Seeing alot of movies lately... Last night I rented Donnie Darko... A rather excellent, yet complex film. It's somewhat hard to classify - but here goes: Think Back to the Future if written by Don Dellilo with a dash of Ordinary People and J.D. Salinger thrown in - all of it set in 1988. The director does an amazing job of capturing real teen angst - and the year I graduated: I was 18 at the time the movie was set and I too thought that a) the world was going to end or b) I was completely crazy. (*Note: I now know for a fact that a) the world will end - sometime... and b) I probably am crazy, but I'm too tired to act on it.)
In any case - today was to be my garage sale day, but a coworker is having a family emergency, so duty calls. Not terribly bad as I need to get some sh** done anyways. Besides, I've not gone through my crap yet to see what I need/want to sell... (Hell, I still can't get into my storage because I've lost the key... Why do I complicate things like this? Sigh... Anyone have a pair of bolt cutters?)

With all the current unrest in the world, you can at least count on the grim fact that people will bet on anything... Yes, that is a very grim story indeed...
In any case - I watched the Anniversary Party last night, acted/written/produced by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming. It was a good stab at Hollywood flirting with dogme style... The plot revolved around a married couple and their guests interaction at an Anniversary Party. The character development was good (probably because it was essentially actors playing actors) and dialogue that was non-scripted was great... however, the scenes toward the end tended to get a bit too Edward Albee (the drug induced night scenes seemed to be the turning point and the film launched into high drama mode at the end...) Anyways - worth a rent. (Hmmm - I wonder if I should bag my reviews page and just start posting here...I seldom see movies, etc...)

Today was H-O-T, hotter than hades and Georgia Asphalt combined... I was sweating profusely throughout the day, especially with some ill timed walks... The problem with the Wick boys is that they have overactive sweat glands. Even looking at something hot makes me start sweating buckets, and sometimes it get's to Chris Farley level of sweating. I sincerely hope the cold wave comes in this weekend and we get some variance in the weather. Hot days like these are going to drive me insane...
I'm booking some trips this week for July. LA first week, Portland the second and then to Bend for a week of R & R w/my peeps (hi peeps! I'm coming home!!)...
In the meantime, you can all ponder one of the latest inequities in casting for Hollywood Films:
Apparently Hollywood cannot define it's correct bird species and has been using the wrong birds... Pam Shaw are you reading this?

Sorry to have lapsed again last night... I was up late watching the Quay Brother's Institute Benjamenta... It was a slow moving film, about a man who enters some kafkaesque school of Servitude, and slowly watches the organization crumble while everyone learns "the one lesson". Being a Quaye bro's film - you don't have any idea what in hell is actually going on, but it looks beautiful. What is with me and absurdist parables?

Something I learned today - I need to push my face back while I'm lifting... I scrunch it up and thus build the muscles around my eyes... This leads to lines and perhaps a big unibrow to match. More importantly, I learned about my stomach muscles and how I can keep them from throwing out my back... Issiah says it will take some time to focus those things and just put them on autopilot, but it does amaze me how much the human body is made up of various parts.

Speaking of - I was perusing the books dealing with Artificial Intelligence and Cloning. In terms of ethics - I go back and forth on the issue personally, although - it's already the pandora's box left wide open. People will inevitably do something foolish with good intentions and - oops - there's the first cloned human. Isn't it cute? Don't you want to take it home? Every home could have one... I wonder if this dwelling on cloning came from seeing Star Wars II last friday? (Yeah, I finally saw it at Cinerama - in the very front row because I came in very late. Needless to say, I could see Natalie Portman's blackheads I was that close to the screen)... In any case, the last few scenes seemed to have all the government characters (the morally ambiguous good guys) scratching their heads looking out over a sea of clones... Yoda then making some grim assessment that the "darkness has fallen" (reminding us of grim reactions following Hiroshima for some who actually grasped what the new technology actually meant...) Same thing for cloning. They've unleashed it... What next? But I'm getting too deep here... Bioethics and Star Wars will make a good film crit' for some struggling film student, but I'm tired and hungry and want to eat my cloned hamburger...

Remind me never to do that again... That being consume 4 daquiri's the night before at Beate and Irene's party and then go work out the next morning... Ohhh I am feeling soooo nauseaus at the moment. Oddly enough, I woke up with the hangover... Drank a whole pot of coffee, got over the sick slope... then went to the gym and had all the toxins re-released...
In any case - the party last night was fun... And they opened the roof up (which was never opened up when I lived there)... Unfortunately, I seemed to have gotten entirely too drunk to remember much of it... When will I learn?
In any case - I cleaned yesterday, so I can rest up and have a lazy afternoon in the sun. Read the New York Times, especially this article on David Bowie! (Yayyy, new album! New Tour!) The great thing about Bowie is that he's neither new school or old school - he's simply Art School...