The Lonely Toilet

I'm always threatening to write children's books called "The Lonely [Something]." "Toilet" is a good one. You can also use something like "Hamster" or "Fork" or "Baboon" or "Encyclopedia." Or "Pie." That kind of thing. Or you could go with "The Lonely Executive" or "The Lonely Driveway" and get kind of existential and novel-y. Or you could go, like, "The Lonely Asshole" and people could wonder if it was about an actual asshole and you were being smarmy and suggestive, or just some guy who was an asshole, and if it was going to redeem him in the end, or what. Again, these last few are not children's books, obviously.

Anyway, I thought of "The Lonely Toilet" because there's a toilet sitting out for the trash across the street from me. And it looks lonely. And perhaps I would like to write a children's book about it. Although, probably not.

P.S. Wall-E was absolutely fantastic. I adored it. Maybe I'll post more about it later. The thing I liked most, though, and I'll try and say this without spoiling anything, is that despite its anger at humanity for being shitty, lazy fuckups, it badly wants to forgive humanity, and allow it to redeem itself, and it ultimately does. It's a beautiful movie. The end credits are the best part.

My most anticipated movie of the year

...is, OK, probably still The X-Files. Yeah yeah. Mulder, Scully, I can't wait and I [heart] them and all that. I've been hunting down spoilers, clasping my hands delightedly at new pictures, etc. But the whole X-Files thing is, in a way, at this point almost more like when your kids are in the school play. Of COURSE you can't wait to see them, and your eyes are going to be fixed on them every moment they're up there, and you love them and whatever they do you're going to be convinced on some level that it's the greatest thing ever, and you can't wait to hug them when it's over and pinch their cheeks and tell everybody, "Those two? MINE" (please note: metaphorical; I'm not going to be stalking people so I can hug them and pinch their cheeks). And then, quite separately from that, you're going to go see, I don't know, Hamlet.

My Hamlet this year? WALL-E. I have been waiting for this movie forever. I have teared up literally every time I've watched the trailer. It's no coincidence that half of my blog is named after robots. There's something ABOUT robots that not only fascinates me but MOVES me. I have no idea why -- well, I do have some theories, but I'm not going to get into my frequent habit of psychologically analyzing myself, and I really think the crux of it is, I like when things that aren't human try to be human. (Except for Data. I never got into Data. Yawn.) I have done a LOT of thinking about this whole thing. I'm one of the few people on earth who unabashedly LOVED A.I., not to mention wept through most of that too (his love is real...but he is not. COME ON, people, I'm not made of stone). I love going to the MIT Museum to see Kismet. I badly want this dude to call my own. Half the reason I love The Sims is that they're basically funny little robots (Sims 1 more than 2). I have babbled to anyone who will listen about the uncanny valley. (You know what gives me the uncanny valley more than anything else, certainly more than any robot I've ever seen? POODLES. Fucking poodles. The big ones, and really when they have a normal haircut, not the crazy-ass poodle haircut. There's something about their proportions that's weirdly human and it creeps me out. And I love dogs, but, poodles. Eeeg.)

I also love Pixar. I've basically loved every movie Pixar has ever made, even Cars. I've been fascinated by computer animation ever since I bought some weird VHS thing from the PBS store in 1989 or something that was basically computer-animated shapes running around to New Age music and these days is pretty much something a six-year-old could make in 30 seconds on a cell phone. I went to see the Final Fantasy movie in the theater largely because I heard they did a really good job on the hair. Computer animation is taken for granted these days, the line between "animation" and "FX" is blurring more by the day, half of conventionally animated stuff is also computer-animated and just made to LOOK hand-drawn (Futurama, for one), and there are Saturday-morning computer-animated cartoons now and kids' movies coming out of every studio. But, well, here's how it is. I remember being at a movie (I think it was The Incredibles, actually), and the previews for it were basically computer-animated movie after computer-animated movie. I remember thinking, "Gosh, these all look great. I guess the other studios have finally caught up to Pixar. Not really surprising," and all that. Then the preview for Cars came up. And my eyes pretty much popped out of my head. Pixar is just in a league of its own.

So I love Pixar. I love robots. I love space, and I love movies where a character looks up into the sky and yearns. And anything about the far future chokes me right up. I am, as an aside, helplessly furious about what's happening to the planet, to the point where I don't even like to talk about it because it depresses me too much. (See also "International credibility of U.S., systematic and gleeful destruction of in name of pointless macho-bullshit bluster.") So, this movie already had me written all over it.

This morning I read Ty Burr's Globe review. It opens:

With "WALL-E," Pixar at last takes the great leap forward many of us knew the company had in it. A "family movie" in name and MPAA rating only, it's a major visionary work, a sci-fi parable of astonishing scope and depth that is anchored by an adorable bucket of bolts and yoked to a sensibility that is - there's no other word for it - furious. It's also, by a substantial margin, the best American film of the year to date.

It continues:

These scenes are stunning in their wide-screen attention to detail and their refusal to let us off the hook. [...] The first act of "WALL-E" is, daringly, a post-apocalyptic silent movie that picks up where the last act of "AI: Artificial Intelligence" left off.

A.I.-esque? Check. Post-apocalyptic silent movie? CHECK-A-RAMA. See my love of Metropolis and all it spawned. Except for Blade Runner. Boo, Blade Runner.

So this is what Pixar is asking us to buy into: a romance between two robots.

Awesomeness. And check.

If anything, this is more frightening than the scenes back on Earth, a goofy but ferocious attack on a consumer culture that turns leisure into religion and humans into overfed sheep.

Checkity checkity chizzzzeck. Personal bugaboo, anyone?

And the pièce de résistance:

Stanton and company appear to have been studying the work of Japanese animation guru Hayao Miyazaki; while his spiritual dimension is missing, the eco-despair that galvanizes his films "Princess Mononoke" and "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" is even more keenly felt here.

Miyazaki? Can it be that I have not, in this blog, yet waxed poetic about my obsessive love for all things Miyazaki? My helpless lack of resistance to kawaii-ness + reverence of nature + total lack of villains and conflict-for-the-sake-of-conflict/embrace of gentleness + crazy incomprehensible and cliché-avoiding storylines = , well, my obsessive love for all things Miyazaki. Check, check, muthafuggin' CHEEEEEEECCCCCCKKKKKK.

So it's official. This movie went in my brain, looked around, figured out what I would like in a movie, and made those things into a movie. And I cannot. effing. wait to see it.

Oh, don't cry, X-Files. I still love you the most. *gentle head pat* No, I'd LOVE to see your new set pictures. Yes, you told me about your new friend Billy Connelly. He sounds very nice! Oh, yes, I'm sure it's VERY scary. You can bet I'll be covering my eyes at the...what did you say happens in that part? Oh yeah. That sounds super scary, all right! You guys are so cute in your costumes. *cheek pinch* Who wants apple-juice popsicles?

MEMENTO

is the most awesome movie in the world. It is second in awesomeness perhaps only to Mulholland Drive, which is also insanely awesome, once you have the key to what the hell is going on and you can start piecing it all together. Goddamn, Naomi Watts. You are a talented lady. Don't drink all the Coke! But anyway, this isn't about Mulholland Drive, it's about Memento, which I finally rewatched because my sister/roommate finally consented to watching it. And it hasn't gotten any less awesome with time. In fact, I think it's MORE awesome because I now know what's going on a little more than I did the first time I saw it (in the theater, back in '00 or whenever it came out).

Anyway. I just love Memento. I think I'm too scattered right now to do any kind of intelligent analysis of it, but it is a fucking great movie. One of my favorites of all time. It's just beautifully constructed, and I'm jealous of anyone who can put something together that skillfully.

I'm rambling a bit because I'm a teeny bit tipsy on...what is it called? Duvel. Belgian Golden Ale. Good stuff. Not that I would really know if it were shitty, heh. It gets the job done.

Anyway, I keep not posting because, I don't know. I feel I should have something profound to say, and I usually don't, or if I do it's something that I don't want to put in a blog. But, yeah. Memento. If you haven't seen it, DO. And give it a chance. If you pay attention it's not confusing. It really isn't. Just awesome.

Remember when Carrie-Anne Moss was all famous and stuff? Remember The Matrix? I really liked that movie. The first one, anyway. The second two I kind of slept through a little bit. That was because I went to see them at midnight and there was too much action. Too much action = I fall asleep. I don't know, I think it's like I get overloaded or something. All I remember is, the people were shooting at some like, crawling robots or something, and I fell asleep for what seemed like a long time, and when I woke up they were still shooting at the same robots. And it seemed very little had happened while I was asleep. This also happened during the first Star Trek movie, which I saw when I was 13 or so, and I remember they were in some kind of wormhole or some shit and I left the room and played with the cats for like, 45 minutes, and when I came back the exact same thing was still going on. So, yeah. Not the greatest movie.

Speaking of Star Trek, how effing awesome is it that George Takei finally got to marry his sweet baboo? And it's also sort of amusing that everyone was invited but William Shatner. Poor annoying William Shatner. Who reminds me of Galaxy Quest, which is ALSO the best movie in the world.

The other thing, of course, that Carrie-Anne Moss makes me think of is Models Inc. Which was, IIRC, a spinoff of Melrose Place, which of course was a spinoff of 90210. (Which is coming back? With Jennie Garth as a guidance counselor? WTF?) Anyway, Carrie-Anne Moss and a bunch of these other beeyotches were models on Models Inc. and it was literally the most insipid show ever made, and it was even too dumb for the general public, and it got cancelled. But the thing I remember best about it is this thing on Letterman where Dave inserted himself into a (typically insipid and catty) scene of Models Inc. where it kept cutting to Linda Gray or whoever being catty and insipid and saying shit like "You talk a good game" and other 90210-y dialogue, and then it would cut to Dave, pretending to be in the scene, and he kept going "ALL I EVER WANTED WAS TO BE A PRETTY MODEL." And he was wearing glasses and a baseball cap. Good lord, but I love Dave Letterman. And Aaron Spelling dialogue. I always like to say that Jason Priestly on 90210 would go around clapping people on the shoulder and saying "Them's the breaks, my man." He probably only said that once, or maybe even never, but that was the KIND of shit they were always saying on those shows. Like, stuff that sounds good to John Q. 38-Year-Old Teen Soap Writer as he's typing it out on his Quadra or whatever computer they had in those days, but is actually bullshit that nobody would ever say. God, there was some bad dialogue on those shows. I'm actually not so much the kind of person who enjoys watching something trashy just to delight in the trashiness -- I get tired of that pretty easily. But I watched 90210 for a good long while. Remember how ever since then there has been an endless stream of over-the-top/pretentiously written yet still brain-cell-killing/sexy-teenager-featuring nighttime soaps? All of which I have avoided? Yep. So there was that. Teenagers, I hate you. I don't believe that will ever change.

My sister told me as we were watching Memento tonight that when she first saw The Matrix, she thought for the first like, half of the movie that the hero's name was Neil. Hee hee heeeee. Neil. Well, them's the breaks, my man. *shoulder clap*

Aaaaaanyhoo. I should probably go to bed. Free-associatingest post ever!

P.S. Also: Callum Keith Rennie is in it!! He's a Cylon. SPOILER! He's in the X-Files movie too, apparently. Not that I care about a single soul in that movie or plot point it might or might not contain except for Mulder and Scully and what happens to them. Sorry, Carter and Spotnitz. I have never cared about your scary stories, and I never will. I actually feel bad about that, because I know you work hard on them. But, seriously. I do not care. Don't punish me by having Mulder and Scully be barely on the screen together for the entire movie. Plz? Thx.

Very enterprising

In CVS:



closer:



You...probably won't be able to get that book autographed, considering you probably won't be able to get into Commencement, and even if you can, you probably won't get within 500 feet of JKR. But I still like this sign. It's so polite and hopeful, and it had a really good idea. You don't want to say no to it because it will feel let down.

The reason I was in CVS was to buy some Visine. Dude, my eye. Wearing contacts was not a good idea for today. Also, it turns out that I am NOT good at putting in eyedrops. What a shocker -- it goes right along with my near-inability to swallow pills. So, if you were ever wondering what Visine tasted like: It's kind of bitter. It doesn't taste like tears, as you might subconsciously expect. It seems to work, though, sorta, once you get it in the eye area. Yay Visine, I guess.

Nature's hangover

I'm having that watery-eye thing again, which I've had since yesterday. I got my contacts in, but barely. And since my desk at home faces a window, I'm literally sitting here at my computer wearing sunglasses. I feel like an Overlord. (Uh, because Earth's light is too bright for them so when they're hanging around outside they wear sunglasses everywhere. That reference would have worked better if I'd actually mentioned that in my Childhood's End post.)

Unfortunately it's hard not to suspect that it doesn't have something to do with this. D'oh. Pretty flowers, why you hurt me so bad?

I was about to say that at least I'd been spared the sneezing fit so far, but: there it goes. Time to take a Claritin, I guess.

I still love spring. So there.

I just linked to THREE of my own blog posts. How egomaniacal am I? Hee. I should throw in a Wikipedia link for good measure. Here -- you should go here every day. There. (Really, you should.)

It's that time of year again

That is, this time of year:


This tree is outside my window. I'm not sure what it's called. I've had one very close to my house in the last three places I've lived. All I know about it is, it looks like this when it blooms, and it smells UNREAL. It smells like...grapes, sort of. It's sweet and very very strong. These are all over Boston, and I'll be walking down the street at this time of year and suddenly the smell hits me and I look around and there it is.

I think it bloomed a little later this year than last year, for whatever reason, and I was sort of resigned that maybe it wouldn't bloom at all (not possible, you say? Well, I will trump you with THIS fact: I am a total moron about plants. So, you're probably right). But this weekend it started up, and now it's blossoming all over the place and my house is completely suffused with the smell, especially with the back windows open. Particularly yesterday when it was breezy I kept getting CLOUDS of it.

I'm just happy I live somewhere where this tree is practically brushing against my nostrils. I love spring.