Transcendental, Mudslung, Heroless Blues.

Notes:

Listening to John Fahey makes you want to add the word blues to the end of every thing you write blues.

I got accepted as a transfer student to Humboldt for the Spring 2008 Semester. Instruction begins January 22nd. I'm excited.

Meat:

I watched the first Michel Gondry\Charlie Kaufman vehicle last night (The second being the epiphanical Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) entitled Human Nature. In typical Kaufman style, it's a fucked up script about a woman with a hormone problem that causes her to have hair all over her body like a man which causes her to shun society and live among the wilderness naked for many years. There, she becomes a nature writer and ascertains enough money to get her hair electrically removed by Tina from Do the Right Thing (Thank God for the left nipple...). Through her, she meets a man who's legally blind with a small penis who she falls in love with despite his severe OCD. They both just want love. Meanwhile, they go for a nature hike and discover a man who was raised by an ape who the man, played by Tim Robbins, insists on turning into an ultra-civilized being (he's always trying to train mice to have table manners, a funny aside to the story). During these trials, Robbins' character falls for his French Secretary, and the ape-man, named Puff, sees their first sexual encounter. Immediately he's fucked up. This is subsequently followed by a falling out between the hairy woman (played by Patricia Arquette) and Robbins' character and Puff. Success and wilderness abound.

Apparently, this movie was supposed to raise philosophical questions about nurture versus nature, but, to me, it was just a typical love quadrangle story that just happened to involved some ultra-quirky characters (much like all of Kaufman's works) and it seems to fall short. His writing and scripting is definitely exonerated when you put Gondry's magical touch on it all. That man has an eye and a knack for making things look downright-fucking-pretty in the most cartoonish, arealistic-but-really-hyper-realistic sense. I can't recommend the movie though, because it dragged on for far too long, and definitely sagged under its supposed weight.

I have seen three (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature) of Charlie Kaufman's five (Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) movies, and I have to say that he is an auteur for the weird shit. I don't think anyone can consistently devise strange-ass characters as well as he can and then consistently get directors that can fully realize the quirks he wants conveyed. Gondry definitely has Kaufman's number since Gondry, as evidenced in his writing-debut The Science of Sleep, is also into creating weird-as-shit characters.

"Stephane, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know, maybe play with my hair for a little bit."

Potatoes:

I hate potatoes.