my tragic right hip

So, being a band widow means now sleeping alone in our big, empty house. That’s by myself. No one else around, well, no humans around, we’ve got two cats that keep quite good company. Annnywaaay. I watched Underworld on TMN last night, and I’m not saying it’s the best movie in the world, but it’s certainly one that I’m fond of and tend to watch over and over and over and, well, over again.

The movie is about vampires and werewolves, and I hate scary movies usually, but this one is different—and don’t hate me for saying this—almost mythical. And Scott Speedman ends up a combination of a vampire and lycan, which makes him, like, the strongest, strangest creature in the whole bloody underworld. How cool is that?

Okay, so then I decide to go to bed, and take Emma Donoghue’s latest (I think) book with me. She writes semi-scary Victorian thrillers. And then, just as I turn out the light, I hear, “BANG BANG BANG BANG.” Ohmigod, someone’s freaking banging on the front freaking door!

I jump out of bed and race to the window, which I know you should NEVER do when you’re already scared to death, lest someone actually see you and know you’re in the house, but it didn’t matter, because you can’t see anything anyway. There’s a roof in the way. Stupid roof!

Then, I look up and notice there’s a full moon. A. Full. Moon. Just sitting there all scary and glowing and sh*t.

Something else crashes downstairs and I’m on the verge of calling 911 when I look outside and there’s already a cop car parked across the street. So, of course, my next logical thought is that there’s a serial killer on the loose and they’ve tracked him to my neighbourhood. I stand there wearing my sweatshirt and no pants (my legs get too hot), totally freaking out because I think I’m about to die, which is just silly because no one was breaking into the house.

The cat was banging on the litterbox.

How silly am I?

Oh, and I slept with the phone all night, just so I could call 911. I’m that ridiculous.

There’s that moment at the beginning of a movie where you just know in your gut whether or not you’re going to like it or feel it’s just a waste of your time. That moment never really comes in Elizabethtown. It’s a movie that just screams, “meh.” It’s not great, but it’s not terrible, either. It’s not particularly moving, but it’s not a complete joke either.

Cameron Crowe’s latest film stars Orlando Bloom as Drew Baylor, a man who has just stepped into a colossal fiasco, not a failure, and lost his job (because he cost the company close to 1 billion dollars). On top of everything, his father dies suddenly and he’s forced to go to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to gather up the body. On the way, he meets a plucky stewardess Claire, who changes his life (of course she does).

See, there’s so much potential there: fish out of water in the South, estranged family coming together to celebrate a beloved figure, meeting the girl of your dreams just as your life implodes. But there’s something about the film that just doesn’t work; it falls into deeply contrived situations that would be better spent in a second-rate TV movie than in a Hollywood blockbuster (what am I saying, I actually went to see Pearl Harbor in the theatre).

Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of cheese every now and again, but this movie just hovers and never quite gets there. Maybe because the main characters forge the basis of their relationship on cell phones. Maybe because the whole situation with Drew’s job is just so ridiculous it’s unbelievable. Maybe because Kirsten Dunst just doesn’t pull off a “Southern Belle” as she should. Who knows? Orlando Bloom was great, and there’s a wonderfully heartfelt scene with Susan Sarandon that almost makes the movie.

Oh, and there’s a road trip that’s pretty spectacular, if the ending of the movie didn’t blow so bad, it might have actually saved it. I did adore one thing about the film, and that’s Paul Schneider, who might just be my next big crush. Yummy!

In the end, I’m still holding on for that one movie that shakes me up this year, and I haven’t found it yet. Where’s Tully when you need him?

Do you agree or disagree, are these the absolute worst lyrics you’ve ever heard? Honestly, I know I’ve complained about OLP before, but seriously:

“Are you happy now?
Are you happy, tonight?
Or did Punk Rock get it right?
Is there no future in sight?”

Sid Vicious is rolling around in the pointy-toed elf shoes he was probably buried in.

Oh, but it gets better:

“Is it different now? Is it different, tonight?
Or did Jesus get it right?
Or is the devil behind the light?
Are you happy now? Are you happy?”

Is he honestly serious? Why are these clowns on the radio? Why?

Another sweet chicklit read that I came upon by reading the review in Entertainment Weekly. Jennifer Vandever’s story revolves around main character Sara, who studies the letters of Charlotte Bronte, and the lives of her siblings, working towards a PhD. When her fiance, also a scholar, leaves her to pursue a fellowship in Paris, her life sort of falls apart.

Sara’s attempts to put it back together take her from New York to LA, to Paris and in between. A funny cast of supporting characters includes Claire, a Princess Diana, Naomi Wolf-inspired “scholar”; a hilarious gadabout Denis whose life is a consistently evolving poem; and her new lover Mr. Emmons, a semi-recovered coke addicted Hollywood producer.

It’s a sweet book, and a good quick read, although I did find myself scanning, which tends to happen when I’m so tired that I can’t entirely focus on the page. Granted, I caught myself most of the time and went back to actually read what I’d slipped over.

All in all, one of my favourite chicklit reads of the year. Funnily enough, I generally abhor anything that reminds me of Victorian literature (the genre has not been kind to me), but the Bronte connection seems to work well in this novel.

Means the freedom to wear your ugly-ass sweatpants and sweatshirt all day long.

Means the fun of not having to take a shower—right away.

Means listening to iTunes all day long on Party Shuffle (the last 5 songs were “Feel Much Better” by Jim Bryson, “Like a Hurricane” by Neil Young, “In My Place” by Coldplay, “Va Danser” by Edith Piaf, and “Turkish Song of the Damned” by The Pogues). What an eclectic mix!

Means getting up early and getting right to work, none of that time wasted commuting or any of that crap.

Means really, really trying to get a handle on your internet addictions. Ahem, I’m trying to take a sabbatical from gossip. It’s hard. But I’ve only slipped twice today, and does the imdb.com gossip even count? It’s news, right?

So, the total number of meds I’m taking in a day has rocketed up to 7.5. Whee-hoo! Now, if only they were fun at the same time, and not just the usual slog, which I’m hating a bit these days.

Other than that, the funniest sentence I heard the doctor say was, “Her organs are not in danger!”

Whew, I wouldn’t want them to be caught walking under a ladder or over an open manhole. I’m glad they’re not being held at gunpoint or caught in a bad case of road rage. Heh.

So I went to see a fancypants doctor today who specializes in auto-immune diseases like the one that I have. The inside of the waiting room reminded me of Nip/Tuck for some reason, even though I’ve only ever seen one episode of the show. It was all Doric columns, peach paint and walnut stain.

Turns out the treatment of the disease this time around hasn’t been as effective as the doctor’s might have hoped. Up until now, my kidney doctor hadn’t prescribed prednisone because in his view, the Wegener’s was just grumbling, and not fully active. But I’ve been having symptoms for a year now, and the imuran isn’t enough. Apparently, studies have shown that you can’t just treat the disease with one drug (imuran up until now), you need both (imuran plus prednisone). So now, after seeing another specialist, I’m back on the steroids, which I hate for many reasons.

They make you crazy. They make you gain weight. They give you acne and “unwanted hair growth”. They keep you up at night. It’s a nasty bit of business, prednisone, even though your body makes it naturally.

I’m upset today because the last time I took prednisone, I fell into the worst depression of my life. I heard voices telling me to jump off of buildings. I cried all the time. I had two years of serious therapy to try to pull me out of my head. I spent obsessive compulsive weeks where I wouldn’t be able to leave the house until I’d scrubbed it with bleach. And I don’t want to go back to being that person. I don’t want to hide in my closet because I’m afraid to leave the house. I don’t want to be afraid of the streetcar because I can’t stand everyone staring at me. But most of all, I don’t want to hate myself with a passion that could truly be used for some thing better.

I went to see In Her Shoes this afternoon with two dear friends. Funnily enough, the two friends have so much in common (they both love pop culture) that I knew they’d get along even though they’d never met. It was kismet, and I like that.

Annnywaaay. The movie is based on Jennifer Weiner’s novel of the same name. Weiner, reigning queen of intelligent, sassy chicklit, has a cameo in the picture, and it’s kind of cute. It’s a faithful interpretation of the book, with some tiny plot points adjusted for the sake of the medium, but it didn’t matter, because I was going to love this movie even if it was mediocre. And I did love it, maybe for all the wrong reasons, for the fact that I miss my own mother (Rose and Maggie’s mother is dead) and grandmother (my own maternal grandmother died fifteen years ago and I still miss her every day) so much that even a hint of that in a film brings me to tears. Throw in a smart girl whose life just seems out of control with sibling issues, and well, you might as well hand me the cold pack for my eyes because I’m not going to be able to see when I exit the theatre.

I’m glad I saw it on an afternoon as a band widow. It’s the perfect film for the day that my RRBF has left. And I’m spending the first night alone in the house we bought almost a year ago.

“Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Why? Well, because my high school boyfriend loved the song. He used to dance around to it in his parents’ truly hideously dirty basement. It is a memory I cherish for some reason. (The later ones of him acting like a freak and then an asshole, I try to forget, but I am not blameless by any means.)

Why? Because we’ve gotten in the habit of using it to get whatever bad-ass radio song we have in our heads out of them.

And it’s good to listen to music when you’re at home by yourself truly enjoying the first minutes of Band Widow-dom.

In the back of my paperback edition of Douglas Coupland’s Eleanor Rigby, he says that Liz Dunn is his favourite character. There’s an actual person named Liz Dunn in his life, but the character bears no resemblance to his real-life friend. And I can see why, she’s a wonderful character and the novel is sweet, short, and fun to read. It’s been years since I read anything by Douglas Coupland, after Generation X, I never went back, maybe dismayed by the pop culture relevance in his books. But I sort of regret that now, having enjoyed this novel so much.