theology&geometry

I saw Monsters vs. Aliens tonight, because I am a sucker for overpriced kids’ movies in 3-D.

And while, like Watchmen, it was gorgeous to behold but had a stupid, not very engaging story (*ducks to avoid nerd pummeling*), there was one snippet of dialogue that immediately lodged into my brain like a verbal splinter.

There’s this giant lady monster, see, and she’s being introduced to her new monster home, tended by a wacky military general.

Giant lady: How long will I be here?

Wacky general: Inevitably.

WHAT?!

I feel like that exchange right there is indicative of why Dreamworks animation pictures tend to fall just short of Pixar’s brilliance, again and again. It’s the writing, stupid. Get it right: Indefinitely.

Anyway, it’s a cute movie, take your kids, blah blah blah. They’ll be mesmerized by the blob thing especially. And Seth Rogen’s laugh.

Recuperation complete. I packed a lot of awesome into one little day. Slept nine glorious hours, went to the gym and got the endorphins pumping, took my lunch to the park down by the river and read The White Tiger on a blanket while the wind whipped the world into a subdued frenzy around me. Then I had some chips and white cheese dip and some margaritas, went home to book chat, and then hauled ass to see Coraline in 3-D, which was just intense.

And now, the routine begins again. I don’t mind.

I just wish I had taken a picture in which my hand didn’t look completely disfigured.

[Project 365]

I feel like I’ve been living out of a suitcase for a month.

I’m glad to be home and I’m glad that the first thing I did when I got to Memphis was take a shower and then go eat some crazy-ass food (ox tail soup and some technicolor potatoes and some other things I forgot how to describe) with my crazy-ass friends, and watch Psycho Killers in Love. Or at least I think that’s what it was called. I can’t find it on IMDB, which tells you just how crazy-ass it was.

Tomorrow I recuperate. Mind, body, soul, and whatever else I can squeeze in.

[Project 365]

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

HT: Chris Wage

Thanks, chums, for the CDs. I dig, a lot.

Today I’ve been a big sack of lazy. I don’t know why it is that on the one day a week when I have a crap ton of time to get stuff done, I lie around in pajamas the longest. Oh, wait, yeah, I do know. Because I am human. Hear me doze. Also, I spent the morning recuperating from last night’s inaugural Yarbro-Dill potluck, which was all kinds of lovely. So my brain is just now starting to unfog. Listen, people, I am not a morning person, and to me, morning lasts until roughly 3 p.m.

Today’s true accomplishments: I’ve eaten a cup of cereal, created and sent an e-card, and watched Jesus Camp. I very nearly cried at the child abuse going on in the evangelical church, including the horrific rattails that said culture apparently encourages. I’ve also spent some time thinking about the country I would like to move to if McCain wins the election. I’m conflicted. Go north or south on this continent or jump a pond? However, as others have helpfully pointed out, perhaps evacuating would be a bad move, because then I would be on the receiving end of the U.S.’s no doubt disastrous foreign policy. This election/culture war/economy horseshit is giving me an ulcer. I don’t want to leave the apartment, but I hate to waste a perfectly good day off.

Okay, enough of these pixels. I’m going to take a shower and throw away these toenail clippings that are on the desk and go to the liquor store and maybe drive out east to visit Ashley and JD and Luke.

I can’t believe I forgot to mention in my last post that the sweet and insanely talkative older lady who checked me out at Schnucks (Union) last night was all atwitter over the fact that Tempestt Bledsoe had just been through there a bit earlier. (The lady used this information as an excuse to give me a rundown on the shows she finds herself watching these days — Law & Order and those shows involving forensics and/or files, but not so much the Cosby Show reruns, which she has never much cared for.) They’re filming a movie in town and, well, even movie stars prefer to do their grocery shopping under the cover of night.

It’s not just us neurotic nocturnal cat ladies.

My cousin Jay: Man, they all had some pretty handwriting.

Saw Batman. Everyone said it was awesome, and it was. A little tedious in places, and heavy on the growly Batman talk (seriously, someone get Christian Bale a Claritin, or maybe poke noseholes in his mask so he doesn’t have to be such a mouthbreather), but overall a delightfully whizbang kinda romp, even with all the warrantless wiretapping going on.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is very nearly the perfect villain. Absolutely mesmerizing.

But here’s one thing I just want to throw out there: Were I to live or do business in a city so wracked with anarchic domestic terrorism, you can bet your ass I would work in a windowless office. Sheesh. If I ever see that movie again, I’ll be keeping a tally of times someone comes crashing into a skyscraper through a window. My estimate right now is THREE THOUSAND.

SS visited this weekend, and, hoping to counteract the heaping amounts of awfulness we ingested at IHOP (or, I-Poh those of us who may be dyslexic), we went to the grocery story Sunday night to stock up on semi- to mostly healthy things to make for dinner. We settled on the ingredients for some grilled chicken wraps and I decided that I wanted to try to recreate the roasted grapes I had at Lesley’s house a couple of months ago.

I can’t cook, but I sure as hell can smother things in oil and sprinkle salt on them. So I figured it would be an easy enough contribution to the menu.

And look how pretty:

Except, when I went to put the pan into the oven, I realized that the pre-heating it should have been doing while I was preparing the grapes, uh, hadn’t been done. And also, was that the smell of gas?

So it turns out the pilot light was out, and there I was with a pan of slimy, salty grapes and no idea how to relight the pilot light (I have seen my building manager do it before, and it involves a complicated series of Catholic prayers and handstands). So we tried putting a grape on the grill to see how it would act. It tasted like chicken and didn’t achieve the consistency that oven roasting would have. Our Hail Mary? The microwave.

Three guesses how that turned out.

We ate our wraps and watched a couple of movies — Dead Birds and Battle Royale. Dead Birds had some pretty creepy moments, many of which made us spew synchronized profanity. I’m not sure I could explain the story to anyone, though. Civil War. Bank robbers. Racism. Demons. Demons with bad teeth. Furniture upside down, tied to the ceiling, which freaked us out.

And Battle Royale is a great flick, which I saw for the first time back in college. I love how the preposterousness of the storyline (the Japanese government is so annoyed with uppity children that it kidnaps several of them and dumps them on an abandoned island and makes them play a game in which only one of them is allowed out alive, or else they’ll all be killed) is completely ignored and everyone’s like, “Got that? Good! Now get to killing!”

It’s beautiful in its simplicity, really.

• I saw Run Fatboy Run* last night with Courtney. It was funny and oh so very corny — man, the symphony was swelling on the soundtrack — with its storyline about a sad sack dude who shirks his duty as a soon-to-be husband and father by leaving his pregnant bride at the altar, and then five years later decides to win her back by running a marathon. That’s a pretty idiotic premise, and I usually love idiotic premises. Anyway, had it been anyone but Simon Pegg in the main role, I might have hated this movie. But I lurve him, and he and Dylan Moran have some fantastic chemistry as well (arguably more chemistry than either of them with Thandie Newton, who boasts an impressive array of pretty but vacant expressions; also, she sported an awesome bead and stone necklace that I will own a badly imitated copy of some day).

Yeah, so. Lots of unexpected man ass in this movie, though. And a blister-popping scene that nearly sent me over the seats in front of us. But mostly it’s just Simon Pegg being Simon Pegg and making silly Simon Pegg faces, and that’s worth the price of admission. Until I get tired of him, of course.

Oh, and I should mention that the most charming character in the entire movie is the city of London itself. I’ve never been to London, but I love how so many movies set there make it seem like everyone lives in the same little neighborhood, and every little charming village is within walking distance of a bustling downtown.

And is that building that’s shaped like a buttplug (Courtney says it’s shaped like a rocket … to-may-to, to-mah-to) a real building? Is that a question that’s going to get me laughed at? Is there a bone in my body that cares? Checking … … … nope!

Seriously, though, I need to get on a plane to London and fast. Who’s with me?

• COURTNEY BOUGHT ME A UNIVERSAL REMOTE. The best part? IT WORKS. I’m sorry. When I get excited, I type in allcaps. This means that last night she got her first taste of Strangers With Candy, which I shove on all my friends at one point or another because everyone needs to have a taste of the awesomeness, and everyone needs to know why I say “good times!” all the time. Even in bad times.

• My universal remote also allowed me to watch Paris, Je T’aime, which had come highly recommended to me and I have to say I really did love. It’s a movie of vignettes, short little films by lots of different directors (including the Coen brothers and my man Alfonso Cuarón), all of which are about love of some sort. Some are optimistic, some are bittersweet, some are outright depressing, but all of them are quite beautiful in their own way.

I can’t watch a movie about Paris — even a freaking cartoon about rats who cook — without giving myself a mental tongue-lashing for never having visited there. It seems absolutely magical. I love the density of the population and the buildings. I love the old streets, old walls, old iron fences, and old trees, and the touches of new that keep the old world and the new forever intertwined. I love the feeling that Paris has always been there and will always be there. I wonder if that’s an illusion coming across because of the loving way filmmakers treat the city. There’s really only one way to find out, I guess. And that’s to get there. So. London and Paris. Someday, I hope.

• I went into Burke’s yesterday on the hunt for Jeanette Winterson’s new book, The Stone Gods. They didn’t have it. But I’m a sucker and can’t leave a bookstore without buying a book, so I picked up Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing.

It was the first time I’d been in Burke’s since they moved into their new space in Cooper-Young. I have to say, I’m not crazy about the new space. I suppose it’s smaller, though I don’t know by how much. It seems colder than the old space. Maybe it’s a high ceilings and the concrete. I’m not sure. I dug being able to walk around C-Y, though.

• I really need to try out that little restaurant next to Burke’s. First I should learn its name.

• There are two tiny pumpkins, a pot of dead mums, countless cigarette butts, and two garbage bags — one full of dirt, the other full of garbage — on my balcony. I’m making it my mission as soon as I hit publish on this meandering piece o’ crap post to go out there and clean all of that up and make way for some new plants that maybe I won’t kill this time. Ahem.

• I noticed the other day that the roof of Anderton’s East has caved in. I wasn’t able to get a picture, but you could clearly through the front windows that the roof had collapsed. I don’t remember seeing news that they are tearing that building down. :(

*Can we get a consensus on how to punctuate this, please? Rotten Tomatoes has it as Run, Fat Boy, Run and IMDb has Run Fatboy Run, which I went with after a lengthy philosophical discussion with myself involving commas and previously nonexistent compound nouns and OH MY GOD does anyone else in the world give this kind of inane crap any thought?