Had a bit of doorknob-related barney on Saturday morning. Veronica and i were just finishing getting dressed to go out to have lunch. She was amusing herself by mussing up my hair, in an endless quest to find a semi-suave hairstyle for me. At one point i felt it was sticking straight up, à la Kramer, so i left the room and shut the door, preparing to do a suitably Kramer-esque entrance. I intended to open the door abruptly and slide in, but i didn't turn the knob far enough and ended up just slamming into the door. I must've damaged the knob however, because after that, no matter how hard Veronica or i turned the knob, the latch wouldn't release. So Veronica was trapped inside the bedroom, while i was outside with, of course, all the tools necessary to disassemble the lock. That can only be disassembled from inside. Luckily, after some ingenuity with shoelaces, our second-floor bedroom window, and a screwdriver, Veronica succeeded in removing the doorknob and freeing herself. Only to us, i tell ya, only to us.

We did eventually make it to lunch, at the Paris Creperie in Coolidge Corner. Afterwards, we had a walk around lovely Brookline, then hopped in the car for a jaunt. We headed off down Beacon Street out to the Reservoir, then turned south down Chestnut Hill Ave., then headed west on Route 9. No particular destination, just listening to music, talking, and relaxing. We ended up at the Atrium Mall, where we did a bit of shopping. Looked at some housewares in Pottery Barn, Veronica picked up some lipgloss at MAC, and we both bought a DVD at Borders: The Complete Jam for me, and Depeche Mode's Videos 86>98 for Veronica. Haven't seen the latter yet, but the former is excellent. Having only gotten into The Jam five years ago at the prodding of my friend Michael, i'd never seen any of their live performances before. You can hear the sheer talent of Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton in the recordings, but live ... it's just unbelievable how full a sound this power trio could generate. The DVD contains a wealth of TV appearances as well as a number of videos, which I was surprised to find i was quite familiar with. Where i caught the video for "The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)" i have no idea. It's a cheesy early 80's flick with some really horrible acting by Paul, but it somehow oddly accentuates the emotion of the song.

days of speed and slow time mondays, pissing down with rain on a boring wednesday, watching the news and not eating your tea, a freezing cold flat and damp on the walls, i say that's entertainment

I tried watching a bootleg copy of Daredevil earlier Saturday morning. I downloaded it last week, as two 130 MB avi files. It was obviously recorded on a camcorder in a theater, but the quality actually isn't so bad. The movie is. Daredevil was an interesting enough superhero and deserved a better big screen showing, especially with someone playing him who wasn't a vacuous pretty boy like Ben Affleck. I'm looking forward to X-Men 2, which should be much better. I can't wait to see Alan Cumming's turn as Nightcrawler. Even better, i spotted my favorite X-Man, Russian metalman Colossus, in a trailer that was shown on Fox a few weeks back.

I went on an mp3 rampage last week, downloading between 10 and 15 albums. I was growing increasingly alarmed that i didn't recognize many of the names being thrown around in the indie circles, being insulated from new music through my focus on things like The Jam, Pale Fountains, and The Stooges. So, being the logical science-type person i am, i went through the available albums one-by-one, checking with AllMusic for a synopsis of those i hadn't heard of, and downloading them when they sounded faintly interesting. On the whole a very worthwhile experience, as the vast majority of my downloads turned out to be fantastic. Rob encouraged me to check out Dntel, a sort of indie electronica, which i did and am now in love with. The Postal Service, a side project of the man behind Dntel, is also fab. The lounge pop of The Aluminum Group has me captivated. Monster Movie is some of the best shoegazing/space rock i've heard since ... well ... since Interpol, although they've been gradually losing my attention. I'm seeing them on Thursday, which may either slow or accelerate the rate of decay of my interest in them.

Veronica and i spent our Sunday night watching Storytelling, the 2001 film by Todd Solondz. I must admit that before watching it, the only thing i knew about the movie was that the soundtrack was done by Scottish twee heroes Belle & Sebastian. The film is split into two segments: the first, "Fiction", deals with a white female grad student in literature and her experiences with her boyfriend, suffering from cerebral palsy, and her acerbic creative writing instructor, a black man with whom she has an affair. The second, focal portion of the movie, "Nonfiction", follows an aspiring documentary filmmaker as he attempts to document the experience of American adolescence through an upper-middle class Jewish family and their stoner son Scooby. The essence of the film is in its comments on the storyteller/subject and storyteller/audience relationships, although what those comments are i have no idea. Characters seem to bounce from one exaggerated stereotype to the next, stopping to spew dialog that smacks of pretension, as if Solondz expects his audience to hang on each spoken word. Events unfold in a bizarre unnatural fashion, again serving to advance the enigmatic, potentially absent message of the movie. Case in point: a ten year old boy hypnotizes his father, successfully, so that he will shower him with attention. After having seen it, i think knowing that Belle & Sebastian did the soundtrack is still the most relevant piece of information you can draw from the movie.

and in the morning when you rise
sure to know your destiny, 'cause it's all worthwhile
the man across the street ain't wise
you know if he was wise, he'd be on the other side
reach, head for the sky, to know what it's like
we'll try

Roughly seven years after beginning it, i finally finished Interview With The Vampire this morning while grabbing some breakfast before work. I began it while an undergrad at Berkeley, borrowing it from my sometimes gothic roommate Jayson, but gave it up after a hundred pages or so because i was bored silly listening to the whining of nouveau vampire Louis. I've always been interested in the story though, so i picked up Veronica's copy a week ago to read on the T. I'm going to continue with the Vampire Chronicles, but my opinion of Louis hasn't changed. It's odd how he embodies so many traits i find maddening: the unsubstantiated presumption that you're wiser than others with vastly more experience, complaining about the state of affairs but doing nothing to change it, exposing personality flaws in others that are equally or more apparent in yourself. Veronica tells me that The Vampire Lestat centers less on whining and more on hedonism and wickedness, so that will hopefully be less grating.