30 January 2009

I went 800 miles to see a $40 movie

I went to Sundance!

Because we had to do this in the most ridiculous way possible, since that's how we roll, Walter and I went on the last weekend (when everyone had left) and drove (800 miles) and got tickets on the internet ahead of time ($6/each service fee) and chose a movie playing in Ogden (1 hour + from Park City). We r smahrt.

But the driving was pretty cool because we got to go through four states on the way (CA, AZ, NV, UT, aka caz-no-VUT) and after Las Vegas it was pretty damned beautiful for most of the way with purple mountain majesties and all that. This little lovely is from Virgin River Canyons:


We arrived at Ogden at night for our first movie and had a lot of time to kill, so we got to walk around in the pea soup fog, have dinner, and I even found a coffee in Ogden, UT! Of course, it was from inside the movie theatre, so I don't think it counts. No coffee shops in Ogden (except one place in an alley behind the theatre that promised to be open due to a whiteboard in the window promising "1/2 price lattes on Friday after 5!", but was not open at all. Maybe that's a result of the horrible economy -- rather than renege on the 1/2 price, they just closed up and ran away). I have a theory that there are mostly no-caffeine Mormons in Ogden, thus no Starbucks; could this possibly be true? Anyway, proof:


Then after coffee-hunting we still had time to kill, so we wandered down to Fat Cats and bowled:


and skee-balled:


and air hockeyed (no picture because of my shame at losing so disgracefully, including scoring ON MYSELF about six times).

We saw "500 Days of Summer" at the incredibly gorgeous Peery's Egyptian Theatre with the live organ playing ahead of time, and the movie was awesome. I have total crushes on both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt and they both delivered, yay, movie!

Then we finally made our way to Park City and hung out with friends and saw some more movies and ate food. Thank you, Park City, for giving us a winter wonderland while we were there.

We went to see the thoughtful and charming "Arlen Faber", written and directed by my old sketch teacher John Hindman (meaning: he's not old; he taught Olde Sketch Style). We joined the crowd of post-movie-and-Q-and-A fans talking to him and shaking his hand, and I said hello and congrats, and thankfully Walter was there to capture this illustrious moment with his cell phone camera:


Boy, I'll treasure that photo!

28 January 2009

20 January 2009

You mustn't lie about one of the most famous drunken writers of our time

These are excerpts from the bio in the back of the current Vintage Crime edition of Raymond Chander's The Simple Art of Murder:

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago..,but spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a free-lance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator.... In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his business career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing....

I've read too much about Chandler lately, so that I've become as woozy from his difficult life as I was by Katherine Mansfield's that time I endured D.H. Lawrence's love/hate insults, her family's coldness, her husband's what's-his-deal-ness, her lost pregnancy in a German pension, Ida's mule-like devotion, and fatal TB with her. It's too much, is what I'm saying.

With Chandler, it's too much booze and too many moves from house to house and too many years between him and his wife and too many worries and too few friends and too much of his beloved elderly wife fading away. And then more alcohol. And some shots to round it off. How could a man who loved his cat so much have such a rough time of it?

So this bio struck me as odd because it made him sound too normal and his transitions in life too smooth, when in fact it was all a fucking mess. By his own admission he worked as a "free-lance journalist" in England for about a week. I'm sorry to admit that I've exited jobs after a week or two, and I wouldn't want my bio to read "worked as a free-lance contractor at the Mustang Ranch." Look, I was barely there long enough to get herpes!

And though he was a director of oil companies, at the end of his time there he was skipping work to have sex vacations with secretaries, and when he did show up, he was drunk. So you could argue that a depression "put an end to his business career", but not The Depression.

Why sugar-coat it, Vintage? We love dissolute geniuses!

05 January 2009

The Universe guided me to the floor

I decided to do one of those things wherein you let The Universe(tm) guide your actions in life by asking It to give you a sign as to the direction your life should go.

Over the years I have met many actors who had been guided by The U to become actors, but I've not yet met a accountant or a librarian or a packaging company account executive who was similarly guided in their paths. Although, to be fair, they may just not be as vocal about it.

Anyway I was in the library (because my life is action-packed like that) and asked T.U. to lead me to a book that would lead the rest of my life. I wandered, then blindly stuck out a hand and grabbed a book.

"The Complete Book of Floor Coverings -- a guide to buying and installing carpet, tile, and linoleum" by Robert Y. Ellis.

Hmmm. The last floor-related issue in my life involved the concrete floor that we had laid down on the first floor of our house. Is Uni telling me that we should've gone with carpet, tile, or linoleum? Are there terrible spiritual consequences to having a concrete floor? But, Universe! It's so easy to clean!

Perhaps I'm being too literal. Floor. The base. The foundation on which you stand. You need to think about the ground on which you are standing. You can only jump off from there. Is it firm? Is it solid? Is it teetering on the edge of a plunge into blackness? Is it carpet, tile, or linoleum?

Very deep, Verse-Man. I'll have to ruminate on it.