"I would like to preemptively apologize for whatever comes next."

Today, I did many things.

I had a job interview.

I had dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in six months.

And then I saw Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And it was all over.

Birdemic is a film made by a James Nguyen from San Jose. His budget was $10,000. The story is simple: A bunch of maniacal crows and eagles suddenly attack Half Moon Bay, killing the patrons. Oh, the shock. Oh, the terror. Right?

This movie got attention because it is so absolutely, completely horrible. There isn't a thing done well. To be honest, my brain is still recovering. It feels like oatmeal.

The highlight of the film is the killer birds, who are entirely computer generated, and made with the kind of technology that was outdated years and years ago. The images, superimposed on the film and observed crookedly by the actors, flap in place and then burst in crayon red when shot.

The director apparently took himself to Sundance, and passed out flyers hoping someone would pick it up. Someone did, and now it's being hailed as the new best worst film ever made, and a cult classic.

It's also playing for one more night at the Clinton Street Theatre in Portland. Originally, my friend and I were the only ones in the theater, and we were hollering at the screen in glee. Eventually, about six other people came in. We more or less continued to holler. Apologies. But seriously, when a movie's this crazily bad... I don't blame my friend for shouting, "This movie made it to Sundance!" at the screen. Among other things.

If I haven't convinced you to see it, watch the trailer.



You're welcome.

Songs I am loving right now

Ellery-You Did Everything Right

I got the EP with this song for free at www.noisetrade.com; fell in love with Ellery when I got a Paste cd ages ago with their song "Anna" on it.




Broken Bells-The High Road

I've talked about this song before, but I'm still not over it. It keeps playing on a repeat loop for me. I have decided James Mercer could sing me tax codes if he wanted to.

What songs are you loving right now?

Did the good old days ever really exist?

One of the things that frustrates me is when someone suggests that our culture or our world at large needs to "return to a simpler time" or "remember the good old days". Now, I realize that, being under 30 (or 40, or 50, or whatever the arbitrary cutoff for these kind of discussions is today), I'm doing exactly what everyone thinks of doing, reveling in the foolishness of my youth, whatever. (And yes, I just said 'whatever'. Don't hate me.)

There are a few problems with the "let's go back" line of logic, however. The easy way of saying it is that, essentially, the good old days weren't as good for everyone as they were for you, and that while times may have been simpler before today. that simplicity also reflected a lack of options for many people, even yourself. And sometimes we might feel that having fewer options is better. It is simpler.

For me, when I hear someone calling for a "return to old fashioned values" or the morals of their grandparents, I'm always curious what they're actually searching for. It's certainly true that there are problems in our society that weren't present fifty years ago, or at least not in the forms we see them. Yes, we live in a busy, sexualized and secularized culture. But a debate over whether this is good or bad is fruitless, and calls to revert are pure fantasy.

There's an endless quality to this desire to reach back--do we go back before MTV, or before penicillin? Do we go back to the past we wish we could have had, or the past as it actually was? Memories are never reliable: your life, even the worst moments of it, seared in your brain, becomes slightly softened and distant with time. Depending on what's being recalled, this can either be a curse or a mercy.

I'm curious to know what people think of this "returning to simpler times/better values/insert buzzworthy phrase here" idea. What do you wish people collectively could return to? What are you glad to have left behind?

And the biggest question: Is anything ever exactly where it should be? Or is there always something better, something worse?

Startup of another crazy month

Hi, friends.

For some reason, I signed up to do the 2010 WordCount blogathon... considering my track record with National Novel Writing Month and the like, you might wonder why. But there are all these things waiting to be written, and I am hoping needing a blog a day will cause me to stop procrastinating and write them.

There's the blog about Haiti, the blog about David Bazan, the blog about Good Friday (welcome at any time, I hope), the blog about the crazy amounts of grace I see being spent on one another daily by my friends.

And yes, technically I didn't post May 1. But I really like my list of 20 things more worth your time than Avatar, so I am claiming that one for yesterday.

Lastly. what's a launch of a blogathon without a little narcissism? I loved my hair so much just now I had to take a picture.

...and to all a good night. 

20 things more worth your time than "Avatar".

1. Serving the homeless.

2. Working in your yard.

3. Working in your neighbor's yard. 

4. Working in the yard of someone you've never met who lives across town and doesn't like you. 

5. Contemplating your own mortality.

6. Baking scones. 

7. Visiting the World's Biggest Ball of Twine. 

8. Visiting the World's Biggest Peanut.

9. Flipping your mattress.

10. Paying your library fines.

11. Boycotting puppies. 

12. Reading US magazine. 

13. Campaigning for Ralph Nader.

14. Learning to hold your breath for a long time. 

15. Breeding alpacas. 

16. Collecting stamps. 

17. Putting your head in the freezer to see what being cryogenically frozen feels like. 

18. Writing a pen pal in prison.

19. Learning to play the spoons.

20. Flossing (courtesy of Eric Gerhardt, who I am sure flosses daily).

Today ONLY! Watch THIS movie instead.

http://www.christiancinema.com/lordsaveus/

I saw "Lord, Save Us From Your Followers" when I was in seminary because Dr. Paul Metzger, one of my professors, was in it.

I'll tell you the truth, for the first twenty minutes or more, I thought it was pretty hokey. And then all of the sudden, it got fascinating.

Honestly, whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, watch this movie. It's free online, and I would love to hear what you think

See this movie.

The truth is, most of you won't. That's fine--in fact, it's probably good. 


A friend once said, "Heather's favorite movies are movies where nothing happens." It's not completely true, but it is close. I love movies where lots of internal stuff happens, while not much else does. Hence, "My Effortless Brilliance". 


I got this movie from Netflix, and the best synopsis and probably most common review came from another Netflix user (MC51658, in case you want to get legal about it):

 This movie is about a self-absorbed writer who's only friend has confronted him with the fact that he's a total jerk. This happens in the first 5 minutes and then the remainder of the film involves his attempts to prove he can indeed be a friend. He could have just apologized it would have been a 6 minute short... instead there is another hour of frolicking in the woods and meaningless dialog.


That's actually exactly what happens in the movie, and my only sticking points are that a) The dialog isn't pointless and b) it could have indeed been a short, but that would have been pointless.


There's a grand total of four people in the movie, and the dialog is entirely improvised. Those two points alone are enough to make me fall in love with the movie, but here's the really great things about it.

• The dialog, being improvised, is so banal it sounds like everyone I know. And at times, it made me really frustrated. In a scene where the writer is being interviewed, the interviewer says the word "Yay" something like eight times ("Oh, you will? Ok, yay. Yeah, good. Yay."). This made me want to pull my own hair out, but I also know for a fact that I and many of my friends overuse the word. Do we think we're ten?

• The writer (Sean Nelson) has hair inspired by "Eraserhead". See? 

(For the record, I have never seen "Eraserhead". The only David Lynch movie I have ever seen is "The Straight Story", because it was the only David Lynch movie I was sure wouldn't terrify me.)

• The writer's friend is played by a guy named Basil Harris, who apparently hasn't made any other movies I've ever heard of. This is really too bad, because not only is he really good, he's also ADORABLE. The other sad thing about him not being in anything of note (IMDB,com tells me he's been in nine movies or tv shows, but...) is that it's nearly impossible to find a picture of him. And he's cute. In the movie, he lives way out in the middle of the woods in eastern Washington, and wears plaid, and has a beard, and chops wood, and it's almost exactly like my dream vacation with Brian Williams.

Here's the thing about guys with beards. If I meet someone who's cleanshaven, and he wants to grow a beard, great. Go do it. But if my first encounter with someone includes their facial hair, and then when I see them next the beard is gone, I feel like I'm seeing them naked. I want to hand them a tiny shirt to cover their chin and tell them to have some self respect. 

That's what trying to find a picture of Basil Harris was like. He needs the beard. Otherwise, he's this kind of gawky-looking redhead. The best I can do for you all is the movie poster:

The rest you'll have to imagine. But the image above does capture the movie well--it's two friends trying, to little success, to reclaim the friendship they had, and I think it's excellent. If the movie were about two women, chances are both would cry, and hug, and confess that each of them had been awful and that they loved each other so much, once they had confessed that each thought the other was a bitch. But, thankfully, men don't tend to work that way. 

See this movie, please. It's slow, it's quiet, and the characters will almost certainly annoy you at some point. But you might love it.