. Aili's been on again off again about quitting, and I never seem to be able to sway her to pick one or the other. Sometimes she'll come home and report how much she smoked, as if she wanted to make penance. But mostly this is stuff I leave off the blog cause who cares, right? Anyway, the mood finally starts to lighten up, as Aili makes the perfect sort of exploratory comments that flatter my mother, and my mom gets to embarrass me in front of my wife. Knowing what's going on, I felt politically I had to take it to make things right.

We get there, it's seven bucks for parking. No one had cash. We were told of a gas station a couple blocks away that would have cash. My mom decides to scrap it. This is standard mom behavior: plan something, don't go through with it. The illusion of having done something without the actual doing. At least the 405 was reasonable.

Aili said she had some work to do, so she took off for her office around four (she got back around ten, when my mom went to bed the night before), and my mom made some comments about Aili's accent ("I can't tell when she's being sarcastic"), but seemed encouraging about our future, even though she's been briefed on the situation. Then we watched The 40 Year Old Virgin, and had a couple of drinks. It's sort of fun to drink with your parents.

Mom begins to go to my room, and Aili showed up a couple of minutes later, and before we could get to sleep, she starts telling me what she thinks of my mom in hushed tones. There's something about having your mom a couple feet away that kills the sex urge, that reduces you to a state of adolescence, and last night was no different. Still it was fun to hear Aili say that she liked that my mom could be (to use her words) "a right cunt."

Dolphins.

Fucking.

Hey white boy, what you doing uptown?

Here's a little message, a little heart to heart.

I don't care if you get married in Vegas. Or Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, or who gives a damn. Tell your mother. Beforehand. Or she will make your life and every sentence she speaks to you a living hell.

The entry God has been waiting for

Seriously, he called was like "Dude, you should post. Even if it's our conversation. I don't care. POST, BITCH!"

- Just as God's son did, I think the time in the world will be divided between pre-Snakes on a Plane release and post-Snakes on Plane release. It's like those six months between Kill Bill volumes. SoaP can still be anything you want it to be. And there will come a time when we will know what it is. And that will be sad. But there you are.

- Am I black or white, am I straight, or gay? Controversy.

- Munich may be the anti-Untouchables. It's definitely Spielberg in De Palma territory, and he used a fashionable playwright to fashion the script. But in this case it's the anti because it's Spielberg working against his instincts to create a film that's not for the crowd (which is makes it more De Palmaeranian because Mr. Brian De P was working within the Hollywood structure). In the end both films come to the exact opposite conclusions. Just a thought.

- My favorite Valentine's day story is this. About five years ago, my then girlfriend got us a reservation at a Bed and Breakfast. Either I worked half a day, or took it off, and we planned to head over around 3 pm. Before I could leave my house I got a call from my friend Jen to tell me that our mutual friend (Explicative deleted) was threatening to kill himself. My girlfriend was rather amazing in this instance and I went immediately to The Space Room, where he was. A couple of his friends gathered, he told all of us that he was ready to die, and how unhappy he was. I think we were all there to give emotional support, but I was more curious than anything. I believe in the right to suicide, though I tend to think it's a stupid, stupid move. But (Explicative deleted) was depressed. He couldn't hold a job, got fired from the position that gave him priveledge and quite a bit of tail, and had probably been drinking heavily for the last five to ten years of his life, with the not so occasional booster of coke and pot, and many other substances ([Explicative deleted] caused me to be three hours late for work once due to taking a blue pill he gave me after a night of hard drinking, while on another instance after a night out with him I went into work still reeking of whiskey. Granted, these were my decisions - but that's the sort of devil he was). After a couple of hours trying to bring him down, Jen laid down the science: (Explicative deleted) had two choices, either he was going to go to a hospital willingly to detox, or she was going to call the cops and get thrown into detox. Hearing this, (Explicative deleted) freaked and told us all that that wasn't going to happen. When assured it would happen he grabbed the nearest glass, broke it on the table and tried to slit his wrists in front of us. We restrained him until the cops showed up. Then my gal and I went over to the hospital, and tried to hang out for a bit as things got settled down and he got settled in. Then we went across the street for pizza and some down time (shockingly I don't think anyone had anything to drink at the pizza place). Around nine or ten we left the hospital to go to the bed and breakfast place. It was fabulous. But though we consummated in the nature of such an establishment - if memory serves - it was akin to Eric Bana's pained nutbust in Munich. How could it not be. And I can't not think of this on February 14th.

Happy Valentine's day.

Hollywood swingin'

Kitty Foyle
Metropolitan
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Zathura

Marriage is boring. We have two bedrooms, one of which is my room (where my mom will be staying next week), and I spend about 90% of my nights with my wife. I've fallen asleep in front of the TV once, and I think it irked her. But supposedly we have our boundaries. She was the one who didn't want to be possessive, and now she's being possessive. That's why putting your penis in someone's vagina is usually considered a commitment. If the worst thing I have to do is sleep with my wife (and her occassional garbage farts), life is good.

I miss you Whit Stillman

Watching Metropolitan, will have the review up tomorrow. Should share my favorite St. Valentine's story this week. You may ask yourself "WTF has Damon been up to?" Well, let me tell you the fuck I've been up to. Moving. We're in the new place. Cat's comfortable and everything. That shit takes it out of you. And my mom's visiting next weekend. Krazy.

My first online comic.

Homo Sexuality

I was thinking yesterday about penguins. And also about how I wonder how much we want the person we're with to be like us. How much taste must they have in common. Shit like that.

I was also driving home and listening to some Joy Division. A song came on, and I had a total recall of the first time I heard the song, when I first started DJing at KWVA in Eugene, Oregon, rocking out from 4-6 am. It was called "The Monty Nesbit Show" and the premise was that I was Damon Houx and that Monty couldn't do his show because he got in trouble for having sex with his girlfriend in the station, so every week I was the fill in. Eventually (towards the end of the term) Monty showed up and bitched me out. Who was one of my neighbors in the dorm. Why I did this to my radio show, I don't know.

Since this is nominally a movie blog

Lemme give high props to my brithday boys, and break it down, Houx Style, the Oscars. Every category - like an SAT test - can be broken down usually to two choices. Here's how I see it playing out.

Best Picture:
Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain - EDGE: Brokeback Mountain
Best Director:
Ang Lee vs.... Paul Haggis I guess - EDGE Ang 'Motherfucking' Lee
Best Actor:
Phillip Seymour Hoffman vs. Heath Ledger - EDGE: Me.
Best Actress:
Reese Witherspoon vs. Felicity Huffman - EDGE: Witherspoon. (note: I have a friend who thinks the Weinsteins can pull it off for Huffman. My guess is that Witherspoon is just more cinematic a choice, and Transamerica seems so forgetable)
Best Supporting actor:
Paul Giamatti vs. George Clooney vs. Jake Gyllenhal- EDGE: George Clooney (note: Peeps want it to be Giamatti, but George Clooney got four nominations this year, and this seems the best category he could win. Also, I feel like if the cards get played right there could be some extra BM love, still, I think it's Clooney's)
Best Supporting Actress:
Michelle Williams vs. Rachel Weisz - EDGE: Weisz [by a cunt hair] (seriously, BM's got the top two locked, but I think it's possible an actor win will come down the pike)
Best Original Screenplay:
Good Night and Good Luck vs. Crash - EDGE: Crash (this is another close one, it could be Clooney's, but Crash needs it's good dog reward. Hrm.)
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Brokeback Mountain vs. Brokeback Mountain - NO EDGE.... LOCK LOCK LOCK LOCK

Reviewin' is like Logjammin' except different

Captains Courageous
Lust for Life

Here comes Johnny yet again...

LIVEBLOGGING: JOYSTICKS

10:41 - Three minutes in, a classic. Opening lame montage to theme song about Video Games, and then gratuitous nudity. Keep drinking, this film may lose its master status.

10:44 - Is this the backstage intruige of how an arcade is run? All those years playing at nickel arcades ignorant of how randy running a quarter joint makes a lady... damn.

10:46 - Pac Man transition! Goofy Monk!

10:47 Fat dude addicted to Pac-Man. Greydon Clark once compared this sequence to the end murders in The Godfather.

10:49 - The Fat man sneezed on a hot dog, and threw it in a girl's cleavage. This sequence recalls the cut scene from Sherlock Jr. in which Buster Keaton accidentally felated a banana.

1o:51 Lazlo Hollfield, Mitchell and Cruiser sharing a frame? Mirrors within mirrors.

10:52 - The fat man farted. God is good and just.

10:59 - Stip video games. Nuff said.

11:00- The great song "Shake it around" with lyrics such as "Shake it around, shake it around, yo baby, yo baby, yo baby... Shake it around, shake it around."

11:01 - Corrine Behrer, how I long for you.

11:05 - The plot machinations have hit their stride - Bufford Pusser is planning to bust up our heroes' arcade. How dare you, Bufford!

11:08 - The geek character is being raped by a sleeping woman... yeah. BY JOE DON BAKER'S WIFE!

11: 16 - Having defeated the sidekicks to Mr. Walking Tall, it's time to Par Tay.

11:17 - In PJ's.

11:18- It's a game of SATAN'S HOLLOW. A game which makes no sense.

11:28 - Blackmail plans to stop Pusser have not yeilded hoped for results. Curses!

11:30 - King Vidiot and Mitchell are plotting to overthrow the arcade!

11:36- the jerking off/joysticks parallel has been made. Thank goodness that was made clear.

11:37 - Mudfight Catfight.

11:44- A final game off! Yes!

11:48 - The hero's fear of videogames is because of a sexual disfunction!

11:51 - Training montage!

11:52 - The tense final game off! Fucking flashbacks!

11:55 - More men being raped, An old man being seduced by Space Invaders.

11:59"Face your fears, play video games!"

12:01 Other brother Darryl! Fears faced! The only possible cherry on top would be gratuitous nudity!

12:02 - Grandpa's back! So's the chick the MC boned!

12:03 - Nerds need to get laid! Recall to sleeping woman into music to fade out credits! And we're good.

"Men forgive women's taste like women forgive men's cleanliness"

Said Q at lunch today. I think it's a half truism, but it rings true in some ways to me.

An Epic Life

The Fog
The Man
Oliver Twist

GET CRUNK, GET BUCK

Boxes/"Because I have a penis"

We found a place up the street from where I live. I'm happy with it, but my commute's the same. I'm hoping Aili's cool with it, but all the places we looked at in Burbank were just too flavorless. Then again, Burbank. And so I have twelve days to get all my possissions in boxes yet again, and move less than four blocks. Aili's got two months to burn on her old place and so she gets to be more relaxed about it, but here I am again, staring at blank walls and boxes upon boxes of DVD's. And a slightly annoyed cat.

Speaking of, we have our first "quiet storm" fight where she was talking about money and how she ahd no problem paying for this or that when it came to our new place, and I got really huffity about it. I took me a couple moments to figure out why, and - as I told her - it's because I have a penis. There's just some things a man wants to do, primitive as it may seem, and I like to provide a little for my lady. And this is something that's magnified by our current situation. So I'm going to try to provide what I can for rent and stuff without putting myself in debt just to prove that I can get a hard-on. Or that I'm more than just one.

Larry Wachowski is one Sex Partner away from "The Dude with the Pussy(cat)"

And I say I find his desire to be a bottom in BDSM games and turn himself into a woman is strange. I say I don't understand such extreme masochism.

And then I go around and request 2005's THE MAN from the DVD Journal. These things do not equate. Because actively wanting to watch THE MAN seems about as painful as getting pins stuck in your genitals, but maybe that's just me.

Seriously, Tom Jones...

has become the John Tyler of Oscar Winners. I looked up John Tyler to make this joke, and my penis died while reading his biography. MY PENIS IS DEAD.

People who are going to burn in hell and die

Big Baby (2006)

Directed by Raja Gosnell

Writing credits:
Gregg Lichtenstein
Adam Mazer

Genre: Comedy / Romance

Plot Outline: Ignoring his wife's wish to have a baby, a workaholic husband is cursed with a power that causes him to behave like an infant.

I like writing about Sam Peckinpah

The new reviews are bold, but I thought I'd collect my Peckingpah writings:
Bring me the Head of Afredo Garcia
The Getaway!
The Osterman Weekend
Pat Garrett And Billy the Kid
Ride the High Country
Straw Dogs

Right there, that's almost half of his filmography. Oh and this:
Seven Men From Now

There's got to be a morning after...

Shelley Winters died, and I just saw The Posiedon Adventure for the first time this week, not an odd confluence at all, but it means I'll probably forever connect the two.

We're all "Sensitive People," with so much to give. Understand me, sugar?

I spent a good two hours on the dance floor tonight. God damn did I miss it. Since I was driving, I let my lass lap me boozewise, and by about nine whatever European shyness she had wore off and we hit the floor. Aili started very body conscious, and honestly it bugged me. It's the worst thing white people can do while on the dance floor, the sort of ironic movements that bespeak a body unwilling to give in to the carnal pleasures of shaking a tail feather. But she wore down. And so did the DJ, who started with such aight cuts as Devo's "Satisfaction" and Gary Numan's "Cars," which made me almsot forgive my wife's sluggishness, but she was saved when "Brick House" hit, and both she and I started to get into the groove.

Now, when I dance I sweat, and tend to sweat hard after a good thirty or forty minutes on the dance floor. But I can't leave the floor for much more than a pee break if the cuts keep coming, and I will run out of the bathroom parts-a-hanging if I hear me some Prince. I took a song break to get a beer, and then heard Erotic City, which forced me to chug it as quick as I could (thankfully it was a Pabst, the watery beer) and hit the floor as I tried to tastefully belch as a result of the quick consumption.

By eleven, I was soaked, and Aili was looking at me like I was crazy to still be there. I think we were both damp at that point. Ahem. But The Rolling Stone's "Miss You" hit and I had to keep going, which is a better dance song than I thought - there's such a great predatory sexuality to it. Thankfully some Madonna made our exit palatable, and in the car we couldn't keep our hands off each other. I'm just glad we made it to her place safe. I'm just out of the shower, and my body is pleasently sore. Time to get some sleep, but thank god for dancing.

Of a Lolitian Age

There is a Mexican place across the way from where I'm working. I like their food in that way where it's as much that I go there because it's close as it is anything. As I was walking back to work, two girls of undetermined age (somewhere between 12-15) saddled up near me. Talking loud in that way teenaged girls do. One asked for a piggyback ride to finish getting across the street. Then I had another street to cross. "Push the button, you little slut." I mentioned that I already pushed it. Girls doing what girls do to draw attention to themselves. I look at them. They are very very young. Before I moved here a friend I used to work with described the "Thirteen" phenom as if it were something to be afraid of. Am I too old or too young to look at these girls with anything but a mixture of amusement and melancholly?

I need a hero!

The Bad Sleep Well
The Valachi Papers

Apartment hunting weekend with the wife. I'm so tired I'm just trying to drag through the day. I'm getting pretty good at making Bloody Mary's, though.

Whiskey and Beer.. Steers and Queers

After a trip back to Portland, I have decided I want to become the absolute master of the Bloody Mary. It's fruity enough to be tasty and manly enough not to be a girl drink. Over the New Year's Eve weekend, I bought some vodka and some Hot and Spicy V-8, but tonight I got Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, good pepper, some Stolichnaya, and some sodium free V-8. I need to get some celery, some celery salt, some Horseradish sauce, and maybe some olives. This is a change for me, as I tended to be a whiskey drinker, and mostly a beer drinker.

The Wedding Crashers, the problems are more evident with multiple viewings. Still, I love on the Vaughn in this.

Ralph's, Rock and Roll

I was on Sunset on Monday, and I couldn't not reflect on something that happened a couple months back. I was visiting a friend, and wanted to get some beers before I went home. I grabbed a sixer of Newcastle and a sixer of Grolsch, not sure what would wet my whistle before I got home, and looking at a weekend of reviewing. I also grabbed some diet Pepsi, as is my want. I then started looking for some food for the next day. While in the aisle, I hear a woman getting in a fight on her cell phone, saying she doesn't want to go see The New Pornographers with some guy because he knows what he'll think. She hits the freezer door as she hangs up.

I couldn't help myself: "Too bad about the show, they're great live." She looked at me, shook her head and laughed. "I'm getting hit on by Phillip Seymour Hoffman at Ralph's. Great." that sort of brokethe ice as I waxed on a bitabout how I'm not PSH and how I love the New Pron. "A coworker. I don't date coworkers. It always ends bad." I couldn't help but ask about her accent. Somehow the conversation turned to Cronenberg, and I told her how excited I was to see A History of Violence. I shocked myself by exchanging digits. And so it began.

The Erratic Thriller pull quote for XXX: State of the Union

"Watching XXX: State of the Union is like having a great threesome with fat twins. There may be some guilt, but once you get over that, it's a hell of a ride."

2005 - the end of impartiality

As I reflect, that's the biggest change. I know people now almost too well to sayI don't have biases born of friendships. 2005 was a fairly decent year, too, did lots of crazy stuff, though the winner in that category is still getting married. For that last night was a fucking blast. Aili let me drive, and she got all girl drink drunk with my friends, and for the first time I got the sense that she was relaxed around my friends - hell, she's normally not that relaxed around me. We got home around three and had drinks until the sun came out on a very cloudy morning. Aili's decided to quit smoking, and we sat on her deck out back, I enjoyed a cigar, she her final cigarette. Then we had sex and she decided she deserved another cigarette. This is going to be hard.

Reviews

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol.4
The Cave
The Dark Corner
Four Brothers


Honestly, it's like my day's begining right now. I woke up at two, and there you go.