3 Films.

Today we saw Fall from Grace (a documentary about Rev. Fred Phelps), Annabelle and Elvis (a new feature narrative with Mary Steenburgen, among others), and Manufacturing Dissent (a sort of expose on Michael Moore).

Fall from Grace was engaging, if only because of a lot of mesmerizingly horrific footage, of Phelps and his congregation (which apparently is made up mostly of his family). But it was repetitive, maudlin, and shallow. The two phases of Phelps career are 1) picketing of the funerals of people who died from AIDS (the "God Hates Fags" phase), and 2) picketing of military funerals ("God Bless IEDs"). The more recent military funerals phase was given much greater emotional weight in the film (a good ten minutes of a sobbing teen bride of a soldier who was killed in Iraq), while the AIDS funeral protests were barely mentioned. It's a student film, which could explain its shortcomings. The film failed to connect Rev. Phelps with a larger cultural context, instead making it seem like Phelps and his family were just a bunch of lunatics on the side of the road holding signs.

Elvis and Annabelle was disappointing. The film was made partly by Burnt Orange Productions, which is the hybrid company in which U.T. film students work on professional indie films. It was beautifully photographed right here in Austin and central Texas. And the acting was good considering what they had to work with. I like Max Minghella (Art School Confidential), and he's appealing in this film. Joe Mantegna was wonderful, in a very moving and funny performance as a brain-damaged, hunchback mortician, a role that very easily could have been awful.

But the story was forced, obvious, dumb. I was giving it the benefit of the doubt (because it really was gorgeous to watch, and it was supposed to be sort of a fable, so I was forgiving the super-neat plot) till about the last 15 minutes when it all just started to fall apart. One of those films where you can see the writer at his desk saying, "Oh, and then this can happen!"

Manufacturing Dissent made up for any letdown we were experiencing from the previous two films. Both J. and I wondered if it was a bit long, but decided we probably felt that way because it was our third film in one day. I've never liked Michael Moore much, always thought he was smarmy and untrustworthy, and now I feel vindicated. I often agree with the stances he takes on issues, but he's a manipulative celebrity-hound who is willing to lie to make his point, and he's the wrong spokesperson for progressive causes because he is so easily discredited.

The film laid out point by point the instances in which Moore has either misrepresented context or chronology in his "documentary" films or, in at least one case, completely fabricated an event. And cases in which he's lied about past events in his own life. An eye-opener.

SXSW.

I realized that I haven't mentioned that J. and I got film passes for SXSW. They cost $65, which, by our math, is a bargain if we see more than 8 films. J. made out a prospective schedule incorporating most of the films we want to see, and it includes about 4 or 5 films a day through next weekend.

Last night, we also saw Third Ward TX, a documentary about Project Rowhouses, where a group of artists rescued an urban neighborhood. It did the best thing a documentary can do: let you know about something you had no idea existed. Besides which, it was moving, funny, beautiful to watch, inspiring.

Sisters.

We saw a remake of Sisters, a 1973 Brian DePalma film, last night. The original starred Margot Kidder and, though I saw it probably 25 years ago late at night on TV, it was so creepy that images from it still make me shudder. The remake was pretty creepy too, with Chloe Sevigny.

A trio of chatty girls sat near us. They weren't enjoying the film and wanted everyone around them to know it. Actually, they were enjoying laughing at it. Not that the movie was not funny at times. The tone was somewhere in that disorienting world where campy parody and reverence meet, sometimes seeming to spoof bad 70s psychological horror movies (children's voices la-la-la-ing a minor key nursery rhyme) and other times actually being that bad movie. Anyway, I knew these girls weren't getting it and I didn't want them to ruin it for me. I shushed them about halfway through, which worked until the end credits started and then they let loose. "Somebody must have thought this was a good idea!"

I like seeing a movie with a crowd. It intensifies the emotional ride. But the risk is high. I don't like seeing a movie with a dumb crowd.

Garden nightmare.

I just need three tomato plants and two poblano chile plants, and I was waiting to get them at the Sunshine Community Garden plant sale today. I pictured it as a little neighborhood event, urban gardeners selling seedlings, sort of like a yard sale with plants.

Our first film today is at 4, and I have to pick up our first box of produce from the CSA farm this afternoon, so J. and I got going early to get to the plant sale shortly after it started at 9. The street approaching the garden was already lined with cars, so J. dropped me off and went looking for a space to park. On my way in the gate, a smiling teenager handed me several stapled pages of legal-size paper which listed what looked like hundreds of exotic heirloom vegetable varieties. The place was bustling. A brass band was playing, people were scurrying everywhere, and two long lines snaked through the lot. I realized that these folks were waiting in line just to get into two small greenhouses to look at the tomato and pepper plants. And the lines were not moving.

I ambled over to a couple less crowded tables of herbs and flowers. People darted past me on either side, snatching plants from the tables. It was like a going out of business sale in a bad sitcom. I made my way back to the entrance just as J. was coming in. He had parked blocks away in the Unitarian church parking lot. I said, "I don't think I can do this," and we turned around and came home.

I just want to get the plants into the ground so we can eat the produce this summer. For me, having a garden is about the grocery bill and it's about the environment. It's not about a brass band and fighting a crowd for heirloom tomato seedlings. If I can't get tomatoes and poblanoes by Monday, I'm going to just put in more sweet potatoes and lima beans.

A beautiful moment.

I'm finally making some headway on this screenplay chaos. It was, as I knew, just a matter of jumping in and getting dirty. Later today I will have a big pile of paper that will tell me what I've got, what I need to do, what's right, what's wrong. Anyway, I hope so.

When I was in the mess of it yesterday, J. told me he was going to do some laundry and asked if I wanted to join him. Since I only have about 8 days' worth of clothes, I almost always need to do laundry. And one of our favorite restaurants, Mother's Cafe, which is across the street from the laundromat, had burned down the night before, and I wanted to take a look.

J. wanted to stop on the way at the Guitar Center for ukulele strings. We have a gig -- surprise! -- in a show called Gay Bi Gay Gay (one of the glut of events riding on the coattails of SXSW next week). J. had a general sense of where the Guitar Center was, and we drove around for a long time looking. There's a highway in Austin called the Mo-Pac Expressway, and it's some kind of vortex of confusion. Whenever we're trying to find anything on or near Mo-Pac, we're guaranteed to get lost. I remember this from as far back as our first visits to Austin many years ago when we were touring. Mo-Pac = lost.

While we were searching, we got hungry, so we stopped at ZuZu, a Mexican fast food place for lunch. Cheap and delicious. Next door to the restaurant was a Hollywood Video, where J. asked for directions to the Guitar Center. The one on Mo-Pace is no longer there, so they sent us to the one in the Northcross Mall, which is the site of a very controversial future Wal-Mart. The Guitar Center doesn't carry ukulele strings, but J. found a Yahama keyboard he liked, on sale, and he bought it. Fuck the ukulele.

Then we did laundry. The whole expedition lasted about 4 hours.

On the way home, we were listening to KOOP, one of the surviving listener-owned, free-form stations where deejays talk about things that are happening around the corner and play whatever the hell they feel like playing. While the deejay was on the air, another deejay called in sick, and they chatted on the air for a good while. It was International Women's Day, and the sick deejay wasn't happy about it. ("Women get their own day every four weeks. Why don't we get an International Men's Day?")

The on-air deejay asked the sick deejay how we was going to spend his sick day, and he said that he was going to stay home and read a good book. He was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. He'd read it several times already, and he spoke admiringly of Harper Lee "because he really nails the characters and the story," or something like that.

The on-air guy said, "I hate to have to be the one to tell you, but your favorite author Harper Lee is a woman."

"No way! There's no way that could be a chick. He gets all the characters perfectly: Atticus Finch, the little boy Scout...."

"Um. I've got some news for you, man. Scout is a girl."

"No!!"

How often do you get to witness the exact moment when someone's consciousness is changed?

Spring things.

The garden is almost all in. We still need to put in the tomatoes. There's a plant sale at one of the community gardens on Saturday and I'm hoping they'll have some there. I also want poblanos, but I haven't seen any plants at the nurseries. Maybe they'll have those too on Saturday. And the sweet potatoes haven't rooted yet, so I haven't planted them. But everything else is in the ground, either seeds or seedlings: 3 different kinds of chilies and bell peppers, cucumbers, lima beans, watermelons, pole beans and snap peas, climbing spinach, and peanuts. And in the herb garden: basil (Italian and holy basil), sage, cilantro, parsley, and chives. And I'm rooting some lemongrass to plant in the herb garden, too.

I got an email from a local CSA farm this morning letting me know there's a share available for us. (All the CSA farms I contacted last month were booked up -- things start early in Texas!) So we'll start getting a box of produce every other week now through July from the Johnson Farm.

The weather could not be more gorgeous. It's in the 70s and sunny during the day and gets down to about 50 at night. I'm soaking it up, hoping it lasts for a good while before the heat comes.

Robert Rauschenberg.

I was just reading in the New York Times a review of a show of Robert Rauschenberg drawings. They are the beautiful "transfer" drawings, where he took images from magazines, soaked them in solvent, and then rubbed them onto paper.

When I was studying painting at Parsons (1981, I was twenty and had just moved to New York), Rauschenberg was a favorite of mine, along with Jasper Johns. But especially Rauschenberg. I got interested in collage because of my fascination with his work, especially the transfer drawings.

Very recently, I was reading another article, probably in the Times, either about Rauschenberg or Johns I can't remember which, in which they were referred to as long-term partners, or lovers, something like that. It was an incidental detail in a story about something else. As if everyone knew that. Maybe they do now. But I had no idea, especially not back then when I admired them so much. When I was aping their work.

That would have made a difference to me. It's hard to say exactly how knowing that my favorite artist was a homosexual would have affected my sense of myself as an artist, would have affected the trajectory of my life as an artist, but I know it would have, and I felt cheated and hurt to discover that it had been kept from me all these years.

Poetry.

I went to a lecture and reading tonight by Dana Gioia, the poet and chairman of the NEA. I like his work -- he uses plain language. The event was at the Ransom Center at U.T., and the audience seemed to be mostly academics a little older than me, or people who run with that crowd. Sort of a high-brow, literary crowd is what I'm trying to say.

He spoke for about half an hour, then he read a few of his poems, along with a little Longfellow and a little Auden. The title of his talk was "Poetry as Enchantment," I think, or, if that wasn't the title, it was his thesis. He made the case that poems, by using language in a specialized way that interacts with us as whole beings, have the power to cast spells. That poetry literally has the power to change us.

That these people needed to be told this was worrisome to me.

Ants.

I was just typing up some poems I wrote while I was in Utah last summer. They're the first poems I've written since high school. I've always been intimidated by poetry, regarding it as an esoteric art form that I would only embarrass myself by attempting. Which is just silly, I know. I like to think that one of my strengths as an artist is a talent for concision, an ability to reduce ideas and images to their essence. So why wouldn't I be a natural poet?

I drafted these Utah poems on a yellow pad, the kind I always write on. One of the poems is about some ants I observed on the floor of the yurt I lived in for a few weeks. When I flipped the page to this poem about ants, an actual, live ant crawled right off the page onto my desk and disappeared. It must have been there since August, just waiting for me to transcribe my poems.

Here's the ant poem:

All morning ants
are dragging corpses
across the floor
under me, a bee,
a moth. A moth!
but it's too heavy.
The ant gives up, leaves
the carcass. Relieved,
I go back to my desk.

A minute later I look up
and the moth is gone.

Animation.

J. and I went to The Animation Show last night at the Paramount Theater. It's a touring program of animated short films, curated by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt.

All the films were wonderful, but a few stood out. "Everything Will Be OK," by Don Hertzfeldt was particularly beautiful and moving, as was "Dreams and Desires" by Joanna Quinn. Both were beautifully drawn. The experience got me to thinking that if I really want to incorporate my visual art training into my film work, I should be doing animation. Hm.

Gardening.

Jay is building a fence around our garden. I gave up helping him and came inside. I think I'll let him make the fence, and I'll do the planting tomorrow. It's still sometimes very difficult for us to work on a project together. Even after all these years and so many lessons, so much forgiveness.

Here's the pattern, as far as I can make it out: J. has a plan. I'm unclear on the details of the plan. I ask for clarification. J. seems reluctant to answer. The more I press, the more frustrated he becomes. Not having a sense of the outline of the project, I decide to see if I can figure it out as we go. J. becomes frustrated that I'm not forging ahead on my own but waiting for his cues. He stops talking, but keeps working. I'm angry because I don't know what the hell is going on. He's angry because I'm not helping.

Tired.

I feel tired and wonky. After the rabies ordeal, I only slept 4 or 5 hours and not soundly. So yesterday I was in a fog. I slept hard last night for 9 hours. J. and I went to see Lives of Others this afternoon. I loved it; J. didn't.

Tonight I may go out to the Chain Drive for a beer or two. I haven't been there in a couple months, since before I met Z, and I miss it. I miss being stoned and beer-buzzed in a dark bar full of horny men listening to loud music and trying to pick each other up. Why does it feel like cheating? On the other hand, maybe I want to go out to prove to myself that just because I've been seeing one man for several weeks doesn't mean I am attached.

Rabies.

Z. picked me up at about 7. He had invited me over to his place to ignore a movie. We decided to go for a walk on the hike and bike trail first since it was such a warm evening. It was getting to be dusk, but there was enough light left for a quick walk around the lake.

We got around to the south side of the lake, near the pedestrian bridge, but instead of going over the bridge, we thought we'd go under and around a different way. We both spotted what we thought was a cat sort of strolling several yards in front of us, but when we got closer we realized it was a small raccoon. A baby raccoon.

It turned around and saw us and stayed where it was. We stopped about 20 feet away from it. I guess we stopped because we wanted to look at it without scaring it away, but it was not at all afraid of us; in fact, it walked toward us. I got a little scared. Something felt wrong. It walked right up to our feet, poked around at our shoes. I was backing away from it, but Z. stayed put. The raccoon climbed up onto Z.'s leg with front paws, sniffed a bit, then bit Z.'s calf.

Z. shooed him away, and he backed off, but not much. He kept trying to come back to our legs. By this time I was freaked out. As we tried to back away, the raccoon followed us. We decided to take the bridge after all, and he pursued us all the way to the stairs but didn't follow us up. We stopped on the bridge to look at Z.'s leg. It was a very minor bite, but the skin was broken in a little curved row of teeth marks.

I knew from the moment I saw the raccoon take a bite that we'd be headed to the hospital soon. Z. was less sure. We went to his place, looked up some info about rabies on the internet. "Immediate medical attention" was the phrase that kept coming up. We did pause to make out for a few minutes, which was pretty funny to recall later.

So instead of a movie, our evening's entertainment was the emergency room waiting room. We arrived there at 9:30. We remarked on the way that it was a good thing this had happened not too late on a weekday, that the emergency room would probably not be too crowded. At about 1:30, Z. saw the triage nurse. At about 3:30, he saw the doctor, and at 5:30 they were giving him three big shots, one in either hip and another one all around the wound (which involved sticking the needle in and moving it around to get what looked like about half a cup of liquid into the muscle). I had to stop looking at that one because I started to feel woozy.

We left at 6 a.m. and had breakfast on the way home. Neither one of us had had dinner, so we were famished. After breakfast, Z. called in sick to work. I think the ordeal was worth it for him for the amusement he got from telling his boss that he wouldn't be coming in today because he'd been "up all night with rabies."

Today.

J. deposits the rent in our landlord's bank account, so I usually transfer my portion of the rent into J.'s account at the beginning of the month. We keep receipts for anything we share (groceries, household stuff), put them on the bulletin board, and at the end of the month we add them up to see who owes who money. I always owe J. This month it's a lot.

Our utility bill was huge, because we used our heaters on lots of days in January and February. And we spend way too much on groceries. I hope we can get into a CSA farm before too long to ease that expense a bit. The produce from our garden will help too, but that won't be till summertime.

Z. invited me over to his place tonight to "ignore a movie." We haven't seen each other yet since I got home from the drug study.

A Prairie Home Companion.

Did anyone else think the movie, A Prairie Home Companion was not very good? (I greencined it and watched yesterday. I was in Utah when it came out, hours from the nearest movie theater.) I'm a big Robert Altman fan, and a big Garrison Keillor fan (well, I like his stories -- the PHC show itself can be pretty tedious), and I loved watching Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin doing their thing, but there were many times throughout the movie when all I was thinking was, "this isn't working at all." The angel of death? Maybe it was too dry for me. I don't know. It felt fake, which was particularly jarring because what Altman was always really good at was creating a convincing world, whatever the world of the film was.

Home, sweet home.

Oh, it's good to be home!

I survived the study with no detectable side-effects. J picked me up at the facility at 10:30 and took me right to Los Altos, a great little Mexican restaurant near our house that serves cheap, delicious breakfast, and I had my first cup of coffee in two weeks. And migas. Rapture.

It's about 85 degrees, sunny and dry, gorgeous spring weather. I have my door and windows open, and I'm sitting here with a big iced coffee, sucking on a square of dark chocolate, and printing out the materials I need to deliver by Thursday to U.T. to accompany my application (resume, C.V., reviews of my film).

What is better than my life right now?

Don't. push. me. 'cause...

I've taken to setting up my computer on one of the ECG tables (like a massage table with no hole for your face) in the "procedure room," which is the big main area where most everything study-related happens. All in all, I think there are more quiet hours here than anywhere else, though, as always, anyone can come in at any time and start playing loud funk music or having a marathon screaming match on the cell phone with her teenage child.

I haven't been writing much the last three days. Just distracted and ready to go home, I think. But I have been having great ideas for my screenplay just as I fall asleep at night. I value that even more than the time spent writing, because when I have one or two of those on my pad, I have something to get my pen moving when I sit down. I know I have something to write.

I was trying to read this afternoon, but I couldn't block out the conversations in the room, so I shuffled off to the TV room to see what folks were watching. They were just sitting down to watch The Guardian, so I stayed. It was long and, well, stupid. But I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do more, so I sat through it. I was hoping for more wet t-shirt shots of the Coast Guard boys. Can't we at least have that?

Now I'm back at my ECG table/desk. And there's a guy 10 feet away from me practicing harmonica. He has a little device that plays the tune, and then he has to play it. Beginner tunes, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I want to feel supportive because he's learning to play the harmonica and anyone who wants to learn to play the harmonica should be encouraged. But it's about to drive me insane.

Home stretch.

Today is dose day again. No breakfast, so I have a nasty headache. Starting with the dose this morning, it got busy again. We're running from station to station, giving blood (12 times today, I think), having our vital signs taken, and giving them every drop of urine we produce for 72 hours. This means we're near the end. As soon as they get our last drop of urine on Monday morning, we're free.

While I've been incarcerated, J. has been turning the soil in our garden. As soon as I get out, Z. is going to take me around to his favorite nurseries and help me pick out seeds and seedlings. It's time to plant! For the warm season, we're putting in lima beans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, cilantro, and basil.

American Idol II (and I promise never again).

Tonight I watched a shorter episode of the show, maybe only an hour long, and, though I walked in about 20 minutes into the show and could have missed something, I don't think there was much singing. They spent the whole hour dragging each contestant up to the stage, repeating the humiliating comments made last night by the judges, and then telling them whether or not they would be returning for another round.

They only eliminated two contestants! How long does this go on?

So, they sent home one boy and one girl, and then what did they do, right after delivering the crushing news, but make the rejected kids sing the same song they sang last night which got them booted! I was really perplexed -- it just seemed over-the-top mean -- and I asked aloud why they did that. Food-hater said, "So they can see what they sound like with crap in their pants." That made my whole day.

Outside.

Our study coordinator arranged for us to have some time outside this morning. It's 80 degrees and sunny today. My fellow study subjects were practically drooling in anticipation.

I guess I'm not a real Texan yet, because I don't have that visceral need to be outdoors. I like a nice day, and I get stir crazy like anyone, but not so soon. People here are so used to mild weather pretty much all year round that if they're stuck indoors for more than a day and a half, they get antsy. Last week Z. and I went to a coffeeshop one of those nights when the temperature dipped into the low 30s, and the patio seating area was still full, everyone huddled and shivering by the gas heaters. I spent most of my life in the Midwest and Northeast where the winters can be so nasty you feel lucky to have someplace indoors to be.

The outdoor break was not mandatory, so I decided to stay inside while they all went for a walk in the yard. Not that I didn't want a break, but what I really wanted a break from was them.