Field Trip City

I stayed up late last night reading Kevin Smith's account of Jason Mewes' battle with drug addiction in My Boring Ass Life. In addition to being an interesting analysis of how drugs can affect a person's personality and decisions, it's a well-written and fascinating account of what a friendship can put you through. I couldn't put it down.

Opera class had a special-guest, a German theatre director who had some absorbing things to say about how he puts together a production, his likes and dislikes about opera. At one point he made a dramatic gesture and whacked Professor Hutcheon in the face. She had to leave class to tend to her left eye's contact lens. It's hard to recover gracefully from a thing like that.

After class I went to the Varsity to check out Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I had about an hour to kill, so I browsed a bit at Indigo in the Manulife Centre and ended up breaking the cherry on my Starbucks gift card while reading a paper. I went back to the theatre and noticed that the 6:30 showtime was for the VIP screening - about $15 for a nicer theatre. I didn't really want to pay that much, and the regular showing wasn't for another hour, so I decided to head home.

I listened to Jimmy Eat World's Chase This Light on the way, and though it's more of the same from the group I really dig it by first impression, especially the songs "Always Be" and "Dizzy." After I got home I finished off the Scrubs box set, watched some Mission Hill, and put on Ghost World.

Ghost World is a movie that changes with every viewing as I get older. When I first saw it in theatres back in 2001, it spoke very directly about my initial post-high school years, trying to work out how to be an adult when a part of you is unable. I watched it all the time once I procured it on DVD, falling in love with its acerbic wit and condemnation of what passes for normalcy in a prescribed society. But as I get older, I find myself armed with an increasing tendency to watch it from the perspective of an adult who has already, for better or worse, battled through a lot of the problems Enid and Rebecca face. Seymour becomes less and less of a character whose oddities I can appreciate - he's someone who makes every decision with a weak heart, putting too much trust in the familiar. Enid calls him her hero, but he's things she'll never be: uncreative, unsure, buried in obscurity. Enid is otherworldly, curious despite being angst-ridden, hyper-individualistic. I find her to be one of the rare creatures in movies for whom I have what closely resembles a genuine affection.

It makes my chest heavy, that movie. It ends so poetically, the way it fades out on a view of the impossible road to a possible place the lonely and estranged might belong, indicating that possibility is an end in itself.