Ten Days in the Life Of

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Dancing on our Graves

Vegas was grand, ridiculous, absurd, everything you would expect from a 40-hour binge. I was drunk before I left SFO, I was on a first-name basis with every black jack dealer who entered our vicinity, and I sang a rambunctious version of Klymaxx's "Meeting in the Ladies' Room(I'll be back real soon!)" on Thursday evening at the height of our debauchery. That was right before we went to Tao, where there were women making out in bathtubs and frolicking in steel cages all around the dance floor. Of course there are all sorts of particulars that can't be revealed out of respect for the participants, but I will admit to wearing bunny ears during the 5:00 am screening of Gummo, seven hours before my missed flight was to take off. I probably won $300 in blackjack, lost $125 on Thursday Night Football and the Heat/Wizards TNT game, and blew about $200 on meals, alcohol, caffeine, and tips. So I essentially broke even and went large in the process, and it only took me 36-hours upon my return to emerge from the cave ready to embark on another week. Am I refreshed? No. Do I still have my sanity? I believe so.

Of course it was epic to have the 4th Season of The Wire, just released on DVD, waiting for my recovery.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos. Here are some shots, though, from last weekend.

Tell the Night

Saw The Cave Singers last Thursday at Rickshaw Stop. It was so beautiful - so cathartic - that afterwards, the only appropriate thing was to walk the 45-minute trek home in the rain, stopping only to get a raspberry Macaroon at the bakery on Van Ness. Even with an umbrella and my old green North Face, I was soaked by the time I got back.

Some of my greatest epiphanies come from stumbling along like this, the proverbial fool in the rain, if you may. You know what I realized that night? I'm not going to tell you.

But I will tell you I'm going to Vegas Wednesday night, the first time I've flown in six-and-a-half years. I'll be doing this without the aid of modern medicine, although I may break down and have a drink if I get to SFO early enough. The last time I flew was on a return trip from Vegas. This was in March 2001. I was sandwiched between two heavy-set Hawaiian women, both of whom monopolized the available arm-wrests, while we circled for hours, waiting for the fog to clear in Oakland so we could land. We ended up being re-routed to Sacramento and landing there, but didn't exit. We waited for another hour on the runway. It sucked.

When one of the ladies fell asleep, the other confided that she had won $27,000 on slots at Circus Circus, but didn't want her companion to know. She whispered this after she bought me a cocktail. They were best friends, had been for 35-years, but she was afraid their dynamic would change if she knew how much the payout was for. I was a perfect stranger, a neurotic mess for that matter after being up for 3 days betting on the first round of the NCAA Tourney, and here she was breaking down as she told me why she couldn't trust what, for all purposes anyway, was her own family. The whole thing saddened me, almost as much as the woman playing Wheel of Fortune at the airport, the one who lost all her money to that annoying jingle and yet kept playing. Desperation like that, it gets me every time.

When people think of the strip they imagine swanky clubs and hipsters yelling "Vegas baby, yeah!" out of taxi windows. They think of the Palms and the Hard Rock.

I imagine these folks.

I vowed never to fly again after reading a biography on Stanley Kubrick. This was a month after we landed safely. It sounded like a reasonable stand to take at the time, although I've missed some cool opportunities along the way.

Then the other night I got a voicemail from a dear friend. She said things were going really well for her, for the first time in forever, and she wished that she could share it with me. She said she missed talking to me, that she understood I was probably working on something important but she just wanted to hear my voice. The way she said it was so sincere, so full of melancholy, so real, that without thinking, I said okay. I'll come.

So here goes.

Margot At The Wedding

I couldn't imagine Noah Baumbach making another film that could hold its own with The Squid and the Whale, but he did. The guy is a terrific writer, with a real knack for painful yet hilarious truths. And if Nicole Kidman doesn't win an Oscar for her performance something is wrong. I couldn't believe how convincingly she played a manipulative New York writer, one that is both cuntish and, at moments anyway, vulnerable. Jennifer Jason Leigh is always interesting, and Jack Black is often amusing in the Philip Seymour Hoffman role, but Kidman steals the show here.

What I really thought was brilliant was how honestly the film conveyed family dysfunction and sibling rivalry without ever straying into caricature. One minute the sisters are trying to be close, the next they're delving into their tragic past. And yet it never feels slapstick.

As a side note, I love the design of the poster. Just the white space and the pink in "Margot" matching her hat. It's so simple yet beautiful.

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Patterns in the Sound

I'm Leaving But I Don't Know Where To

Bright Eyes - Landlocked Blues