David Fincher and flashlights

I've never seen this mentioned anywhere before, but David Fincher seems to be obsessed with flashlights. In Se7en there are some scenes of cops in dark rooms shining flashlights. In Panic Room, Kristen Stewart does Morse Code with a flashlight. Even in The Social Network there's a party scene towards the end where cops show up with flashlights. I'm pretty sure Zodiac had some flashlight scenes too- I can't remember. You can go back to David Fincher's early work- Aerosmith's video for "Janie's Got A Gun" has cops with flashlights searching a car.

Estelle Parsons

I was just watching the last 20 minutes of Dick Tracy. I remember I saw it when I was 14 and I had a really hard time following it.

Anyway, the credits rolled and I was looking over all the big names. When it came to the characte of Tess Trueheart's mother it said "Estelle Parsons".

Why does that name sound so familiar? I looked it up and now I know- Estelle Parsons was Beverly, Roseanne's mother on Roseanne.

Online, I noticed that Parsons starred was in Bonnie & Clyde and I'm thinking that's probably where she met Warren Beatty.

Estelle Parson's was great on Roseanne.

The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club (1985) directed by John Hughes

A lot of people love John Hughes's movies from the 1980s. And for most people, their favorite is The Breakfast Club. I have a soft spot for those movies too, but my favorite is Weird Science- it's more of a sex comedy and it's very funny (we'll talk more about it some other time).

Anyway, The Breakfast Club was on yesterday and it had been a long time since I'd seen it all the way through so I watched it.

It was hard. The movie has some good scenes- it's like a well written play- but there are certain scenes that I can't even look at. I'm talking about those ridiculous 1985 dance scenes. They seemed out of place back when I saw TBC in the late 80s and now they just seem funny but not in a good way. How about when Emilio Estevez shouts and the glass shatters.

And speaking of glass shattering. Whenever I'm flipping around and happen to catch TBC at the beginning I always forget about the David Bowie quote. It's something from one of his older albums, Hunky Dorey maybe, and remember how the image acually shatters and the pieces fall away like it's a Friday the 13th title sequence?

I just can't take The Breakfast Club seriously. It's a total product of 1985. It's a shame when talented people try to be fashionable instead of trying to be timeless.

I'll say one good thing, though: I love the scene where Judd Nelson sticks his knife into a table or chair or something, and then when nobody's looking Ally Sheedy reaches over and steals it. Perfect. That's better than 10 shattering David Bowie quotes.

Dustin Pedroia

I don't know a lot about baseball and I avoided playing it when I was a kid- I'm no good at that shit.

But latey I've gotten into the Red Sox and Dustin Pedroia. Something about him is very interesting. I wanna buy the book he put out in 2009, Born To Play: My Life In The Game.

The only problem is: Pedroia co-wrote the book along with Ted Delaney. I don't care if someone works very closely with their editor, but when you put a famous person together with a writer you know that the writer is going to take over and then the person's voice is lost.

I'd rather read a sloppy book by Pedroia than a neat, organized book by a real writer. But anyway, I checked the library last year and theyb didn't have it; I'm gonna try again Monday.

I also wanna try his salsa.

Meeting new people

I consider myself the kind of person who doesn't attract other people. Not that I repel people. Just that out in public, I'm not the person that a talker come up to. I'm bad at conversations and I think other people sense this. That's good for me because I mostly enjoy listening to other people talk.

But the last 2 days thing have been different.

Yesterday afternoon I was waiting at the bus station and smoking a cigarette when a chubby woman in her late 40s came up to me and started talking about how she almost missed her bus earlier and how she had an argument with the driver. She told me the whole story and we talked about busses in general plus the weather and the tornado that rolled through the area on June 1st. She was clearly a little "off" but not so strange or crazy that I felt like making a run for it or politely finding another place to wait. She was nice and harmless.

Today, a the same place, the same thing happened. I feel so popular. I was talking to this guy that I had talked to before when this other guy came up to ask the other guy what time it was. The new guy mentioned that he'd just gotten out of prison and we congratulated him. Then a funny thing happened. Of the two of us, the jailbird started talking to me. The other guy ended up drifting off and Anthony told me about how he liked to work on, and race, cars and how big his 3 year old son was. I know nothing about cars but it was interesting and I pretended that I knew what he was talking about. Turns out that he started with one kind of car and added parts from another kind of car and modified everything.

He's 22 years old and he was very happy when I said that I'd thought that he was 25. He said that's because he's matured now. He's learned to forgive his father and other people who've hurt him and because of that he's able to forgive himself. I said that's a good way to be. It's healthy.

Turns out that he was taking the same bus and that we live in the same part of the city- on the edge of town. I got on the bus first. I'd hoped that he'd sit near and, in fact, he sat right next to me and we talked the entire time. I was disappointed when he got off the bus before its final stop but he had somewhere else he had to go.

I'm hoping that we'll run into each other again. He might be trouble, but he seems like a good person.

Machete

Machete (2010) Directed by Robert Rodreguez and Ethan maniquis

Machete is a great Friday night movie to watch while you'tre sitting at home on your loveseat drinking cranberry/ raspberry juice cocktail and eating croutons straight out of the bag.

That's the scene here except it's Tuesday night.

Normally movies with all-star casts suck. There's Mars Attacks. That movie is a piece of shit. And I look back fondly on the Cannonball Run movies but they're pretty weak.

Machete, though, is a good movie. I'm still watching it. Right now Lindsay Lohan is naked, Splash-style. Don Johnson and Cheech Marin are reunited- they were great in Tin Cup- but here they don't share any scenes. Jeff "The Lawnmowerman" Fahey does a good job as one of the bad guys and I can't get over how different he seems now that he's older.

Danny Trejo doesn't have a lot of lines, but he carries the whole movie well. After years of supporting roles this is his first time being the leading man and he does a great job.

So here's what I really think about Machete: It's an entertaining movie, but it just seems like an episode of CSI :Texas only it has nudity, swearing, and more blood. Note: Now I'm eating a bowl of bread & butter pickles. They go so good with croutons. Anyway, I can't help comparing Machete with Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. And Machete lacks all the elements that make Jackie and Bill special. I could watch Quentin Tarentino's movies over and over again. There are so many scenes that I love and am amazed by. If I never see Machete again that's fine- there's not one single scene that I remember and think, "That was great, I'd like to re-watch that".

Machete's over now so I'm gonna have one more cigarette and then I'm going to bed. Big day tomorrow, maybe. Good night.

Amy Winehouse

I got home from work around 6pm and, like always, got on the computer to check on news and whatnot. Had I gone to USA Today online instead of my local paper I would've seen the news right away. As it was I scan the local headlines and didn't see the story about Amy Winehouse till I scrolled down.

I've gotta say: I'm surprised. Yeah, I knew she had plenty of problems, but it never occurred to me that she might die. She seemed like a survivor, in spite of, or because of, all the trouble she got into.

I liked the two songs that I heard on the radio, "Rehab" and "You Know I'm No Good". I checked out Back to Black at the library and while i thought it was good, nothing else jumped out at me. Still, those two songs are excellent. I love how "Rehab" has that 60s sound to it but I can't think of any particular song from that time that it sounds like.

And she was so cool looking- that beehive was so unexpected and so right. She was very pretty and she seemed like she'd be fun to hang out with, at least until she started coming off as more of a fighter, somebody who actually gets into fights with people.

I think the whole thing is so sad. Like I said, I didn't see this coming. I always imagined that, while she may or may not keep getting in trouble, she'd have a decades- long career and a lot of amazing songs in the future.

On a side note, Twitter is starting to annoy me the way that it's become a legitimate news source. Everyone's Twitter account is being quoted. I know it's early, but have you read any thoughtful comments from any of her fellow musicians? I haven't. Only Tweets that don't look much different than the comments that teenagers leave on their friends' Facebook pages. "RIP Amy", ect.