It’s Saturday, January 3 [this is a retro-post] in the brand spanking new year. I’m watching that classic holiday favorite Fight Club. Nothing like a little nihilism to put everything into perpective. Thi is one of those films you can just leave on all the time because you’ll always notice something new each time you see it. Plus, I just read that there is going to be a combat action game based on the movie coming out at the end of this year. 
This is actually part of my ruse to get Ron to see the movie – he’s awake now – he has refused to watch the movie because it’s so violent. I’ve tried to explain the sense of humor of the movie and how much he’d love it but – shit he closed his eyes again.
I was going to write that ‘2003 was a hard year,’ but I feel like I say that every year. I don’t think I could ever say that ‘X year was an easy year.’ It certainly wasn’t as harrowing as a couple years ago (the fabled Nick-Bastard-deceit-betrayal saga). Liberal media experts predict that in a time the global anti-war protests of February will be seen as a sign of a sea change in the anti-globalization and evidence of a growing opposition to American imperialism and hijacking of American Democracy (not to mention the Republican party) by a band of nutcase academics powered by Fundamentalist Christians and hypergreedy families. Of course my kids’s history books will make no mention of any of this – merely the liberation of the Iraqi people and the set-up of the first nation devoted solely to the rape of a repressed land and the installation of a corporate oligopoly.
“This movie is sorta gay,” Ron just said. He has no idea. Substitute punching for fucking and you’ve got a bathhouse. The Paper Street House that Tyler lives in and it’s surrounding area remind me of the industrial sector down near Chinatown off the river. Sort of an industrial wasteland that is starting to be taken over by apartments and warehouses. I’d love to have a huge warehouse studio space there. A big open space with half of it a living space and the other half a wild performance incubator.
“I sometimes wonder if another woman is what we really need.”
“On the weekdays we were like Ozzy and Harriet.”
“My God. I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school.”
I wonder where I got the appreciation with dark, wet, grimy imagery – the stuff that David FIncher specializes in. I remember visiting New York City when I was in high school and being totally fascinated with the seediness of the pre-Giulani Times Square. The huge posters of Cats and Miss Saigon (I saw it the week after Lea Salonga won the Tony) next to marquees for porn posters. The crowds of identical pigeons milling around the crowds of identical people. 
The garbage over-running trashcans – a foreign landscape alien compared to the manicured Lynchian lawns of Hoosier surburbia (we keep our garbage hidden under the porch, thank you very much). I hope someday I can direct a production of King Lear or Macbeth with the same grimy feel. Though the thing I think directors always screw up with Macbeth is to make it too moody too fast. It’s the descent that makes it all so satisfying. When Duncan says ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat,’ we should see a palace of grandeur and lively perfection. I think it’d be cool to have the whole set bleed as the play descends – with gutters downstage to catch the blood. And the costumes slowly being soaked in blood as the play continues. Hell – maybe it even rains blood onstage (the opening of Blade still makes my jaw drop). Or I picture the servants laying down tarps trying to contain the bleeding.
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
Now Ron wants soap made from human fat.
We went out to Sidetrack last night and had a good time. Ron’s friend met us with a date and the date introduced us to a another asian-white couple. So there we are – three asian-white couples against the wall – what Ron and I usually refer to as a ‘rice paddy’ 
(the usual rice paddy is in the back bar of Roscoe’s where a conspicuous amount of asian guys congregate to stare eachother down). Sidetrack is such a tall-person’s bar.
A couple weeks ago – for the first time ever – all of the Billboard top 10 were black artists – marking a coming of age and legitimacy for hip-hop and it’s predominance over pop (but when pop is no longer the most popular – do you still call it pop?).
New Year’s dinner was at Jack’s – and very yummy. Two of Ron’s buddies from Hong Kong flew in an one from San Diego. All four Filipino – so it was a Tagalog evening.
Ferdi and Manuel told a great yarn about staying at a hotel in Tai Pei. The hotel was built on top of mass graves and is haunted. Ferdi saw someone else in his bathroom mirror. My god, that would totally freak me out (ever since that one episode of Twin Peaks – I’m always scared of seeing somebody else in a mirror). That and even though the hotel (next to an airport) is completely soundproofed – they heard dogs barking outside. Eeeek!
We stumbled on a comic book called Adam and Andy yesterday. It features a mid-thirties couple – two meathead guys that live together (next to their neighbor Mrs. Bitschlapp). One is always working and one is always in his underwear. It’s a really sweet set of cartoons – good humored and tender and funny. You can read it at http://www.adamandandy.com/.
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