We rarely practise discern.

Yesterday actually turned out okay in the end. Well, as okay, as trying to (not) have a relationship 4000 miles away can. I feel temporarily better anyways.

That wasn’t my reason for blogging though, mostly I felt inclined to commit my thoughts to t’web on account of having just watched The Puffy Chair. It may well have restored my faith in indie cinema. Seriously.

I haven’t seen anything that rings this true to everything I believed in moviewise for ages. Script is great without and walks the fine line of honesty between overly earnest and being contrived without ever stumbling into either. It’s also one of those relationship movies that almost hurts to watch, the way reading Jeffrey Brown hurts, because it’s all OH SO real and familiar, you’ve had that fight, you can see yourself and the people you know in the characters as you watch them make choices and mistakes you personally have spent a fair amount of your adult life deliberating over.

There’s no opportunity for you to empathise with any one character in particular, it’s not a girls movie or a boys movie, there is no domininant viewpoint here. Everyone in this movie is flawed, each of the characters at some time does something  unlikeable, but no one is ever cast as the bad guy. It also has one of the best endings I think I’ve ever seen.

It would be wrong of me not to mention the use of music, which, again is some of the best I’ve seen recently, the music is so perfectly placed you’re never a hundred percent sure whether the sound is diegetic or not. Loads of polyvinyl stuff, and I’ve never heard Transatlanticism sound better…

Anyhow, I’m going to try and get some sleep ‘cos I have the worlds busiest work week.

technorati tags:indiemovie, puffychair, deathcab

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well do you really fucking get it?

EIther I am an idiot, or the situation is idiotic. But I guess, if the situation I’m in is idiotic then I’m still the idiot for getting in it. It will never end well.

Everything else is still sort of going okay, ish. And it’s only a month til NY. And thereby 35 days ’til I turn 30. Oh good. At this stage I just want it to have come and gone already, so I can stop worrying about all the shit I should have done before it happened.

There’s at least loads of good shows towards the end of the year, Adam Gnade is coming over again, and Lucero and Against me! are back. Punk rock and drinking are sure to keep it good.

I’m trying to watch The Puffy Chair, but I’m somewhat preoccupied. I should know by now solitary saturday evenings are bad for me. As is having no money. Dear the bank, stop waiting til I have no money to take your made up fees away.

Who wants to get old with me? I wish Grimes was here.

I was in a really good mood earlier, I had the most fun with Lou today. I love Lou, and she completely understands the concept of a life queue.

I need to re-read Life After God tonight, and I can’t ‘cos my copy is still at Jamies house. Life After God would give me the sense of perspective that I’m lacking tonight. Against me are just making me want to be drunk at a punk rock show. I wonder, will I ever get so old that being drunk at a punk rock show isn’t the only thing that makes perfect sense to me?

technorati tags:punkrock, againstme, 30

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because punk rock can make it all okay…..

I was going to write a big ranty blog about retrograde planets and saturn return and politics and offices and what I really should be doing with my life, and I probably still will. But I’m still reeling that one of the IT guys just came over and made the bold (read:sweeping) statement that chicks don’t like action movies.

wow.

Today (and every day that my nearing 30th birthday looms large over the horizon) I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I’m in the wrong place doing the wrong thing….. Don’t get me wrong, this is easily the best job I’ve had, it’s actually a pretty awesome job, but I sometimes doubt that I’m cut out for a structured(ish) office environment, y’know? It might be because a lot of the people I know are affforded the luxuy of making a living of doing something that they love… and I think if I actually put in the effort I could too, once I made the decision as to what I actually wanted to do.

It would be fair to say that this year has been somewhat tumultous, and I’m sure that if I could just figure it out, somwhere encoded in the years events are the directions I need to get to where I’m going.

I hate not being able to figure these things out. I used to know things, the older I get the less sure I am of anything, yet the more I know. It’s a curious combination. I’m glad it’s pouring with rain, it validates my mood. I think I’m too tied up with the world, and the planets. I really do. Regardless of how I try and act about things it seems to be their pull which ultimately governs the outcome of any gievn situation.

I realise I sound like an insane hippie. I’m not one. I hate that any kind of vaguely esoteric belief system conjures images of patchouli soaked tie-dye.

I just thought by the time I hit 30 I would’ve found the people I’d spend forever with… I love my friends, but besides the tiniest number it all seems so transitory. I hate that the people I want to see the most are on the other side of the world having fun and doing things. And I’m here. To all intent and purposes having fun, but not really.

So this turned into a misery orientated stream of consiousness then. Great.

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Why aren’t we content to just be middle class?

I just finished watching everything’s gone green.

Here is what I thought…

Overall, I liked it. It came closer than many things to describing post 20th century late 20’s trauma. But it seemed sort of clunky, the moral of the story seemed overly obvious and literally everything that happens is grabbed from another coupland tale. Parents havea gro-op in the basement brother is a corrupt real estate guy = jpod, father losing his job early on =microserfs, ming being a  location scout in vancouver/seeing aliens in the street  = girlfriend in a coma, and then the other obvious coupland themes. Strong family themes – a need for things to be real – a desire to feel it’s all bigger than you – the dissapation of the middle class etc etc.. are all represented here.

Having said all of that, it’s still very, very watchable, and if you aren’t obssessive about coupland then you will probably like it. If you are, then you might find yourself wishing for something more.

It’s a film in 3 segments. Section 1 at the beginning we find our protagonist (who has the most amazing smile, his eyes light up every time) dumped, unemployed and 29, something bizarre happens and he ends up getting a (kinda crappy) job, and meeting a girl who is unavailable. Section 2, our protagonist on looking around realises everyone is doing better than him, and remedies this by becoming corrupt himself and dating a hot girl with no personality. Section 3, our protagonist feels bad about this, and the loss of himself, so conveniently manages, within a very short timeframe, to not only become uncorrupt, but also to win the heart of the girl, become real, quit his job and drive off into the mountains.

It all just felt a little too neat for me, at the end of a coupland book you’re usually left like, well huh. Y’know? It’s a little clearer but it’s not finished and shrinkwrapped for your appreciation.

I am being too hard on the movie, it was nicely shot, it was good to see all those bits of Vancouver you’ve been reading about for years, I just expected it to be more deft and subtle in its script is all.

I’m off to go watch dexter season 2 episode 2. ba-boom.

technorati tags:coupland, vancouver, movies, 20s

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I wannna always feel like part of this was mine…

You know those nights when you NEED to go out, ‘cos something might happen? it just feels that way, you listen to some songs that make you remember that somewhere in the world there are people worth getting to know. That all it can take to change everything, is just one night… tonight feels like one of those nights.

Can’t do anything about it though, lost my cashcard the other night, so can’t actually get any money from anywhere. And anyway, there’s no one around. Robyn is back in America, back on tour, back having fun. Tara is at comicon. Fuck, even Jamie is working til late o clock.

The only thing that compares to the nights out that change life are the nights in that are perfect. And I haven’t had one of those for about 3 years.

You know that bit in beautiful girls , where natalie portmans character is upset about staying in on a saturday night, and tim hutton is all *you have a million saturday nights ahead of you* ? Yeah, feeling that, in the sense that I don’t have a million saturday nights ahead of me, my 20s are all but done and I still haven’t managed to locate my designated other.

I miss America. I miss feeling like nothing IS and everything COULD be.

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forget it, she already did.

Today I kind of feel like Angela at the end of the my-so-called-life episode self esteem (it’s the buffalo tom episode) I know I am being an idiot, but I sort of like it. I should know better.

I can suddenly feel a my-so-called-life marathon coming on.

Tara is at fake truckfest, since the real one got cancelled, due to the apocalyptic weather. So I slept for 10 hours, and have spent the day slacking around with no make up on doing sunday stuff. Best.Weekend.Ever. Haven’t left the house once. Monster foot might actually recover.

I went to the midnight screening of transformers on friday night, after awesome veggie indian in angel. Midnight screening, probably not the best idea after 3 hours sleep the night before, but as aforementioned, recently. I am an idiot. (Jamie’s being quite sensible, we need to restore the universal balance). So the opening was good (but as usual, with Bay’s direction), the action begins to slide and theres that hoour long period in the middle where nothing really happens and you get a bit bored. I fell asleep during this part. The Transformers looked pretty good though, and the action sequences were great. From what I can remember, the plot was extremely thin on the ground, and some of the later developments seemed more ridiculous than the CGI wolves in day after tomorrow. But it’s worth going to see at the cinema, if only for the stuff blowing up, and giant robot attacks. Bay is good at that. It’s about all he’s good at.

Highlights of the cinema experience were; Tara being hit on by the acne faced confectionary stand guy, “hey mamma, I’ll hook you up with half price candy” and the JJAbrams trailer beforehand, I’d seen it on appletrailers, but it looks fricken awesome on the big screen, and y’all know how much I despise LOST. I’m pretty excited.

It hasn’t rained yet today. Don’t worry, it’s going to pour tomorrow.

If we can just make it through the next month or so without a heat wave then summer will be over, and I’ll have survived it unscathed. Roll on fall. And impending 30th birthday gloom.

technorati tags:mysocalledlife, idiot, transformers, sunday

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