I did a full post about the David Lynch screening over the Austin Movies Blog.

I have such a headache today and I think some of it is honestly the movie and the experience of the screening completely overloading my brain. (Work hasn't helped today, either.)

We went to the Paramount theater last night, my brother and I, to see David Lynch's Inland Empire.

David Lynch, one of the true heroes in my life, who has informed and influenced my dreams since I was about 14, was there, and he didn't disappoint. The Q&A afterward was very short, and I'm not sure he would have said much more about the film itself if it had been twice as long, but it was a wonderful ("beautiful thing," he'd say) experience just to have him in Austin, to see him in person, to see him seeing us.

As for the film itself -- I know I didn't get it and the answers to what the film is saying aren't as easy to come by as they were for Mulholland Drive. I think a great many people (even some people at the screening last night) will be bored, frustrated, and eventually annoyed by what they see. One young couple in front of me was visibly bored and mocked the director's hand gestures and his goofiness after the movie played.

Yes, the film feels at times very indulgent and it goes on seemingly forever.

But... there are moments of incredible beauty in it, of near limitless darkness, of terror, of humor. Laura Dern is so damned amazing and I've yet to see a digital film that is so luscious and rough at the same time. It was, in short, a Lynchian experience. As my brother said on his blog, it's not an experience I expect to ever forget. Whatever that thing was that Lynch sent, I'm glad I got it.

(More here, my Austin Movies Blog entry on the screening and Q&A.)

Bonus random link: A cat in a spa/torture chamber. Funny, funny shit.

New Smallville recap is up of the much hyped episode "Justice":

The League of Extraneous Gentlemen -- Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash (a.k.a. Impulse) return to join Green Arrow and Clark to...uh...sorry, we were too busy looking at all the male-male camaraderie to remember what they're doing. It involves Lex and a secret lai-aaair and lots of code names and verbal high-fives. Oh, who cares? Bring on the leather, tights, and testosterone-fueled one-liners! They're FAB-ulous!

A new Space Monkeys! comic has been posted, against all odds, in spite of our enemies, with a directness of purpose wholly disproportionate to the ills of the world, which seek only to spoil such an endeavor.

The least you could do is check it out.

COOOOOOL!



You can also find parts 2 and 3 on the Tubes of You (Fitter, Happier, The National Anthem, Exit Music and others).

(Link courtesy my cool brother.)

I thought this weekend was going to be so productive because I got started on my recap early (Friday is early for me) and didn't have any other major obligations. We even went to see Dreamgirls yesterday (not much of a story, but you don't care because the music carries it right along and it looks great), and I caught up on all the TV I was buried under after my trip last week.

But today, the cedar is awful and it's all I can do to keep my head upright. I'm cranky, I keep wanting to go to sleep and I've only been able to recap in tiny 10-minute bursts. We went to a tiny Sears Appliance Center nearby (yes, they do exist, apparently) and decided to buy an energy-efficient washer/dryer set. Can I personally bill Al Gore for making me feel guilty for using 10-year-old appliances that work fine otherwise?

But other than that activity, it's been a real slog. We were supposed to go up to Austin and spend the day there, but getting out of bed and on the road in a timely manner proved too difficult.

My eyes are itchy and I have a lingering low-grade headache. Now it's dark and the day feels wasted, so I'm just going to try to finish my recap and get a good night's sleep.

Oh, one other thing. We went to my folks' house last night. My brother's in a redecorating mode and they were clearing out old clothes and clutter. I hadn't realized how much stuff I'd left at my parents' home when I moved from New Braunfels to Austin. There are about three big boxes worth of papers, books and other junk I never went through. I also have a big box of comics that mysterious disappeared at some point. That part really bothers me.

Going through the old clothes, I found T-shirts I literally hadn't seen in 10 years but that I used to wear all the time. I found old receipts in jacket pockets. My old "Joey" doll from when I was a toddler. An issue of Playboy so old that... well... let's just say women groomed a bit differently in 1990 than they do now, at least in the pages of magazines like that. A copy of Dangerous Visions I didn't even know I'd lost. Tons of clips from my college newspaper. Old computer game manuals.

I think the clutter is really stressing me out. I've been trying hard to clear out my office and go through newspapers to get my clips out and file them in neat bins. But it's a long process and every time I think I've made some headway, three more huge bags of materials come into my life, like some goddammn Egyptian curse.

A story I wrote that runs in today's Life & Arts section of the paper is about women who blog about their fertility problems. You can find it here.

The story's been making me nervous all week because the women I interviewed trusted me to tell their stories and they've been writing online in relative anonymity. It was a big deal for them to be written about, photographed and thrust into the public eye. I was scared to death I'd mess up a detail or somehow say something dumb in the article that would make them regret their decision to be interviewed.

So far, except for one e-mail from a woman who thinks white, financially secure women should stop whining, the response has been good. I'm very proud of it and very pleased if the women I wrote about are able to help others in similar situation with the things they write on their sites.