Elvis in King Creole. Pippi Longstocking.

LONG WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY
I took the day off work. I had no real reason to do so. I just needed a day off to relax. Of course, I still had WORK to do from home, but it was still more relaxing to work on film stuff at home in my jammies than to do work-work at the office.

That night, B-Rex was having his birthday party. He had a BBQ dinner at his girlfriend’s house first, but I talked it over with the Troika and we just couldn’t seem to figure out a painless way of getting to West Seattle during rush hour. We opted, instead, to meet them at the War Room later. The War Room is a new club/bar that opened up in a building that used to be a gay bar. Meep and I called it the Elk Lodge because that’s precisely what it looks like from the outside. (It didn’t used to look like an Elk Lodge. It used to have an entirely white exterior. Now it’s all wood). Plus, there is no name on it so we didn’t know what else to call it. We were excited to see what it would be like on the inside. We gussied up and got there early (around 8) in an attempt to secure seats on the roof-top deck. Well, being a new bar with a mysteriously nameless exterior and a prime Capital Hill location, the roof-deck was already completely packed. We opted to reserve a nice, expansive booth in the empty downstairs section. We were surrounded by art deco pictures of Nixon, Mao and Lennon (not John). The motif was nice. The drinks had names like “The Iron Curtain” and there were $3 well and $2 beer specials until 9 so we felt optimistic. (Even though Meep and I did get scolded by a bouncer for putting our feet on what definitely looked like a foot stool to us. Apparently, it was just a very low, small table). A D.J. showed up and started playing Hall and Oates so our optimism rocketed ever skyward. The Birthday Gang was running late. They sounded like they were having a great time in West Seattle and we were sad to be missing out but our absence served the seat-saving function so we reconciled. I continued to drink bottom shelf vodka and sprites, completely forgetting the fact that I’m not supposed to do things like that anymore. Meep downed several High Life’s. Around 10:00, the Birthday Gang showed up. The birthday boy in question was appropriately hammered. We have several hilarious pictures of him opening his card and birthday present from us. (For the record, a G.I. Joe-themed card and a home-made t-shirt depicting his face on Godzilla’s body…Gafzilla; His nickname from the “Snow Day” shoot and for the rest of his life). By then, the place was PACKED and the DJ was playing less enjoyable music. I did some chair dancing and some people tried to get me to get up and dance, despite making fun of my extremely white lack of rhythm. No thank you. Here’s where things start to get blurry. One by one, the people at our table decided to trickle upstairs to the roof deck to enjoy the sardine-like standing room only situation. This was in no way appealing to Meep and me so we stayed until the very last. It wasn’t until we realized that we were sitting in the corner of a booth full of people we didn’t know, that we decided to concede. By now I had lost track of how many dirty vodka drinks I’d had and was feeling pretty, well, shnockered. We headed upstairs to find our friends who seemed perfectly happy to be standing shoulder to shoulder yelling conversations at one another. It was then that I realized that I was having a “paranoid” drunk. This doesn’t happen too often. But then again, I don’t normally drink cheap booze…anymore… The cacophony of the crowd was deafening and I was definitely starting to feel the walls closing in on me. I decided that I had to leave right then and there. So out I went, with Meep behind me. Problem was, I didn’t say goodbye to anyone, and Meep didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. When she followed me outside, she couldn’t get back in without paying a $5 cover (which starts after 10), and she was PISSED at me. And rightly so. It took a little work on her part but eventually she got me to explain that I was feeling claustrophobic and had to leave. She called Borgia and explained everything and we went back to her house for a QUIET nightcap. Guess what…I didn’t need a nightcap.

SATURDAY
Man. From time to time, there comes a point in your night when you’ve had so much bad alcohol that the standard two pints of water before bed will do you NO good. This was one of those times. I was in PAAAAIIIIN. Luckily, I had few responsibilities that day. I rested until around 1 and then got ready to go have lunch with my friend Kristie from college. She lives in D.C. now with her husband and about twice a year, she comes back West to visit her family. She has such a big family that she spends the whole time driving around Washington visiting them and only has a meal’s worth of time to hang with me. This was my meal. We went to Sushi Land in Queen Anne to gorge ourselves on gastronomical proportions of conveyor belt sushi. As much fun as the conveyor belt is, the sushi isn’t really that good there. But the green tea is free and you can’t get sick from bad vegetarian sushi, so I was ok. Kristie, her husband Ben, Dom and I had a leisurely lunch and then went next door to Ladro for a post-meal cuppa. The conversation was top notch, as usual and I always find myself very sad at the end of these whirlwind visits. Kristie and Ben are super cool and we always have a lot to talk about, despite only seeing each other bi-annually.

On our way back, I asked Dom if I could drive his car. I haven’t driven ANY car since I sold my Volvo 3 years ago. I never much cared for driving. I’m not good at it. I don’t enjoy it. But there are times when a person needs to drive so I figured I should put in some practice just in case Dom is incapacitated for whatever reason and I need to drive his car. Maybe there are some bad guys chasing us. Maybe it’s slow-moving lava from Mt. St. Helens. I don’t know. These things happen. Anyway, he foolishly agreed to let me at it. I plunked down in the driver’s seat, pulled the seat way forward to accommodate my short legs, adjusted the side mirror and went to adjust the rear-view. It didn’t move so I pulled just a LITTLE bit harder and SNAP. It came off in my goddamned hand. From the look of it, it seemed like we should be able to just snap it right back on again. Dom pushed. Nothing. He pushed a little harder. CRAACK! The windshield under the mirror mount fanned out into 5 spidery cracks. Fuck. Well, I told Dom I owed him a new windshield. Which I can definitely afford right now. I’ll just have to put off buying that amusement park. I took the whole situation as a bad omen and I re-claimed my rightful place in the passenger’s seat. But Dom still didn’t have a rear view mirror. Now it’s uselessly duct taped on and we still don’t understand why it’s not just snapping back on. Sigh.

When we got home, we rested for a while and then got ready for the Brunswick’s Blacklight Party/Roxy’s Birthday/Roxys Going Away Party.

I was still pretty damned hung over and decided that drinking was not a good idea. Instead I made some phone calls and scored myself a little green for the night. The Brunswicks had moved all their furniture to the side and rented several HUGE black lights for the night. Throughout the night, guests brought glow-in-the-dark goodies and everyone drew on themselves with highlighters. It was all very cool. You can see pictures here. You would think that it would be impossible to take a good blacklight photo, but some of them really did turn out pretty well. Except for the part where apparently NOBODY looks attractive under blacklights. Blech.

SUNDAY
Ah…nothing like waking up without a hangover! Thank you, nature! I did some work around the house and got ready to go to yoga. I was feeling pretty good and definitely ready to sweat and work hard inside the sweltering yoga studio. As I sauntered up to the door, I got a sinking feeling that I should have checked the holiday schedule on line before walking over there. I was right. They canceled the 4:00 class. I walked as fast as I could on the way home to get my heart rate up and then launched straight into living room yoga which is more painful and not as effective, for some reason.

That evening, we had planned to hit Sunday karaoke at Jalisco for Jef’s birthday (so many July birthdays!). Right as we were leaving, Jef called and said that the karaoke was canceled so the party was moving to Ozzie’s. The Troika are not fans of Ozzie’s. We always found it to be waaaaay too meat-markety for our tastes. But we hadn’t been there for quite some time and it was Jef’s birthday so we were willing to give it a go. When we walked in, we were surprised to find that it had been converted into some weird cross between a Shoney’s, a Farrell’s and a (surprise) frat house. It was replete with an ice cream window! It was pretty empty when we first got there and there was even a charming, pipe-smoking old man in the corner perusing the karaoke song books so we thought it might not be so bad. But then the bachelorette party showed up. And then everybody else showed up. By the time Meep and I made our first trip to the bathroom, we had to wade through a gauntlette of cat-calling meat men. Every time we turned around, one of the guys we were with was being threatened by some testosterone-crazed white hat. The karaoke song choices were mostly awful and we decided to leave as soon as we finished singing the songs we'd put in. There were a few gems. Jef did a bang-up job with “kiss” by Prince. Dom and my old apartment manager showed up to sing the hell out of “Poison” by Bell Biv Devo. A spot-on impressionist of Robbie Williams did “Angels” (and afterward was all the rage with the ladies). But we had to sit through the WORST version of Bon Jovi's “Bad Name” I've ever heard, among other fratty standards I'm repressing. We couldn't get out there soon enough and all of us vowed never to return. Of course, I had to be the one to forget something. Just when Borgia was speeding us away from hell, I realized I'd forgotten my glasses case which contained my favorite, irreplaceable sunglasses. I had to go back. Borgia dropped me on the corner and I queued up to get back in. As soon as I was cleared by the doorman, I pushed through an oblivious wall of people and found my glasses case. I bolted for the door and ran across the street to where Borgia had parallel parked. Apparently, his parking job was not without incident. When pulling in, he had lightly tapped the bumper of the car behind him. Of course, the drunk, burly owner of the car was across the street waiting to get in to Ozzie’s. He ran across the street with his more sensible girlfriend after him and demanded that Borgia get out of the car. Borgia refused and instead locked the door. Apparently, after his girlfriend calmed him down a bit, he stopped trying to call Borgia out. I returned and got in the car, and both he and his girlfriend watched like a HAWK as we pulled away. RIDICULOUS. Also, NEVER GOING BACK.

MONDAY
The fourth! I slept in and was surprisingly unaffected by the many margaritas from the previous night. A stupidly last minute trip to the grocery store and the Troika was on its way to Borgia's house in Fremont for the obligatory BBQ. It was blazing hot and I'm REALLY glad we decided to buy sunscreen at the store. We played some trivial pursuit, ate WAAAAAY too much, watched a terrifically bad 1979 sci-fi movie (thanks to Elyse and Gene) called The Shape of Things to Come (starring a perpetually grizzled Jack Palance), and later, watched fireworks. Fun fun fun! Until, of course, it came time to drive home. It took us an HOUR to get from Fremont to Capital Hill because the cops had LITERALLY blocked off every single left turn so that everyone had to sit in the gridlock on Fairview. Why, no one knows. So we didn't get home till after 12:30 on a school night. STOOOPID.

July 5, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

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WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

A bunch of us went to see the LONG AWAITED new George Romero zombie film “Land of the Dead”. We knew it was going to be cool because it's the man who INVENTED the genre. Still, I was a little worried about there being name actors in the film. I always liked the anonymity of the actors in the other “of the dead” movies. It made the whole situation seem more real. My fears were assuaged early and often. Simon Baker is dashing and dreamy, Asia Argento is the cutest lil Italian prostitute with a machine gun ever. I want to put her in my pocket. Even John Leguizamo was really good. Dennis Hopper, of COURSE, was tremendously amusing. The violence was creative and delightful. The zombies looked cool as hell, and Romero totally sold the whole “smart” zombie thing. There were two really exciting cameos too. The first was that of the endearing “smart” zombie from “Day of the Dead, Bub. The second was Tom Savini. Tom Savini rules. Supposedly, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are in there as zombies somewhere too but we didn't see them. It was, after all, a LAND of the dead. And it was really quite a perfect film.

After the movie, Faye, Sherrard and I headed over to Queen Anne for Dan's birthday. He was having an “Iron Curtain” themed party. There were people there dressed in whatever they considered to be european 80's club attire. I rifled through my closet to find something acceptable but Dom told me I looked like Brittany Speares and Faye said I looked like a “Madonna Supporter”. I'm not proud of either of those comparisons. Turns out it didn't matter too much anyway. It was a party and everyone was HAMMERED. Only about half the attendees were in costume. Faye and I saw an old college friend who we were actually happy to see. That so rarely happens. Everyone was in a pretty good mood too. Fun party. The only downer that happened was that a particularly snobby Tacoman decided to make fun of my drunken state by quoting one of my less than intellectual sounding utterances in Ahe's book. I was quite heavily intoxicated at this point in the evening and I knew that I would be too hung over to attend the Saturday yoga class. So I commented to Sherrard (I think this is pretty close to what I said) “I am so not making it to yoga tomorrow. I am so fucking serious”. Admittedly, it sounds pretty stupid when taken out of context. The context being the fact that I was drunk and that yoga carries with it a certain stigma that I don't normally subscribe too. Regardless, what she did was cruel and unnecessary. And why she decided to direct her cruelty toward me at that moment is beyond me. I may never have exchanged more than 10 words with this person. Admittedly, what I said sounds pretty stupid when taken out of context. And I make fun of people I don't know all the time. But to do it in such a way that she knew I would see it. It just wasn't nice and it kind of brought me down for a little while. Still, it might help me curb what I say about people I don't know…for a little while at least. After a while, the embarrassment and hurt subsided and I continued to enjoy myself well into the wee hours.

SATURDAY

Ow. I slept well past noon in an attempt to alleviate a very painful hangover. I was in my pajamas till after 4, at which time I showered and prepared myself for the evening's festivities. We started with dinner at the Canterbury where we gorged ourselves on too many fries and milkshakes. Then it was off to a Nimble Productions fundraiser to help the fine fellows earn enough money to buy the festival rights to “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies. They screened the short and made a very good case for why they needed that particular song. It was a very funny and well produced short so I hope they can make it happen. After that we headed back to the Hill for Kayobi's housewarming party. We met Kayobi's three awesome cats (one of whom is the very definition of butter ball) and saw their very cute new apartment . For their gift, I brought them a drinking game called “What the F*ck”. In this game, a person must choose between two undesirable activities and everyone else must guess what the person in question will choose. Those who guess incorrectly must drink. It's pretty simple because, well, it has to be. Complicated drinking games never go over well. This one didn't go over as well as I thought it would, however. A lot of people were disgusted by having to choose between two human secretions to consume (in popsicle form) or deciding what they would rather insert into their various orifices. After a short while, the game trailed off. I, for one, enjoyed myself. But then again, I've proved myself to be rather anti-intellectual this weekend, whatwith brain-busting quotes and high-brow games about boogers. Faye wasn't feeling well, so she left the party early with Borgia. I walked home on my own and had a GREAT time. I had never strolled through the quiet parts of Capitol Hill by myself so late at night. There are so many huge beautiful houses in tucked-away cul-de-sacs. I've been living in the city for so long that I forget how rare it is to have total silence. As I was walking through the neighborhoods, all I could hear were my own footsteps and the occasional backyard fountain. It was creepy and exciting all at the same time.

SUNDAY

Another lazy morning. I woke up around noon to the sound of helicopters overseeing the Gay Pride Parade. Dom and I tooled around the apartment for a few hours, enjoying doing nothing. I wrestled with Tobe a little bit. Then we headed to West Seattle for Dom's sister's baby shower. It was a pretty atypical baby shower. It was really more like a party. They had a keg and people were just hanging out and talking. There were, however, kids everywhere. That many kids around makes me nervous. I'm not sure why. We found out the possible names of Dom's future niece or nephew. If it's a girl, she will be called “Indie” (but that's Dr. Jones to you). If it's a boy, he will be either called “Vann Damon” or “Issac”. We were dismayed that they weren't going with our suggestion: Optimus Prime. It works for either sex!
We had to take our leave to go and record audio commentary for the “Snow Day” special edition DVD. Recording commentary is hard. You want to impart useful information and you also want to be funny. Marrying the two is where it gets tricky. I think next time we definitely need to be drinking. I think it's the key. Everyone knows the best commentary in history is the drunken commentary on “Cannibal, The Musical”. Apparently, there's a drunken commentary on the new “Orgazmo” special edition too. I've yet to hear that one.

And now the weekend comes to a close. We have quite a full week ahead of us, starting with meeting Bruce Campbell tomorrow at his book signing in the U District. We plan to hand him a copy of “Snow Day” but there are all kind of crazy rules printed on the signing ticket so he may tell us primitive screwheads to piss off. Like in the deal. Wish us luck.

June 26, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions, I Made Movies . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Keeping iit Like a Rock

WEEKEND RECAP

I know the weekend isn't over yet but a)I have a feeling I will be too bushed to update after yoga today and b)I have many things to gush about and I feel like gushing! Soooooooo…

FRIDAY

After an emotionally harried work day, I was ready to do some drinking. Though, when am I not, these days? That sounds pathetic, but really, I think that once I take care of my work situation, I will be in a much better head space. Earlier that day, I found out Roxy got into the A.D. program (or is it P.M.?) down in L.A. and will be leaving us. She was celebrating at Linda's so we headed over there for dinner and drinks. There were a LOT of people who came and went. I think there is a large chunk of Seattle that is going to sorely miss the Brunswicks. Meep and I used to hang out at Linda's all the time, despite the unoriginal selection on the juke box (Strokes and White Stripes over and over and over again) and the horrible wait staff. But we tired of it (go figure) and hadn't been back in a while. Very little has changed. It's still packed to the brim with hipsters (Meep and I actually invented “Hipster Bingo” back in the day because of Linda's), the juke box was playing The Strokes, and our waitress forgot about every other thing we ordered. She accidentally brought Dom and rum and coke instead of just a coke and he took a sip! So Dom had his first taste of alcohol (and hated it). He's a man now. Around 11:00 we were sick of Linda's but still keen to hang out so the Trio, krk and Borgia went to Bill's. I love that place! Our waitress looked like an older, dark haired Lily Taylor (I thought) and was enjoying herself. They ALWAYS play great music on the juke box (Ive never seen the selection because the music is always so good that I've never been compelled to go and play something) and their food is delicious. Best of all, they have Blackthorns on tap! Since we were the “Retard to Retard” crew, we finalized our game plan for the next day. krk told some more great stories about his metal days and we talked about Anthrax (which was one of my favorite bands in high school. That's right. In 8th, 9th and 10th grade, I was a little metal kid).
As per usual, I checked my email right before bed and lo and behold, I had one from the San Diego Comic Con. My heart stopped as I clicked to open the email. The first words “Congratulations! Your film has been scheduled for the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival!” HOT FUCKING DIGGITY DOG! I had just been telling Meep earlier that I'd resigned myself to the fact that we weren't getting in and that I was ok with that. But we ARE in and let me tell you, I am MUCH MORE ok with THAT! It was kinda hard to go to bed after that.

SATURDAY

Woke up around 10 and immediately started looking for tickets and hotels. ALL of the hotels within walking distance to the con were (not surprisingly) sold out. I am kinda pissed that they waited so long to tell us. They are very generous though. We get FIVE free passes (plus guest) for a short film! We also get our own slot (instead of having it lumped it with a bunch of other shorts) and we get to introduce the film and have a mini Q and A after. There is MUCH to do. We need to get our postcards together, press some more DVD's and Meep and I need new outfits!
Anyway, we didn't have a lot of time to mull things over because we had a stupid movie to make! We met at Dom's sister's house in West Seattle around noon. We got a late start because we were playing with their dogs. They have a HUGE dog named Shackelton who always has these stuffed toys he carries around. They have noise makers inside them. He likes to just chew the hell out of these toys and tear out their stuffing (in the most loving way possible, of course) but because they have noise makers, while he's chewing, they are making noise and the noises get more and more horrifying as he chews. It's funny and sick at the same time. We dove into shooting around 12:30 and were OUT OF THERE by 1:30. That's how retarded it is. But we were laughing the whole time so I think we really have a winner on our hands.
We parted ways so that The Trio could go make some travel arrangements. Jacob is going to meet us down there, but The Trio plus 1BenDur are going to fly down together. Anyone else want to meet us down there? It's going to be a BLAST and we have guest passes! we'll even sneak you into our Ramada hotel rooms (which we are cramming into because all the affordable hotels were booked. It will be like summer camp!).
Once we got the travel stuff out of the way, we headed down to the noc noc (which I love, despite the goth decor and the dodgy patrons…Wait. Who am I kidding? I LOVE dodgy patrons!). They have $1 PBR's and High Life's and cheap food (including tater tots! The perfect bar snack!). We downed as many beers as humanly possible in an hour and a half and then went to Pacific Place to see Batman Begins.

Batman Begins is awesome.

Christian Bale was pitch perfect. Absolutely. Michael Kane was a fantastic kind, gentle and sassy Cockney Alfred (his performance was exactly how I'd always read Alfred…without the Cockney bit). Cillian Murphy was creepy and hot. Liam Neeson was amazingly unirritating. Morgan Freeman was super cool and delivered the sweet burns. GARY OLDMAN IS ALWAYS FLAWLESS. He really is the greatest working actor. It was so great to see him not be evil. And Ahe pointed out that somehow he made that mustache sexy. Amazing. Katie Holmes still sucked but she didn't ruin the movie. (Although Meep and I couldn't help but laugh out loud when she said “I'm a Gotham city District Attorney. Let me pass!”. Is she supposed to be the same age as Bruce Wayne? Because there's no way she can pass for 30). There were some flaws to the movie, it's true. But the cast was so good that you really had to look for them. And Christian Bale sold EVERY WORD he uttered. He was THAT good. Even when he was channeling Patrick Bateman. Which is still a perfect choice because Bruce Wayne IS a borderline psychotic. He just doesn't have the business cards or the affinity for Whitney Houston.

After the movie we had the HARDEST time finding a bar to go to. All of our usual late-night, guaranteed a table establishments were packed to the hilt. We finally ended the Crocodile which would have been fine had there not been a monotonous emo show going on in the next room. Ahe recognized all of Death Cab for Cutie in attendance. (I have seen pictures of them, but am so bored by them that I can't be bothered to remember what they look like). We had a few more beers and gushed about the movie, among other things and then walked home around 1:30.

SUNDAY

It is still Sunday morning. My plans for the day include calling my father, yoga, dishes, possibly buying some milk and watching The Crow. Glamorous.

June 19, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Is wait as expound

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday

After a particularly trying workweek for me and Meep, we decided to have a relaxing and quiet-ish evening at the Canterbury. We started out just the two of us and whiled away the time by outlining our new web series “America's Next Judge Reinhold”. I'll just let that sink in.
After a while, Sherwood showed up and later Borgia and Dom. Sherwood was already drunk and ended up leaving early. Around 11:00, we tired of the Canterbury and decided to try our luck with an adventure elsewhere (sans Dom who had to get up at 5am the next morning for a shoot). We paid our bill, leaving one of my remaining New Kids on the Block trading cards along with the tip. (I bought a pack at Archie McPhee's and have been leaving them all over town. The response is surprisingly positive). Anywho, once outside, we were at a loss for where to go. Nowhere on the Hill seemed to temp us. Finally, I remembered one of the places Faye and I have always wanted to go: 13 Coins. How can one NOT be seduced by a dodgy sign on the side of a major road with an arrow pointing to seemingly nowhere that boasts “24 hour dining and lounge”. So we hopped in Borgia's car and headed down there. When we finally turned down the right street and feasted our eyes on the green awning for the first time, we had mixed feelings. We couldn't really see inside and so whatever was on the other side of the door was going to be a surprise. To our shock, it was POSH inside. We went into the lounge which looked like Gentlemen's Club (but with ladies inside and no one wearing robes). We took a gander at the menu and found everything to be overpriced. Not what we expected at all. (And kind of not what I'd hoped. It was no Great American Dive Bar). But with 13 coins shellacked into the table, a mosaic ship lamp in the corner, and menthol cigarettes on the menu, everything checked out. We had one beer and called it a night. My curiosity is now sated and I can check 13 Coins off the list.

Saturday

I went to the noon yoga class and was happy to discover that the slow-talker wasn't teaching. When I got home, I felt pretty good. I had way more energy that I usually have after the 4:00 Sunday class. I think I will start trying to go to Saturday noon more often. SOOOOOO, after a shower and a small lunch, I met Faye to go to Value Village. We were costume shopping for “Retard to Retard” which we are shooting next weekend, right before the Earth opens up and swallows us. After that, we relaxed for a little while and met BennDunn for dinner at the Red Line. After having an orgasmic sandwich there a couple of months ago, I have been bugging Faye to go back there with me. (Actually, I've been bugging everybody, but she was the first one I could talk into going). The sandwich actually wasn't as orgasmic as the last time but it was still good. And a cool crisp beer is just what I needed to wash it down. Then we headed down to the Crocodile for the comedy stylings of Eugene Mirman. (If you visit his website, make sure you are on a computer with speakers). The opening act was the most ADORABLE cross between Chuck Barris and Cat Stevens. His name is Langhorn Slim and he's a 23 year old bluegrass prodigy. He plays guitar like the devil is after him. He dances around and sings songs about heartbreak like only a literate 23-year-old prodigy can. I think Faye and I were utterly smitten after about the second song. It's funny. I went in there all jaded and skeptical, ready to hate whatever he was about to play. I have been so displeased with new music lately. But when he started playing, I could actually feel my cold, dead heart melt and turn into ice cream and puppies. Buy his album. You won't regret it.
After Chucky Baby played, it was Ron Lynch from Home Movies. When Faye and I first got tickets, Brendon Small was on the bill. But according to his website, he done got busy. So we got Ron Lynch instead. It turned out great because my face hurt from laughing long before Eugene even hit the stage. Holy crap. The man is funny. I especially enjoyed his character bit in which he is a comedian who's suffered a nail gun injury. He stands on stage with a bandage on his head and just stares straight ahead. Meanwhile, on his lap top, his bit is played through a Stephen-Hawking-style voice generator. Effed up. And awesome.
Then Eugene came on and was even better than the first time we saw him with Stella so long ago. The best part was when he played a real recorded phone conversation between him and a Christian phone company that tries to get you to switch to their service by telling you that other phone companies support gay marriage. He totally takes the piss and they have NO IDEA. It's AMAZING to me how few Christians seem to have a sense of irony. Particularly the ones who say “ya'll”. Buy HIS album too.
After the gig, we drank some more and played a new game we made up wherein we decide which filmmakers, actors and films should be awarded “hacks”. As an example, Eli Roth gets 5 hacks. Were “Cabin Fever” not so over-hyped as being so extremely edgy and violent (which it isn't), we may have been less harsh. Kevin Smith gets 4 hacks. The only reason he doesn't get 5 is because of “Mallrats” which is entertaining enough. “Ferris Bueler's Day Off” gets 5 hacks because it turns out the character of Ferris Bueler is not endearing but rather a mooching, manipulative arsehole. Now you play!
Faye and I started craving some nachos from Shorty's so we popped over there for a Nacho Nightcap. BennDunn snapped some very compromising photos of Faye and I deep-throating a veggie dog. Hopefully they will never see the light of day. Ordinarily, we're all for amusingly inappropriate photos, but these didn't turn out that way. I can't explain why but they really do look disgusting and wrong. Horribly horribly wrong.

Sunday

I really DO love not having the pressure of 4:00 yoga hanging over me. It was very liberating. I went to the grocery store, tidied up a bit and watched a TON of tv. Delightful. I also happened to catch the end of “Pretty in Pink” on TV. And once again I realised that a film I found enjoyable as a kid is actually a huge load of crap. So at the end, the beloved Ducky, who is in love with Andie, “lets her go” be with Andrew McCarthy because he's such a nice guy. Aw. Poor Ducky. I bet this is going to be awful for him. Unrequited love is horrible. But wait a second…who's that young thing making eyes at him from across the dance floor? I don't know but she's hot! Andie who? And with that, all of the reason for us to care about him goes out the window. If they had only played it out a little bit different. Maybe if Ducky had flopped his sad ass down in a chair and the cute girl came over to find out what was wrong. She sits down and starts talking to him. He's still sad, but there is a hint that this young chicklet might help him get over it soon. But no, they had to go for the instantaneous erasing of any open-endedness. NO ONE CAN BE SAD. This is John Hughes' world. No one is allowed to have more than three emotions and CERTAINLY no one can go into the fade-to-black with unresolved issues. John Hughes, I give you 5 hacks.
Later, Faye and I went to the Mercury which, once a month, hosts a neat little shindig that's open to everybody. They have video games, music, drinks and legos! On this particular night, they were showing our movie so we went to introduce it. It was a great crowd and despite the fact that the sound and picture were AWFUL on their system, the audience was really receptive. Our movie didn't go on until 11 so we didn't get home until after midnight but it was worth it, I think.

June 13, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies, The Soundtrack . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday

The Troika (being Dom, Faye and myself…I decided I needed a nickname for us because I'm usually writing about the three of us. What better nickname then a reference to three slightly evil geeky villains from Buffy?) arrived at the Rendezvous for the “Opening night Gala (or Gayla, depending on how you pronunciation preference) for STIFF. We had no idea what to expect. The program suggested that it was 5 hours long and we thought they couldn't be showing movies for 5 hours. Turns out they WERE showing movies for 5 hours. Since we were very hungry and tired and seeing a midnight movie that night anyway, we opted for being social and fed. I think we made the right decision. After all, I would have had to share an audience with my nemesis, Fan Boy. And that would have done no one any good.
We left around 10:00 to go to the Neptune to see “Night of the Living Dorks” (or however you say that in German). Even though I had consumed 5 ciders, I had only the slightest buzz. I think I may be regaining the Karen Allen in Raiders-esque alcohol tolerance that I possessed during my 8 boozy months of living abroad. Hmmm. Good or bad? Anyway, we got in line for the movie and Dom and I passed out “Snow Day” postcards promoting the screening the next day. We, in turn, received free energy drinks from the Jones Soda crew that I will NEVER drink. Every time I think of ANY energy drink, it reminds me of Red Bull which I've only had once in conjunction with too much vodka and an early-morning three hour charter bus ride. Suffice it to say, I will never drink Red Bull again and don't even want to be reminded of the taste, smell, texture or concept.
Moving right along…we took our seats for the movie, armed with a last hoorah of carbohydrates. We were treated to a short before the feature. When I say treated, I actually mean we were taunted because this “little” short about a high school geek who makes a pact with the devil to be good at basketball was ALL special effects and nothing else. THIS is the kind of thing that SIFF accepts as independent? Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Almost every festival with the word “international” in it is basically a hollywood-sponsored dealy. But I was surprised. And jealous. But that was nothing compared to the sheer disgust that all three of us felt once the feature started.
I don't know who these guys are that made this movie. I did a little internet research and from what I can tell it's two old German men who basically make American-style teen sex comedies en masse. So why they needed the help of an “independent” American film festival is beyond me. But that said, I think they will do fine because the audience FUCKING LOVED it. The film was essentially a cross between American Pie and Idle Hands. (The latter of which I marginally enjoyed). The audience was chalk full of eager beavers who ERUPTED in laughter at every stupid cliche boner or weed joke. I also realise now that the so-called geeky protagonists WEREN'T EVEN THAT GEEKY. They smoked pot on the way to school, they got laid and they were even marginally attractive. In fact, the “geeky” goth-girl love interest was EXTREMELY attractive (and don't even get me started about the gratuitous scene involving this alleged high school virgin sleeping in lacy underpants and a tight t-shirt). As for the horror aspect of it, well, it was luke warm. There were more gross-out moments involving excrement and jizz than there were gorey moments. It's like they threw the whole zombie bit in there as an afterthought; some cheap way of making the otherwise cliche “losers-get-laid” plot stand out. Awful awful awful. But I guess we were the only three people who thought so. I just hope it was because it was a drunken midnight movie audience who was eager to laugh at anything. Because I was actually EMBARRASSED when the audience shrieked with glee at a reference to Seattle and Kurt Cobain. (Although Faye has a theory that they actually change that line to be city-specific. So if it's playing in Lubbock, Texas, the line is “If this spell works, we can fly to Texas and resurrect Buddy Holly” WOOOOOHOOOO!). After all that mental exhaustion, I went home to sleep the sleep of the sex-crazed, dorky German zombie.

Saturday

Faye and I headed down to the Seattle Art Museum around 1:00 to catch the screening of all the Weekend Film Challenge films. In particular, we wanted to see the one that Dom, krk, Ben, Borgia and Jef made on the big screen. For the challenge, several teams got a prop, a genre and a line of dialog on Friday night and had to complete a film (written, shot and edited) in 72 hours. The prop was lotion. The line of dialog was “Basically, everything that comes out of my mouth is good” and the genre, for our boys, was sci-fi. The short that they created from those criteria is nothing short of comic brilliance. I can't even begin to describe it, but I will definitely link to it when it appears on Storypipe later. The rest of the films were pretty funny too (except for the one that wasn't), but I still think “Future Good” was the cream of the crop.
After the screening, Faye and I got interviewed for Storypipe which was weird. I'm still not used to being in front of the camera. But we did get to tell “bad date stories” (in our ongoing effort to extinguish all stereotypes about women filmmakers).
Dom had to run off to interview some legitimate artists, so Faye, Borgia and I killed time at Shorty's before our screening at 6:00. I have never played Lord of the Rings pinball before and I have to say it is ABSOLUTELY my favorite pinball after South Park pinball. If for no other reason than the moving Balrog piece.
The screening went as well as can be expected for a space that only holds about 30 people. I can't wait till we can get this thing in front of a horror audience though.
After the screening, we hung about the Rendezvous for a while longer and then headed over to the Nite Lite to take over their juke box and keep it Garth Brooks free for a while.

Sunday

I was utterly useless. Except when I was stricken with my monthly bout of guilt for living in filth, and cleaned the house.

June 6, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

A GGood Boner Back in My Life

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday

After a hellish week for both Faye and me, all we wanted to do was chiiiiiill and watch a bad movie. We managed to rope Ben and Sherrard into watching it with us and we even pre-funked by watching part of the “Muppet Wizard of Oz” starring Ashanti. Well, not even Pepe the Prawn in a starring role could save that pile of excrement. So after we had a sufficient buzz going, we started the movie. The movie was “American Psycho 2”. Since Faye is going to post her review about it, I shant spoil it. I will only say this. It was in NO WAY a sequel to American Psycho. In fact, I'm pretty damned sure that it was only given the box office gold “American Psycho” title because after the producers saw the first cut of the film they thought “Well, we certainly can't sell this turd based on Mila Kunis's acting. And since she doesn't take her top off ONCE, we are fucked. Unless we can think of some way to tie this thing to another movie as a sequel. Hmmmm….what movies are about serial killers? Well, there's “Silence of the Lambs” but this isn't even on par with “Hannibal”. There's those “Urban Legend” movies but this doesn't have an ensemble cast and all the college student characters die within the first 40 minutes. Wait! I got it! “American Psycho!” Sure, at the end of the story we learn that Patrick Bateman didn't actually kill anybody but most people who saw that movie didn't even read the book so they couldn't be sure WHAT the hell the end of that movie meant. We'll just shoot one extra scene wherein Mila Pug-nose witnesses Patrick Bateman killing her cousin, thus fucking her up for life. Perfect! We may even make back a quarter of our budget on video sales this way.”

Near the end of the movie, Elyse and Gene showed up and were bored instantly. Luckily, Tobe was there to melt their hearts. After the movie, Faye and I couldn't bring ourselves to join people at the Rosebud so we watched the “Reefer Madness” musical instead (which we seem to be alone in appreciating).

Saturday

Faye and I decided to be girly and shop a little before seeing “Layer Cake” at SIFF. After shopping, we still had some time to kill and we went for some drinks. There had been some crazy street fair in the U that day. I don't know if that's what brought the freaks out or if it was the usual clientele. But at Finn McCool's we were annoyed by a young, obnoxious named Tyler (of course) who bet us we “couldn't shake his hand”. We were in no mood for this so we downed one drink and left, passing Tyler who stood on the porch trying to smoke a cigarette through 3 straws.

At Big Time, things were much more calm. The eyecandy was in effect and the enjoyment of the beer was uninterrupted by students. But then we were approached by an old man who's cheeks were rosy with drink. At first, we thought he just wanted a friendly chat. He asked if we were vendors for the art thingy. We said we weren't. He said he worked with wood but we could never quite pinpoint what he DID with the wood. He them told us that was his hobby. He really worked for the Seattle Storm. He assumed that we must be into the Seattle Storm too. At first, we had no idea why he would think this until it became apparent that he thought we were lesbians. Faye said “No, we're just best friends” which he thought was beautiful, but ultimately, not as interesting at lesbians would be. He asked us what we did and we told him we were filmmakers. This prompted him to tell us that he was a “multi-billionaire” and he tried to get us to tell him why he should give us money. We weren't really prepared to pitch but if he WAS an eccentric billionare, we didn't want to pass it up so I started into my shpiel. He stopped me saying “No! No. What do you WANT”. I told him we wanted to make films for a living. He said “NO! What do you WANT”. I said “We want money to make the films”. He said “YES! Ok. [to Faye] What do YOU want”. Faye tried the same tactic but it was too late. He turned to the girl at the table next to us and said something to her. She responded and he turned back to us and said “Now, SHE'S interesting”. And that's our cue to exit. I think the only reason we'd stayed around that long was because he'd offered to buy us drinks. But he never did. Billionaires are so stingy.

We still had time to kill before the movie so we tried to get in one more at the “All American Bar”. It was at that point that we realised we were in no mood to sit quietly in the dark for the next two hours. So we just picked up our SIFF tickets and bussed it back to The Hill. We met Sherrard and Borgia for a few more at the Lava Lounge and Belltown Pizza before calling it a night.

Sunday

Nothing exciting to report.

May 23, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

supplicate Strattera

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday

I went with Faye and Elyse to see the show that Dom is in right now. It’s a musical called “Ragtime”. I know a lot of my gentle readers are familiar with musical theatre in general, but for those of you who aren’t, “Ragtime” is THE whitest musical about black music perhaps ever. It’s as if someone set out to make a classical opera about Rock and Roll and didn’t put one single NOTE of guitar in there. It also could have been easily re-named “Sterotype-time” because that’s how it felt. The Jewish immigrant character sang about money all the time and actually “made-it” by becoming a Hollywood director. The main characters were a black couple and their story would have been pretty moving had it just been THEIR story. But they had to share it with the Jewish stereotype, his mute daughter who inexplicably wore a hackey-sack on her head, and the white family with the prejudice father, the long-suffering mother and the radical son. Along the way we also met some “characters” based on real historical figures like J.P. Morgan and Harry Houdini, the latter of whom was played by Dom. Houdini’s lines were such transparent metaphors that he ACTUALLY said something akin to “I am also am immigrant and look at how famous I am. You can break your chains of oppression like I did.”. (And seriously, I was paraphrasing the line, but it was phrased that blatantly). Of course, none of this is the fault of the cast. The actors were great. The singing was good. I just don’t understand why, in this day and age, especially in a city like Seattle, why anyone would feel the need to put this show on. There are no “lessons” in there for us to learn that we don’t already know. And it certainly wasn’t to celebrate the music of “ragtime” because there was NO GODDAMN RAGTIME IN IT. So what’s the point? Well, the audience was 95% geriatric so that might answer my question for me.
We were grateful that we packed out vodka and cokes. During intermission, the three of us hid behind a tree to pass the bottle around and we were lucky enough to witness something glorious. Across the field, in the darkness, we saw a cop car pull in flashing it’s lights. They said something over the loudspeaker and then, all of a sudden, the darkness lit up with the headlights of over 50 cars. All the cars sped off as fast as they could. One car stayed behind, taking one for the team. Awesome! A high school kegger got busted! I was a loser in high school and never got invited to those parties so I didn’t even know that really happened outside of the movies. But apparently it does. Dom said that from backstage, they could see even better and saw some kids running off into the woods. Hilarious!

Saturday

Tobe had to go to the vet for a checkup and his annual shot. He was in and out of there pretty quickly though and nothing seems to bother him much.
I had a few hours to kill so I took a nap whilst attempting to watch a Robert Altman movie. Then Faye and I went to a friend’s birthday BBQ at Golden Gardens. I’d never been there for a BBQ before and Faye and I found it a little strange. It’s SO crowded. We kind of felt like we were crashing some huge party. But I wonder if everyone there feels like they’re crashing someone else’s party. Right next to us, a guy showed some people his fire-vomiting trick which involved putting lighter fluid in his mouth. That doesn’t seem too smart too me. Seems like it would work just as well to use something edible like Bacardi 151. But the dude vomited fire so who am I to question his lifestyle choices?
I also happened to witness a totally surreal, sad and hilarious moment in American life. A HUGELY overweight woman wearing a mumu was walking down the path with her slightly less overweight friend and a little girl. The mumu lady was carrying an unopened bag of cheetos. Suddenly, she stopped and opened the bag. She actually had to STOP WALKING to open the bag of Cheetos. She ate a handful and then handed the bag to the little girl and they continued walking. It was the kind of scene that would have made Bill Hicks cry.
Later that night, Faye and I were at a loss as to what to do. We wanted to do something “new” but couldn’t think of anything. We rounded up Sherrard and headed out in search of a bar that we’ve never been too. Instead, we went to the Honey Hole. On my FIRST DRINK, I gesticulated a little too wildly about god-knows what and spilled the damned thing all over myself. The waiter was nice though and actually brought me a new one free. I was so impressed with his service that in addition to the 20+% tip, we also left him a Jonathan Knight sticker that I had earlier acquired from Archie McPhee’s. That’s what you get for good service from me.

Sunday

I spent most of the day being a lump of crap. I skipped yoga and then felt guilty about it so I tried to do it at my house. I think I may have fucked up my neck as a result. Then Dom and I got thai food and watched Pootie Tang which was pretty damned funny. I’m surprised I haven’t seen it until now. It was written and directed by Louis C.K. who is a great comedian with a pretty entertaining website. I particularly like the “Bad Jokes” section. My personal favorite?

Q: What do you call the female child of the woman who helps you while you're pregnant? Also the woman is from Boston and the child is sort of oddly tall shaped.

A: My doula's oblong daughtah.

Ba-dum-ch.

May 16, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Be that kind of guy

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday
Faye, Borgia, BennDunn, Erik and I met at the Wok and Grill which used to be a nice quiet place to get a drink and a good meal on a Friday night. We reveled in their cheesy New Wave/80’s hits juke box selection. Those days may well be over. Around 9:00, a DJ showed up and started playing The Smiths. While I count myself a person who generally enjoys the Smiths, I do not enjoy them on a Friday night when I am trying to stay awake and upbeat. We decided to leave at the end of our round and find refuge elsewhere. We lost (Erik) one but gained 3 (Sherrard, Dan and friend, a lovely girl called Marie) and set ourselves up at Bill’s Off Broadway where the music selection was decidedly more party-like. A few pitchers later, we were happily drunk enough and ready for bed. BennDunn crashed on my couch. He was kept warm by the thoughtful Tobe who volunteered himself as a blanket. What a considerate cat.

Saturday
This was probably the first Saturday in recent memory that I didn’t have ANY commitments or work to do. Nothing. Bliss. Dom and I ate breakfast at Julia’s (delicious French toast but lackluster potatoes). Then we went to get some afternoon movies. We rented a “short” film (40 minutes) called “Being Ron Jeremy”. It was a parody of “Being John Malkovich” which was saved ENTIRELY by the participation of the titular actor. It was written/directed and starring a lanky, pale Jewish man who bares a striking resemblance to Matt Stone. This guy apparently went to film school in New York and is slightly younger than me and I was immediately jealous of his having been able to get Ron Jeremy to be in his movie. Most of the jokes are pretty obvious and cliché, but The Hedgehog is always so enjoyable to watch that I forgave the cheesy dialogue.
Note to filmmakers: There is almost NEVER any reason why a short film should be longer than 20 minutes. 40 minutes isn't short. But thank you for cutting out the scene where you, the nerdy lead actor/writer/director are in a hot tub with 2 porn stars. We all know why you wrote it. You were wise to save it for the deleted scenes.
After Dom left for his show, I watched the other movie I’d rented. I have been trying to get people to rent Saw with me since it came out on video but to no avail so I realized I would have to watch it on my own. The downside to this is that there was no one there to wake me up after I fell asleep halfway through. Is that a testament to how dumb the movie was or to how run down I have been lately? The world may never know… (My money is on a combination of the two).

Sunday
I was stricken with a sudden shame over how horrifically messy the apartment was. Seriously. Dom and I are disgusting. Why this only bothers me once every couple of months is beyond me. I decided that as soon as I came back from yoga, we would clean. And clean we did. It really wasn’t so bad and now I feel so much better about my living space that I wonder why I waited so long. Of course, we’ll see how long this attitude lasts. I’m sure I’ll be back in the same lazy headspace in no time.

May 9, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Happier days with lower interest rates

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday
Well, the long awaited, much fretted over day was upon us. I headed to the Cinerama straight after work to meet 1 Ben Dur and get in line. I am that much of a geek. However, since Ben and I were the first to arrive, we decided to lay low in his car until a line began to form. This is after I got a dirty look and an eye roll from the girl at the ticket counter. Hello, Cinerama employees. Do you know where you work?
Anywho, Ben and I pulled out our towels and waited. People began to trickle in, many dressed in bathrobes, many more with towels. This would have been fun were I not so damned nervous.
We got our seats in the balcony, which I will never sit in again. I didn't realise that they are designed for people over 6 feet, as there is a giant bar right at my eye level. So I knelt on my feet and prepared for the movie. I was hoping for a Serenity trailer but instead got “Monster in Law” and “Herbie: Fully Loaded”. Interesting demographic.
Spoilers contained herein.
The movie started and I was genuinely excited. I loved the dolphin musical number. I loved Martin Freeman as Arthur straight away. I also loved Mos Def as Ford and immediately forgot about the accent. He was perfectly awkward and quirky.
When the Earth blew up, I got chills. Fantastic. But they started hammering home the love story hooplah from the word go (a camera phone picture? Come on! Arthur is NOT that sentimental). I'll just go on the record right now and say that not only is Trillian not the love of Arthur's life (it's Fenchurch, as annoying as she was at times), but that the whole idea that Arthur would fall in love with some girl he met once at a party and harbor “feelings” for her after all these years is ridiculous. Furthermore, it's directly in opposition to the character of Arthur who is presumably so level-headed that he would never suspect his best mate to be an Alien. So un-romantic that it took him ages to work up the courage to do anything heroic. This is not a man who would hold out hope for a fleeting crush. If anything, Arthur's fixation on that party was more the fact that his manhood was called into question by Zaphod than a love-at-first-site situation.
As for Zaphod, well, I was TOTALLY buying Sam Rockwell’s performance…until that fucking second head popped up and I realized I would have rather had them have NO second head than do what they did. That flip top, Pez Dispenser thing looked cheap and was very distracting. That moment where chaos breaks out on the Heart of Gold and Zaphod runs around like an idiot with his head popping up and saying things is so horrible. Once he had the head removed, I could deal with Zaphod again.
The Humma Kavula episode was boring and contrived. I know they said Douglas Adams wrote this part himself but I can’t help but think that what he wrote was vastly changed post-mortem.
That strange woman who was in love with Zaphod was also boring and contrived.
Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast was probably one of my favorite parts. He was perfect and he reminded me of Jennifer Saunders from AbFab which was a take on that character that I never would have thought of.
Alan Rickman as Marvin was aight. Marvin just didn’t have much to do is all.
The ending made me want to vomit.
All in all, and I’ve thought about this quite a lot, the movie wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But it also wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been. I know that they had a lot of pressure to cater to the fans and also to a new audience, but unlike Peter Jackson, they chose the wrong things to take away from the story, leaving it an empty shell of a film. I realized after my post-film drinking binge, that most of my favorite parts of the story are Douglas Adam’s little philosophical tangents. I love how he dis-proves the existence of God. I love the bit about the 3-breasted whore. I love all the stuff about Ford’s past and how he is just basically this mooch who likes to get drunk and hang out with women. You don’t see any of that stuff in this film. I suppose, it’s to be expected because it’s a Disney film. But still, that darkness is part of Adam’s humor and, if you ask me, a very important part of the essence of the story. I don’t see how they could possibly made a decent sequel or sequels to this film without all that darkness because it only gets worse in that world for all those characters. Faye was right. Seeing this film, for me, was like seeing Fellowship of the Ring for her. It was more painful and stressful than just a fun movie-going experience. I need to see it again to solidify my thoughts because right now they are more emotional than reasonable.
And that’s all I’ll say about that. For now.
End of spoilers.

After the movie we went to the Nite Lite to drown ourselves in Journey sing-a-longs and beer. Aaaaah….

Saturday

Tobe went to the vet in the morning and we learned that he has gingivitis but is otherwise fine. We also learned that when he’s nervous, he has the ability to shed his bodyweight in fur.

After that, Faye and I took naps because we were HUNG OVER. Then we finished the script that we have been working on for 3 and a half years. Hoorah!

By that point, our brains were too fried to do anything but rent “Wild Things 2”. And thank god we did. Comedy. Gold. Faye is writing a review for it as we speak.

Sunday

Yoga hurts.

May 2, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

blocky compendia gorham fluff charles dateline

WEEKEND RECAP

Friday

It was looking like it was going to be a poor turnout for our Robocop screening. At 8:00, no one had shown up yet (besides me, Faye and Dom. And Two of us live there), so we continued to watch Carnivale and be equally amazed by it’s brilliance and amused by it’s charming Dust Bowl dialogue (you sonofabitch, goddammit). Around 8:15, Sherwood arrived, but, by that time, we were too far into the episode to stop. So Sherrard, who uninitiated into the world of the Rousties, (not that those of us who were caught up had any better of an understanding of it), checked his email and padded around the apartment until we were finished. Around 9:00 we started Robocop (first watching 5 minutes or so of commentary which was long enough for us to learn two important and amusing details.
1) Verhoeven almost didn’t accept the offer to direct it because his first reading of the script “led [him] to believe that it was a standard American action film”. It wasn’t until his wife read it and convinced him that “there was a lot more going on here” that he decided to make his American directing debut.
2) He pronounces it “Rrrrrobocup”. It’s hard to type that out the way he says it. Basically, he rolls the first “r” and makes the whole word as close to one syllable as possible. Hilarious.

Around 10:00, krk arrives with snacky reinforcements and a friend who’s name has already escaped me. (Damn you, reefer!) BennDunn arrived around 10:30 in time to catch the end of the movie, drop off a copy of the Tivo’d “Reefer Madness” and a Polaroid of his person identifying himself as “1 Ben Dur”. Everyone met and adored Tobe who reveled in the petting orgy. And then we all retired to bed because we are all sleepy and lame.

Saturday

Faye and I had some writin’ ta do. We have all these “little bits” left to add to the feature script. Things that should be easy, but when you sit down to write them, they end up taking a dogs age and you’re googling random phrases like “rectal prolapse” for inspiration and the next thing you know, it’s time to go to a backyard BBQ and croquet match in the rain. I’m hoping we’ll only need one more week on this bad boy and then we’ll have completed draft # 3.
At 5:00, we headed to our friend Chris’s house to eat veggie BBQ and prefunk for the Reggie and the Full Effect show. We ate a delicious and gluttonous portion of veggie burgers, rice and kimchi (sp?) and homemade angel food cake for dessert. We enjoyed this meal whilst watching THE most fucked up TV ever created, Wonder Showzen. This was only the second episode I have ever seen and I have to admit that even this bloodlusty wench was a LITTLE grossed out when I first saw the bit about the Chewties. However, by the time they got to the “Leprosy Nachos”, I was already desensitized. Still, I must know who these people are and how they can possibly think of things so disturbing as a child in a Hitler costume interviewing people on the street.
After dinner, we decided to break in the newly grown grass in the backyard with a game of croquet. I have only played croquet once before and it was a looooong time ago so I have to say I think I did pretty well. I was in last place but I was still right behind everybody else so it wasn’t as cripplingly humiliating as, say, high school gym class. I can’t wait to play again! Halfway through the game, it began to rain. We thought we could play through, being hardened Seattleites that we are. We were wrong. The rain came down with increasing strength and we were forced to postpone our game. Luckily, it stopped before we had to leave, so we finished the game just in time to hop in Chris’s fancy and recently acquired antique convertible. No top down for us, but Faye still wore the fifties-style scarf I bought her for this very occasion.
We arrived at El Corazon (formerly Graceland) just in time for Reggie’s set. We were horrified to find that we were surrounded by children with a mean age of 18. Despite the presence of irritating children, drunk dudes and some guy farting tacos, the performance was great. I had previously held reservations because I heard that the lead Reggie is going through a divorce and it also saddened by the break-up of the Get Up Kids. Faye and I were both worried that this meant a return to the emo sensibilities of the GUK. It did not. It meant death metal. Very angry death metal. And people adorned in fake blood. Awesome.
We left as soon as the set was over, as we had no desire to stick around for New Found Glory or to spend any more time with these people. Since it was still early, we headed to the Hill for a drink. We started at the Wok and Grill but were dismayed to learn that their juke box was broken. Having no other purpose to remaining there, we decided an impromptu karaoke session at Jai Thai was in order. We made some calls to bulk up our group and proceeded to sing!
Highlights:
-Andrew’s surprise performance of “Power of Love”. We were trying to train him for his contest the following night where they choose the song for you. He clearly did not need training.
-Chris’s balls-to-the-wall, and no doubt sore-throat inducing performance of “Mother” by Danzig.
-Some guy with a devil lock who did the most dead-on performance of “The End” by the doors, followed later by an incredible Elvis impersonation. I think I have a crush on him.
-Erin’s always flawless “One Way Or Another”.
-Me doing “Say It Aint’ So”. It might not have been a highlight for other people, but for me it was loads of fun. I wish they had more Weezer at karaoke. I would KILL to do some songs off Pinkerton.
-Some poor girl choosing “Piano Man” and being drowned out by the entire bar singing along loudly.

Sunday

It started out as a perfectly normal Sunday but escalated to a bit of an emergency situation when we realized that Tobe was urinating blood. Faye and I took him to the emergency vet (right around the time when I would have gone to yoga. Doh!) and he was given antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. The poor little guy! I have to give him a pill twice a day for two weeks. For those of you that have ever had to give a pill to a cat, you know that it is typically a Sisyphus-ian endeavor. However, Tobe is a champ who takes his pills with little protest. We will know in a few days if his problem is clearing up. I’ve had the little guy for a week and he’s already been to the emergency room. Hopefully this is just a problem that he’s had for a while and was just never taken care of, rather than a sign of a weak immune system. Poor little feller.

Anyway, now we are back to Monday and this is THE critical week in the world of Snow Day. We have to send the movie off on Wednesday (Thursday at the latest) to make it into the San Diego Comic Con. Wish us luck!

April 25, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies, The Soundtrack . Tags: , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

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