March 20th thru the 26th, 2005

Sunday March 20th, 2005

A Strong Conviction that Something Must Be Done Is the Parent of Many Bad Measures.
That was Daniel Webster. He had nothing to do with the rest of my day, which was going to grocery store to buy bachelor food including Guacamole Doritoes, and to BlockBuster to rent Silent Hill 4... (review follows) and I got some firelogs. I had Netflixxed Mullholland Dr. (a wierd film; my "explanation" is below,) and so I popped it in with some organic turkey burgers and self-made french fried potatoes. The house got a bit smoky, though, when I soon realized someone had closed the flue! Arrrgh! Whatever. So it was movie, fire, a few of those Orange Zimas, and eventually sleep.

Silent Hill 4: The Room
It was much like the other Silent Hill games... boring unless you're in the mood. Graphically eerie, of course. But let's face it-- these are scripts and dialogues written by non-English speaking unprofessional writers. Whenever I rent these survival horror games, I end up going to gameFaqs anyway for the walk-throughs, and so they are less like games and more like interactive movies, which I suppose is sort of the point. Indeed, in order to unlock some content, a person must play through the game several times, witnessing different endings. The A+ numero uno bestest score is one obtains by, among other things, finishing the game in less than two hours. Ostensibly this is not easy, and ostensibly, one would fail at this a few times before sucess.. on the one hand this ensures replay value, but on the other hand, this just means there;'s only about two hours of unique content. And are scary movies ever really scary the second time? At any rate, I guess I wasn't in the mood after all-- I played for aout half and hour and gavce up.

Mullholland Drive "Explained."
Diane's aunt dies and leaves her a little money, so she moves to LA to get into movies. She meets Camilla, and falls in love with her, but Camilla leaves her for a recently-divorced director. Heartbroken, Diane hires a man to kill Camilla, and then, overcome with grief and guilt, she kills herself.

We pretty much get this entire story in the last few minutes of the film. The majority of the movie before this is inside Diane's head, (I think any scene that she is or Camilla is not in is a "real-life" scene,) where she intertwines a fantasy with her guilt. She fantasizes about a way to meet Camilla (Rita) and be able to have her, while, at the same time, guilt over what she has done taints the fantasy. But more than guilt, even, is probably the grief she feels over Camilla's death.

Director/Writer David Lynch has the uncanny ability of almost boring us. But being almost bored means being not bored. I think he decided to take a fairly simple story (Girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl kills girl, girl kills self) and use it to make up one of his bizarre mood pieces. "It's not what you say but how you say it" kind of thing. So, the "point" of the movie is to just absorb the textures.

I think this is actually articulated by The Cowboy that Adam, the director, goes to meet in the corral. He talks about attitude, and asks Adam if he can quit being a smart-aleck and actually pay attention and think about what is going on. Of course, the shots of The Cowboy saying this are facing the camera, as if he is talking to the audience. Recall, he says "If you do good, you'll see me one more time. If you do bad, you'll see me two more times."

The Cowboy appears two more times, to the audience, one more time, to Adam. He's at Adam's party, the one that Camilla brings Diane to, and then he appears later, telling Diane "it's time to wake up, girl." One supposes the audience has "done bad" because they need to have the story explained to them-- and so we get the reality of Diane's story in the last few minutes of the film.

So, if texture is "the point" of the movie, then "the fun" is deciding what each of the little symbols mean, and connecting Diane's fantasy elements to her real life and to her grief and guilt. The way she pretends to be Betty, gets Rita wear blond hair. The woman with whom she switched apartments says "those two detectives were here looking for you again" so she incorporates that into her fantasy, it being herself and Rita looking for Diane. Camilla's stopping the limo to take Diane up the secret path to Adam's party becomes the point where Rita is stopped to be killed, only to lose her memory and "descend" into LA. And so on. One could probably watch this movie on two monitors simultaneously and find that David Lynch has left visual clues between these links.

Monday March 21st, 2005

But then it was to work. Hooray. Eventually I went out for more bachelor food, but not before downloading "Mustapha" by Queen from their album Jazz, and then came home to play Magic: the Gathering Online. I haven't played that in more than a year. I'm a bit rusty-- I managed to win only about half of the games. Of course I played with the pre-constructed decks in the free room... I rarely, if ever, win with my own decks. I like the sealed deck format best, which is when everyone buys 90 new cards, builds a deck out of that, and goes for it. That way no one dominates by virtue of having the best cards. There's more skill-- which is what I lack. Anyway, inspired, I went looking for The Prima Guide to Magic Online, but not finding it, I picked up Undefeated, Inquest, and Scrye instead, three gaming magazines. Time to get my nerd on!

After all that it was time for bowling. DID my practice form last week pay off? I think it did. I managed 473 in 3 games, for an average of 157, 23 pins over my established average. I had two songs running through my head-- "The Heat of the Moment" by Asia, and "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. My teammate pointed out the hot/cold dichotomy to me-- would have been better if it had been on purpose, eh? Then I went home, had pizza and giggles with Heralta, and eventually found the sweetest bliss is the slumber of consciousness.

Tuesday March 22nd, 2005, World Water Day

Tuesdays are Like Mondays with Bite
Hung with the Mastah Chilla and worked worked worked. Tried to buy The Matrix Online but that was a no go. Damned lying websites. Eventually made my way to Revolutions for the coffee thing. Learned about how certain drugs can assist the kidney in ridding the body of excess water. Then went over to the Little Red Hen and made a damned fool of myself. Why? Because girls smell good. That's going to be the name of my autobiography.

Home Again
...and I stayed up too late, downloading a whole mess of music. I am thoroughly enjoying "Hysteria" by Muse, and I have been playing it over and over... they claim to have taken inspiration from Radiohead and Nirvana, so it looks like I'll have to download more of each. Word.

Wednesday March 23rd, 2005

I Bought The Matrix Online-- It Was Nice Knowing Ya
Yesterday I went to EB Games because a website said 3-22 was the launch date for TMO. The lady behind the counter was friendly but the guy was sort of unenthused. Ass. But he said they'd have ti today. So I went back, and after waiting 15 minutes while he bought used games from a friend, I finally got to ask about it, and his crap attitude was the same as yesterday. And he said no-- maybe in the afternoon. Well screw his rude ass. That's one lost sell for EBG, as I went to nearby game Stop and got it no problem (after another long wait while the dude bought sued games from an off-duty employee. Decorum? What's that?)

Anyway, it was MMORPGs that put the blog in a coma a year ago and left it there until February. But I'll be more disciplined this time. I promise. I'll blog every day before and after I play. Pinkie swear. Stay tuned for ad-nauseum reports on my game experience.

25 for 25- Barking Frog in Woodinville
A long drive out to Woodinville took us to the Barking Frog. I rather liked it. I even ordered expensive water. I am so with it.

Thursday March 24th, 2005

Friday March 25th, 2005

Dinner was at Applebee's and the rest of the night was, you guessed it, iTunes. I am a man obsessed. More on that later, which may end up being a repeat of things I've already said. I need to read my own blog!

Saturday March 26th, 2005

You know what the deal is? I am just bad at sleeping. I mean someone people are bad at driving, right? The don't seem to get it, they can't seem to align themselves with the idea of being a contributing, sensitive member of the traffic flow. And some people, no matter how much they practice, will always have bad hand-writing. And me, well, I'm just not good at sleeping. I do it with my clothes on, in some weird position, and get all tangled up in the sheets and snore and get up to go to the bathroom like 3 or 4 times a night. It's time, I think, to pay attention to a bed time ritual. I'll let you know how that goes.

But, yeah. iTunes. I think I'll speak on that Monday. As for today, well, after iTunesing it up all day, I met with Grocery and we went to Elysian, a brewery, for dinner (I had bangers and mash and Dragonstooth Stout) and the over to Chop Suey to see Doug Stanhope. His openers were not so good-- guy one was okay, guy two sucked bad, and guy three WAS funny, but he was a damned Stanhope clone. Doug himself, though, was hilarious. And off the hook. The man is crude and crass and the best is that he is neither proud nor apologetic for it. He had to deal with some serious jerks in the front row who wouldn't stop trying to participate in the comedy with him. But he handled them pretty good. I got an autograph at the end. Score.