i wish i was asleep. but i am not. i am at work. i have been here for an hour. i will be here for 8 more hours. i did not get enough sleep this weekend. i will stop writing in short sentences.
so my documentary binge wrapped up on saturday night with "jonestown," which has been made by a supposed genius (he won a macarthur) for pbs, about the jonestown massacre. it was very disappointing, it felt like the filmaker just hadn't tried very hard to bring the story back in a new or interesting way. "look, here's all this footage they took of themselves, and here are some photographs, and here are some survivors that we talked to." the survivors' interviews were riveting and moving, but they didn't come together to create the kind of deeply meaningful story that i know could be made based on the massacre. that being said, it happened 8 years before i was born, and my mom said after that while she agreed with my criticisms of the movie, it was enough for her to just see a little bit more of the background behind jim jones' movement. she was satisfied. so maybe you had to be alive at the time to really get it without a much more satisfying examination. that brought me to four movies in four nights--jesus camp, the last waltz, air guitar nation, and jonestown. the best of which was, FAR and away, air guitar nation. i had more fun watching that movie than i have had in a movie theater in a VERY long time. perhaps ever. see the imdb link here. the comment on the page is mine. especially split between jesus camp and jonestown (two often unbearably depressing and upsetting films) air guitar nation was just plain inspiring.
in other news, i saw alex this weekend for the first time since last summer! it had been almost a year and it was wonderful to give her a hug and catch up after so long. seems like she's doing really well, and she's gearing up to start college after taking a year off to go to bangalore, jakarta and madrid (lucky girl). perhaps more telling than anything else, she joined facebook yesterday ;) and friended me. her profile needs some work (it's a little spare) but that'll change soon enough. EVERYONE MUST SUCCUMB TO FACEBOOK OR IT WILL FIND YOU IN THE NIGHT AND KILLLLL YOU. seriously, i can see facebook becoming a scary monster-monopoly corporation like google, with whatshisface the exeter-harvard guy who made it joining sergey brin and larry page in the forbes top 20. but still, like google, somehow remaining awesome throughout. zuckerberg, that's his name, already turned down an offer to sell for 100 million dollars. holy living fuck. i wish IIIII could have an idea like that. anyhow, alex and i watched munich with various members of her family cycling in and out. it was good but not entirely what i'd expected. a little contrived at times, but still, spielberg is a total master of his craft. even i with my small knowledge of filmmaking, can tell that he is one of the all-time great hollywood storytellers. after the movie was over i drove home from annapolis, which might not have been the best idea considering how tired i was, but i made it okay...
...and with enough left in the tank to wake up on father's day and go for a hike with momdadlincjack in little bennett regional park way out in bumblefuck, montgomery county. it was a really nice walk, if incredibly hot and humid. nice scenery, pretty forest, these incredible, gigantic anthills all over the place (really, they were amazing). then we went for dunch to olney ale house, which was tasty and provided my lunch for today, to boot, and then, upon barely making it home without crashing, we stumbled inside and instantly fell asleep en masse. turns out walking six miles in 97-degree d.c. heat without enough water will really take a lot out of you. go figure. woke up, had a nice little chat with mom and dad about study abroad and all that, then went over to judy's and watched crouching tiger, which i hadn't seen since it played at afi two or three years ago and which was TOTALLY worth seeing again, especially since she hadn't. speaking of all-time great storytellers, ang lee's gotta be on that list. that he could make movies as different in theme and setting and style as crouching tiger, brokeback mountain and eat drink man woman and have them all be really good...damn.
finally, my frisbee game on saturday was fun...we won, picked the best name possible (huck norris, especially after i was afraid we'd get stuck with shudder finding dremo's) and i played well. i'm a bit of a liability on defense because i'm fairly fast for wafc pro but i'm not in very good shape so when i get stuck on one of the other teams' faster guys (or, god forbid, in the cup), i get run into the ground quickly. but i make good throws and cuts and don't turn it over very much, so hopefully i make up for my mediocre defense with offensive usefulness. then went to oh captain my captain's house for a little birthday party, where a bunch of people from the team plus her parents and a few other cool peeps sat around, drank some beer, ate some mussels and burgers and watched the us get robbed of a victory by a fucking referee. but hurray for julie serfass and HUCK NORRIS! but seriously, i wanted to nuke the entire nation of uruguay after that game. i'm over it now and see how that might not have been the most pragmatic response to such thievery by a uruguayan national who was, after all, in germany at the time. and happy birthday, robin (nice grab!). after that party, i hauled ass on over to arthur's 60th birthday party, which was okay--good to see the beach people i'll be missing this year because instead of being in north carolina in august, i'll be in chile. well, now i've been writing this off and on for an hour or so and it's time to shut up and read some other blogs or something. the office is half-empty today, so i won't have, well, anything else to do. joy of joys. peace.
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