there's a christmas tree behind me that's pretty and makes me feel good. happy kwanza everybody.

and by "ewan-jude ATTACK" i mean when ewan and jude rush into my bedroom in the middle of the night very soon and jump me... they're coming.. very soon.

for all of you post-lacking fiddledeepoos - a tip. as i have proven below, there are more than a few times when you don't feel like you have anything to say, and you maybe think of some little thing that feels like you'll have to force to get every drop out of it but then when you actually START WRITING it becomes this huge thing because your mind travels much better than you ever could.. so.. just sit down and start on something every week (or more!) and you shall see... it'll stop yer damn ruts. i am right as always.

so i saw Elephant today - the new gus van sant movie about the columbine shootings, i'm not sure if it's supposed to be an actual recreation or if it's just an interpretation, it was very interesting, and really scary. frank, i wasn't as shaken by the actual shootings nearly as much as the first hour where you're following people and you have no idea if you're going to see the killers and they're going to open fire now.. or now.. or now.. jesus. THAT is suspense. when you first see them walking up in their gear i had this huge rush of fear sweep over me, it terrified me. you feel so vulnerable throughout this movie. i didn't like the shower kiss, it said nothing about anything and it seemed like van sant playing with us, with the other gay references it just felt forced. and i don't think i like how he ended it either. but then how the hell could you end that? so, a very unique movie-going experience.

the previews were great, i got to see the preview for the next charlie kaufman movie. god bless charlie kaufman. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, starring jim carrey, kate winslet, kirsten dunst, elijah wood, and mark ruffalo, looks fantastic. go to imdb.com (link to your left! ; ) and find a trailer that works for your computer, there's a bunch. directed by michel gondry who did human nature, a not fantastic movie but he also did a bunch of great music videos for massive attack and bjork (the music video goddess). redeemed! and so i got on an imdb search craze, checking how wes anderson's doing - he's working on another great bill murray movie, the life aquatic, due out fall of next year, lots of great repeating actors from the last two films, fun fun. which got me thinking about bill murray. he's really incredible. i looked at his movie list and, with minor exceptions here and there, he really has had great taste in movies, especially in the last five years. and he's going to be the voice of garfield! that's so great. i love you, bill, i hope you win the oscar.

eagerly awaiting my ewan-jude ATTACK..

so here's my dream last night: i'm going with kristin clark to a sort of wshs reunion at marcus sobering's house, a huge mansion and i apparently wasn't invited so everyone looks at me funny - and for some reason her bag is full of candy and i eat some only it's laced with what i understood was ecstacy or something but it is no good feeling i feel, more a sickly drunkenness and i am in a stupor for a long time in a back room. during this time of darkness i am miserable and overly aware of the boys around trying to avoid me, including chase bernstein, who is hardcore avoiding me in the most offensive way, and this is depressing. ok but then! i gain full consciousness and who walks by but.. yes.. of course.. brian lacey. lol. (seriously, what the hell is going on in my head? i'm going to reread this a few years from now and laugh hysterically at this obsession i have developed COMPLETELY WITHOUT MY CONTROL) so he's grown up some and i say "wow, you're taller and manlier" and he stops to talk to me and it's all great. and there's some kids at my feet, including alan who's sitting indian style like 3 feet away and i've been given this opportunity finally to tell brian about my craziness about him but i'm embarrassed so i kind of lightly nudge alan with my foot and go "could you go.. over there.. maybe.." and he knows what i'm about to do so he's laughing at me. so then brian and i sit down and it's easy to talk to him, he's very welcoming which is a relief, and i start in with my "you know, i have to tell you something.." and i start real slow "i've been... having... (long pause)" and brian goes "dreams? you've been dreaming about me?" "yes! oh my god, how bizarre, yes i've been having dozens of dreams about you, what is going on? because see meghan flocken had this crush on you in 9th grade and i didn't really see it then.." and he makes this disgusted face, i have no idea what that's all about, but it's certainly not good for me, and i start in again "and then you and brittany had that fling which just set the wheels turning in my head i guess.." and he opens his mouth to say something that i know was going to confirm or deny whatever he felt about me when suddenly i hear live's lightning crashes... it's my fucking alarm. jesus christ. i quickly turn it off and try to force back into the dream, i can feel my mind pushing it along but it's not the same and fuck i've got to go to the early showing of elephant. jesus. how shitty is that? what the hell was my head doing the other 7 hours of sleep? i shake my fist at the sky! ok. so good luck tonight, eh?

i love BJORK - that song Pluto, it's grating but i kind of love it, it makes you jump around and want to scream - Bjork you make me jump around and want to scream!

i wish i could figure out how to write a screenplay.

i just watched mrs. parker and the vicious circle for the 4th time this year - and it makes me talk like that and want to write like that, but i haven't written a goddamned thing in years really and i'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't a completely absurd notion to begin with, like everyone who knows me is kidding themselves or i'm not in on the joke yet - obviously me and groucho are right there together on club membership - i would never be satisfied with anything i put out there, i'm sure. but couldn't i just write a stupid action movie and get a quick mil? that sounds.. soul-selling. so struggle for greatness and achieve nothing or sell my soul and buy a damned car? not sure what to think of that. yknow i'm still completely entangled in teenage crap fantasy storylines that pander and go nowhere interesting - it's such shit. i've been guzzling gatorade all day. i can't take my drink anymore? eat beforehand next time i guess. i just got an IM from someone wanting me to meet them behind the bleachers after class. in a pretty blue hyperlink. i wonder what they'll think when i'm not there? brian lacey kissed me hello several times on my cheek and then i chased him around new york because a malicious female soccer player spoiled my good time and told him my obsessive everything. he had shoulder length hair and was very small and frail and there was a tenderness to him that i never saw in waking life. those that actually know this boy read this and think what the hell because really this brian only exists in my subconscious mind and the reality, which i'm slowly forgetting, is likely completely different. it's like hearing someone's fantasies about your 10th grade math teacher - like, "what?" i fit into jeans now that i didn't quite fit into 2 months ago. my evil plan. i bend my fingers together. if this changes everything i'm going to absolutely murder everyone and then myself real quiet like. "i wore my heart on my sleeve like a wet red stain." let's go out and dance like we mean it.

i am completely in love with the new alicia keys song "you don't know my name" - but the video is even better. starring.. mos def as her love interest. damn. i liked him before but.. nothing like this. that's one sexy boy. check out that video.

mission completed!

i'm pretty sure i'm getting four A's this semester, v.nice, couldn't expect anything else from a bonehead really, i feel much more learned on the topic of religion, and thankfully my views were not skewed so much as they were strengthened, a good all around time. still, a couple of great kids i will miss and hopefully i have this class with nate next semester and the newfound crush jeremy (i love that name - the name of my first boyfriend in kindergarten, jeremy engles) is hopefully not completely lost to me, tho surely won't hear from him next semester, maybe down the road in future artsy fartsy classes. i really don't want to lose touch with nate, i feel very close to him tho i couldn't tell him that because he finished his final before me and skeedaddled. nate and i should be very good friends for a long time.. if all goes according to my evil plan.

Let some kind saint hold you
It's not love now I'm just through
let hope go, it's a crutch
let this just be new

let old aching be dust
little sage around new doors
oh, there I am, there I am!
this my little relief

to face unaware.. the plans that we share... walkin in a winter wonderland... doubleyewwwwss....


i can't believe the last samurai was that good, frank, what with all the reviews. i really wanted to see it before the critics ravaged it.. still want to see bad santa even, but i'm really just holding out for return of the king and GET THIS it's a melody lovefest christmas (!!) ->>> EWAN AND JUDE ARRIVING THE SAME DAY.. with big fish and cold mountain opening christmas day as it is scheduled.. i am salivating already. i've decided that my ultimate threesome twosome would most definitely be ewan and jude.. (making homer salivating sound) - cuz imagine.. they're old friends, i bet they've made out before, they get very drunk, ewan loves to get naked and jude's just a little slut, they both have tons of experience making out with men onscreen.. oh lawd.. maybe i'll submit this to the make-a-wish foundation... there is a twinkle in my eye.

i hope this is working

sleigh bells ring, are you listenin...

in the land... snow is glistenin...



i continue to have dreams about brian lacey and fantasize about him daily in very distracting ways that almost make me crash my car.. hey now. BRIAN I JUST WANT TO MAKE OUT WITH YOU AND SEE WHAT IT'S LIKE FOR CHRISSAKE

if i don't move, he can't see me...


blogger was acting up yesterday when i had all this stuff to say but i'm going to try here.. first i have to try a "MANOOOVAH" and see if i can gut this thing for the betterment of all.. sing christmas carols while i do this..

and just to gloss over the psychotics - here is the thing i've been trying to email you, alan, because apparently it got lost in the blackhole that is the internet - roger ebert's review of lost in translation that i love so much.

He gave it.. ****

"The Japanese phrase mono no aware, is a bittersweet reference to the transience of life. It came to mind as I was watching "Lost in Translation," which is sweet and sad at the same time it is sardonic and funny. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson play two lost souls rattling around a Tokyo hotel in the middle of the night, who fall into conversation about their marriages, their happiness and the meaning of it all.

These conversations can really only be held with strangers. We all need to talk about metaphysics, but those who know us well want details and specifics; strangers allow us to operate more vaguely on a cosmic scale. When the talk occurs between two people who could plausibly have sex together, it gathers a special charge: you can only say "I feel like I've known you for years" to someone you have not known for years. Funny, how your spouse doesn't understand the bittersweet transience of life as well as a stranger encountered in a hotel bar. Especially if drinking is involved.

Murray plays Bob Harris, an American movie star in Japan to make commercials for whiskey. "Do I need to worry about you, Bob?" his wife asks over the phone. "Only if you want to," he says. She sends him urgent faxes about fabric samples. Johansson plays Charlotte, whose husband John is a photographer on assignment in Tokyo. She visits a shrine and then calls a friend in America to say, "I didn't feel anything." Then she blurts out: "I don't know who I married."

She's in her early 20s, Bob's in his 50s. This is the classic set-up for a May-November romance, since in the mathematics of celebrity intergenerational dating you can take five years off the man's age for every million dollars of income. But "Lost in Translation" is too smart and thoughtful to be the kind of movie where they go to bed and we're supposed to accept that as the answer. Sofia Coppola, who wrote and directed, doesn't let them off the hook that easily. They share something as personal as their feelings rather than something as generic as their genitals.

These are two wonderful performances. Bill Murray has never been better. He doesn't play "Bill Murray" or any other conventional idea of a movie star, but invents Bob Harris from the inside out, as a man both happy and sad with his life -- stuck, but resigned to being stuck. Marriage is not easy for him, and his wife's voice over the phone is on autopilot. But he loves his children. They are miracles, he confesses to Charlotte. Not his children specifically, but -- children.

He is very tired, he is doing the commercials for money and hates himself for it, he has a sense of humor and can be funny, but it's a bother. She has been married only a couple of years, but it's clear that her husband thinks she's in the way. Filled with his own importance, flattered that a starlet knows his name, he leaves her behind in the hotel room because -- how does it go? -- he'll be working, and she won't have a good time if she comes along with him.

Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" was about a couple who met years after their divorce and found themselves "in the middle of the night in a dark house somewhere in the world." That's how Bob and Charlotte seem to me. Most of the time nobody knows where they are, or cares, and their togetherness is all that keeps them both from being lost and alone. They go to karaoke bars and drug parties, pachinko parlors and, again and again, the hotel bar. They wander Tokyo, an alien metropolis to which they lack the key. They don't talk in the long literate sentences of the characters in "Before Sunrise," but in the weary understatements of those who don't have the answers.

Now from all I've said you wouldn't guess the movie is also a comedy, but it is. Basically it's a comedy of manners -- Japan's, and ours. Bob Harris goes everywhere surrounded by a cloud of white-gloved women who bow and thank him for -- allowing himself to be thanked, I guess. Then there's the director of the whiskey commercial, whose movements for some reason reminded me of Cab Calloway performing "Minnie the Moocher." And the hooker sent up to Bob's room, whose approach is melodramatic and archaic; she has obviously not studied the admirable Japanese achievements in porno. And the B-movie starlet (Anna Faris), intoxicated with her own wonderfulness.

In these scenes there are opportunities for Murray to turn up the heat under his comic persona. He doesn't. He always stays in character. He is always Bob Harris, who could be funny, who could be the life of the party, who could do impressions in the karaoke bar and play games with the director of the TV commercial, but doesn't -- because being funny is what he does for a living, and right now he is too tired and sad to do it for free. Except ... a little. That's where you see the fine-tuning of Murray's performance. In a subdued, fond way, he gives us wry faint comic gestures, as if to show what he could do, if he wanted to.

Well, I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters. I loved the way Bob and Charlotte didn't solve their problems, but felt a little better anyway. I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we're not allowed to hear it.

We shouldn't be allowed to hear it. It's between them, and by this point in the movie, they've become real enough to deserve their privacy. Maybe he gave her his phone number. Or said he loved her. Or said she was a good person. Or thanked her. Or whispered, "Had we but world enough, and time..." and left her to look up the rest of it."