A Little Slippage Can Be A Good Thing...
The blog has been a back burner thing lately, but this tends to happen when I spend less time
wasting time near a computer. I had a very good and delightfully restful weekend - a weekend in the tradition of what weekends are made for. I went out to brunch twice - a gluttonous ritual I don't take part in enough anymore. Then the rest of the weekend consisted of a double header of
The Village &
The Manchurian Candidate. From the relatively small audience I've talked to,
The Village didn't quite impress or impose fright the same way that M. Night's
Signs did. Patrick championed it more than most and for pretentious film scholar reasons: deep staging, visual story telling / cinematography and his symbolic readings of the plot, leaving the theater boasting, "there's a paper in there somewhere." I on the other hand, like my circle of friends who also saw the movie on opening weekend, were left wanting more and somewhat confused, disappointed and only half-full on the wealth of visual displays. In comparison, I found
The Manchurian Candidate to be more bang for my buck. To Demme's credit or fault, the plot really isn't all that different than the original, minus of course, one of the greatest 360-shots in all film history. That being said, it has more action than most cerebral movies and has more meat to think about than most shoot 'em up blockbusters. It is a movie dripping with strong performances - Meryl Streep, Denzel and Liev are all at the top of their games. I enjoyed it, so of the two if you can only see one, I'd throw my money that a way.
I introduced Eric to Upwords and he has mixed feelings, being more of a Yahtzee man at heart. I also went out for a few drinks with Eric and Tom and enjoyed a rather heated political discussion.
In addition to some much needed lounging around, I participated in another of my favorite activities, vicarious shopping - or shopping with someone else's money. Patrick and I went to Marshall Fields to return a gift. Anyway, they were having one of those great big sales where everything is on sale and just a short time later, the one shirt we returned became a whole new wardrobe for an out of pocket cost of $80. I think my love of bargain shopping is rubbing off on him. So now he's set to take St. Louis by storm looking like a hip, young film professor, though he's pleading exception to the
young on account of his birthday yesterday. Just the same, we had a good time and he's fully outfitted for the fall and for a place much hotter than Madison.
I get to continue the pleasures of vicarious shopping when I turn all of my domestic energies to Patrick's swank new St. Louis apartment. We're moving this weekend, well moving the stuff and coming back to Madison for two weeks in time to gear up for my move, and I really wish that Queer Eye's adorable Thom Filica was on hand to help out. I feel like I'm not quite emotionally or physically prepared for the scale of this sure-to-be exhausting move, but at the same time, I am not sure how much could be done any more than a few days ahead of time as it is unpleasant and in part impossible to live out of boxes. But we're moving some of the old stuff, leaving heavy art books in storage and then going on a buying rampage for a bed and new furniture en route Southward. We'll probably be pretty darn sick of all things Scandinavian after a pilgrimage trip to Ikea, but Patrick will finally have a real bed (and a real big Queen size one at that) and a real kitchen table and chairs to live the yuppie existence he's dreamed of since the early-1990s. I haven't really given much thought to my new apartment and how it will take shape, but in two weeks time, it'll be the topic of the day.
It's hard to believe that it's August already. I am wrapping up my tenure as a film professor for the elderly and very much looking forward to a prolonged break from lecture prep and having to get up before a group daily. There is a bon voyage send off on Thursday that I am planning to go to and then ready to call it quits for being a teacher for three weeks or so, until the school year starts up anyway.
That being said, I have a new resolution for teaching this semester - basically to trim the fat in any way possible. Ideally, I'd like to spend a few days getting everything together - writing quizzes, tweaking the syllabus and getting lectures in line so that I can just show up and do my job with minimal effort expended otherwise. Going into the next school year, I am most thrilled about just being a student again, writing solid papers and spending my time doing the work that interests me. This year I couldn't help but feel torn in many directions - dealing with a new city, new school, new job and the like. But now with a lot of the variables solved, I just want to be a student and do my thing, quietly, unobtrusively, see a whole lot of Ozu movies and read a shelf full of important books. It's kind of a pretentious goal, but it's all to easy to lose sight of why I am here and what interests me. In an ideal world, I'll just steer the course and avoid all and any distractions, accomplish some good work and write a paper or two that I am really proud of.
posted by lmjasinski at 2:38 PM
