I spent the entire bus ride (with two seats to myself) to Peterborough reading The Gum Thief over again, since it's been awhile since I last picked it up. Coupland's writing style is still among my favorites. His latest book admires the idea that people deserve a second look before they can be considered understood or even really seen in the first place. We all remain so relatively invisible to one another, lumped into categories based on our appearances and social positions. Meanwhile there's so much going on inside everyone. It's a fascinating contradiction.

I just emailed him, asking for an interview. I'm already nervous as shit. In any event I have to go with the flow of what comes of it, if for nothing else than for the sake of my mark in Biography.

It snowed heavily in Peterborough. I have a hankering to check out Chumleigh's. We'll see if I can slog my way down there. I do have a fair amount to read this weekend, including work by Coetzee, and a Shakespeare play I had to rescue from the boxes of stuff in my parents' basement. Every time I visit my dad announces his plans for spring cleaning. There are decades worth of junk in this place that would make a nice addition to someone else's junk pile.

Last night my folks and I watched Judgement at Nuremberg with Spencer Tracy and a slew of other stars. Really well directed and didn't drag at all in its three-hour length. There's a fascinating scene in which Marlene Dietrich and Tracy are walking through the streets of Nuremberg and a band of men are singing "Lily Marleen," a song that Dietrich made popular. She lightly sings a couple of bars herself but otherwise translates its meaning into something Tracy can understand. It's a wonderfully scripted scene.

My passport is now firmly in my possession, faux male supermodel posed picture and all. Everything looks set for my New Year travels. Andrea sent me a bit of an itinerary and man am I excited. Lots to see and do, lots of pictures to be taken.

I felt tired most of the day and took a nap before finishing off the Dietrich presentation, and not a moment too soon because I'm starting to have dreams in which she tells me I'm the cream in her coffee (and the salt in her stew). Speaking of food, I picked up a box of Reese Puffs at the grocery store. Heaven. God bless General Mills for shoving chocolate and peanut butter into a cereal bowl and calling it breakfast.

The presentations in Opera class are becoming more elaborate - costumes, media projections, piano stylings and the like. It seems everyone's a born actor. I have a good feeling about my group, however, and that we'll pull off something awesome. Anything that allows me the opportunity to wear an outrageously false moustache is something I can get behind (see the pics of my Beastie Boys gala event outfit for proof).

I finally got my new health card in the mail, so I'll feel a lot better about contracting potential sicknesses and injury. I'm still coughing and despite my first-ever foray into Buckley's cough medication (an experience akin to swallowing a nuclear explosion), it's a persistent bugger.

I'm getting kind of Dietrich'd out, and I think I'm doing a little too much research for a 15 minute presentation, but it should be ready to go on Tuesday.

I got to talk with Andrea for the first time in over a week today. I really miss her terribly. Tomorrow I'm picking up my passport, and that will bring me one step closer to Germany. Time seems to be passing slowly for me this month. I've only been in school for six weeks or so, but it feels like a hell of a lot more time has passed.

I went out to pick up some clothes today. It was gorgeous outside. The sun was shining and I didn't need a hoodie. I bought a nice suit jacket and shirt, plus a new pair of pants and a tie. I left most of my ties in Peterborough during the move. I haven't worn a suit in weeks and when you wear one at least once every couple of weeks for two years you get to feeling like kind of a slob. Hopefully I'll get some use out of this one.

I wrote more of that story I'm working on for In/Words. I should be able to finish it in one more sitting. It will feel good to have a piece of prose done.

It's been awhile since I've stayed up late for the sole purpose of listening to music. The blood rushes in a slightly different way at this time of day.

Of course, this happened because I had a hankering to watch a couple episodes of Undergrads, which brought me back to my life five years ago. A few songs filled in the blanks of old narratives. If I really wanted to get deep into it, I'd read some old journal entries. But I don't. I just want skim the surface of memory and apply it to the present in positive and useful ways. Seems rather unlike the person I was five years ago.

I read a lot about Marlene Dietrich today, and watched her in The Devil is a Woman. She bent the minds of so many men in half, but she seemed rather lonely and affected. I started designing a website that I'm going to use for my presentation that will talk about her films with von Sternberg, her USO tours, the Dietrich persona and her role in Touch of Evil. I miss creating websites. Putting jigsaw pieces into place.

I need to hit Value Village and pick up some new duds. I'll try and do that tomorrow if I can wake up early enough.

Lately I've been reading Kevin Smith's My Boring Ass Life before I hit the sack. It makes for great bedtime reading. I listened to SModcast today and he spent the hour talking about how his post-high school/pre-film career years were the best of his life. I wonder what I'll consider the best years of my life to be when I'm pushing 40. I don't think I've had them yet, and they seem to keep getting better.

I watched The Blue Angel today, and had the idea to show a clip in class of a Dietrich performing live in her sixties, making references to how she began her film career. The movie itself isn't the best of von Sternberg's, but after watching a bunch of his films in a row one starts to get a sense of how Dietrich really twisted at his heart and soul.

I also watched Breathless, which I found strangely coherent for Godard. The elements of Hollywood crime film influence are well placed. Though I despised the male lead, the screenplay is pretty fantastic. Poetic and true.

I baked some penne paste with sausage tonight while Jay played around with a new electric drum kit he just picked up off of Ebay. Readings are caught up for now. I was thinking of hitting a show this weekend but I have a lot of prep to do for next week and I'm already feeling incredibly lazy.

Wicked. The Q&A went down tonight. I asked Wes and Jason about the occupations of a couple of characters in The Darjeeling Limited. Wes mentioned that Owen Wilson's character was the owner of a fledgling electronics company. Jason said that there were a lot of ideas and bits for back story floating around while they were writing the script, and although those elements didn't make it into the film itself, it dictated the way the characters acted and responded to one another. Wes told him that was more of a response than an answer. I flipped Jason the thumbs up and got one back. Wicked.

After the Q&A the two hung around for a bit. I was too shy to ask Jason for a photo, but I was able to snap the shot above. He was really nice about signing autographs and joked with everyone. All in all a very cool experience.


I sat beside a guy who wrote for IGN FilmForce. We chatted a bit about Orson Welles and he told me about trying to make his way into the television industry. Seemed like a nice enough dude.

I talked with Professor Columpar about my Dietrich presentation next week, so I now have a better idea of what to focus on. I'm a third of the way through Dietrich's biography, Blue Angel. Man oh man, did she sleep with a lot of folks. Scandalous. Tomorrow I'll watch her in The Blue Angel and take care of my Bibliography readings. I also rented a copy of Godard's Breathless, which for some ungodly reason I haven't yet seen; I need some inspiration for a piece I'm sending off to In/Words. One of the characters is a French New Wave anachronism who believes the only way to truly appreciate art is to despise most of it.

I'm officially dubbing this Marlene Dietrich week, as I will pretty much be obsessed with all things her for my Touch of Evil presentation next week. Tonight I watched Morocco, the film that granted her an Academy Award nomination, and I preferred it to Blonde Venus. The final shot of Dietrich following the man she loves into the desert as it swallows her up is fantastic. I should make it to campus tomorrow to read a bit of her biography and watch The Blue Angel before catching the Wes Anderson/Jason Schwartzman Q&A.

I feel like I'm working on something really worthwhile in that class. At times I wish I were taking it the whole eight hours a week. Our prof started an online message board to continue class discussions, and I hope it picks up, because two hours a week just isn't enough to hurl ideas around. I want to make something really sweet for my final project; I could envision working on this even after I'm through with the class. An Orson Welles multimedia piece has the potential to be of great use to the worldwide academic community. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I took some pictures around campus, but not enough to warrant posting them. African-Canadian Lit is progressing all right, but at times it feels as if I can't get into it as much as I initially wanted to. At least the readings are great. Things should pick up once I start researching my presentation. I received a couple of Ottawa slam poetry CDs in the mail today that I'm planning to incorporate. I dig this multimedia approach.