September 29, 2004
I keep blundering this name: The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I picked it up at Best Buy this morning - and that’s a problem with me, buying movies on DVD, I have like, well, a lot - (I actually have to go buy another bookcase because the one I have is no longer big enough) - anyway, GREAT MOVIE!
It’s by Charlie Kaufman … y’know, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, he’s the fucked up guy who got Nick Cage to play him. How cool is that? Anyway, his stories are usually somewhere between “The Twilight Zone” and “90210″, in that they’re either really weird, or really down to earth. Well, usually somewhere that’s not quite in the middle.
In “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” - and, y’know, it’s not like the movie is in chronological order but I’m going to try and give you a brief spoiler-free, uh, spoiler - a guy named Joel (Jim Carrey, no relation to John) bumps into his girlfriend at a bookstore the day after a huge arguement during which he calls her a slut and she wrecks his car against a fire hydrant. Well, the girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet with blue/yellow/green/purple hair depending on the scene) totally doesn’t recognize him! He’s bummed out until he finds out that dear old Clementine was SO distraught by their fight that she had her memory of him … ERASED!
Well, he’s more than a little pissed off, and has the same thing done to him - memories of Clem? Gone! Gone! Except, as they’re erasing his memories of her - and him with no way to communicate with ‘them’ that’s-a-doin’ the erasin’ - he decides, “Wait! I love her! I don’t want to lose these memories!” And therein begins a wild chase as he tries to hide memories of her in places of brain where the “colander as a brain sucker” can’t locate and destroy them! All the while, the machine is on auto-pilot, and the tech and his girlfriend are eating his food, drinking his beer, smoking weed, and having sex on his bed.
It gets a bit more complicated than that, and an act of seeming charity by Kristen Dunst’s heartbroken receptionist almost destroys the happy ending …
… wait, there is no happy ending, this is a Charlie Kaufman script. Or is there? I don’t know, I’m still confused by it. Anyway, worth the $4 to rent it, or the $20 to buy it. It’s on the shelf next to “Adaptation.” Well, no, it isn’t, but that’s because “Adaptation” is on the shelf but “Sunset” is on top of the stack next to the shelf because I don’t have any more room for DVDs!
(Washington) Washington, D.C. Councilman David Catania, once the GOP’s top fundraiser in the District, officially quit the Republican party Wednesday over its continuing attacks on gays.
The 36 year old joined the GOP when he was 16.
“For some time, the leadership of the Republican Party has been dominated - and I believe very adversely - by a single, narrow group of individuals, who show no interest or concern for issues that confront a diverse nation,” Catania said in his statement.
“The time has long since past for me to stop believing that by working within the Party, I can be an agent of change.
Empty words and rhetoric are all that are left of the once proud Republican Party and I am no longer willing to associate myself with it. I shall, therefore, continue my public service as an Independent.”
The Republican Party can continue to try to present itself as compassionate and fair-minded, but so long as they continue to preach hatred as a core Republican value, they will only lose those bright future stars who are essential to the Party’s future absent of its past stereotypes of rich, fat white guys.
Once upon a time, in 1984, David Catanina felt that the Republican Party was compassionate enough to accept a gay member. Twenty years later, the Party has moved not a step forward, but rather taken some incredible leaps backward.
The GOP is fracturing, and they have only themselves to blame.
“I don’t want to create a society where all succeed equally, but an opportunity society where all have an equal chance to succeed no matter what their background, class or race” - Tony Blair
Last night when I returned from work (and flooding made the job a living hell), I set to work cleaning my apartment - well, the living/dining room, actually. I also rearranged the couch, love-seats, and entertainment center. I flipped on the TV as I worked, and wound up watching Tony Blair’s speech from earlier in the day rerun on C-SPAN.
What I found most interesting in his speech was when he said that it would be progressive - not conservative - ideologies which would win to victory in the war on terror. I’ve tried to find a transcript of the speech, but I haven’t been able to!, but what he said was along the lines of, “Progressives know that to defeat terrorism it isn’t enough to kill the terrorists, you have to go in and change the conditions which give rise to terrorism.”
Excellent, Prime Minister! Someone who gets that killing terrorists is all well and good, but is only part of the solution, not the solution in and of itself.
