"I AM NOT A NUMBER!"

Went to see The Village with some friends of mine this morning -- that's 108 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. Like the reviews say, the acting is great, it's the writing that blows. The atmosphere was effectively established, but then there wasn't anything to deliver -- I ended up feeling like it was all foreplay with no climax. Which can be OK, except the foreplay itself was clumsy and not very stimulating. I guessed the "Big Twist" even before I entered the theater, but had rejected it as being too obvious. Apparently it was just obvious enough. How are they going to survive with apparently all their farm animals mutilated? Why are people in 1897 talking as if they were in a high school production of The Crucible? Most importantly, was Adrien Brody supposed to look like Paul Reubens? These are among the many questions that I find I don't actually care about.

The comments I heard on the way out were almost uniformly negative, but the fact that these were hairy-knuckled frat boys saying this made me a little uncomfortable. I'm still pissed off that this didn't star Patrick McGoohan, driving around in a Lotus Seven, crazy bongos on the soundtrack, and a stocky dwarf with shifty eyes lurking around the corner. I would've liked it then.

Thus far I have only seen this and Unbreakable in Mr. Shyamalan's ouvre, and it is fair to say that I remain unimpressed, considering that Premier has declared him the "modern master of the horror thriller". I personally don't see anything the Rod Serling couldn't have done, or didn't do, in fact, and without the haut auteur pretensions.

In the evening, I headed out to Ann Arbor, where my friend Hope was going to participate in a poetry slam/concert benefiting a friend of hers who has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and who has no health insurance. When I got to Hope's apartment, she told me to hang out while she took a nap, which I did. I should have woken her up, but I felt rather weird about pounding on her bedroom door and demanding she arise. (It was the first time I've been to her domicile since the mid-1990s.) Two-point-five hours later, a friend of hers called to see where she was at. By the time we got there, it was too late to participate in the open mic portion of the night, so Hope, her friend John, and I went to the corner outside the bar to busk for money, and to promote the concert. We made maybe $25.00, plus change. A group of people on a bar patio down the street actually requested she come play closer to them. They were trying to get her to play "A Few of My Favorite Things" ala Coltrane, and were singing it to her, because she didn't remember how to play it. It was nice. The resident of the loft above the bar disagreed, however, and sicced the police on us to get her to stop. After the concert, we made the requisite after-hours stop at Denny's, then went our separate ways.

I was able to finish Meet Me in the Moon Room while I was waiting for Hope to arise. It was quite good, and I liked it, although I did notice a lot of characters and references to Louis, Lewis, Louie Louie, Louisa, et. al., in the stories. It struck me as odd, since I don't know that I've ever met a Louis (et cetera) in my life.