The long and short of it.

The movie SIDEWAYS led me to wonder how I wouldn't end up like the character Miles, a fortysomething, insecure, depressed, divorced, unpublished author courting alcoholism. It was a very, very good movie, and I really, really identified with Miles, which scared me a little. I drink socially, though, so I don't think the alcoholism was the thing I feared. I think I'm more afraid that I'll just keep doing the same things until I'm in middle age, wondering whatever happened to my life.



Clearly, I thought to myself, I need to write something just to prove that I can do it. (I love it that this thought only occurs to me as a whim, usually so late into the evening that the only thing I really want to do is go to sleep.)

But this time, instead of saying to myself the cliched "Oh, OK, I'll finally start that book," I thought I should maybe write a short story, just to prove to myself that this is not some hopeless, unaccomplishable dream.

In the movie, the character Miles has actually already written his book, but he still can't seem to get it off the ground.

I loved SIDEWAYS the way I loved WONDER BOYS a couple years ago. In that one, Michael Douglas played the frustrated, middle-aged, drug-addicted, depressed writer courting suicide. And Tobey Maguire, in that one, played a frustrated, young, insecure and depressed writer courting suicide. It was a really good movie, one of my favorites of that year.

Of course, in WONDER BOYS, they'd both already written their books.



So my goal of the week is to come up with a character. To write a story of a moment, a singular, emotional moment, the sort I usually can touch on in the journal, but I want it to be about the character, not about me.

Of course, SIDEWAYS and WONDER BOYS were both books first. Written by frustrated authors.

Lupo: An American Boy Watches TV.

On Wednesdays, Lupo and I usually dissect the previous night's episode of GILMORE GIRLS, which has become our latest mutual-favorite show.

But, since it's not The WB tonight, Lupo e-mailed me with an alternate suggestion.

I've italicized Lupo's e-mails in the following exchange:
_____

LUPO: Since there is no GILMORE GIRLS tonight (though there is one this afternoon, in which Emily and Lorelai go to a spa together), I think we should do a pretend recap of SAMANTHA: AN AMERICAN GIRL CHRISTMAS, which is taking the place of GILMORE tonight.

Sample:

My favorite part was when Samantha said, "Christmas is not a day of the year, but a wish that your heart dreams."

I also liked it when Mia Farrow, who played the rich grandmother, remarked to Samantha, "Stay away from intellectual Jewish guys with glasses."

It was okay, but it was no ABIGAIL: AN AMERICAN GIRL ARBOR DAY or KATHERINE: AN AMERICAN GIRL GOES TO THE MOON.



RILEY: I really liked the part where the beggar girl with the tousled hair looked out from her orphanage window to find that, alas, it was snowing on Christmas - and that if you truly believed in your heart, then something you wished for would come true. And I love how she wished for something cool like snow on Christmas, instead of, you know, parents or a home with heat or something.

Samantha was a true inspiration to those girls. Though I don't know if she should really kiss that boy under the mistletoe like that, for it seemed awfully forward of her and sets a bad example.

I gasped, as well, when Samantha got thrown from the horse on the country road.

My favorite part, though, was when Angus started to cry during Samantha's speech.

"Because Christmas is a time for warmth and hugs ... a time to belong."

Mia Farrow was a delight. Although it seemed jarring when she walked into that house and said, "Damn, this is no PEYTON PLACE. I'm tempted to make a deal with the devil in order to get us some better real estate, Samantha."



LUPO: You make me laugh....I especially love the part about being thrown from the horse, and Angus' tears. He was truly crusty but loveable.

....did you notice the cameo by two-time Christian music award winner Amy Grant as the fiddler's wife?

If I had to rank SAMANTHA, I would say that it was better than RACHEL: A GERMAN GIRL'S HOLOCAUST but not as good as SOPHIE: A FRENCH GIRL'S DESCENT INTO WHITE SLAVERY. I just couldn't buy Dakota Fanning's accent.

Stanford admissions.

Last night CJ annoyed me while we were watching SEX AND THE CITY by telling me repeatedly that I reminded him of Stanford Blatch.

I look nothing like Stanford Blatch. I don't really act like him.

I think CJ - who is prone to the expression, "Oh, that's so GAY!," and uses heterosexual buffer seats at the movie theater - is daring to suggest that I'm like Stanford only because I'm gay.

"I think your friend Kevin's more like Stanford," I said. "He wears brighter colors and doesn't have any hair."

"Yeah, but Kevin's very masculine," CJ said.

Great.

It reminded me of when well-meaning friends told me that I reminded them of Jack from WILL AND GRACE, which is not a compliment.

I'm tempted to tell CJ that he reminds me of "Insert Random Heterosexual Male Character Name" here because, well, they're both straight.

And, you know, very masculine.

"Hey, you know, you remind me of Ted Bundy from that serial killer movie," I would say. "You and he are both into girls."

I ran CJ's comparison by my friend Lupo.

Lupo, comparing me to Stanford, said, "Well, you're both gay ... and you both are prone to talk in quips. And that's it."

Late Lunch at Tiffany's.

My friend CJ has been doing hardcore studying on Sunday for his law school exams, and a couple weeks ago he asked me if I minded spending the day with Solenn, his girlfriend who recently got here from France. He called it a favor, but I reminded him that I like talking to Solenn - so spending that Sunday with her wouldn't be a problem.

And it wasn't.

Last Sunday, Solenn and I headed to Buford to catch THE POLAR EXPRESS on 3D IMAX, and it gave us an opportunity to have Chinese food at my favorite childhood restaurant, Lee's Golden Buddha. It ended with me learning a new card game from CJ called Sequence - and teaching Solenn a few swing dance steps.

Yesterday with Solenn was even better.

The day started early because I found out that my old film professor, Dr. Neupert, was coming to town to speak at the Sunday Key Cinema Club, which meets at 10 a.m. The club is cool because they don't tell you the name of the not-yet-opened feature that they'll be screening until you walk in that morning.

Since Neupert is the state's best speaker on French cinema - and because he last spoke at the screening of AMELIE, one of my favorites, I took a guess that we'd be watching a French movie and asked Solenn if she wanted to come along, even though it was so damn early.



The film we watched was the World War I romance I mentioned here before, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, which was directed by the same guy who made AMELIE and starred the same actress from AMELIE and looked a lot like AMELIE and seemed like it really, really wanted to remind us of AMELIE. But A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is darker and way more complicated than AMELIE, and, to me, it was confusing and a lot less satisfying.



A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is beautiful to look at, first of all. It gives us beautiful shots of Brittany - and it features some amazing battle sequences from the trenches of World War I.

Its love story features two young, innocent kids named Manech and Mathilde, who have loved each other since they were very small. Mathilde caught polio as a child and, in the film, walks with a limp. (In the novel, she's in a wheelchair.)

The movie begins by showing us that Manech, sent to the front, goes crazy, tries to get out of the war, gets convicted for treason and sentenced to a horrible, horrible death. He's sentenced to walk out onto the battlefield unarmed with four other men, where the enemy will attack at morning.

A few years later, Mathilde, who has been told that Manech was killed, refuses to believe it and investigates the intricacies of what happened on that battlefield that day.

As details pile up and characters from the trenches start to reveal layers of secrets, the film becomes a confusing, twisted puzzle involving dozens of characters, some of whom are hard to keep straight.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is another story from Jeunet featuring complications of fate and how a plucky, moon-faced girl chooses to navigate her way through it. You still cheer for Audrey Tautou and want her character to find what she's looking for. But it doesn't "work" the way AMELIE does.

Solenn and I both agreed about A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, though Solenn didn't like AMELIE and couldn't figure out what all the fuss was for.

Solenn's good at speaking her mind, and she impressed me several times yesterday.

After the movie, we went to Phipps Plaza for lunch, then we did some browsing at the haute couture boutiques.

Outside of the main ones, Solenn saw the Phipps Plaza Santa Claus, and she began to coo because, apparently, he didn't just look like some fake, store-worker Santa. He looked like the REAL Santa Claus, she said. I asked her if she wanted to see him, but she said her devotion didn't run that deep.

My favorite, Giorgio Armani, was as fun to look at as ever. I did my usual examination of all the ties.

Solenn, looking at the women's clothes, told a salesgirl that this one mink wrap looked like it had a bunch of cat tails sewn onto its edges. (Solenn was right. It did look like that. And it was kickass of Solenn to say so. But the salesgirl tried her best to be "unflappable" in the face of adversity.)

At Versace, Solenn and I tried to find the gayest, most elaborate shirt there, and it was a toss-up between several of them. One of them, though, had a hot-pink lining and looked like an Oriental rug from my mother's house, so that one got Solenn's vote.

At Gucci, Solenn and I looked at shirts and accessories, picking out some really good things, but we spent the majority of our time there checking out how damn hot the salesmen were.

I asked one of them where he got his haircut, and Solenn told me that I was flirting with him. I denied it, not convincingly.

Then, we ended up at Tiffany and Co., which Solenn had shockingly NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. Not "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Not the Tiffany's boutique in Paris. She'd NEVER HEARD OF TIFFANY'S BEFORE.



I was so stunned that I ran the girl immediately to the diamonds.

Looking in the cases, Solenn told me that she likes simple jewelry made of silver. Diamonds - the beautiful, sparkly, beautiful-from-a-mile-away, oh-my-God Tiffany's diamonds - didn't impress her in the slightest. Not the slightest. Which was really, really great.

"What is a big diamond supposed to tell me about the man I'm seeing?" she asked, in her cute accent. "That the man I'm dating is rich? Am I supposed to be bowled over by how much money he has?"

I remarked, in the diamonds' defense, that they were pretty and sparkly.

"It's not practical," Solenn exclaimed, looking at the display. "Just save your money, get me a simple ring with faux diamonds and buy me a car!"

Another lady browsing the Tiffany's display counter, overhearing Solenn, widened her eyes and gasped in horror.

It was great.

The heart necklaces didn't impress Solenn either. She doesn't like anything with hearts or crosses.

A salesman came up to us, and he got Solenn to try on a really pretty, thick-yet-simple silver bracelet. We didn't ask how much it cost.

Solenn later found this porcelain egg with a design painted on its outside that fit in the palm of her hand, and she opened it up, then closed it.

Curious, she looked at the price, and I think it was around $500.

"Wow, $500!" Solenn said. "You should really put something important and expensive inside that. Like cocaine or something."

Then, she carefully put it back on the counter.

Then, we went to the Gap, where we found more sensible, smarter and simpler clothes. It was a lot of fun. At one point, I took a tied fur stole, put it on my head and asked Solenn if I looked like a character from DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, something that I wouldn't have DARED to do at Armani.



The night ended back at my apartment, where we watched episodes of SEX AND THE CITY with CJ until they had to go grocery shopping.

After they left, I ended up back at Phipps Plaza to watch FINDING NEVERLAND, which made me cry.

Everyone else in the theater had people with them. I was, like, the lonely guy in the fifth row with tears streaming from his eyes. But it's not the first time I've been that guy before.

Solenn and CJ should see it. She's plucky, and she has a thing for Tinkerbell.

Without a net.

I've been unmedicated for about two weeks now. There's no real reason why I decided to go off my Luvox, and I don't think I'm in any long-term withdrawal effects at this point. I think that takes about two months to happen.

I'm having difficulty sleeping. I'm having weird changes in mood, but I'm mostly constant.

I'm tempted to cry on occasion, which is bizarre. I don't think that I've bugged anyone more than necessary, but, if I've sent you a lot of e-mails or called you a lot - to an even bothersome degree, let me know.

I wonder if it would be possible to, you know, stay off the pills and stay fine, although I'm not sure if I should risk it without consulting a doctor.

I'm not panicked about it.

Whore for money.

I'm indulging moreso in advertising for the site, in case you couldn't tell, because I occasionally chat up products and stuff. (Hey, I'm a salesman in one of my actual jobs, so why not make the most of it?)

You'll see the usual Amazon links replaced by little, boxed advertisements. I hope no one minds. (And if you do mind, I hope you feel comfortable enough to say so.)

I figure by being straightforward about my use of advertising that it softens the blow of it.

Of course, if you think that I'm a blowhard jackass and that I shouldn't use my blog for such purposes, let me know. I'm persuadable.

This message has been brought to you by Amazon.com.

Our little corner of the world.

Miss Gibson and CK are currently, in all likelihood, at the airport, and I'm at Larry's - where I was supposed to do laundry but instead headed directly over after sorta seeing off the travelers. (I saw them as they departed in our mutual friend Crystal's car for Hartsfield-Jackson.)



I wore a tweed jacket to go see them, and CK, following my lead, put on a jacket. Then, Crystal's boyfriend Teague put on his tweed jacket, and we all looked like variations on a theme. It was quite nice.

Our time together was spent having pizza at Slice, exchanging gifts and seeing an M.C. Escher exhibit at a local gallery.

Crystal and I spoke of "Buffy." I spoke to Teague about his parents' upcoming visit. CK and I spoke of food, Escher, the plot of "Gone With the Wind" and of impossible-to-open Walmart security cases on compact discs. CK told me that I need to come back to England.

I spoke to Miss Gibson of how I was so genuinely happy to see her that I almost cried at one point. And we spoke about the blog.

At one point during lunch, I mentioned the odd thing I found out yesterday.

A porn film star named Johnny Rahm, a nice-enough guy who I once ate a strawberry off of while he was dancing naked at my friend Larry's Pride Party - and who later helped my friend Lupo up off Larry's bathroom floor when he was a bit worse off, died this month. He hung himself at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

"Wow, that's an ironic way to go," Crystal said during lunch.

"Yeah," I said. "The porn star's hung."

Crystal's cool. We segued from the topic of porn suicide to the Chihuly Exhibit at the Botanical Gardens, and neither one of us has seen it yet. I think it's there until Christmas. I've heard it's phenomenal.

Miss Gibson was a vision in black, wearing a long string of faux pearls that looked just fantastic.

The Robbie Williams CD she brought me had a better, sexier photo of Robbie than the one I'd seen on Amazon.



As a means of repayment to her - and because I won't see her for the holidays, I got her a copy of the National Book Award winner for fiction, THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY by Lily Tuck.



I also got CK a Miles Davis album because, well, I figured out that CK is pretty hip and culturally tuned-in that night I slept on the floor of his flat, surrounded by his freakin' impressive DVD collection - which featured, I think, some David Lean, Stanley Kubrick and Fellini.



(I would've bought him the movie his nickname comes from - since he still hasn't seen THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but it's not available on European regional DVDs. The disc would only play in America.)

I figured Miles Davis was a way to buy him something that maintained the proper level of cool that CK should likely be accustomed to, and I think he liked it.

Seeing Miss Gibson made me miss being able to see her all the time, even though I e-mail her constantly. We didn't have enough time, this time through, to really break the ice and get to talk about stuff of deep psychological and emotional resonance, though we did have moments.

She's one of my favorite people in the entire world, and I love when she comes to America. She raises the quality of the real estate.

Slow burn.

Last night after the movie, Edmondson came over to my apartment for the first time ever. He immediately called the apartment "spotless" compared to his own house, which I have never seen, and he also called it surprisingly small.

"Gosh, man," he said. "How much are you paying for this?"

Edmondson lives in Stockbridge and commutes. He owns a three-bedroom house, even though he lives with two cats. Apparently our space needs differ.

Edmondson also proclaimed that he cannot cook. He proclaimed this at the point where I pulled the lid off the slow cooker to show him the pork roast that I'd started preparing, oh, about a day before.

Getting it out of the slow cooker was fun because the roast kept falling apart on the fork we used. Edmondson, impressed by that and impressed by the smell of my cooking, waited for the food while I quickly made some spinach on the stovetop.

The only things I had to drink in my refrigerator were grape juice and tea, so we had the juice.

The roast came out great. Really tender - and only a little bit greasy. Even though it had been in the cooker for about 18 hours or so.

Next time I make it, I should put vegetables with it, for that really adds to it - and provides an immediate side dish.

Edmondson ate more of the roast than I did, saying that it was awesome and proving once again that the slow cooker, a gift from my stepmother, may be the best, most practical gift I've ever, ever received for my kitchen. (Wow, I really qualified that praise, didn't I?)

So I made dinner for a friend. And it wasn't even a holiday.

I'm thinking Thanksgiving, whatever I end up doing, is going to be awesome.

Everlasting gobstopper.

I saw this poster up yesterday outside the theater where I saw KINSEY.

Considering Tim Burton's more recent track record (his Helena Bonham Carter period), I'm not sure whether this is going to be good or not, but it's usually a good thing when he teams with Johnny Depp, whom Marley says is just awesome in "Finding Neverland."



Of course, "Planet of the Apes" was terrible, and this is another remake.

Still, the poster's cool. And I loved the book - which this time has the same title as the movie - when I was a kid.



Read it if you haven't.

The dam breaks.

I had lunch with my father yesterday, and it was not as charming and funny as it usually is. Well, it was funny when I was eating my mashed potatoes, and he kept telling me that I needed to "build a dam" for my gravy - which I think he first said to me when I was about 5. He kept looking at my food yesterday, and he said, "Oh no, it's leaking ..." over and over. Eventually, I just broke the dam.

It took a turn for the worse when Condi Rice appeared on a television to accept the nomination for Secretary of State, and my father started to talk about how the Democrats would hate that they weren't the first party to nominate an African-American woman.

He called the Republican Party the party of "tolerance and moderation," representing the values of "mainstream" America.

I got upset.

Marissa is my beard.

The following is an e-mail exchange between me and my friend Jenipher, discussing THE O.C.
____

RILEY: I got THE O.C. DVDs at Target on Saturday, and I've already watched, like, five episodes. That show is beyond awesome.

JENIPHER: Hello? What do you think I’ve been talking about for the last year?

R: I'm sorry. In matters of culture, I'm not used to being a follower. But, OK, Seth is BEYOND gay, as is Luke and maybe Ryan a little.

J: Did you see this season’s first episode? Seth becomes gayer as the season progresses, even when he is caught in a love triangle. He can’t make up his mind b/c he loves Ryan most of all. I don’t think Ryan is gay at all.

R: Um, OK. Ryan's not gay acting. But seriously, there's the fact that he's the rebellious, vague, muscle-armed tough guy in a tanktop. And that he walks into every scene in the first four episodes and attracts the attention of every man in the room. Including an older attractive lawyer who wants to keep him in the pool house, a overcompensating rich jock, a bicurious and thin geek boy, a muscular, violent Mexican convict in juvenile hall AND a high school water polo team. The fistfights are there instead of foreplay. The whole thing reads like porn.

J: Yes, I will totally give you all of those things. But I certainly don’t think Sandy [Peter Gallagher, the lawyer] is interested in him. That’s icky. Kirsten put him in the pool house, not Sandy.

R: If it were Peter Gallagher from his SUMMER LOVERS period, then THE O.C. would be a different kind of show.



J: What is SUMMER LOVERS?

R: It's a softcore porn movie he made with Daryl Hannah in 1982.

J: I looked it up. Why do couples in movies have these wild, random trysts when on vacation in exotic places? I have been to somewhat exotic places (Orlando does not count), and have never even been tempted.

R: Maybe nobody sees you and immediately thinks of having an affair with you. Maybe some wild, Latin man would look at you and immediately want to play UNO or something.



J: That is not flattering at all.

R: What would you have me say? "Oh Jenny, I'm sure that someday you'll be lured away from your happy marriage for some sort of hot, clandestine tryst with someone while on a vacation on some tropical island." Or maybe this? "Oh Jenny, you've surely caused sensual thoughts in dozens of men, the effect you used to have on those Mexican construction workers when you worked at that store Small Things, but they likely know that you're pure and decent. Try though they might, they know they cannot have you." What do you want? I think it's more accurate to say that you inspire the average-thinking man more of "fun card games you'd play with your favorite aunt" than of "hot desire."

J: That’s not what I meant. I meant Gabe and I have never even thought of having some hot, EMMANUELLE-type wild tryst with foreign people, much like Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah in that movie you mentioned.

R: You haven't. I bet Gabe has.

Where it's at.

Poli Sci Guy asks me routinely how my attempts at writing a great novel and getting published are going. Every time, I reply, "Fine. It's fine. The blog is good, at least."

But I'm not writing anything outside of the blog. I'm not. I wish I were. Or, no, I mean that I wish I'd already written a good book so that I wouldn't have to settle down and actually have to write one someday.

I logged on to the blog just now intent on writing whatever came into my head, thinking that I might find an answer to Poli Sci Guy's challenge in what I wrote. I'm just not feeling the whole writing-a-book urge right now. It concerns me that it's only an urge I feel occasionally.

Lately, I've just felt tired. I'm trying to open myself up a bit. At the same time, I'm finding new things in my everyday life that amuse me or keep me fascinated.

Like how Chuck the bookstore manager has started talking to me more than he has to, as though I'm someone he enjoys talking to.

Or how people react when I wear a sportcoat into the office, which I did yesterday after last week's reactions.

I'm still inside my own little world, though, and it's still all about me in my head. Lupo's suggested I find a way to branch out, and I'm looking into that.

I don't want it to be a whim, though. I don't want any good thing I do to be on a whim. Or motivated by my own desire to be someone who does good things.

It's weird. I don't know if I'm talking about this the way I wanted to.

I feel like having a sandwich. And chocolate cake. And seeing my friend Edmondson. And seeing a movie with him. And having that be that.

Often I'm waiting on the one that maybe won't come.

Three years after buying it, Sarah Harmer's YOU WERE HERE is still - I swear to God - the most relaxing, folk-and-guitar-infused, genuinely good and touching albums I've ever owned. The fact that you can barely find it in stores anymore is really, really sad, though you can find her second album from time to time.



You've probably never even heard of Sarah Harmer, but she's awesome. Several of these songs would play on the soundtrack of my life, were I ever to make one.

I love this album. Love love love it. If you are a fan of the Lilith Fair style of music, buy this. If you liked Sarah McLachlan's stuff in the late '90s, take a chance on Sarah Harmer. Really. If you like Indigo Girls. Nanci Griffith. Dido. Am I speaking to you yet?

I mean, look, you can get a used copy on Amazon for about three bucks. Take a chance. It's worth far, far more than that.

Go for it. Do as I say. Buy yourself this album. It will make you feel better. It will provide you with evocative mood music for when you're alone, maybe driving in your car. It even has a wedding song. And about five good songs about how to cope with a breakup.

My personal favorite song is "Weakened State," but yours may differ.

Found money.

It's been a really, really rough week for me financially. Seriously. My account was overdrawn sometime last week due to an error I made while checking my spending against my online balance, so I've barely been getting by all week.

It's been stressful enough to keep me from checking my mail, for it's usually all bills.

But last night, it was different.

A couple months ago, a woman hit my car. A couple weeks ago, my car spent two weeks in a body shop getting repaired, and, during that, the insurance company decided to total my car. But I wanted to keep my car, so I used the payoff from the insurance company to fund the repair, a situation that worked out after I stressed about it for about a week.

I forgot that they told me that whatever funds didn't go toward the repair would be sent to me.

So yesterday, there was a check in my mailbox from the insurance company.

It wasn't much. But it's enough to help me out. It was enough to cheer me up about the situation.

So I'm going into the weekend on the plus side of my bank account with a cleaner apartment, a job I like, a job I don't like, great friends and a decent-enough sex life. I feel like seeing a movie.

What I'm (not) reading.

I can't get started on a new book lately. I'm trying to find something to read among the hundreds of unread novels that I have in my apartment - now that it is decently clean - but I can't quite gauge my mood right now. I mean, I tried BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON, in preparation for the movie, but I got 100 pages into it, read to the scene I've always heard about featuring Bridget's interview with the real Colin Firth, then saw that there were 200 more pages and just ... couldn't ... do ... it.



The movie's coming out this weekend, too, so it's not like I have to read the book now. It's like I've run out of time and patience for it, but what I read of it was just fine.

It was the same way I treated THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - which I started, got decently into and then just stopped reading.



With that one, I was interested up to a point, for I'd forgotten a lot of it from when I was 11. But once I'd satisfied my curiosity about it, I just couldn't keep reading it.

I'm tempted to try JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL again, for I feel as though I'm guilty of "plugola" for hyping it up and not reading it myself.

I'm also tempted to try THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES again, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS again, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD again and EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED again.



And I wish I could read Sebastien Japrisot's A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT on the first try, for the movie's coming out in a couple weeks. And I want to see the movie really, really bad.



I feel most tempted, though, to read A FAN'S NOTES by Frederick Exley. Because it was hilarious. And brilliant. And challenging. And sad. And complicated. And the only thing that really held me back from reading further was that it had 40-page chapters that I couldn't come to a stopping place on or digest easily before going to sleep. Instead, I'd just keep reading it and reading it, staying up WAY TOO LATE to try and make some headway. It's still next to my bed. I just haven't done it yet.

It's really hard to read about a smart man with a tremendous wit having the most difficult, sad, horrible life ever. But what I read of it was genius. Complete genius. The first page made me laugh out loud.

I recommended it to a lot of my friends, and only Vic was able to finish it. Black got further than me, but told me that he had to stop. Everyone who read even a portion of it said it featured some great, great writing. It's just, at times, really hard to take.

But I still recommend it, if that makes any sense.

Testing the birthday mood.

I just e-mailed Hennessy and told him that I was thinking of getting him a birthday card. I asked him how that sort of thing would go over.

He replied:

I know I am a freak, but you don't have to be scared of me that much!

So I wrote him and explained that I was just trying to respect his boundaries.

I wrote this:

You set a boundary early. I'm just trying to (and this is going to sound like OPRAH) grow into a friendship with you while respecting that boundary.

I like you. I don't know why I like you or the facets of how I like you or how you're going to react to reading this. But I do like you. And, because I like you, I don't want to scare you too much or push you too much or call you too much or annoy you too much.

Besides, of all the people I've hooked up with in the last six months, you're the one I've known the least. Which, by default, makes you my new favorite.

So I'm going to get you a card.

I thought it was funny.

The year without a Very Kacoon Thanksgiving.

Kacoon's mother-in-law wants Mike, Kacoon and the family at their house this Thanksgiving, and she's not seen them all since the Fourth of July. Since their family ties - which were strained - are now a bit better, Kacoon feels that they really can't say no to Thanksgiving.

So I'm not making a turkey for them this year.

And, because I work retail, I can't do the Thanksgiving weekend in Ohio, which is the only time that I get a chance to spend time with my mom alone over the holiday. My brother Dan and his fiancee are going to be there with them, but I've been cleared to work.

I can make other plans. But, argh, this is disappointing.

No one's getting a scarf from me this Christmas.

This is Isadora Duncan. She was a famous American dancer at the turn of the 20th Century. She died a horrible, horrible death.

I found out about it from reading Roger Ebert's review of THE INCREDIBLES, which I really want to see this weekend.

Will there be A Very Kacoon Thanksgiving?

Kacoon and I don't talk as much as we used to, though we do have tentative plans to eventually see SAW and have had some basic discussions about Thanksgiving this year.

Kacoon and her husband Mike, apparently, want to de-stress this year and not feel so constrained. So, instead of the traditional Thanksgiving meal that allows me to oil down and cook up a turkey, Kacoon and Mike mentioned - and this was months ago - making the whole thing a "breakfast food"-type meal.

I asked if I could still have my sweet potato souffle, and they said yes, though again they, um, "waffled" on the topic and again suggested breakfast food.

So, um, I don't know what's going on with Thanksgiving.

I've been invited to other dinners. (Heck, I even got invited back to Wes and Travis's Thanksgiving - in spite of that one holiday's sex-on-the-washing-machine incident.)

And there's always my mother's house. (OK, no, that's not gonna happen.)

Or I could make my own turkey and eat it all by myself or something.

Or maybe there will be another Very Kacoon Thanksgiving.

It's all up in the air.

No tubs were soiled during the making of this film.

Last night, Ron and I went to see the new David Gordon Green film, UNDERTOW, which Roger Ebert gave four stars.

I thought it was pretty good, though it didn't really have a third act to its story. It just had its characters run and run and run, not really giving them anywhere to go.

Ron, though, hated it. Hated it. Hated hated hated it.

"I thought Dermot Mulroney was OK in it," he said. "But everybody else was just boring. And I kept getting tired of seeing dirty people in dirty places everywhere. I mean, did they not know anyone CLEAN?"

"That's a David Gordon Green film for you," I said. "Everyone's usually poor, kinda dirty, and there's always a broken-down car in someone's yard."

The film also has a 10-year-old actor, who looks like Milla Jovovich in the face. His constant need for a haircut becomes distracting.

After watching UNDERTOW, I felt like seeing something predictable, Hollywood, feel-good and pretty. Since SHAUN OF THE DEAD doesn't fit that bill and ALFIE didn't come out until today, I opted to watch SHALL WE DANCE, which Marley had said was OK.

And it was just OK. It was exactly what I expected it to be.

I'm one of the few people in the world who still likes Jennifer Lopez, I think, although I miss when she used to do movies that actually required deep acting. If you want to see a good J. Lo movie, your best option is still the completely awesome OUT OF SIGHT.