thursday evening i went riding around with brad, kelly, and jason. we hung out at the diedrich’s on montrose for a while, then we headed to the big easy on kirby to see luther and the healers. i’m not a huge blues fan, but they were good and there were a lot of good dancers on the floor.
friday night was the monthly “geek gathering” for the radio show. we had it at the petrol station, which is the new place by the guy who had kaveh kanes. it is a converted old gas station in the heights north of 610 between ella and shepard. it’s a cool place, although it probably has too little indoor seating for our needs. we had a fair number of new folk show up, which was cool. afterward i went to the meridian with jamie for the john evans band cd release show. it was cool to get to see the meridian (since i’ve planned to see shows there but have never made it), but i could have done without seeing any of the bands.
on saturday i hooked up an old black rotary phone that used to be in my grandfather’s shop. i’ve had it since 1995 but had never messed with it. i plugged it in and got a dial tone. i called my brother and left a message. it seems to work just fine! not bad for a phone internally stamped as being built in 1973. i need to clean it up because it’s kind of nasty with paint and grime, but if that works out it should be a pretty nifty piece of functional old technology. i love it when i get a call and i get to hear the sound of those phone bells ringing.
i went by cactus. they’ve sold a good portion of the store merch already. i picked up the austin city limits releases for merle haggard and waylon jennings. they have storewide mark-downs. but it kind of feels like taking stuff from your friend who is dieing before they’re dead. or at least it sort of felt that way to me. maybe that’s why i have such a hard time going through tamara’s stuff she left behind, much less throwing it away.
i also found out saturday that my great aunt nelda mae passed away. i knew she had gone into the hospital, but last i heard they thought she was doing much better. i’m a total slacker (yeah, yeah, act surprised) and i’d never written thank you notes to people who got me wedding presents. she got us a cookbook put out by the fredericksburg pta. this particular one was a compilation of the best recipes from all of the cookbooks, going back a long way. tamara never cooked much, but one of the things she sometimes made was potato soup from a recipe in that book. it’s really good. anyway, i always meant to write her. after i heard she was in the hospital and then doing better, i thought i really needed to sit down and write her, even though it’s almost 8 years late and my marriage disintegrated. oh well, one more thing for me to regret in life. i think i’m going to go to her funeral though. i should at least do that.
late saturday night i watched thumbsucker. it depressed me. i think it is well-filmed, and the characters and their interactions were all interesting. i can’t really pinpoint why i had the reaction i did. sometimes that just happens. i think maybe it was the awkwardness of the main character and how he (and others in the film) went through these various stages where they were trying to find themselves — sometimes believing they had — only to later realize they were wrong. like the point is there is no point. hurray for small victories, but they’re meaningless. or maybe i’m just reading my own issues into it.
today i managed to wake up around 10am, so i went to church. i rode my motorcycle down to river pointe in sugarland. they have reserved parking for bikes up front, and i guess have a group of people that ride together. i’ve been to river pointe a few times. it’s a casual place and i think the pastor has an interesting vision for the church. i’m not sure if he and the congegration are actually pulling it off, but it sounds good. i’ve never actually met anyone new any of the times i’ve gone. it’s pretty easy to go in and out without meeting people, although they appear to want to be friendly and greet you and all that jazz. normally i’d probably like that, but i’m really wanting to find some kind of xian community to be a part of. i’m not particularly socially outgoing, so unless there is some obvious compelling reason i need to meet someone it doesn’t happen unless someone else initiates it.
tonight i went over to the potts and watched broken flowers with jack. (written and directed by jim jarmusch.) the story and filming were good. it’s paced pretty slowly and has a lot of extended shots with silence and little movement. it’s also got some pretty funny stuff in it. but if you don’t like movies that leave the ending open you won’t like this. it’s about as open as you can get. still, if you’re someone who can take pleasure in the journey and the sights on the way then give it a shot.
jack and sue have a dog named hans. they got him not too long after i met them back in 1997 or so. they had to take him into the vet a couple of days ago because he was acting very sick. i forgot what the diagnosis was, but he’s got some kind of advanced illness so they are going to put him to sleep. he is acting better since the vet gave him some medicine, but it just makes him feel better — it doesn’t heal anything. sue said jackson asked if hans would be in heaven. i asked her if she went and added all dogs go to heaven to her netflix queue. (humor doesn’t really solve anything, but sometimes the temporary distraction makes things easier to handle.)
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failure is not an option. it's a requirement.
You are dead on about Broken Flowers. I also found it quite similiar to Lost In Translation.
bill murray plays a somewhat similar character. in fact, i think one could almost tie the two movies into being about the same person. i think i liked lost in translation more. the emotional affair developing through the film bothered me quite a bit when i saw it (because i don’t think it was really innocent or fair or okay and i think they would have acted on it given more time together), but my wife didn’t seem bothered by it. of course, i think she saw herself in that situation at the time. and she was involved in an affair (it may have also only been emotional at that point, but they had more time together). so while i think lost in translation was a good film (and scarlett johansson r0x0rs), it’s kind of got a personal connection that is rather painful for me. i thought the virgin suicides (similarly written and directed by sofia coppola) was really good too.
of course, i can’t mention the sad bill murray roles without mentioning rushmore, directed by wes anderson. it was the first that i’m aware of to really put bill into that kind of role. i think the two above, rushmore, and the life aquatic (also by wes) round out that category.