Yay!

Netjetters is back.

Jim from the third batch is my favorite: he opted to freeze his heart out from Norway to Japan, which enough people don't seem to do.

“That’s just from your end. It’s ’cause you’re never satisfied with me.”*

I love Terms of Endearment**. It's an overblown, old-school melodrama trapped in a J.C. Penney catalog. And all of us, at some point or another, talk about everything except what we most wish to say when flush-up against loneliness, decked out in bad clothes and worse hair.

What I like most about it at the moment, though, is the score. Just as the movie tries to be one big Norman Rockwell, the score tries to be an Aaron Copland. But amongst all the copycatting sings the saddest, simplest little melody that resolves itself with this corny optimism: listen to the end credits-- it ends on an honest-to-God twinkle. Your American life can be the most miserable pile of shit, and you'll still have a lone oboe and chime fluttering about you, tilting your washed-out face to the sun.


*Similar to what the NotoriousRRZ has to say about Jennifer Connelly, my money was always on Debra Winger: she had the most expressive eyes and the best throat I'd ever seen. I spent hours in the mirror as a teenager trying in vain to widen and crane my own in the hopes of capturing her spark and defiant ease, ten years out of time and captive only to my own audience.

**This does not mean that I'm going to see that looks-like-a-piece-of-shit Spanglish, however.

"All these accidents / That happen / Follow the dot"

Or the Amazing Yellow Line. Whichever.

What I dig most about Iceland is the multiplicities people take on, and the hum this makes in Reykjavik.

Correct Me If I'm Wrong...

...but wouldn't the least metal moment ever actually be the countdown itself on VH1?

Hey, you, Vanessa Carlton:

If only you'd recorded your song "White Houses" in the B-maj you've been playing on all the morning shows instead of the C-maj-as-heard-by-Billy-Joel on the record, I'd have totally bought a copy off iTunes. Synaesthesia, like.

And I hate "A Thousand Miles," (and "Ordinary Day," and sort-of "Pretty Baby") so, really: trust me on this.

Is this how to interpret where all the porn is, too?

The question still remains: how do we account for the seemingly proportionate relationship of red states to strip clubs? I'm looking at you, I-45. You, too, I-75. Except Michigan: you're too broke for the champagne room.

With the nation split like the pants on a fat pastor, can't we all agree that this may just be an oeuvre of such magnanimous tackiness that we may once again unite in shamefaced karoke? I mean, c'mon... for the chirrun, y'all. 

Ah, As You Do.

Continuing my grand tradition of crying at Pixar productions, go see The Incredibles*, and show up for the short "Bounding." The American Jackalope sing-songing about "rebounding" and not caring: *sigh* with regards to recent events , and with a bit of a nostalgia for me being 19 and being laughed at and told to "shut the hell up!" by a six-year-old at Cinemagic on account of blubbering a little bit (okay, a lot) at that part in Toy Story 2 where Jessie the Cowgirl recounts being abandoned.


*My brother kinda looks like Mr. Incredible (in 15-20 years, and if he were on some major 'roids). And Holly Hunter's character so totally has her Broadcast News hair (awww! espesh. being in DC at the mo'). Except my brother also kinda looks like William Hurt in that movie. Which I've always found really creepy. So yeah. But Sarah Vowell is Violet! And my brother and I have bandied about the idea of making a radio documentary about this crazy-ass housing area we technically lived on that kept all the American names after it was turned over to Germany for This American Life. So everything is full circle! Despite lousy sentence construction! Sort of! Or something. Whatever.

Either way, I'm still going back to bed. And then I'm going to give Jon Stewart a big hug, and then go hang out with the Popbitchers in a concrete shed. 

ZZZZzzzzz...

Ugh, it's, like, so totally quiet in DC tonight, it's like Christmas Eve.

So, as you do, you crawl up with a book and wait to hear footsteps on the roof. Or something. I don't know. Crappy analogy. But I have just read The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and that just might turn into a tradition for me.

Anyway, here's the deal: whenever I've come up against big decisions, I break out a ladder of abstraction, and I go up and down the rungs until I find a focus that suits my comprehension. Four years ago, I was up on the roof and still couldn't be sure if it really was one, amalgamated super-douche or two separate dillweeds that wanted the job. This time around, it's fairly easy to discern: yes, I still have to get pretty damn far up the rungs to get the clearest picture, but it's there.

I've also found that this ladder works when attempting to articulate my frustration with third parties at the moment: being farsighted, it's a drag for me to have to account for every single leaf on the yard that needs raking when I know it's going to get in the big pile anyway. Or something like that. Again, lousy analogy.

Oh, to Be 18 Again...

...and threatening to kill your girlfriend with a screwdriver because you don't like who she's going vote for.

Overall I'd say the affair is composed of a bouquet of COPS, with a top note of Italian parilament and a dash of a fisticuffs in a 12th grade civics class.