.blindness.

I was in Turku going to some weird street fair/music festival. I saw my Aunt Ellen there, and she had a large shaggy brown dog that spoke English. The dog was Swedish but spoke with a great American accents. We hit it off pretty well and my Aunt offered to give me the dog. She (the dog) seemed to want to live with me instead of my Aunt so I took her home but told her I wouldn't be able to give her my full attention. She was fine with that, though when she leaned on me, her paws had long claws that dug into my arm.

My friend Juuso and I were in the East German town of Frankfort-Oder, trying to hitchhike to the far side of Poland. We saw a Chinese truck stopped, and the driver, a Chinese man dressed like a garbage man, was smoking. I approached him and asked if we could hitch and he said yes. We got in the truck - Juuso in the front seat and me in the back, and made small talk. He told me his name but it was something Chinese so I forgot it. Suddenly I realised we were driving through Pittsburgh so I started shouting out landmarks and other things - and I got excited by it. I insisted that we stop for the night and stay with my parents - the other two guys weren't so into it, but I talked them into it by promising lots of free food. We actually stopped at my aunt Janice's house, where some family gathering was going on. The three of us sat in her living room and everyone said Hi, though no one seemed particularly surprised or excited to see me (which irritated me). In fact, everyone was running around and shouting at each other and ignoring us. I made smalltalk with the Chinese truck driver and again asked him his name. He said it was Philniekro. I said "like the baseball player?" and he said "I guess so" since they don't really follow baseball in China. I started to tell him about how I always drove past Phil Niekro's hometown on I-70 in Ohio and there was a billboard about it, but then I stopped telling him because I realised he didn't care. Juuso asked me if all the Fails were this crazy but I explained that this was my mom's side of the family, so I was the only Fail present.

It started with a giant musicology but it didn't end there. The digital woodman, casting a small resistance foreclosure of resolutely immobile upbringings into a ragtag bandit of makeshift homily entertainment Boxing Days, smirks from its governmentally-enshrined anthology. I want to eat, please let me eat the goldenrod. Airbus is heavy and thick. Walking past the generic living quarterns of the vinaigrette, we entered the vast wormwood of gargle ploys and beerhouses. It's enough to block the olfactory embaras of the blueings you are trying to find. Is it the birdlimes who are flying over? Outside the barricades kill play hieroglyphic. From there we walked to the edition of the vinaigrette, to the arboreal scuttle known as the Pensioner's Allodium. Towards your internal compatriot's magnetic Soviet, you scrape your knuckledusters on the fecund underexposure. A blind personnel in you understands more than you think. Dark sticky flummox in barricades tremble.

Attempting to watch all of Godard's films, in order, starting today with 'À bout de souffle'.

Thoughts:
Getting an 11-DVD Godard box set for €9.99 has reinvigorated my plan to watch Godard's completely filmography (well, at least all of the features) in chronological order, which means starting with this one. This is the first time I've ever seen this in widescreen and the difference is astounding, as I previously though this wasn't something I'd ever be able to sit through again. It's hard to say something poignant here about one of the few films that truly changed the history of cinema forever. Though the first and third acts are the really explosive freewheeling parts that set the world on fire, I really clicked with the second act, particularly the long scene in Seberg's room. In addition to the technical innovation and the European recombination of film noir/gangster/arthouse elements, À bout de souffle really makes Seberg's character the soul of the film, which isn't so obvious behind Belmondo's clowning around. Writing a meaningful review here is like writing a review of DaVinci's Last Supper or something, so I'll just say that I was really into this, a thousand times more than when I first saw it in college on VHS - whether my new appreciation is due to maturity, my deeper interest in film today vs. then, or the superiority of seeing a film in its proper aspect ratio I'm not sure - perhaps a combination of all three.

I was pissed off to find out that my elected Congressman (Mike Doyle) lived in the C-street house that's been in the news lately, so I decided to challenge him in the primary next year. I started making my campaign materials and I was phoning the media to announce my candidacy. I bought some white posterboard at RiteAid and I was starting to draw signs in magic marker. Then I realised that I was also living in the C-street house and didn't realise it.

Opinions are like assholes so here's mine since no one is asking.


Bottle Rocket, 1996 - the perfect summation of all that independent film can be. Hate to sound like the guy saying "their first album is the best" but A+.

Rushmore, 1999 - I'm almost completely with ya, This Recording -- certainly it can never be repeated and nothing says 'zeitgeist' of my college years more than this film + Fight Club. Perhaps the perfect balance between wide-eyed innocence and dense brainy quirkyness. A

The Royal Tennenbaums, 2001 - Ambitious is rarely a bad thing for me. It shouldn't be possible for me to connect with characters this [choose one: rich/ridiculous/self-absorbed] but I guess that's what New Sincerity is all about, cause I sure felt. A-

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004 - But here's where I falter in my faith; Owen's accent just couldn't convince me (living in Kentucky when this opened); starts to feel like it came from the Wes Anderson Factory. Still down with the sprawl/ambition but I have little desire to rewatch this. I wonder if Owen's roles in shitty films like Shanghai Knights, Starsky and Hutch etc were starting to colour things for me by 2005. C+ ... no, wait, B- for class participation.

The Darjeeling Limited, 2007 - A return to form yet also a new direction. Brody is magnificent, the Indian setting stirred many personal associations for me and the visuals were perfect. Instantly familiar in that Wes Anderson way without being repetitive. Not wild about Hotel Chevalier out of context but as part of a whole, I'm down. I wish this was longer. A

Pros: Bottle opener in bathroom, so you can open a beer while you are on the toilet. Also, room came with toilet paper roll that was 75% gone - which is cool - opening a new roll for every guest is stupid and wasteful. A backup roll is also provided. Cons: Shower was not hot. Small bottle of red wine left outside of minibar suggests it is complimentary, but it actually costs 75 DKK (for a 250ml bottle).