9.27.98

    Yesterday, T. and I neither walked the Universal City Walk nor read the paper all day. We did chores and "decorated." I did the dishes and T. cleaned the shower.

    He has a very interesting way of cleaning the shower. I hate doing it because we have those stupid clear, plastic, sliding doors. It is impossible to do the whole shower at once. You have to do one side with the metal track digging into your stomach then lather, rinse, repeat. T., however, has a different approach. His is a total emersion process. He attacks it from the inside. He becomes one with the grime — there's a fair amount of sweating and cursing that goes on. In the end, the shower rests quietly — sedated and tamed.

    After that we decorated a bit. T. has this huge poster made of some sort of heavy acetate for the Dave Matthews Band album "Crash". I'm not a huge Dave Matthews fan. There are a few songs I like but it's not more than a passing fancy. The poster is nice, though. It's just the album cover but it looks great blown up large.

    We went through my posters and nixed several. One which I rolled back up and put away is a bootleg of Bob Marley smoking a big, fat doobie. I bought it in a London tube station on my 18th birthday on the way home from a Rage Against the Machine concert at Brixton Academy.

    I remember parts of that night like it were yesterday. Taking the bus once we got into London because the IRA was threatening one of the tube lines. Getting separated from the group and hanging out with Gabe, a guy who I had a romantic fixation on for over a year. Buying my first legal beer.

    Memories or no — that poster just doesn't have a space in this apartment. We just don't smoke big, fat doobies and listen to Bob Marley too much these days.

    In the evening we went out to see Without Limits the movie about University of Oregon, long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine. We were really hoping to see a bunch of our friends in it who spent days as extras when they shot it at our campus. Unfortunately, it was sold out. Who woulda thunk? So, instead we saw Permanent Midnight.

    I would say that for the most part it wasn't an awful movie. I think that Ben Stiller acted really well in it and it had moments of interest. However, it really fell flat for me.

    There seemed to be very little character development. Apparently, the movie is based on the story of a teevee writer who wrote stories for that show Alf. Remember that one? I guess the writer was a big-time heroine user and ended up really fouling up his life. So, we get the story of this guy through this really odd expository narrative between Stiller and this former-rehab chick who picks him up at the Drive-Thru and they have sex the whole time. I got pretty sick of flashing forward to the sex scenes and the exposition was so obvious and seemed really forced.

    For some reason people have been bringing up Trainspotting in the context of this movie. Maybe there's a connection besides heroine that I don't know about but I found Trainspotting to be a much more compelling and involving film. Ewan McGregor plays a character who you can feel sympathy for. He's one of these kids who because of his surroundings and upbringing seems to have "no chance." He goes through an intense struggle in the film and in the end we are rooting for him. Ben Stiller's character goes through no major struggle, as far as we can tell, and he is not sympathetic. Permanent Midnight vaguely alludes to a strange family life but that isn't necessarily a cause and effect relationship.

    The peripheral characters seemed completely devoid of purpose. None of them actively encourages or discourages his drug abuse; he seeks it out on his own. Elizabeth Hurley plays a woman who marries Stiller in order to get her green card. I could never figure out why she cares for Stiller and seems to almost love him. Their relationship is never fleshed out and seems unbelievable.

    This wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen but it leaves much to be desired. I heard Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up but that's not necessarily any indication of a great movie. I seem to disagree with them quite a bit. Go see Without Limits.

    Went golfing today at Scholl's Canyon once again. This was my second time out and I shot a 91, give or take a few strokes. The guys were very patient with me. I was frustrated. Some dialog from the end of the day:

T.:
I think you need to work on your backswing.

Me:
Oh yeah?

T.:
Yeah -- you're doing something weird and I don't know what it is.

Me:
It's golf.

    Yep, golf is the very weird thing that I'm doing.