And so . . . I left a big scary face on the woman's desk. She wasn't in her office, so I left the flyer there, waiting, staring . . .

Last night I dreamt I was in an elevator with Neil Gaiman (who would probably have been in a lift). The thing got stuck and we had a few nervous moments of listening to it creak and moan before the cable snapped and we plummeted eleven storeys.

We actually survived, although Gaiman was very quiet from then on. I left and went to my high school where I was barely in time for some class. But my teachers, a pair of large women with cunning faces and old grey robes, told me I was too dirty from the accident, and told me to go home and take a shower.

On my way, a girl wearing an enormous yellow wig and a red cheerleader uniform jumped on my back. She laughed in my ear as I kind of staggered, and she said, "Remember me?"

My mind automatically started running through the names and faces of every girl I'd known in high school, but I never precisely pinned down her identity. Looking back, her costume was reminiscent of Karen from Street Fighter: Alpha.

Anyway, I told her I had to go home and shower. She whispered wickedly; "Let's go together!"

But then I was suddenly home--although it didn't resemble any home I've had in waking life--and she was gone. I was watching a cheap movie made in the mid-1980s. It starred Ian McKellen and Andrew McCarthy and had a soundtrack by Howard Shore. I remember thinking it wasn't very good.

hulllruuuuuunnthh . . . I'm not meant to be up this early. It's NOT NATURAL. How I hate Thursdays. And this looks to be the Thursdayingest of Thursdays.

I couldn't get to sleep, of course . . . I ought to've just stayed up all the way. It's worse somehow to settle into a deep sleep with your measly four hours only to have to be jarred up again, even if it is by the Hope Sandoval/Jesus and Mary Chain song "Somtimes Always".

I finished the Boschen and Nesuko page early, but was not allowed to savour that. No, I had to be asleep. But first I had to find a way around my printer whose lack of a fresh fifty dollar ink cartridge made it feel justified in not printing out a black and white image. I finally figured that it wasn't printing the shades of grey, so I very quickly drew up an entirely black and white image for the Acorn Review flyer I'm supposed to deliver to-day, or thereabouts. Why don't I feel so enthusiastic about the Acorn bloody Review right now? Why am I not sending my stories off to more real magazines? Do I mean "more" as in quantity or are they more real somehow? I'm sure they are more real. The Acorn Review is unreal. Hoo-ha.
So for the Acorn Review--sweet, bitter calcium drop on the brain tongue just to keep typing it--for the Acorn Review last night I hastily drew a face . . . staring with big, dark googily eyes at any hapless passers-by, telling them they have to submit to the Acorn Review, but something horrible shall probably happen to them (the passers-by) anyway.

After that I read a bunch of Scott McCloud comics. Now there's a site with great content. That's what I need; content.

Then I lay awake thinking about the nature of comics. I thought about how comics relate to films and figured the writer is closer to the director while the artist is closer to cinematographer. I thought about how I wish I could work faster and better. I thought about people like Jhonen Vasquez who wrote and drew their own big comic books, and I wondered how long it took them put out a 24-or-so page book. I felt ashamed that the best rate I seem to be doing is sixteen pages a month. I tried to think about what I could take out of my day, but there's not much left to take out. Iiiissssssh. I thought about the sound "Iiiissssssh."

The two predominant things I felt yesterday; happily creative and bitter. I thought about whether I wanted happiness or the continual pursuit for creative fulfillment. I concluded that I don't think happiness is possible, and I'd better get used to the latter, although I think part of that latter is its inability to be comfortable. Like a toothed inner-tube.

I don't feel like listening to myself. The gods clearly meant for me to be asleep right now.

I wonder if I'm the only one who's discovered that mozzerella cheese is best served with mustard?

So many film stars didn't survive the advent of talkies.

Mall Mexican restaurants are depressing.

There. That was cohesive, wasn't it?

All right, back at it. Just three pages to go . . .

I've been working on Boschen and Nesuko every night, wanting to complete at least one page a day. This has regularly taken until 5am, but last night I somehow finished at 2:30am. So last night I watched Body and Soul, a film from 1947 about a boxing champion played by John Garfield.

It was pretty good. A typical story of athlete fights for friends and family, athlete gets corrupted by fame and fortune, athlete has climactic fight where he might salvage both his soul and the faith of his girl. But it's put together by a very smart screenplay. You're never really sure what who's gonna say next, but it always seems natural. My favourite scene was Peg (Lilli Palmer) answering the door early in the morning to find Charlie (Garfield), her estranged former fiance. The conversation they have is really neat, particularly the part where Peg mentions not being "very bright" that morning because she'd worked late the night before. Just a nice moment of a character's "real" life making itself known subtly in the dialogue.

I'm a lot more tired right now than I oughta be . . .

Tim and I went last night to see Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman. At last, the good blending of the musical with the martial arts genre that I've long dreamed of has finally occurred. It's only too bad Fred Astaire wasn't in it.

Partially, it was a good, old fashioned samurai movie with quick but deadly action sequences interspersed with story and character development. As Roger Ebert notes, the director, Takeshi Kitano has a very keen sense of timing, so this old format seems very lively. But it doesn't stop there, folks, no. There're also choreographed farmers, smacking dirt in a rhythm to correspond with the movie's soundtrack. And the musical number at the end is fiercely smile-inducing. Even the homophobe jackasses sitting behind me went quiet, evidently at a loss for words, or even guffaws.

I knew they were homophobes because of their reactions to one of the film's characters, a transvestite. When I could get past my irritation at the two chuckleheads, I found myself pleased at the all-to-rare example of a transvestite, or other gender altering characters, being portrayed respectfully in a period piece.

Gods, movie audiences are getting too fucking annoying. Behind the homophobes were another couple of noisemakers. One of them commented to his companion, "I don't understand anything that's happened so far." I wanted to turn around and scream, "Well then you must be AN IDIOT!"

Er, so . . . Zatoichi is excellent. Go see it. And don't murder anyone in the audience.

I've gotta learn to pace myself. I find if I actually work too much on my web comic, I end up behind the next day. It's very strange. It looks like I'll have the next chapter up a week from to-day, though.

I've been desperate for unsweetened beverages lately. They're hard to find in this country. I swear we were a nation of humming birds in a past life. So to-day I went to Mitsuwa and bought a jug of unsweetened green tea. I may go back to-morrow as it looks as though there's a sale on ramen. A man was standing next to the stand yelling at passers-by in Japanese. When I smiled at him, he giggled oddly. So it's probably good ramen.

I watched the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines last night and, holy fucking gods, Batman, what a great movie! Not a single scene is wasted. From what looks like an actual elephant hunt to the scene where Allan Quatermain discusses reasons for seeking the mines with Mrs. Curtiz.

Now, I've not read the book and right now I'm suspecting that's a damn shame. The instincts with which the story was put together, placing you early on into violent chaos, and then taking you aside and having Allan explain about the jungle's meaningless cycle of death . . . Great stuff for rumination, but it becomes a hard punch when combined with how fucking realistic the movie seems--I mean, the fact that it was made in 1950 is sort of astounding. Real Africa, yes, that'd happened before, but exclusively real natives, bloody real stampede, and real knowledge . . . Well, I haven't seen everything yet but it all seemed pretty groundbreaking.

Deberah Kerr and Stewart Granger were both great. And great sports, too, for all the shit they obviously really had to go through, including Kerr falling face down in a swamp. She looked genuinely miserable. I mean, there's no logical way she could have not been going through hell. And Granger's Quatermain was just bad-ass.

When they visit one village and Quatermain makes to trade salt and meat, Mrs. Curtiz says she thought it was always beads that were traded. Quatermain explains that salt is incredibly valuable and adds, "They're not stupid, you know."

Wow. In 1950, after the Tarzan movies and the like where the natives are portrayed as stiff particle board brains, these real natives are correctly observed--and in many ways throughout the movie--as being very much not stupid indeed. Hot damn, I'm glad I watched this movie.

I watched the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines last night and, holy fucking gods, Batman, what a great movie! Not a single scene is wasted. From what looks like an actual elephant hunt to the scene where Allan Quatermain discusses reasons for seeking the mines with Mrs. Curtiz.

Now, I've not read the book and right now I'm suspecting that's a damn shame. The instincts with which the story was put together, placing you early on into violent chaos, and then taking you aside and having Allan explain about the jungle's meaningless cycle of death . . . Great stuff for rumination, but it becomes a hard punch when combined with how fucking realistic the movie seems--I mean, the fact that it was made in 1950 is sort of astounding. Real Africa, yes, that'd happened before, but exclusively real natives, bloody real stampede, and real knowledge . . . Well, I haven't seen everything yet but it all seemed pretty groundbreaking.

Deberah Kerr and Stewart Granger were both great. And great sports, too, for all the shit they obviously really had to go through, including Kerr falling face down in a swamp. She looked genuinely miserable. I mean, there's no logical way she could have not been going through hell. And Granger's Quatermain was just bad-ass.

When they visit one village and Quatermain makes to trade salt and meat, Mrs. Curtiz says she thought it was always beads that were traded. Quatermain explains that salt is incredibly valuable and adds, "They're not stupid, you know."

Wow. In 1950, after the Tarzan movies and the like where the natives are portrayed as stiff particle board brains, these real natives are correctly observed--and in many ways throughout the movie--as being very much not stupid indeed. Hot damn, I'm glad I watched this movie.

I watched the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines last night and, holy fucking gods, Batman, what a great movie! Not a single scene is wasted. From what looks like an actual elephant hunt to the scene where Allan Quatermain discusses reasons for seeking the mines with Mrs. Curtiz.

Now, I've not read the book and right now I'm suspecting that's a damn shame. The instincts with which the story was put together, placing you early on into violent chaos, and then taking you aside and having Allan explain about the jungle's meaningless cycle of death . . . Great stuff for rumination, but it becomes a hard punch when combined with how fucking realistic the movie seems--I mean, the fact that it was made in 1950 is sort of astounding. Real Africa, yes, that'd happened before, but exclusively real natives, bloody real stampede, and real knowledge . . . Well, I haven't seen everything yet but it all seemed pretty groundbreaking.

Deberah Kerr and Stewart Granger were both great. And great sports, too, for all the shit they obviously really had to go through, including Kerr falling face down in a swamp. She looked genuinely miserable. I mean, there's no logical way she could have not been going through hell. And Granger's Quatermain was just bad-ass.

When they visit one village and Quatermain makes to trade salt and meat, Mrs. Curtiz says she thought it was always beads that were traded. Quatermain explains that salt is incredibly valuable and adds, "They're not stupid, you know."

Wow. In 1950, after the Tarzan movies and the like where the natives are portrayed as stiff particle board brains, these real natives are correctly observed--and in many ways throughout the movie--as being very much not stupid indeed. Hot damn, I'm glad I watched this movie.

Intending to go to bed early last night, I began watching Quo Vadis at 2am . . . and watched the whole thing. Three hour long movie. Damn.

I like long movies, though. I like when the cinematic narrative gets to stretch itself out comfortably. There ought to be more three hour movies.

Quo Vadis had a lot of week points. Robert Taylor, as the lead, is astoundingly bland. There's an irritating pro-Christian thrust that does even Christians a disservice. In an earnest attempt at converting Taylor's Roman commander, and obviously intended as a portrayal of righteous evangelism, Deborah Kerr and the numerous Christians fail to even really explain their philosophies very clearly. Yet we're meant to feel sorry for Taylor when, even though he's had the word "Christ" repeatedly shoved in his face, he resists becoming a Christian.

So the most likeable characters have nothing to do with Christianity. Mainly I'm thinking of Peter Ustinov's Emperor Nero. It's fun to watch the deluded, bad artist cream-puff and his cadre of fluffers. Ustinov's absolutely wonderful. He's positively soaked with self-adoration and self-pity.

A part from this, the movie was fun to watch simply because it was Ancient Rome with action, great costumes, great, huge, expensive looking sets, intrigue, and all that. Usually unrealistic lighting pisses me off, but here the vibrant Technicolor made everything look like Pre-Rahpaelite paintings. So I forgive it, even for a big banquet scene where a single wall sconce in the background is supposed to explain to us why the room is so bright there aren't even any shadows.

Anyway. I'd better start drawing, now.

Watched an episode of Ducktales a few minutes ago. I had a revelation.

Scrooge McDuck says he's happy to have Launchpad back. Launchpad asks if he's still gonna get a raise.

Scrooge says, "I was already paying you twice what you're worth!"

Launchpad says, "All right, Mr. McD. I'll come back to work for you only on the condition that you pay me half of what you were paying me before."

And they shake hands.

When I was a kid, I never got the joke even though I saw the episode over and over. Which probably goes to show you what my math grades looked like. Anyway, this morning, I saw and understood.

After Ducktales was an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (I was watching Toon Disney). I want a show that gives you that same, sweet, pastel, adventurous feel as Pooh, except with a lot of blood and horrendous violence. Before Toon Disney, I was watching Taxi Driver.

These are the kinds of things my brain can do at 5am. I'll get back to you when I'm fully brain certified again . . .

I called this picture "Flower Eater";

I drew it. It's appearing in the new issue of Acorn Review, Grossmont College's litarary magazine. I suppose it's nice having it in the magazine and stuff. It'd been nicer if the other five submissions I'd told had been accepted had also appeared in the magazine. And it would have been really nice if another, really shity drawing of a faerie, appearing elsewhere in the magazine, which I did not draw, were not attributed, in the magazine, to me.

Julie Cardenas, the lady who runs the magazine, seems to feel really bad about it. And she's a really nice lady but . . . I'm still mad. Really mad.

It's not as though it would have been difficult to contact me to verify if a drawing, which they had obviously been confused about, was mine. It's obvious that they guessed. Which is sloppy and unprofessional. Of course, it is only a community college literary magazine . . .

It's stupid to get upset, I guess. No one reads the damned thing anyway . . .

To-day shall be about evenly divided between drawing and writing. I'll do the writing first, since I can do that at Starbucks . . .

Not feeling great. I think it was the breadsticks with Frappacino I had earlier. Perhaps it was the new Wal-Mart next door. In any case, gahk.

Last night I watched the absolutely wonderful Shanghai Express. A few minutes in, I realised I wasn't in the mood for a movie but I still loved it. I finally understand Marlene Dietrich's charm--before this I'd only seen her in Manpower (made in the early 1940s) and Witness for the Prosecution (made in the mid-1950s). Both were good movies. Dietrich was subtle and cool in the former and scarily, hideously thin in the latter. But in Shanghai Express, made in 1932, she was absolutely ravishing. The film, and Dietrich in particular, is beautifully shot.

It also was nice to see a Chinese movie star, Anna May Wong, in the 1930s. And playing a really cool, really deadly character, too. Reading up on her, I discovered she was in a mid-1930s production of A Study in Scarlett. It is a Sherlock Holmes movie, and A Study in Scarlett is the title of the first Sherlock Holmes novel but, of course, similarities end there. It's too bad a faithful adaptation seems destined never to be filmed, what with over-zealous political correctness. So what if it demonises Mormons? The Church of Latter Day Saints actually is kind of scary.

No offense to any Mormons reading. We're all of us kind of scary, after all.

Got my copy of Aladdin Sane back from my sister yesterday. It sure is nice to hear it again, nice and loud. I went out to get coffee earlier and I was originally planning on only going to a Starbucks a few blocks away. But "Watch that Man" convinced me otherwise and I had to drive much further in order to listen to several other songs.

To-day, I draw. I'm gonna try sticking to a regime of at least one page a day. I drew a page last night and I was surprisingly happy with it. Usually I can't draw as well at night, for some reason.

Not much time to-day so I'll just share some screenshots of some of my Morrowind characters;

The first one is Raequeoa, a breton vampire mabrigash weilding Gimli's axe. The second is Rey Inna, a wood elf thief wielding a civic knife.



This is my most powerful character, Grushenka, named after a character in The Brothers Karamazov. She's weilding Narsil and is dressed without thought for aesthetics--with the exception of the pauldrons, she dressed in the best armour in the game. And the pauldrons are second best. Everything she's wearing is available in un-modded Morrowind. This is her with and without the Masque of Clavicus Vile.

I was awoken from a dream about a woman petting a porcupine while talking on the phone by my ringing cell phone. My sister was on the other end of the line but who knows what animals were near?

I got to thinking last night about how I never watch my DVDs. I then proceeded to have a very, very nice viewing of Blue Velvet.

David Lynch movies are best taken all in one gulp. I find if I watch half of one, then wait for even a brief period, the second half loses some of its lustre. I believe this is in some degree true of all movie, but particularly true of Lynch's. The man's tapped into the secret logic at the back of our brains and everything we see and hear must naturally follow something previous to it. It has to unscroll like a dream.

And last night was able to watch Blue Velvet straight through with no interruptions and almost no intrusive sounds from my environment. You see, because I have this belief that David Lynch movies ought to be viewed in something like a vacuum sealed environment, there's some kind of Murphy's Law thing goin' where I'm almost never actually allowed to. There was one point last night where I could hear my grandmother upstairs using the bathroom, and it kind of broke up the very delicate flow of Sandy describing her dream about the robins. And later, Lucky the cat started freaking out when he noticed that my attention was absolutely focused on the screen (and away from him). But for the most part, it was pretty pure.

When I was younger, there was a lot more I didn't understand about Blue Velvet. I loved it, but I enjoyed it for some slightly different reasons. The primary difference being my understanding of Frank and Frank's relationship with Jeffrey.

Frank was impressively frightening to me in high school as a very ingenious sort of monster. Everything he did was unpredictable and had something to do with hurting people in ways and at times I wasn't expecting.

By now, of course, Frank can't help being less predictable to someone who's seen the movie several times. I respect the fact that he's frightening, even though he doesn't frighten me as much now, but I'm also now able to see him as pathetic and, in this way, I'm able to see his connexion to Jeffrey.

The scene where Frank says to Jeffrey, "You're like me!" was one I've always loved and always felt had a deeper resonance, but for a long time I never understood the specific dynamics.

But now I can see it--Jeffrey's huddled there all vulnerable and larva-like in front of Frank. And Frank sees a chomping caterpillar like himself. The same soft, greedy little baby Frank behaves like when he's raping Dorothy.

Perhaps it's a fault in the movie that I never really feel like Jeffrey could be a bad guy. But then again, I love Jeffrey's innocent voyeur detective thing so I don't think I could call it a fault.

Anyway, however you slice it, it's a great movie.

So my site's gotten a number of hits. Many of which are probably due to Caitlin very kindly mentioning it in her blog. I hope people've enjoyed it. I'm gonna try to keep it updating once a month, hopefully even more frequently than that. Thanks for looking at it. Tell your friends, enemies, and appliances.

I want to go back to bed. I probably will, too. Last night was the first night of Fiction Writing Class, which is a class that I think shall be useful because I think the teacher's . . . er, what's the most diplomatic way of saying this . . . got some decidedly unwise opinions and prejudices regarding the nature of fiction. I find I work well, or at least interestingly, with an adversary. So there's a use for a fiction writing class; battle!

To-day's been good so far, particularly for a Thursday.

Yes! Finally! The fucking thing is up. My web site, I mean. Drop in, please.

I was originally gonna charge money for some of the content, but I started to feel like a bastard. It's just not enough to charge money for, I think. I'll probably try to sell stuff on it eventually, though, because I'm sort of poor.

But, please, enjoy. Now!

A couple days ago, I finished reading the advance uncorrected proof of The Dry Salvages.

Written by Caitlin R. Kiernan, a lady whose work is invariably good to read, this thing is an absorbing shade, a terrifically fascinating story that successfully demonstrates the awesome potential for fear inherent in the literally strange. Performing the deliciously ingenious trick of taking us beyond what we hate or fear or know, and reminding us that the darkness always waiting under the trap door is absolutely alien. She reminds us how little we know of the truly alien--of what the word "alien" really means, after all--and brings us to the logical conclusion inside ourselves, which is fright.

The story is of a team of scientists who're sent to a distant moon called Piros, where they are to rendezvous with another ship, one which has already met with some interesting misfortunes. The story is told in first person narrative, a form which Caitlin has expressed some displeasure with as she feels it's inherently artificial. No one could possibly remember everything everyone said, or all of the small minutiae that are typically revealed in fictional first person stories. I don't agree that this weakens the form, but Kiernan's dislike of it has fostered some fascinating techniques that very cleverly become part of the story, almost subverting the readers' conscious mind.

So the story is not only that of the scientists' strange and terrible encounter, but also of a whole human world where some of the more quietly terrible faults of the species have risen to the fore.

What's wonderful about this book is the elusive definability of what is frightening, even at the same time that the threat makes a fierce impression. It's even fiercer, in fact, because of this. There are no psychological safety barriers the mind can construct against something more mysterious than wind, or currents, or light.

Anyway. An excellent book.

...

Gods, writing in this thing always feels more serious at night . . .

Yesterday, I was sure it was gonna happen. But, of course, it didn't.

You can't blame me for thinking it. It seemed full proof, and with contingencies.

Sunday, Tim's sister informed that banks will take birth certificates and California IDs as secondary IDs. And on Monday morning, I finally got my registration for Grossmont college.

So that's three possible IDs. The odds of this thing not happening, I thought, were too fucking slim.

Turns out, the only appropriate part of that expectation was the "fucking."

I paid for my classes okay (230 dollars for two classes, sheesh!), and then wandered over to the ASGC office, where one gets one's school ID . . . to find that it was closed until August 16.

"Okay," thinks me, "'tis time for plan B. And, if that doesn't work, there's plan C."

I decided to try the birth certificate first, as that would be the easiest to acquire--the California ID required a trip and probably a long wait at the DMV.

So to Washington Mutual I went with my certificate that said I been born . . . I stepped up and shook hands with a pretty young woman named Erica and said to her, "Now, I've tried this twice already so before we talk about anything else, I have to ask you . . . is a birth certificate an acceptable form of ID?"

She gave me a wincing smile that was a very clear "no." Talking further with her revealed that a California ID would also be useless.

Ah . . . ah . . . ah . . . well . . . I guess I'll just . . . wait for . . . August 16th . . . and see what goes wrong then.

Still no fucking checking account!

I got up early on Tuesday, all ready to go ahead with the whole she-bang. But no, I did not have the fall registration thingy for my school, I could not get a student ID, I did not have two IDs, I could not get an account, could not get my web site going, and I will not make a tired Monopoly joke here.

Arrgh! This . . . is . . . really . . . getting . . . under . . . my . . . fucking . . . skin!!! I wanted this site up a week ago. Everything's done. Graphics. Content. Voodoo. Crap. But this lousy speed bump is too big!

Two forms of ID. It kills me. I've got a government issued driver's license. Ought to be enough. I mean, if they think I'm forging that, then how the hell would they trust a student ID for fuck's sake?!

Oy. GLLLAAAAGH!!!

Not gonna get my checking account to-day. I'm gonna wait until Monday or Tuesday. I'm gonna wait until I feel good about depositing ten dollars. What's all this for anyway, you may wonder? Why, for my new web site!

Yes, it's truly pathetic but I've gone all this time in cyberspace without having any means for paying for things online. And, yes, it's really pathetic but, at twenty five years old, I have never had a checking account in my life. I've never written a single check. I've always cashed paychecks and have spent cash . . . Well, I guess all that's finally gonna change.

I heard a great story at Fashion Valley to-day.

Fashion Valley is a slightly concentrated example of San Diego's strange fushion of snobbish decadence, beauty, and truly pathetic creatures. As malls go, it's really very nice looking, with earth-tones and green trellises on the upstairs and . . . Well, a thousand times easier on the eyes than nearby Mission Valley Centre with its bold, mismatched Crayola paint job.

I was at Fashion Valley with my family this morning--they'd invited me yesterday to go with them and eat at a restaurant called The Cheescake Factory. Yes, they make great cheesecake, but all I had were avacado egg rolls and a portabelo mushroom burger. The avacado egg rolls were definitely the best part.

Anyway, another feast for the eyes at Fashion Valley lately is the legion of terrifically tiny skirts being worn by seventy-five percent of the girls. It's amazing what goes for respectable wear these days.

In Charlotte Russe with my sister, watching her buy one of the denim variants of these, I remarked that I'd seen more of these skirts to-day than I'd seen in any one place in my life.

"What?" she said, looking up at me uncomprehendingly.

"Yeah, NASA," I said.

"Oh . . ." she replied and went on with what she was doing. I suppose it's uncharitable of me to share that anecdote, as my sister is pretty smart. Really, I think it was more an issue of her knowing I was being weird and not caring.

Yes, perfection, or a conception of it, is visible everywhere at Fashion Valley. These skirts make you think about how nice it would be for these girls to sit on your lap but they're in terrible colours. And yes, there's probably an annoyingly unconscious sluttiness that goes along with them.

I saw a dress I sort of liked at Charlotte Russe, on a rack. It was black and its hem looked sort of like it was shredded. I pointed it out to my sister and all she had to say about it was, "Ew!"

Three inch skirt--good. Big black dress--just poor taste.

So on the way out, near Cheescake Factory again, we ran into my parents' friend Denise and her daughter, my sister's friend, Rachel.

Plain, pleasant conversation insued between them all as I stood silently among them, slowly feeling heat from the cloudless sky cement all my insides into a single melted organ mass.

Then Rachel told a great story. It seems that for one reason or another, a few days ago, she needed to have a urine sample for something at school. So she got the sample ready and put it in her backpack. Upside down. With the lid on not so tight.

When she stood up to leave class, there was an embarrassing mess.

Now, the best thing about this story was hearing it being told by one of the pretty-perfect denizens of Fashion Valley, giggling about it as a quaint little misadventure.

Rage! Anger stuff! Growl, spit, etcetera!

I was trying to open a checking account . . . But it turns out I need two forms of ID. Arrrrrrrrgh! This upsets me more than I would have thought. Mainly because it means I have to put an indefinite hold on a project I've been working on for a while . . . Damnit. I have a driver's liscence. There has to be something else I've got that says I'm me . . . The lady at the bank ran through ideas. Passport? No. Military ID? No. School ID? Yes, but it's incredibly old, which caused me to wonder why I haven't been getting new school IDs. If I have to wait 'til fall, when I start classes, in order to open a checking account . . . Well. I'll be annoyed.

And last night I watched Oklahoma!. The songs were good, some of the performances were decent, and I was oddly turned on by the ladies doing ballet in their knickers. But even though a number of the reviews I read praised the film for its bold, rich colours, the colours were actually a weak point, in my opinion. I didn't catch it in the credits, but I'm betting it was probably Eastman or something, and not Technicolor. Either that or it was a bad copy of the movie or it was done intentionally and it's just my wonky taste at fault. In any case, everything look faded and yellow, like it'd been soaked in butter. It made me uncomfortable to watch, and oddly reminded me of being left out in the hot sun for a very long period.

Following the studios' tendency in the fifties of placing a slightly irrelevant dance sequence into the centre of all their musicals, Oklahoma! had an almost good dream sequence detour that temporarily substituted the lead actors with actors who could dance. Which I don't think ever quite wins over the viewer--at least, it certainly didn't work on me. There's also a substitution of mood and style in this sequence, making it feel like a scene from an almost completely different movie. Which would have been okay if it had been extremely good. But it wasn't good at all. It was almost good.

Good, hot, fresh drip coffee often reminds me of penguin beaks. That's what I'm drinking right now--coffee.

Er, I didn't go to the Comic-Con yesterday. In one way, I'm glad because I only have five dollars left to-day. On the other hand, I'm angry for missing out on Claudia Black, Ben Browder, David Kemper, and a number of other things . . .

So how did I get from forty to five since yesterday? Let's see . . . Well, fifteen dollars was spent on gas. Three dollars was spent on a venti Americano with an extra shot. I think I spent three dollars earlier on Saturday on a latte . . . In the evening I spent seven dollars on burritos for Trisa and I after a confusing coffee attempt in Hillcrest. On the way home, realising I had no cold drinks with which to wash down the burrito, I spent two dollars on a bottle of Arizona's green tea with honey. Then there're the coffee, scone, and ginger ale I got this morning.

So. I've spent thirty-four dollars out of forty . . . and to-day, I have five dollars . . . Damnit, I ought to have six, grr . . . I'll never be a responsible adult.

Did you know I'm perhaps a Nebari? I'm perhaps named Leh'agvoi. To perhaps prove this, Mella drew this picture of me (which is certainly very flattering);

So. The second day of the Comic-Con--or, as it's familiarly known, the San Diego International Comic-Con--is over. Actually, for me, it's day one, as I opted not to go on Thursday.

There's something unnerving about a place where people who write or draw really cool, widely loved things are just milling randomly about in a crowd of several thousand cosplayers and variously odoured boys and girls. This struck me as I turned a corner on the main floor and found myself a few steps from Neil Gaiman, who immediately begun speaking to a little girl he called Zoey.

I hung around a little with some vague idea of telling him he kicks ass, but, as he continued talking to Zoey, I walked away as I had begun to feel like a filthy stalker. I went upstairs thinking about how such an encounter first stuns, then depresses me with its fleeting, insubstantial quality. That's really why, I think, I don't have very much interest in waiting in line for autographs.

So I was thinking this, walking along in corridors between the rooms upstairs, when I turned another corner to find four or five people having a conversation with Stan Lee. Or someone I was dead sure was Stan Lee, though I couldn't find his name in the programme. In any case, it was enough to make me start feeling a little faint, so I took myself to the deadest hallway I could find and just stood around for a while.

One of the most extraordinary and wonderful things about the Comic-Con is that, even though there're thousands of people there, there're still plenty of cool, air-conditioned quiet spots. And none of the security people seem to mind if you just set yourself down on the floor, anywhere.

I suppose air-conditioning is important when you insist on wearing as much black leather as some of the people (including Neil Gaiman) insist on wearing. I saw voluminous and heavy leather being put to use in a large assortment of nice costumes; a very perfect Jack Sparrow costume that I saw posing in front of a life size X-Wing with Boba Fett, a very decent Vampire Hunter D costume worn by a young woman, and of course any other shape or configuration of leather you could imagine (okay, maybe not every). There were also a large number of people dressed as members of the Crazy 88s, two Links from Legend of Zelda, and a female Sephiroth.

This time out, the only person who came with me to the Con is my friend Tim. When I met up with him after my persistent, accidental celebrity encounters, we made our way to one of the anime screening rooms and watched a decent episode of Ranma 1/2 from its seventh season (a better episode than many of the ones I remember from the fourth season), and a classic episode of Urusei Yatsura. And then from there we went to the Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean panel devoted to discussion of Mirrormask. Clips were shown and it looks like an incredibly beautiful movie. And Gaiman revealed that the Death and the High Cost of Living movie is now under the jurisdiction of New Line, which provoked an awful lot of applause. And I felt almost inexplicably happy about it, too.

And now I'm debating whether or not it's a good idea to go back to-morrow, with only around forty dollars left . . .

Last night I dreamt something about purchasable personal wings or something . . .

I watched The Magnificent Ambersons, an Orson Welles film that is also, as just about every write up about it I've found on the internet has said, a terrible tragedy. I knew from the beginning of the movie that, after Citizen Kane, Welles was never again granted full control over any of his movies. I knew there would be wonky edits and maybe even blunderingly inserted scenes. Oh, and it was so . . .

Partial scenes of vicious cinematic genius are followed by standard, plain-Jane 1940s swill. The ending, in particular, feels horribly wrong, and even worse after having read about the original ending. The excised scenes were apparently destroyed by fire, which some claim was without malice towards Welles and simply a matter of spring-cleaning RKO Studio's storage. Others say differently.

Somewhere in this footage is a frightening, big, alien story about the world changing into something where wires and noisy, steaming machines are commonplace, slowly, innocently propagating over old, beautiful homes and families. There're terrifyingly ingenious shots of an early automoble trundling over a snow coverd hill under an enormous, skeletal tree . . . Agnes Moorehead in a black dress screaming as she fumbles through shadowy halls . . . An old, dying man with oddly poetical, senseless words . . .

Looks like I'll be spending lots of time at Starbucks to-day. I have to drive my aunt (who works there) to and from.
 
The Comic-Con looms closer. I wish I had a boatload of money.
 
Discovered my copy of Nosferatu is missing the last four minutes . . . I need more tapes . . .
 
Time to go . . .

I had a dream involving clones, television, people with wings, and sky cities. There was some kind of double cross going on, and some of the clones had no brains and consequently wanted to eat brains they found. But otherwise, these clones seemed pretty nice.
 
Well, my sister read Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts" and said "it wasn't that gross." Which I suppose was inevitable. Teenagers . . .
 
I had bitter suspicans confirmed a few days ago when I finally found time to watch the subtitled version of Spirited Away and found that the screenwriter(s) for the dubbed script indeed took some incredibally stupid liberties. In a couple places, they even put in lines where there were none before.
 
The first time I noticed this, was when Chihiro first sees the bath house. In the English dubbed version, when the camera's not on her face, Chihiro exclaims, "A bath house!" When I saw the movie dubbed, I immediately suspected this line hadn't been there originally. And, indeed, it was not. The reason for its inclusion was obvious; the screenwriter felt us Americans would become confused and therefore angry and growly because we were looking at a building whose function we could not instantly ascertain.
 
Perhaps there're even reasonable people who agree with this argument. As for me, I say poppycock. Later dialogue does, after all, reveal it to be a bath house. And anyway, in America, the very concept of a bath house is foreign to your average youngster, so the line very likely would become the cause of confusion, rather than a deflection of it. After all, by this point, the kids have already been forced to just be cool with a lot of foreign things and imagery. The line would probably make them feel like they're supposed to know with the place is right now.
 
A worse instance came later when Sen and Haku part at the bridge after having visited Sen's parents. After crossing the bridge, Sen turns back and sees a distant white snaky shape in the sky. In the dubbed version, when the camera's off Sen's face, we hear her say, "Haku?" In the original language version, she says nothing.
 
Okay, now this is one hell of a liberty. At this point in the film, we're clearly not meant to be certain that the thing is Haku. It certainly seems to come as a revelation to Sen when she discovers it again later. And anyway, it seems ludicrous for someone, when seeing a dragon in the sky, to instantly assume it's another manifestation of the guy she was just talking to.
 
Oy . . . Well, I'm glad I have the subtitled version. The actors are all much better, too, and Yubaba looks like she's actually saying her lines.

Not much to say. Been drawing things. Drew better yesterday than I drew to-day. But I drew more to-day, perhaps unfortunately. Maybe it'll look better once it's inked . . .
 
Yesterday I had an iced venti vallencia Americano. It was pretty good, and pretty cheap. I think I have enough for another to-day, although maybe I'll get it without the vallencia . . .

Trisa and I went to Borders yesterday, where we and about three hundred other people listened to Chuck Palahniuk read "Guts".
 
If you've ever read "Guts," then right now you're likely raising your eyebrow at the idea of this piece being read aloud in a public bookstore where there were in fact five year old children wandering around. Yes, it was glorious.
 
This story, which made even Poppy Z. Brite uncomfortable, has, according to Mr. Palahniuk, made more than twenty people black out, six of which occured last night at the selfsame Borders' reading. One elderly man, in another city, was even found in a pool of blood after having passed out, hitting his head against a shelf. I assume he didn't die, but Palahniuk didn't say.
 
It even made me uncomfortable, and has had some lingering effects as occasionally I catch myself to-day wondering about things that might be shoved up my ass for various effects.
 
The story has to do with guys experimenting with different ways of masturbating. Palahniuk's stated intention with this story, as well as with a number of others that shall be included with it in a forthcoming collection, was to attempt something like what Edgar Allen Poe was most famously concerned with in his tales--to make us uncomfortable by using subject matter that we all deal with in some way or another in our lives but never, ever talk about. Honestly, when Palahniuk said this, I don't think it was seriously possible for him to carry it off. But, well. He did.
 
If you want to read it, it's online in a number of places, including here. I don't know if it's with proper permissions anything but, then, I don't know if it isn't . . .

Yesterday I saw Night Nurse and Spider-Man 2. They were both good.
 
Funny--the theme in Spider-Man 2 of "with great power comes great responsibility" reminded me of Mary of Scotland. Peter Parker felt he had to give up a bit on his personal desires in order to serve his city, somewhat in the same way Queen Elizabeth felt she had to give up her womanhood in order to serve England.
 
Hmm.

Too bloody hot around here . . .

Watched John Ford's Mary of Scotland. It starred Katharine Hepburn in the title role and she was very good. The costumes and sets were gorgeous and Ford's use of shadows and silhouettes is brilliant.

There must've been a big pressure in those days to have movies end on an upbeat because this one's ending is a curious moment where Mary's lover is dead, her kingdom and child under the control of her enemies, and she herself is walking up to the scaffold. And even so, she gets a hopeful smile on her face as the music swells.

Just a few minutes earlier, Queen Elizabeth visited Mary in her cell to gloat. Even though the actress playing Elizabeth was clearly instructed to portray her as a villainess, it's hard to ignore the nobility and wisdom in her words to Mary as she makes the case that because Mary wouldn't sacrifice her lovelife for the greater good of her country, she's lost everything. Elizabeth talks about how she sacrificed everything else about herself for the good of England.

It's downright funny that the movie wants us to think something great is happening when Mary realises aloud that she wins because Elizabeth, with no heirs, will be succeeded by Mary's son, James. Yeah, congratulations, Mary. There may be mayhem and murder as a result but . . . well, at least you've won. Er, sort of.

It's interesting to compare this movie with the newer Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchet. Many of exactly the same events occur, but there's a better truth in the actors' motivations.

But, again, Mary of Scotland was good. Costumes, castles, John Ford . . . You know, I have to wonder if Ford new exactly what he was doing. If he wanted us to see the foolishness through the movie glamour . . . Really, it's not very unlike John Wayne's character in Ford's The Searchers. Wayne's character was a psyhcotic racist, but he's played like the hero half the time. What an interesting period for moral ambiguity in Hollywood history . . .

A friend told me a tale of an Australian who went to Thailand and discovered a strange and insanely potent energy drink. Seeing the opportunity for this thing overseas, the Australian carbonated and diluted it, and sold it in America under its original name, which is Red Bull. The American Red Bull is about a third the potency of the original.

Recently, my friend put in an order to Thailand for thirty two pounds of the original concoction. It arrived days ago and, being my friend, he offered me a bottle of the curious liquid.

I took it from my refrigerator this morning. The small glass bottle was of a shaded amber hue, like the ware of an evil apothocary. Eating first two oatmeal granola bars, I drank the stuff.

Like the American version, I find this stronger Red Bull tastes not unlike melted Fruit Stripe Gum or what I imagine praying mantiss blood would taste like. Sadly, it seems to have had no effect on my wakefulness . . .

Yesterday, I watched Dragon Seed, starring Katharine Hepburn and Walter Huston with their eyes taped back so that they could play Chinese farmers. Wrong? Er . . . Well, yes.

Robert Osborne, in the host segment, explained that in those days, part of the reason movies were made at major studios was so that they could promote their stars. The fact that they had no Asian stars meant that the cast had to be entirely Caucasion. And that's . . . what's with the eye taping . . .

Oddly enough, what the strange makeup succeeded in doing, more than making the actors look Chinese, was to make them look Romulan. And, not for the first time, it occurs to me that the alien species on Star Trek were based to a significant extent on the portrayal of foreigners in old Hollywood.

I know I'm not the first person to suggest that. I can't be. But, boy, is it ever apparent in Dragon Seed. Even the dialogue has the peculiar, almost lyrical formality of Star Trek aliens.

But if one somehow manages to set aside feelings about the inaccuracies of a movie made entirely by people foreign to its setting and culture, there are some really good qualities. The art direction and costumes were quite beautiful and even seemed authentic. Scenes of dialogue between Hepburn and Huston were very effective. Sure, they were wearing silly makeup, but they were also both incredible actors. They created something with shear, brute, actor force.

Made in 1944, the movie was meant to show American audiences how horrifically the Chinese were being treated by their Japanese captors. But some of the best scenes are good for avoiding any attempts at harsh realism, as when we get to watch Hepburn stealing into a Japanese occupied mansion to put poison in their feast ducks.

...

Last night, I dreamt I was watching a trailor for a movie starring Johnny Depp. It took place in the early 1930s and Depp was taken to prison for several years. He emerged with an insane grin, telling people he'd met an angel and he was going to create a comic serial about him. That angel's name? Superman!

The headache still hasn't gone away but, you know, I refuse, just refuse to take headache medicine. Because . . . because . . . uh, I don't want to.

Watched Rear Window to-day, which was more fun than I'd expected. It had an incredible set, more impressive even than The Terminal's set.

Don't feel up to much to-day accept watching things. I've already been adventuring throughout town with Trisa, since 6am. And I am sleepy.

Started reading Peter Straub's Shadowland this morning. It started off with a very cool story about the King of Cats.

I'm not sure if my head hurts because I haven't had enough caffeine or if it's because I've had too much. I'll drink more and see what happens.

Been listening to the new Cure album. The more I listen to it, the more I like it.

I was in Mission Valley a short while ago and watched a flock of emergency vehicles going down Friars Road like a calamity had occured. Parts of the road were blocked off where it looked like a bad idea to block off a road, where a few minutes'd probably meant cars were backed up through three stoplights. So I had a burrito.

To-day, I've argued why Threshold's better than Donnie Darko.

Watched and was, perhaps inevitably, disappointed by Badder Santa yesterday. It was basically funny and all. It was basically good. But when you put the word out that your movie is gonna be super-supremo naughty, and even naughter in a special DVD unrated version . . . Well, you better damn well be naughty. But what was the "worst" this movie was able to do? Was it Santa pissing himself on his mall throne? Was it the topless girl in the background of the stripper bar? Damn it, I don't know. I don't what they meant for me to recoil from but, gods, if this is the sort of thing we're reduced to in naughtiness . . . Well, someone's gotta go to Hollywood and knock some heads.

I wanted to see Lauren Graham naked! How do you even do one of those "she just happened to decide to wear her bra the whole time she was having sex" scenes in a movie like this one was supposed to be? I mean, damnit!

Hmm. Trisa and I had really bad omlettes yesterday, but a really nice waitress. No, we didn't have the waitress that way. You see? The casually perverted faculty of the brain has advanced too far.

Where is my naked Lorelei Gilmore?

...

Stolen from Mella:


You are a No-Rules Rebel!


In A Post-Apocalyptic World, Who Would You Be?
brought to you by Quizilla

My arm hurts, I'm hungry and . . . hmm . . .

Went to guitar lessons with my sister yesterday. Kept screwing up in ways I wouldn't have if I couldn't practiced this shit on my own. Oh, but no, class, we gots to do this all together . . . I hate classes that aren't all lecture. I hate being forced to work with people I don't care about.

What to do to-day . . . I have something like no money. I have two hundred fifty dollars and a car registration that's asking me to pay it two hundred fifty dollars.

On the other hand . . .

If I wait 'til Monday, I'll have another hundred. And the late payment fee thing shall be ten dollars. So two hundred sixty dollars.

These are dangerous thoughts.

Oh, I want a mocha . . .

What a bad time to redevelop a taste for the mocha. Guah . . .

Awoke at 9:30pm last night and went back to sleep at 4:30. In between, I watched a hezmanna of a lot of Farscape with Trisa, who's at last taken an interest in the show. We reached the end of the first season last night, and I'm excited about how much I know the show improves in the second season.

Afterwords, I went home and, before going to bed, watched an episode of Case Closed, an anime series being shown on Adult Swim that I'd caught part of an episode of a week or so ago, and thought had seemed very good. It's got a good, casually strange concept; a detective gets turned into a child, who seems to be really good at football/soccer. Now he secretly solves crimes, not letting anyone know that he's got the brain of an adult detective.

The show has a couple of nods to Sherlock Holmes, which I liked. I watched a full episode last and, once again, I was made to appreciate how brilliant Arthur Conan Doyle was. Case Closed was good, but it wasn't very difficult to figure things out before the kid did. That never happened to me with Sherlock Holmes. I guess I've been spoiled . . .

Notice anything odd about this "metal" bikini? (from Leia's Metal Bikini ).

Awoke at 9:30pm last night and went back to sleep at 4:30. In between, I watched a hezmanna of a lot of Farscape with Trisa, who's at last taken an interest in the show. We reached the end of the first season last night, and I'm excited about how much I know the show improves in the second season.

Afterwords, I went home and, before going to bed, watched an episode of Case Closed, an anime series being shown on Adult Swim that I'd caught part of an episode of a week or so ago, and thought had seemed very good. It's got a good, casually strange concept; a detective gets turned into a child, who seems to be really good at football/soccer. Now he secretly solves crimes, not letting anyone know that he's got the brain of an adult detective.

The show has a couple of nods to Sherlock Holmes, which I liked. I watched a full episode last and, once again, I was made to appreciate how brilliant Arthur Conan Doyle was. Case Closed was good, but it wasn't very difficult to figure things out before the kid did. That never happened to me with Sherlock Holmes. I guess I've been spoiled . . .

Notice anything odd about this "metal" bikini? (from Leia's Metal Bikini ).

Good mornin' . . .

I woke up at 4am with the sickening realisation that I'd slept nine hours. The realisation that I was not going to be getting any more sleep and that the day, for better or worse, had begun. So here I am, drinking the Komodo Dragon blend Starbucks coffee I found in the refrigerator.

So what've I been up to for these quiet days? Lots of movies of course . . . Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Coffee and Cigarettes, Fahrenheit 9/11, Boom Town, Strange Cargo, The Terminal, and Manpower. All of them were mostly good, except Strange Cargo was rather disappointing. But even it had its moments.

For fun, I'm gonna try to link all of these movies . . . Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was an interesting little Tennessee Williams drama that wasn't as good as A Streetcar Named Desire. It starred the pretty Elizabeth Taylor and the scorchingly gorgeous Paul Newman, who not only looked better than Taylor, but was a better actor. You've probably heard it here first. In later life, as a cool looking old man, Paul Newman appeared in Road to Perdition, a film directed by the same fellow who directed American Beauty, which featured Thora Birch, who was also in the wonderful Ghost World with Scarlett Johannson, who was brilliantly partnered with Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

Bill Murray was one of the highlights of Coffee and Cigarette's, a film that was the culmination of twenty years of short films directed by Jim Jarmusch about people doing things whilst enjoying coffee and cigarettes. Over the period of twenty years, see, Jarmusch would occasionally bring aside a couple actors and make a little short film with them on the subject. The first film, starring Roberto Begnini and Steven Wright, won a prize at Cannes, but I only found it mildly interesting. It felt contrived to me, and not nearly as good as some of the later pieces. I enjoyed the dialogue between Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, which was a scene something like watching exotic animals circling each other in fascinating lighting. But my favourite segment was Cate Blanchett in duel roles; as herself, and as her somewhat bitter cousin. Blanchett carried off the performance of two different people talking to each other so well that it was breathtaking. And the subtility of the characters was better than the broader humour seen in some of the film's other segments, like the Tesla coil scene with The White Stripes. Cate portrays with surprising delicacy the star's awkward feelings about being caught in the strange eyes of the common woman.

The scene where Bill Murray converses with GZA and RZA of Wu-Tang clan was strangely darling, right from the moment where Murray drinks straight from the coffee pot. Generally, the movie was good, although I didn't enjoy it as much as Jarmusch's Mystery Train.

Cate Blanchett has been a favourite actress of mine for a while. She appeared in the reasonably good The Talented Mister Ripley with Matt Damon who, most sentients know, is best friends with Ben Affleck. Affleck had something of a cameo appearance at the beginning of Fahrenheit 9/11.

I like Micheal Moore. He twitches oddly when he's trying to sit still. I admire that in a man.

And I admire this film. It didn't tell me much I didn't already know, in terms of raw information. But he brought into it the emotional element that is lacking in simple reports of what a fuckhead George W. Bush is. Yes, I really think a lot of people need to see the Iraqi man holding the mutilated corpse of a baby, asking the camera what the child had done to deserve this. We do need to see the man being taken from his home by U.S. soldiers without being told why. We need to see all of the soldiers coming home to the U.S. with missing limbs. We need to have our eyes and or ears open to what's happening. This film does that.

Unlike some people, I even like Moore's humour. It provides a useful function. Without it, there're a lot of people who would never sit through a movie with images like what this movie has. And that would have meant a lot less people who're informed.

One of the most important issues with the Bush administration is its connexions with oil dealing and trade. It seems to have pushed these fat-cats into an unimaginably loathsome, cut throat mentality. And it was odd that the next movie I enjoyed was a film called Boom Town.

Made in the early 40s, it took place in the early 1900s and cast Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy as pennyless oil prospectors. They swiped equipment from Frank Morgan (who played the Wizard of Oz and who I'd seen a week earlier in The Mortal Storm, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan as Jews escaping from Nazi Germany on skis--but that's another kettle of fish) to drill on a spot where Tracy thinks there might be oil.

The film also features Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lemmar, both of whom looked delicious. It also had a court room scene at the end where Spencer Tracy talked about the importance of preserving our land's oil as much as possible, so it wouldn't be so scarce for future generations. Aw, such innocent times.

Clark Gable also starred in the next movie I watched, Strange Cargo which, like I said, was disappointing. It featured two favourite actors of mine; Peter Lorre and Joan Crawford. In fact, it was the first time in years that Gable had worked with Crawford, after the two of them had frequently been paired in dramas of the 30s. The set-up was promising--in some exotic country (which is never clearly identified and could've been either France or India), Gable's a convict and Crawford's possibly a call girl (the Production Code prohibited the film from being too clear about that). Peter Lorre's possibly a pimp.

Unfortunately, somehow it was decided this movie would feature a conterfeit convict who turns out to be an incarnation of Jehovah, in order to push a religious message on the film, and ensure that, as per the rules of the Production Code, Gable turns himself back in at the end after going through a lot of trouble to escape.

Peter Lorre also appeared in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. John Huston later directed The beautiful 1952 version of Moulin Rouge (as far as I'm concerned, the best movie to bear that title), which featured Peter Cushing in a small role. Cushing appeared in Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, directed by George Lucas, who at about the same time, co-wrote the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, directed by Steven Spielburg. Spielburg also directed the movie I saw yesterday, which was The Terminal.

The Terminal took place almost entirely on a very impressive set, which looked exactly like an airport terminal. It must've cost a fortune to build.

It was a cute movie. Sometimes too cute. But basically good and effective. I really liked the ending, which didn't make too much with the good-wins-hurrah business.

Okay, here's the long shot; The Terminal had the lovely Catharine Zeta-Jones in it. Zeta-Jones costarred with Rene Zellweger in Chicago. Zellweger'd been in Jerry MacGuire, which had Tom Cruise in the title role. Tom Cruise starred in Ridley Scott's Legend. Scott had made Blade Runner a year earlier; it had starred Harrison Ford. Ford'd had a cameo in Apocalypse Now, as did the great, recently passed Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando had been in Guys and Dolls with Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra had been in Some Came Running with Shirley MacLaine. Two years later, MacLaine was in The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder, who'd directed Witness for the Prosecusion about five years earlier. It'd starred Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. Around fifteen years earlier, Dietrich was in Manpower, the movie I watched last night (whew!).

Manpower was directed by Raoul Walsh whose best films, I suspect, I have yet to see. Manpower also starred Edward G. Robinson and George Raft. It was about guys who fixed powerlines when they broke, usually in dramatic thunderstorms. It was a great movie, though. Part action, part blue-collar comedy, part film noir. It certainly had the film noir quality in that I suspect it was partially inspired by the puritanical nature of the Production Code. It was inspired to show how sometimes life is really not so tidy and sometimes, in the end, there's very little us mortals can do about it.

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." -Sherlock Holmes

Evidently, a number of people in my family like to use the word "evidently." My mother's been driving me crazy by peppering her speech with it overmuch for months. Too much peppering. Sneezing peppering. Now this morning, my grandmother, recounting the boring events leading up to the finding of her lost keys, saw fit to goop on copious doses of "evidently." Where the hell did this come from? I'm starting to hate the sound of the word from my own mouth.

Last night I went to bed at the peculiar hour of 12. I woke up at 6:30am. This must be the most normal night of sleeping I've had in years. Certainly it's the strangest in recent days, which've seen me sleeping from 9am to 6pm.

So I walked to Starbucks, drank a mocha (with an add shot), ate a scone, and read a few chapters of Poppy Z. Brite's Liquor. Really a good book. It never occured to me that I'd have so much fun reading about a couple of guys starting a restaurant. But fun it is.

I don't talk much here about what I read, do I? Well! I've just finished James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Before this, the only other Joyce I'd read was the novella The Dead, and both works had something very concentrated about them. I was struggling to describe it to Trisa one morning, and the image that comes to mind is of Spider-Man's web shots--how they come out in a very neat violent line but kind of fan out at the end, suggesting that the cord is made up of many strands concentrated together. That's kind of what reading James Joyce is like for me. In any case, wonderful writing. There's actually nothing wrong with it. Almost too much nothing wrong with it--well, not really. What I mean by that is just that, er . . . Well, there's no fringe uselessness, or even what might seem to be uselessness in Joyce's work. Every line is so much the straight dope that sometimes I need to stop and catch a breath.

Anyway. I'm not used to being alive this early. I've an optimistic suspicion that I'll be more productive to-day. We'll see!

Snurched from Mella's journal;

"1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Make these sentences into a paragraph:
Book #1 -- first sentence
Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
3. name your resources."

"1801--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. In the meantime the sister woke up from the bewildered state she had fallen into after the sudden interruption of her music; after she listlessly dangled the violin and bow awhile in her slack hands and gazed at the music as though she were still playing, she pulled herself together, put the instrument in the mother's lap (the mother was still seated, gasping asthmatically for breath), and ran into the next room, which the boarders were rapidly nearing under the father's pressure. Not a very deep space, but long, the bar along the bridge side and the opposite all mismatched windows, looking south, past the piers, to China Basin. Then suddenly his eyebrows contracted, and with a brusque movement of his left foot he spurred his horse and galloped forward. 'I've done you before, haven't I?' it said."

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson
4. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
5. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

Well, that didn't make any sense.

Who's the naughty boy not updating his blog? Pontius Pilate! Oops, I mean Setsuled. Almost gave away my secret identity . . .

Seriously, folks, I'm feeling bleached. I drew a picture last night, first bit of productivity in "days". Why in quotes, asks you? Because of my weird ass sleeping schedule, because of meeting Trisa for dinner at 7am for days and waking up at 6pm. Pull it together, me.

Trisa drew a picture of me. I told her it looks a little like Lucien from Sandman, but that doesn't diminish me feeling happy 'bout it.

I think I have about 323 movies on tape that I've never seen before, and most days, I'm in the process of recording about three more. Yet, last night, I actually sat down and watched a movie I'd already seen before. I watched Time Bandits, one of Terry Gilliam's earlier films and a really good one. I love Randal's attitude--sure, God's fallible. But why get upset about it? Why not get stinking rich?

I love the anti-feel-good ending that feels oddly great. I love Kevin's stay with Sean Connery's Agememnon. I love John Cleese's naive, superficial Robin Hood who seems to be either a soft bellied coporate executive or a confused communist dictator.

Anyway, I slept 'til 6pm to-day, so I ought not to put too much time into the blog . . .

I have a feeling I'm not going to be very productive to-day. I've only just awakened, after having gone to bed at around 1:30. My head feels foamfull.

What movie? Did I watch? Brigadoon, a fairly decent musical fairytale starring Gene Kelly, Cyd Charrise and Van Johnson. Van Johnson was half-funny, half-pointless. Gene Kelly, as usually, made you wanna play along in whatever game he was playing. Cyd Charrise was speaking in a false Scottish accent, and not very well . . . But she was gorgeous, so it's okay.

Gene Kelly managed to tap-dance rather well on a dirt road. That was impressive.

I'm going to try to stay awake now.

Dreamt that a planet was discovered at the centre of our solar system, where we'd all supposed the sun to be. For some reason, what'd looked like a sun from a distance was in fact a planet similer to earth, covered with green and water.

With an old man, a raven, and a spaceship, I journeyed to that world. We wandered through vibrant green forests under a blue, sunless sky, finding no apparent sentient inhabitants. Then we came upon a very nice, large house of dark mahogany wood and various places to put scotch and bourbon. We wandered around in there, and stayed the night. The next day, we continued exploring the world.

...

Last night I watched Tarzan, the Ape Man. It was made in 1930, before the production code, so Maureen O'Sullivan got to look really gorgeous in a skimpy, shredded dress, confusedly handled by Tarzan. It was odd how much her screams sounded like the screaming apes clustered around them. Apparently, in 1934's Tarzan and His Mate, she even has an extended nude scene. Since 1934 was the year the production code was established, it gives a tantilising glimpse of what movies of the 40s and 50s--perhaps even society--might've been like if people'd realised from the beginning that the proposed code was in violation of the First Amendment.

Ah, well.

So, Tarzan the Ape Man. There were several moments in the movie that one might dismiss as racist, such as when Jane and her father's expidition are negotiating a lofty, hazardous cliff and one of the black men they'd hired to carry things falls to his death. Mr. Parker and Holtz seem far more concerned with the loss of what the man'd been carrying, although Holtz did add, as an afterthought, "Poor devil." Personally, I saw this more as an illustration of how hardassed the men were, and how pragmatic, rather than as casual racism.

Which is not to say there isn't racism in the movie. Much is made of the fact that Tarzan's white, for example, although Jane's father does have a line something like, "It doesn't matter what colour they are. They're all savages!"

Even so, I liked the movie. The scenes with the animals felt eerily genuine, as if Tarzan really was cooperating with the elephants and chimpanzees. I'm pretty sure that, in one scene, he's genuinely wrestling some lions. Of course, the poor animals must've been terrified going through whatever they'd been forced through to make them seem so canny for the camera.

I liked also how silent much of the scenes were of Tarzan and Jane hanging out in the trees. There was something truly animal about John Weismuller's Tarzan, something about the noises his body made scraping against the trees. This was one of those cases, I think, where Hollywood was blessed by the fact that it didn't know how to be as polished as it does to-day.

I suppose I've always had some difficulty with the Tarzan premise. I can never help wondering, "Why doesn't he have a beard? Why is his hair so perfect? Why does he wear a loincloth?" The answer to all of these questions, of course, is, "So he'll be presentable to the audience." I ought to read the book and find out if Edgar Rice Burroughs really meant it to be that way . . .

I made a new pin-up for Nar'eth. In the process, I learned a little about Indian jewellery and clothes.

I watched Forbidden Planet last night. Not a bad movie. It came from a time when space meant cold, weird, discordant electronic sounds. Which was kind of neat, I think, as I think it reflects the terrifying strangeness of being outside earth's atmosphere.

I didn't notice the whole movie that the story was based on The Tempest. Even though it very much was. With Robby the Robot as Ariel, which I didn't mind, even though I usually prefer to think of Ariel as a pretty girl, perhaps because of The Little Mermaid.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was that I didn't find the movie to be at all silly. I bet there're plenty of people who would but . . . I took it as seriously as it took me. Even though Leslie Nielson's flying saucer crew talked like the 40s movie crew of an American WW2 battleship. They even had a cook wearing an apron and a paper hat. In fact, I liked that.

I'm horribly sleepy. I didn't go to bed until 8am because Trisa and I met for breakfast--dinner--meal. And at 2pm I realised I had to wake up fully (I'd woken up briefly earlier to enlargen an eye) because I have to go to a guitar class with my sister.

I'm currently drinking bad coffee and there's nothing else to say . . .

And last night I watched 1947's Sinbad the Sailor, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.--who did a charming imitation of his father's almost ballerina-like athletic antics--Maureen O'hara--a strong jawed, red headed (the film was in colour) Irish lady playing a Persian Princess--and Anthony Quinn. It was a really pretty, colourful movie that seemed almost peculiarly faithful to the sort of Arabian fairytale upon which it's based. The special effects weren't always so special, but were also charming enough and effective in their way.

And what the hell else would I tell you, blog? Let's see . . . My venti americano looks like a Grecian column.

Ann Miller was a terrific dancer (I spelled her name with an extraneous "e" yesterday!). She was the opening act in the movie I watched last night, Kiss Me Kate. A George Sidney movie with music by Cole Porter, it was a very fun and well played out idea about adapting The Taming of the Shrew into a musical. Katharine Greyson was the lead, but Miller easily diverted my attention during her scenes.

And that's all I'll say right now.

Last night I watched the Gene Kelly/Stanley Donan film On the Town. It was shown as part of a tribute to the recently deceased Anne Miller. The only other movie I'd seen with Anne Miller was Mulholland Drive so, needless to say, it was fascinating to see her so vivacious and sexy (no, I don't find it an odd experience at all). And what an incredible dancer--she really ought to've had a larger role. I'd have loved to see her dance alone with Gene Kelly.

Frank Sinatra and Betsy Garret were also in the movie, and both did very well. Sinatra had that voice and that manner . . . you know.

I feel sleepy to-day . . .

Wednesday night I watched the first Bette Davis movie I'd ever seen, The Old Maid, a wonderful film based on a play that was in turn based on an Edith Wharton novellette. Of Wharton's works, I've only read The Age of Innocence. Comparing these two stories, there seems to be a common theme of an individual repressing his or her desires for their entire lives, never being granted the thing they want most before death. And every time the sacrifice is brought to a point, we see that the character has very good reason for sarificing him/her self, and we admire the character's strength for being able to do so.

Bette Davis was a very good actress. Knowing she was the notorious rival of Joan Crawford biases me somewhat (I love Joan Crawford), but I figure it's all water under the bridge--and, anyway, art ought to rise above such things . . . blah blah. Yes, Davis was great. And for some reason I was surprised by how slim she was.

Mirium Hopkins was also in the movie, having just begun to mature past the deviant moppet I loved her as in Trouble in Paradise, a film I've been thinking about a lot lately.

So why didn't I post yesterday? Well, after 6am Thursday, there was rarely a moment that I had any access to the computer. I didn't return until the following 3:30 am, when I found my aunt had been having troubles with the printer that I endeavoured to help with before falling unconscious.

And what was I doing yesterdy? I drove and wandered. Then hung out with Trisa, and played much Soul Calibur 2 . . . At last, a human person was willing to play against me! Such joy . . . and she wasn't a push over, neither. Sure, I won most of the time--but not all the time!

Last night I watched Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach, starring Robert Ryan and Joan Bennet. A very flawed film that involved a blind painter who Ryan's character suspects isn't blind and is played by a man who had no idea how to play a blind man. At least the movie had some good ideas, even if they didn't play out so well.

I walked to the bank to-day and could have sworn I saw someone I knew. I locked eyes with her and I'm still not sure if she recognised me or not, or if she was even the person I thought she was. Oh well . . .

It's only 6:30 pm--practically morning for me--and I've already been out to dinner with my family and angered them by asking why they follow the teachings of Sylvia Brown. It was kind of creepy the way my sister answered, as if it were a perfectly good reason, "Because we're programmed to." I don't normally discuss their beliefs with them, having learned long ago what a breach of diplomacy they considered it to be. But I guess it'd been so long since the last time that I'd forgotten.

I watched Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game last night. It was a fun diarama of chaos and people being cool and kind of stupid about the grave peril they're. My favourite line was when Marceau, the poacher, helpfully suggested to a man (whose name escapes me) that he shoot Octave for kissing his wife, only to have the man reply that he'd used up all of his bullets on Marceau for doing the same thing. It was like screwball comedy delivered with utter candour.

Now I feel like working on things . . .

Took the guy at Starbucks by surprise to-day when I ordered a grande valencia americano with no room for cream. It just struck me as I walked up to that little booth that calls itself a Starbucks at Parkway Plaza; why haven't I ever gotten flavour syrup in my americano?

So it's pretty good. It tastes a bit like hot orange juice.

Now, I draw . . .

Last night I watched John Ford's Fort Apache starring Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Shirley Temple, and John Agar. Temple was cute and adequete in another of her teenager roles. Wayne was quite likeable. But the best performance here was definitly Fonda's as the disciplined but overconfident U.S. colonel. It's a role where you could have very easily ended up despising the man but Fonda makes him more complicated than that. Really, the whole movie hinges more on Fonda's performance than anyone else's.

I taped the film off TCM and there was an introduction by TCM's film historian Robert Osborne, who usually has interesting things to say. he mentioned that Fort Apache, made in the late 40s, had the skewed morality regarding Native Americans common to westerns at the time. After watching the movie, I found it odd Osborne would have mentioned this because the film portrayed the Apaches in a surprisingly good light. There were even scenes of Captain York (John Wayne) defending the Chief's honour when the colonel suggested that all Indians, including the Chief, were mindless savages. In fact, the Indians hardly seem villainous at all, especially after the Chief's speech about how war is bad, but living in a state where women and children are dying because the U.S. government is neglecting them is even worse.

...

I had a minor triumph with HTML this morning, working on my new web site. Little did I know that for hours I was merely one, small tag away from having the tables I wanted . . .

I discovered, on Thursday night, that my last alarm clock, my phone, doesn't make any noise. This was unfortunate, since I had to be up at 6am to go to my sister's graduation, and then on to other things. So I knew it wouldn't be a good idea to stay up through the night, as I normally would. Fortunately, a search on yahoo! led me to a software alarm clock that even loaded up an mp3.

So, securing four hours of sleep, I awoke to "Kathryn" by Black Tape For A Blue Girl, and proceeded to my parents'. I then journeyed with them to the SDSU Open Air Theatre, the same place I saw Morrissey a year or two ago.

We sat in the sun and listened to more than six hundred names get called off and listened to bad speeches. The valedictorian's speech was amusing and, since he'd clearly meant it to be, was pretty good. The preceding speech, by the salutatorian, was another matter. She began with something like, "This year, we said farewell to six friends on the TV series Friends . . ." and I was thinking, "Please be a jest, please be a jest, please go on to say, 'But to us acedemics, this barely caused a ripple in our lives which were much larger, and now I'd like to quote from some truly great works of art . . .'" But, no. The conclusion of Friends became her metaphor for the graduating class. How so? Something like, "If we were all on a television series, I'm sure viewers would be just as sad to say farewell to us." This was delivered with no irony or really humour.

Gods. Are my expectations for humanity too high? I'm starting to think so. But my gut reaction at the time was, "this person is supposedly the second highest ranked student in the school. Is this really what's in her head? Can't we do better than that?"

Oh, we can. The valedictorian's speech was fine, after all. He was a person out to do something. He wanted to create a certain effect and did it. This salutatorian clearly had the stink of one who's far less interested in doing things than she was in getting things done. "Do this junk to get this grade, this title, this to pass go."

I said congratulations to my sister afterwards--everyone was too hot and tired to be particularly emotional. We went to a very nice restaurant right on the beach with a beautiful view called The Marine Room. The menu said Gregory Peck had eaten there once.

I asked my sister about the salutatorian and my sister had said that she had indeed known her and not liked her. My sister said the girl was constantly trying to show everyone how intelligent she was, "and," my sister added, "obviously she is . . ."

"No," I said. "Don't say it's obvious. It's definitely not obvious."

"Well, she has one of the highest GPAs--"

"That is not an accurate measure of intelligence."

I could see my mother and her exchanging one of those looks that says, "Oh, he's got a strange opinion again. Let's just let him be so there's no argument." Which, of course, implied they disagreed with me and I'm afraid propriety and peacekeeping have lower priority for me than the quest for illumination. I didn't think I was wrong, but if I was, I'd much rather have learned why than have to turn everything off. And if I was right, that there was something more important to learning than GPA, then it was certainly something my sister needed to take to heart, particularly, I figured, this day of all days.

So I said, "My whole point is that this girl's speech showed she wasn't very smart, and that the school system was in error."

No one said anything in reply, the subject was quickly changed, and I suppose I won't know if my words meant anything to anyone, but I figure that's as much as I'm gonna get out of it. I figure I did my duty, though.

We later went to see The Stepford Wives. Not a perfect movie, but it was a lot of fun.

Last night, I watched John Huston's Beat the Devil. It felt kind of like watching an Indiana Jones movie I'd never seen before. It was great fun with cool and interesting guys and beautiful and interesting women. The movie deserves more from me but I feel rather dead at the moment. Inexplicably sleepy . . .

Jennifer Jones was a adorable. Gina Lollobrigida was terribly sexy. Humphrey Bogart had noticeably bad teeth at this point but really seemed to be enjoying himself. And Peter Lorre was in it, because he seems to be in every movie I watch lately. Roger Ebert, in his Great Movies review, said Lorre improvised a lot of his lines in this movie.

In other news, the Starbucks at North County Fair, my favourite mall, has been suckicised. It now has the new machine, and its big comfortable chairs have been taken away. It was a disappointing sight. The triple latte I got was good, but only as good as most Starbucks'.

I have to get up early to-morrow for my sister's high school graduation. Oh, how the time flies. As Lorre said, "What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."

Now I think I'll draw things . . .

I have coffee and I've got Cherry Coke.

Last night I watched the 1960 Ken Hughes film The Trials of Oscar Wilde. Peter Finch played Wilde and, for the bulk of the film, did a reasonably good job. No one working on the film seemed to have the proper sense of timing to deliver Wilde's witicisms early on in the film. So badly were they delivered, in fact, that I was partially compelled to stop watching, out of respect for the late Mr. Wilde. But I stuck it out, partly because I don't believe in judging a work of art until you've seen the whole of it, and partly because I was still curious about where it was going.

When it got to the actual courtroom scenes, the movie began to be effective. I suppose this is probably because the scenes took their script from court transcripts. Also, in these scenes, Finch gave a very good, moving performance, and it had me dwelling on that absolutely daemonic situation, of this brilliant, beautiful person who strayed into a lion's den with faith that being a true person who'd done nothing wrong would be all the defence he needed. Here's a vivid example of someone being destroyed by villainous and popular prejudices.

Someone's actually consented to take photos of me again.

So, friends, here's some images of me at the park with my family;

First, here's one of the many instances where I look like I've been punched in the face, even though I hadn't been;


Here's me showing off my false tooth with my Lon Chaney impression;


Here's me being the smug bastard I am;


Finally, here's me, my sister, and my sister's 1300 dollar Louis Vaton bag (no, I'm not exaggerating);


...

Picked Trisa up from work last night--er, I mean this morning. At around 6:20am. She works in a very nice part of town . . . I told her about watching Sylvia Scarlett a few hours earlier, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn's first collaboration. It was good. Hepburn spent most of the movie dressed as a boy, looking very much like Hilary Swank's Brandon Teena, and Cary Grant got to use his natural cockney accent which was, well, clover.

I've got a lovely bunch of Altoids . . .

Ginger Altoids! I love ginger things . . . yeah . . .

I watched Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Peter Lorre in Silk Stockings, the musical, 1957 remake of Ninotchka, with songs by Cole Porter. It was pretty good. Not much of the witty dialogue the older one had, but the dance numbers kind of made up for it. Cyd Charisse seemed to be doing a straight Greta Garbo impression (Garbo played Ninotchka in the original film), but that was kind of cute.

The climactic dance sequence, centring on Astaire, was not as good as I wanted it to be. This film suffers from kind of the same thing The Band Wagon suffers from--it focuses too much on the nature of musicals and their relevancy to modern audiences. The final number, "Ritz, Rock, and Roll," was too broadly a "Hey, it'd be neat to have this fusion thing!" If they wanted to do that, they ought to've simply done it instead of singing about it. It needed to be a love song anyway.

I did kind of like the song they did about Cinemascope, Technicolour, and Stereophonic Sound. But my favourite scene was Cyd Charisse dancing with the titular stockings; it catered to the pervert in me.

Saw the new Harry Potter movie with Trisa yesterday. Trisa tells me there're some things in it different from the book but we both seemed to enjoy it. I thought it was easily superior to the previous two movies--but that's not saying much because Chris Columbus is a moron. This one felt more dynamic. You felt more like these kids were going to school at a secret magical school instead of hopping into a Hallmark Christmas card.

No blog entry yesterday because . . . I was not here very much.

Where was I? Nowhere of particular interest.

Actually, let me start by saying that I saw Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho for the first time on Friday morning. That's a beautiful movie. The beginning segment with Janet Leigh does the wonderful thing of putting together a world where you are guilty and on the edge of being found out by a world with a frighteningly greater moral clarity than your own. By the time Norman Bates shows up, we're already in a place where bad things can happen to us not simply because life is cruel and people are twisted, but also because we're not entirely sure if we don't deserve it.

More can be said; the music was gorgeous, Anthony Perkins was perfect as this sweet kid whose mother knows best, and the camerawork and lighting were . . . you know, supurb. There's not one mistep in this movie.

So Friday evening, I went to a play with my family and my sister's boyfriend. This play was Moliere's Don Juan, which was a lot of fun. The lead actors were pretty talented and fun to listen to as they delivered naughty dialogue. And there were ghosts and talking statues and . . . fun.

And last night, after a fruitless attempt to install Neverwinter Nights, I watched Top Hat, a Fred and Ginger movie with songs by Irving Berlin, including "Cheek to Cheek." And what a glorious dance sequence that was.

I really am spoiled by all this great art, I think.

With Trisa yesterday, watched Rebel Without a Cause. The director, Nicholas Ray, had a definite agenda to put forth his perhaps not invalid theory about the destructive, dysfunctional relations of the family, and the young person's inability to find the familial solace he or she desperately needs. Sometimes, it worked; the characters' of Jim and Judy's respective parents were intriguing and very believable. Other times, it didn't work--Plato, Jim's tag-along-buddy, with his psychotically tinted need for his dead parents, wasn't very believable or interesting, consequently making his character a little annoying.

But James Dean, as Jim, was a very effective thing. His aura of chaotic, cool vulnerability added a sort of credibility to scenes. You really felt for this guy. The action sequences, particularly the knife fight, were the best parts of the movie because Dean looks like a guy who might get cut. I liked the movie.

Later in the evening, I watched a movie I enjoyed a little bit more; Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace, with Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, and Peter Lorre. No big message with this one, just a screwball comedy about an anti-marriage playwright who gets married (Cary Grant), a psychopath named Jonathon who hates when people point out he looks like Boris Karloff, a fake doctor named Einstein (Peter Lorre), a bugle player who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, and two little old ladies who put Arsenic in the eldeberry wine as a public service, certainly not to murder, and that's why there're twelve bodies in the cellar, of course.

Another day, yo. Last night I watched George Stevens'Penny Serenade with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. It was okay. It was sad. The ending felt wrong. It felt a little like it was just the beginning of another cycle in the loop the movie kept putting the couple through. These were real, complex characters. They deserved a real, complex ending.

Lucky the cat has been in my room since 5am and I don't think he wants to leave any time soon.

Not much time right now and I can't think straight anyway . . .

Watched the season finale of Justice League last night and it was good. But I wish they were allowed to cuss and show nudity and blood.