February 19-22, 2015

Well, we survived the Deadly Cold Snap without anything bad happening. Didn’t even slip & fall on the ice. I give full credit to the ugly, too-long too-wide Chinese flannel-lined jeans I wore. I ordered them sight-unseen over the internet back at the start of winter & was then too depressed to return them, which worked out pretty well, I guess.

The cold snap meant I got to eat at Dashi without standing in line, so that’s something. It also meant I worked from home for a solid week, which got old after day two or three. I missed my land-line and my real headset. I missed my Absurdly Large Monitor. 

That’s actually about all I missed – my coworker was working from home as well, so it’s not like I would have seen her had I made it to the office.

But despite the fact that it takes 20 minutes to get to work, and there aren’t as many lunch options in RTP, and nothing is walkable … despite all that, I still appreciate the clear delineation that comes from Going To Work.

Friday night we watched Fury, which was well-made and entirely superfluous. Like, seriously, a WWII movie? In 2014? Nevertheless, the set dressing was amazing – the interior of the tank alone was remarkably detailed – and it was competently made & suitably depressing. 

Saturday night we watched Upstream Color, which is one of those heavily symbolic movies that everybody raves about. It had its moments. Overall I didn’t think it was as good as my [fuzzy] memory of Primer, actor/writer/director Shane Carruth’s first feature, which I saw at the Carolina when it came out. But I haven’t seen it in a decade, so who knows. M wants to rewatch it this week, so I’ll have more to say soon.

In any case, my life wasn’t changed by Upstream Color. Sorry!

Tonight we’re sitting on the couch listening to Freddie Hubbard and not watching the Oscars. It’s somewhere between an overt boycott and a final acknowledgement that they no longer hold even a shred of interest for us. For the same reason: It’s all white men slapping each other on the back, and occasionally handing out a token award to a white woman. It’s gross.

And the movies they purport to honor aren’t a comprehensive cross-section of the best the year had to offer, specifically because of their white male supremacy problem.

But instead I get to read a good book and listen to music and get to bed at a decent hour, so it’s all win from where I sit.

February 19-22, 2015