Was having a wonderfully long leisurely lunch with Beate and we noticed - It snows!! And in weird Seattle style too - (first some hail-like ice chunks and now the real thing)... Everything seems like a Winterwonderland - people scurrying in various levels of un-preparedness (including my ill timed paper-thin leather jacket and camper ensemble -- I am now frostbitten for my fashion silliness)... I am not sure if we'll make tonight's showing of recent Sundance rave "Bark" at the Women's Film Festival if this keeps up. I secretly want this to acculmulate and bury the city like it did in 1997 - only I wish this would happen during the week (so I can relax in the heated confines of my studio and get caught up on
work/projects/dishes/laundry)...

Daniel Harris is at it again in his Kitsch analysis of 9.11. I'm not getting a Salon premium either to read the entire thing -- I already regrettably know it's going to be the same retread: talk endlessly about consumer culture and how it's cheapened 9/11 and what it's meaning is. His analysis is always so paperthin and smug that I find it as tawdry and cheap as the products he's deriding. Well - he goes after another sacred cow (undoubtedly to generate controversy) and all I can think of is - what's the bloody point? Last decade - when Irony was still considered high form, you could analyse how AIDS discourse was creating some ill fated kitsch --- but now, Irony isn't so much dead as we've come to accept the fact that we're a retail culture, and everything is game... Anything is up for interpretation, Kitsch is a given in quite a few circumstances --- and in times of fervor -- we're going to probably message patriotism in any possible venue or way possible (and thus, some of it becomes Kitsch... Look at past examples of war propaganda - some of it was probably just as bad) It doesn't take a cultural theorist to pick this apart... I guess I'm less offended that he's going after 9/11 discourse, only that he's trying the same tired arguments. Load o' crap, folks!

Ok - can the trite TV movie idea. I'm back to square one... Err possibly not. More bad idea's brewing... Possibly take a whole bunch and will pitch them to Rachel tomorrow. In the meantime, I spent approximately 30 minutes fighting impossibly heavy weights, and then another 30 doing aerobic activity, coughing the pounds out between gasps. I guess that's why they have that awful house music blaring - to drown out the moans. Needless to say - the endorphins are having a field day right now.

I got this great idea for the film for taking some trite made for TV movie and inserting real people monotoning the lines. It's probably been done - but this would be very simple to make. Trouble is finding scripts -- but since this is a basement level production, I doubt I'll have lawyers clammering for copywrites... More on this later.
The Olympic torch passed through Capitol Hill this evening. I missed it - but there seems to be alot of buzz in the air on Broadway. It's artic cold outside right now - which could mean snow... Who knows, perhaps the snow day is at hand....

Thus Spake Momus... His thread this month is jarry and all over the place (and with the usual flaky egoism taking center stage -- I can't help but think these memoirs to be sounding more like someone trapped in an Ashram than the Surrealist provacatuer we've been digging on for some time)... Oh well, the pictures are quite lovely -- and he does dredge up timely debate over the arts (and why get involved - esp. w/my currently courting a degree in I.D.) - it's definately food for thought...

MLK day, and the one day I shleppe to the library after work to look at Cheever stories (for the film project)... It's closed, which is a short story in itself. I'm almost beside myself as the deadline for the proposal is looming and my mind (like it is with all project based phenomena) is completely drawing blanks. Maybe I'll do one based on those police reports you read in the stranger - "Are you the one's who gave my daughter the dope?" That's a movie in and of itself, aside from being a good Frogs song.
Issiah called in sick - so I'm trainerless tonight. Which is ok because now I don't have to scramble down there and can go a bit later... but alas, i also have to be at work at 7am tomorrow, so I can't wait until the wonderful witching hour to get my workout...

Now I've seen everything...Check out this New Age Gem to relieve something....Uhhhhh yeah. Should I be concerned that they're using payments?

I'm thawing out fish and going to cook it. In the meantime, I'm reading the latest online site that features avatar-sex, or that is - virtual (Videogame) chat. Sheesh - if you watch the preview like I did, you quickly find out how much more sexier Pacman is to these folks (they all look like Pornstars as rendered by a team of Korean Anime artists then sent through a pixelator). Odd. Oh well, the internet's about giving something for everyone...
I'm currently trying to brainstorm over short story idea's for the upcoming Dogme feature. I'm reading Rodrigo Rey Roysa, which Lyle loaned to me - but in half-joking, we thought a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys adaptation might be more entertaining. In any case - we've got to make this cheaply, easy, and under 20-30 minutes ...Oh yeah, and subscribe to the tenants of Dogme 95. More on this later...
Oh...and a little girl saved a rare species of blonde hedgehog today somewhere in England.