Donnie Darko

Two years ago January I awoke before dawn in a hotel room in a Seattle suburb. I had quit my job the night before in the face of a big promotion. My adrenal gland is producing, you know what I mean. Life in between gears. No clutch at all. It was that night before feeling. The night before you graduate, the night before you get married. The mind fears change. The body goes fight or flight. So there I am basking in that rare optimistic adrenalin rush. The window is open and of course it's January in Seattle so it's raining. I turn on the TV. My experience of Hotel TV's is that they get HBO and crap. And the crap is fuzzy. So I turn on HBO and get paid off with the most engrossing, timely and mood-fitting couple of minutes of TV I've ever experienced. It was also a little perplexing. I watched a jet engine crash countless into a suburban house. Then I heard a song that I knew I knew but I couldn't place. In that dark, unfamiliar room, high on my own future I knew what the song writer meant when he said that the "Dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had"

Life is terminal. Jim Cunningham had it wrong life is not divided into fear and love. Life is divided into living and not. Dreaming of dying and then waking up. It's better than getting shot at and missed. So I had this image of a boy sitting on a bed laughing as a jet engine crashes down on him, his family losing it the next morning and Jena Malone riding her bike past and admits that she didn't know the main character at the end of the movie. And that hauntingly familiar "I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad, that dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had. " I was off balance enough that I left a notebook in the room when I left. This was before that version of the song would be all over American radio. It is also before I discovered the IMDB. It took me a while to figure out who all the players were. I got a hold of that song and some sound bites from the movie. I actually mixed a loop of the life line exercise into the Mad World cover. And I played it over and over again.

But I didn't watch the movie. I didn't take me long to see what a cult following the movie had. A teen angst movie with a cult following set in the eighties. It's very existence screamed Mess with my emotions. Manipulate me. I acquired a copy of the movie on DVD. And I sat on it. I held that movie in reserve. I almost went and saw it on the rerelease. (Which I learned about via another literary crush). But I either missed the re-release or it missed me. It didn't make it into the 'burbs and I never saw it on the San Francisco listings. This week, on vacation, I broke it out. I talked to an old friend yesterday, someone I hadn't talked to in a year. She was shocked I hadn't seen it yet. She told me to watch it three times. So tonight I put in another two viewings. What isn't there to like, some of my favorite songs of all time, a shrink prescribing enough meds that the space time continuum rips up, coke in the hallways and Patrick Swayze as a real slimeball. Oh, yes some superb women. This guys sister is hot. No really she's hot. Jena, "You're weird...No, that was a compliment" Malone. Mary McDonnell doing that resigned sigh that kills me in all her movies. Listen, I had a crush on my Senior English teacher, but if she had looked like Drew I wouldn't have made it. Nope no way. Oh and yes for all of the readers of my blog Jolene Purdy as Cherita Chen, because well, you know their grateful and all that.

The key line of the movie is Gretchen's. "Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood." To her that is the big link between her and Donnie. She recognizes, like the viewer that Donnie is a tragedy waiting to happen. One of my favorite lines is from one of Donnie's friends greeting him at the bus stop the morning after the engine misses him, "Darko cheats death." I can't help but think that it's not death that Donnie gets to cheat but Aristotle. Donnie himself is the first to realize that he gets to avoid the tragic hero's fate. As Frank approaches he even says it to Seth "Deus ex machina... Our savior." Science fiction is the god that descends on this stage. In our last image of him Donnie has that satisfied smile of someone about to sleep the sleep of the just. Donnie dies laughing. Donnie dies a hero. His death saves the lives of his mother, sister and the girl he loves. Of course Gretchen kinda gets the shaft. But of course she doesn't know it.

When I sat down to watch the movie on Wednesday I was thinking about death and the nature of life and the rules of tragedy. Synchronicity or just me bringing my own baggage to the viewing? A little of both. This is a movie about synchronicity. God I wish I had a journal entry from October 2, 1988. I know what I was doing though. I was pining hard for a girl. I was just starting to write again after that breakup. I wonder what I wrote that day.

Moving right along

Whew, that's done now I can post again. A note on the state of the ten things to do every day.

1. 3 a day keeps the shrink away: This is the big one and I still dropped the ball. I wrote 33 pages in the month of April. A third of my plan. When I write three a day I'm more confidant, I let things get me down less and I'm more imaginative and creative.
2. Eat less sugar: I'm eating less sugar. This isn't to say I eat no sugar. Candy is ever present at the store and Karen usually has something stashed.
3. Keep up the home front: I'm not the greatest homemaker but the house has been in pretty decent shape this last month.
4. I paid my bills until I ran out of money. Here it is I'm spending my vacation on my computer eating top ramon until I get paid on Friday. I really am a mess with money. I hear that really goes over well with the ladies.
5. Update blog monthly. Wait did I say daily. Oops.
6. Read Bible daily. Even my mother called to ask what the heck for. "Wisdom is a strength to the wise man more than ten rulers which are in a city." It always has something to say. And the King James really stretches the language. I wouldn't mind if I could say the same thing about my own writing.
7. Listen to 3 Lectures a day. Too much to commit to. One a day on average no problem. Two on some days but three really hasn't happened until I took these last three days off.
8. Read a book a week. I've been running a little slow. I only finished "The Day I Became an Autodidact" which is good since I started it over ten years ago. I realized I still have a crush on this girl who is now a woman that is married to a guy that writes a pretty damn cool blog himself. I got bogged down in a couple of compilations of essays, "The Oxford History of the 20th Century" and "Signposts in a Strange Land". I read every day but I took to bouncing around and rereading. I started "A Confederacy of Dunces" Sunday and that is going well. I'll put four books to bed in May.
9. Watch two new movies a week. Well, this one is, as usual, a slam dunk. I'll catch up with movie news in my next post.
10. Write 1 essay a week. Yea, ok, whatever. Not there yet. Let's see if we can muddle through three pages of stream of conscious writing a day first.

Thin Skinned

Ok, so I took a shot to the chin and went down like a sack of wet pasta. What is it that they say? If you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen. If I can't take a negative comment then why don't I turn the comments off? If I only want people I know reading this blog, then why list it? If I'm embarrassed by my own descriptions of my life, then why use my real name? I've been reading postings on the internet for years now. I know that there is a zero tolerance policy towards showing weakness. In the anonymity of cyberspace civility takes a back seat. So what was I doing getting all bent out of shape because somebody called me boring?

Mostly I was getting bent out of shape because I am boring right now. Not only that, I've taken it upon myself to write about how boring I am. And usually I'm with you. I have little tolerance for anybody being boring in public. Even on cyberspace. Sometimes you have to beat against the wind. So, I'm doing it anyway. Cause I'm a rebel. I take chances. Because I know that first you've got to get boring. You've got to say "I'm as boring as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

All of my energies in my twenties went into a series of unrewarding careers, trying to make impermanent relationships permanent, and cheap (read expensive) thrills and escapist pursuits. Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking unrewarding careers, bewildering relationships and escapist pursuits. Those are the activities that make up life. They are not boring. They are where stories come from. Drama and soap opera, soap opera and avocation and so on and so on. Listen I just need a break to think. And I want to know what other people were thinking about when they took a break to think. This blog is a record of what I'm learning, who I'm listening to and how they are affecting me. I'm learning how to read and how to write all over again. Well here I am: childish, introspective and boring. Hey. That's got a nice ring to it: Childish, Introspective and Boring. I may change the name of the blog. At least then I won't keep getting accused of false advertising.

Played by a Pro

That was the line from a song whose name I cannot remember right now. But it was all I could think of last night at the Stanford Theater while I was watching Suspicion. If Hip-hop artists want to see a true pimp in perfect form they should get a load of Cary Grant in Suspicion. Of course like most Hitchcock movies I was the one that felt he had been played by a pro. The second of the double feature was The Lady Vanishes. Another one that kept me on my seat although the heavy was pretty easy to spot. 1938 (Anschluss, Munich, Kristallnact) hangs heavy on this picture. The fate of the pacifist politician is pure propaganda. Appeasement is not going to work. War is coming. Europe is about to change forever and she knows it.

The Source of the Sunscreen Song

Several years ago one of my favorite radio stations in the bay area began playing a spoken word song recorded by some guy calling himself Baz Luhrmann. The song (really a speech set to a a beat) was called Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen). I came across the Chicago Tribune column by Mary Schmich while reading an article on Dale Messick, the creator of Brenda Starr. Dale would have been 99 today if she hadn't died last week. Mary Schmich is the current illustrator of Brenda Star. I have been taking her advice and for the past two years have been wearing sunscreen daily. You should do the same.

10 Things

I've made a list of things I can do to make my life better.

1. Write 3 Pages Longhand Every Day in My Journal
2. Eat Less Sugar
3. Keep Room, Desk and Kitchen Clean
4. Pay Bills Timely
5. Update Blog Every Day
6. Read The Bible Every Day
7. Listen to 3 Lectures Every Day
8. Read 1 New Book a Week
9. Watch 2 New Movies a Week
10. Write an Essay Every Week

I figure that the list will evolve as I go on. The idea I guess is that at the end of each day (or the beginning of the next) I can just think about it and say, "Yea, I had a 1-5-7-9-10 day" Progress on the "Every Week" items counts for the day. Life Examined and all that.

Happy Birthday Hef!

Forget rock stars, firemen, and movies idols, what american boys of all ages want to be when they grow up is Hef. He's 79 today and has more girlfriends than you do. Thanks for 50 years of the american dream.Playboy Enterprises, Inc.

Jury Duty

Juror Number 18092 on April 27th that's me. I haven't actually served on a jury in years. I wonder if this time I'm due? San Mateo Superior Court

The Yamamoto Mission

I was reading about Tojo. I haven't got myself on a set reading program yet. I linked my way out of Iris Chang to the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (read a couple of chapters of another disturbing book) then started thinking about Yamamoto. I realized that I never knew what happened to Yamamoto. I looked it up and found out it was one of the best stories to come out of world war two. I read this article in Air Power History.