it's official

i hereby declare that Pavement is the official soundtrack for Thursdays.

and that is all.

so i've watched some flickage the past week

but haven't had time for the wrap-up. words are a premium lately. but there's always a few around for movies. so some films and dvds, in the past weekish:

1408: film students should watch the first 2/3 of this movie for a primer in how to set mood and tone and scare the beejuzus out of an audience with subtle effects and atmosphere - then watch the last 1/3 of the movie for a tutorial on how to blow all of that with hokey twists and bad writing. bleah.

notes on a scandal: judy dench as single white female? um, weird...

dark water: good lord, it's terrible. it's the soggiest film i've ever seen.

daywatch: probably deserves more than a few words, actually. in short, i guess, i loved it. but much like nightwatch, it's potentially migraine-inducing: rat-a-tat-tat special effects, narratives that pop in and out without warning, a mythology that only really seems to care about its own logic... but it's wonderful! it's taken about 45 minutes for me to find a point of entry into each of these films so far - the combination of style, the fantasy universe that's at hand and the fact that the whole thing is russian (the culture and language divide feels vast) makes my brain scream when i start watching. but then, once i let the film overwhelm me, i'm completely glued. can't take my eyes off the screen. loved it, loved it, loved it. even with its obvious shortcomings.

severance: it could be a strange little british comedy-of-manners gem masquerading as a slasher film. or maybe it's just another self-referential piece of horror garbage. or maybe both. my guess is both. it's darn funny and clever in some moments, and tense in a few others. but it wants to have its cake and eat it, too. in my mind, it can't work like that: you can't make a film that scoffs meanly at its characters and makes light of killing, but then invests us so thoroughly in the terror of the victims and then undermine even all of that with cheap ironic jokes (well, i guess you can, and then you'd be eli roth and the film would be 'cabin fever' and then i would feel kinda bad about how much i loved you). okay, so maybe i'll settle on this: severance is an okay film made by a bunch of sarcastic sassypants.

haven't seen the sequel to hostel yet, but i'll get there.

on listening to hank williams in bed

i'm learning to love my failure as much as my success.

all the major-minor disasters, the lost loves, the yeses that should have been nos (and vice versas) the missed adventures, the too-costly adventures, the risks i'd wish i'd taken, the risks that should have been passed on.

i think: i want to be more than the sum of what i've done. i want to include all the things i should have done, didn't do, and completely fucked up. and why not? they define me as much as the things i got right. they are the negative space i move through, the space that creates the boundary that is me, living and flesh. it's time to love these failures - and not because i've learned something from them, not even because i've grown as a result of them - simply because they're mine.

i reckon the real trick is this: not to love the failure too much. not to become smitten with the mistakes, to believe in the density of disaster. i've lived with and loved too many people who carried on long romances with their failures, who set themselves up for unsuccess time and time again because of this love affair. embraced their mistakes as an irrefutable truth about themselves.

but i've lived my life like i can undo my mistakes with more successes, better choices, greater adventures. it's unnerving, a happy to-do melancholia that attempts to erase a good bit of my time.

if we were to know each other, all really know each other, we would have clarity: we're all a bunch of fuck-ups. and we deserve to love each other the more for it.

this move i make in a few months, it has a very cinematic, great-success-or-failure quality to it. as if there lies amazing success or sure ruin ahead. but the truth of the matter is really that it's just another move, another beginning, composed of ordinary achievements, mistakes, awesomeness and heartaches - simply subjected to the scale of excitement.

i expect that i'm going to tear up new york city. and completely screw up a whole lot, too. but my real hope is that i find real happiness in both.

um, it's completely true...

there really is no sleep 'til brooklyn.

atlantis

I sat with the new collection of poems by Eavan Boland the other day.
This one, in particular.

Atlantis, A Lost Sonnet
- Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city - arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals - had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city -

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best tradition of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

this week's daydreams

little bit of time and some sleepyhappy space this week and i had a few memorable daydreams, chief among them:

* starting an ELO cover band
* giving Joss Whedon a Pulitzer Prize for Radness
* inventing homophobia-eliminating bubble gum

also: don't you think it's time for Michael Bay to direct a live-action adaptation of the video game Joust? the WORLD IS READY.

It's officially summer

Audrey has started hunting. She left her first dead mousey prize on the front porch this evening. She seemed pretty contented with herself as she marched back into the house and threw herself on the carpet, exhausted.

(The days have been odd here in Denver. Cool and rainy. Unexpected, but familiar. This is the Colorado that sticks with me from my childhood: warm dry days that turn into cool rainy late afternoons full of thunderstorms. Storms always seemed to hit just as my Dad was getting home from work. I would be perched on the couch, looking out the front window, waiting for the lightening. Then I would bury my head into the arm of the couch and count until I heard thunder. My Dad always seemed to come through the front door while I was counting. I'm surprised that he didn't declare himself master of the goddamn elements, considering his timing. But those kind of comments seem to have become him as he's gotten older... A few years ago, he declared himself God and claimed that he made the automatic toilets flush when my nephew asked him about the mechanics of the plumbing at a movie theater).

Today is my monthly birthday. I admit that I just don't celebrate my monthly birthday as a single girl the way I did when I was married. I forget completely sometimes. But today the universe sent me a sweet note. I discovered a twenty dollar bill in the back pocket of a pair of pants that I picked up a thrift store a few weeks ago. I washed them and hung in the closet without checking the pockets. But today I discovered the twenty. And then I realized that in the craziness of the past few months I had COMPLETELY forgotten about the release of Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer through Darkhouse Comics. I've missed three issues already! So I zipped off to the comic book store after work and picked up three issues of Buffy plus a variant cover (why not, right?) and also grabbed a copy of the new graphic novel The Plain Janes (hat tip to David). The total was $20.47. And the store owner made it $20 even.

Thanks to everyone (and the universe) for accidentally making my monthly birthday a real treat. Even Audrey, who left mousey guts on the front porch today out of so much kitty love.

the den, the rock star life

One thing the Clayton Manor does well is ENTERTAINMENT. 'Tis the season: kickball practices, backyard movies, theme parties, the greatest porch of all time and now... Guitar Hero.

We cleaned up the basement to make it a den. And the boys transformed it into a video game play palace. And now Guitar Hero has entered our lives. Full projection. Surround sound stereo.

I may be getting carpal tunnel syndrome from playing this game, but SWEET JESUS I am a rock god.

i don't write about music

I generally don't feel comfortable with the vocabulary, I have a hard time translating my experiences with music to sophisticated musings, and my lack of witty insider nods reduces my musical street cred to zero in writing.

Out of my love for it, I prefer not to risk maligning music with written ineptitude. Words do permanent damage, yo.

But then there's The National's Boxer.

I so so so want to write about this album - a compulsion born of repeated listenings for the past week that haunt me when I'm not even listening.

A few hopelessly inadequate words about Boxer? Oddly baroque at times, tethered by incredibly rich orchestration, lyrics that make me feel like Matt Berninger has nudged indie rock into more poetic (and sparse) spaces (and oh how glad I am that this album is a little bit less cynical and caustic than Alligator - heartbreaking as always, but fueled by a subtle belief that there are some joys to be had in intimacy, in loss, in ultimately growing up). This is a slow burn record. I have curled up on my bed and listened to 'Slow Show,' 'Apartment Story,' and 'Start a War' over and over again, three songs in the middle of the album that are malleable and sophisticated enough to chart the internal territory of just about everyone I know who has approached (or moved into) their thirties. Boxer is a drummer's album, too, and hooray for that.

I'm aware of the pretention in a phrase like this, but all the same: The National makes music that illuminates me. In that way, I feel blessed by an album like Boxer. It's difficult, at times, beautiful at others, and utter nonsense on occasion. So I write about it because it feels like a kind of koan. And that, my loves, is amazing.

yummy bowls of goodness, unwishful thinking

Tonight was all about eating delicious bowls of yumdevorous rice noodles with one of my favorite people in the world. And I realized in the middle of a slurp that I've somehow started to wish my days away, thinking about what's next, what's on tap for the weekend, who will be doing what, what's happening after work, and what I should or should not being doing with whom or wherever. My presence has been on pause, waiting for the next thing (show, fun time with friend, dedicated time for good work, etc. etc.) and even when I'm in the middle of the anticipated thing, I'm thinking about the next thing.

A relentless refusal to rest and be in the present. No doubt this is encouraged by the craptastically hectic nature of my job right now, but I've got no excuses for it. Regardless.

I don't want to wish my last summer in Colorado away. I need to be present for every bit of it. I want to stop being so anxious for the next. To be here, and get it done (or not) now.

A small reminder, this post.