Sorry for the extra long hiatus…holiday plans, traveling to the other side of town, playing lots of Grand Theft Auto 3, and lots of general hanging out didn’t leave me with a lot of time to write anything. Anyway, I’m back, for better or worse…
Here are a couple nuggets from the weekend:
I went to see Solaris, the new Steven Soderbergh movie. I have to admit, I had pretty high expectations. Soderbergh always amazes me; I suppose I just have a lot of respect for him because he never does the same thing twice. It seems that he’s always trying to reinvent himself. He has success with a movie like Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a spare, low budget movie that focuses on relationships, but he can have the same success with a large cast, large budget movie like Traffic, while still being poignant. He can reach the mass market without compromise in Erin Brockovich, with style in Ocean’s 11, and make an all-around cool genre crime movie with The Limey. Anyway, I was excited about Solaris because now Soderbergh is foraying into the realm of space and science fiction (an area I’ve always been partial to).
I’ll say right now that I wasn’t disappointed; I was just pleased in a way that I didn’t expect. I thought the film would be a more traditional sci-fi movie where the setting mattered and where sci-fi was the point. In Solaris, it doesn’t so much matter that it’s set in space and none of the trappings of sci-fi that are present in the movie are there gratuitously. The setting, the science fiction isn’t the point; it’s a tool that makes examination of humanity and psychology possible. It doesn’t matter what happens to the characters in the end like it would in, say, Star Trek. The film is deliberately ambiguous because, like a good work of literature, it allows us to examine ourselves through our interpretation made possible by the setup of the film. I guess that sounds sorta complicated, but long story short, if you go see the movie, don’t expect something traditional. It’s not a movie where the point is escape, rather the point is introspection and better understanding of humanity. Anyway, I don’t think anyone else who I talked to about the movie (besides Nick) liked it. Maybe it had to do with the expectations, maybe it had to do with the pacing (it’s kinda slow), maybe the girlies wanted more of George Clooney’s butt, whatever. Who knows?
Last night I went with a bunch of chums to see a free holiday light parade in Prescott. That’s not so important because it was ridiculously short and I was mighty cold. The cool part was when we went to eat at a fine establishment called Zooma’s. I feel absurd saying the name…like I’m imitating a racecar or something. Anyway, thanks to Zooma’s, we have Steve’s shaming story of the week. Behold:
I’ll cut right to the point: we had a ridiculously attractive waitress. Normally I can handle those sorts of things, since I’ve already successfully navigated the waters of puberty. Unlike the frothing 16-year-old I used to be, it seems that, generally speaking, I can manage to be around an attractive woman without making a clown out of myself. Well most of the time. Not last night.
First of all, I couldn’t focus…not even a little bit. I’d be having a conversation with someone and I’d just completely zone out. If I had a dime for every time someone said, “Steve, are you listening?” I’d be a very wealthy man. Anyway, Cori had to go with someone out to the car to get something, so she put me in charge of ordering her dinner. No problem, I told her. Such a menial task was well within my abilities.
Cori left and soon thereafter the waitress came to take our orders. She looked me in the eyes, ready for me to tell her what I wanted, and I completely blanked.
“Uh, uh…I forgot what I want.”
I frantically scrambled for my menu and managed to locate my choice. Ah, disaster partially averted. I can still salvage this. I tried to compensate for my idiocy by talking louder and trying to generally be a more amusing guy. It didn’t get me very far because I think the poor girl just wanted to take my order. I then ordered for Cori and came to a major impasse…there were more choices that I didn’t have instructions for. Soup or salad? I opted for one of each because I figured if she didn’t want one, I would eat it and she could have the other. “Alright, what kind of soup?” Aw crap. I went for the enchilada soup. “What kind of dressing for the salad?” Oh man…I have no idea. Rather than cleverly tell her that I’d tell her what kind of dressing later so she could bring it on the side, I just started saying, “uh….uh….uh….” Finally she came up with the idea of ordering later and the whole incident was over. I pretty much kept my mouth shut around the waitress for the rest of the night.
Oh yeah. I ordered the wrong pasta for Cori. I’m a driveling idiot.
