Loramir Of Gondor's Journal

Wow. Jake Gyllenhaal is filming a movie (which looks really weird) a few blocks away from my apartment building. How awesome is that?

He's been seen at Strom, the university gym, late at night. I've gone there about 5 times in my 3 years here, but I think now would be an excellent time to go again, LOL...

I'm still at a loss as to why they film movies here. Kevin Bacon and John Goodman were around last year filming Death Sentence. Columbia is quite possibly one of the ugliest, most generic, personality-less cities I have ever seen. It's a bigger version of my ugly, generic, personality-less hometown. There are very few tall buildings, even downtown, and no skyline to speak of. Just shabby, half-empty strip malls and ancient, empty buildings.

Beaufort or Charleston, I can see as filming locations--they have some character and appeal. Columbia is rundown, shabby, dirty, and generally dull. The downtown areas where they're filming, around the State House, are full of homeless people. I have no idea why you'd film a movie here.

Right. So I haven't posted since July. However, posting in forgotten blogs is one of my patented Essay Avoidance Techniques. When it's two AM, my paper is due at 11c and I still have 3 or 4 pages to go, I start getting insane urges to do things I normally don't even think about. I start going "Wow, I'd love to clean my room right about now!" and "Hey, let's totally redo my website that hasn't been touched for 5 months!"

Another symptom of essay writing is that my music selections become Decidedly Odd. I can't write and listen to songs with words, so I'm limited to instrumentals. Back in my BitTorrent days I had a large stock of film scores, but I've gone straight as far as music downloading, so now I only have a few tracks still on my computer. So I've turned to Pandora, and I find myself listening to--and quite enjoying--lots of Old Guys With Long Hair And Goatees. I have a vague idea that Floyd Kramer is not cool. Probably Richard Clayderman isn't either. My only station criteria was Phil Coulter, and now they're trying to give me Liberace (skipped that one--too fluttery). It'll be Kenny G and Yanni before I know it. I hereby swear that I will NOT sink that low...

Now Pandora's started playing Jim Brickman. My Dork Factor is skyrocketing.

Ah well. Back to Oscar. You'd think I could write an essay about Oscar Wilde with no problem, but I just can't focus and the fact that I hate the class (or at any rate the professor) with the fire of a thousand suns (my favorite 10 Things I Hate About You quote) and deeply resent this assignment doesn't help.

Professor S drives me NUTS. Just thinking of her makes me mad. She is SO pretentious. She thinks she's this great poet and she's always blathering on about the Arts Institute and poetry slams and chapbooks like we're supposed to care. And she says "idear." She's an ENGLISH professor, for crying out loud! On my end of course evaluation I am going to write "PLEASE, for the sake of the sanity of your future students, STOP saying 'idear!!!!'" She also pronounces "gesture" with a hard G sound. WHO TAUGHT HER TO SPEAK??? She's one of those people who always misuses big words and says the wrong word when reading aloud. Arrrrrgh!

Life's been a bit crazy lately. Finished my finals. The two classes I'm most worried (but still not very) about haven't posted grades yet of course. Went to the Merle concert Tuesday; was awesome, review coming soon. Me and Amanda (2nd_date), my best friend and roommate, moved from our dorm to our very own apartment (pix soon perhaps), where my cousin and other friend will be joining us once the school year starts. So craziness. G2G for the moment, more later.

Um, hi. It's been a while. I'm not dead! I've just been a bit distracted. Sadly, I was not distracted by distracted by studying for finals, which are next week. I can't actually remember what exactly I was distracted by. Went out of town for the weekend (and reconfirmed how much better North Carolina is than South Carolina)...played a lot of KoL...went to class (occasionally)...

On the bright side, I made 5 icons tonight for my icons100 challenge. Only 6 more themed and...49 artist's choice ones. Hm.

On the even brighter side, I'm going to see Merle Haggard at the Township Auditorium on the 2nd of May! I've been hugely into classic country lately, having branched from Johnny Cash to Charley Pride, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, and Faron Young, among others. The main problem with this is that a large majority of the artists are dead. Especially the ones I'd have killed to see live, like Johnny & June, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, etc. So since Merle was conveniently coming to Columbia and was someone other than Willie Nelson (who is the only classic country person who ever seems to come), I figured I'd see him before he dies or quits touring (like the Statler Brothers, whom I'd also kill to see). My parents are convinced that I will be raped and killed going by myself, but I'm not that worried. I'll take my pepper spray, for heaven's sake. I do, however, anticipate being the only person under 40 there.

So...I think I'll go watch a movie now. Maybe I'll re-re-screencap WTL. I *wanted* to watch Skylark, the sequel to Sarah, Plain & Tall, which I love and watched last night, but unfortunately we only have it on video (a thoroughly useless format) and the VCR ate it. So now I can't watch any videos since Skylark is stuck the VCR. *sigh* Outdated technology.

Just saw Walk the Line. Awesome film! You probably get the impression from the few reviews I've done that I think more or less everything is an awesome film, but...there are some I don't like. Memento for instance. So there.

Anyhow. I had never seen Joaquin Phoenix before, but he was awesome. Reese Witherspoon was phenomenal too, but I really don't see why she won so many more awards than he did. For me it was easier to see him as really being Johnny Cash, since I'm less familiar with him. I've seen Reese in so many things that I still kind of saw her as Reese Witherspoon playing June Carter.

While I'm familiar with Johnny Cash's big hits (especially since we got this wonderful new country legends radio station in Columbia, which I love!), I don't really know much about his life. From my impression of his life and personality, though, Joaquin was dead on (probably a good thing he doesn't go by Leaf anymore. It'd be hard to take him seriously).

I usually have little patience for drug-rehab type stories, but at the moment I have the utmost sympathy for poor Johnny after June and her parents drove his dealer away at gunpoint (one of my favorite minor scenes, as I can easily see it really having happened). My current sympathy is due to the fact that I'm switching antidepressants and getting off my Effexor, and am currently rather miserable.

I don't think Dr. King was familiar enough with the side effects and such. Most people I've heard of weaned themselves off really gradually and still had trouble. He just put me on a half-dose for a week and then off altogether, with the result that I'm having electric flashes in my head, weird dreams and interrupted sleep, and (a new development this evening) shaking uncontrollably. So now I feel like a junkie.

But back to the review. I thought it told the story well, without glossing over the bad parts and trying to make Johnny look good all the time. My favorite parts were his early tour and the later Folsom Prison show, when he was clean and sober and you really saw what a strong personality he had. I also loved how June stood by him during his recovery from drug addiction and his proposal to June, being the hopeless romantic that I am.

As a final completely random note, Joaquin Phoenix in this role often reminded me in appearance of Captain von Trapp from The Sound of Music.

Now I want to buy either this movie or a Johnny Cash CD, along with Pride & Prejudice, Bride & Prejudice, the Bride & Prejudice soundtrack, and Goblet of Fire. And I don't even have a job at the moment, having quit my hateful job at Fred's. I'm holding off for a bit since my depression's been bad lately and I tend to go to pieces under stress, of which school alone provides plenty.

As an example of school-related stress, they totally screwed up our housing assignment for next year. Amanda and Rachelle and I had asked to room together in the Quads, but they put me and Amanda in Bates West with a party girl and chain smoker and put Rachelle on the waiting list. So now after a hectic and stressful search for somewhere for the three of us to live (made more stressful by both of them having somewhat unrealistic criteria - must be on campus, have individual rooms, and be under $400 each a month), we've applied at Whaley's Mill apartments. I don't really care where we live or if we have individual rooms. I don't really care if we have hall bathrooms - I put up with it all last year and to me it's just part of college.

So. Going to bed with my Ambien now.

My German class is positively abysmal. This one guy was trying to read "Heute Abend spielen wir Karten." He said "Hyoot Abend speelen weer karten."

*sigh*

Does no one else find it odd that the news agencies are quoting Bush's State of the Union before he's given it?