My favorite graffiti is gone. It used to rest at the corner of Second and Washington, the unpunctuated sentence "I can't sleep at night." I discovered this Tuesday night, around 1 AM, as I went out of my way to see it on the way to a convenience store after I watched Raging Bull. It bummed me out.

It's funny, in Olympia I like to claim a kinship to Philadelphia, which is kind of real and kind of bullshit, in that I lived there for all of three months this past summer. I felt the city. I know it's mood but not it's geography. But that graffiti is gone now. It's mood was not the mood of the city but was one of my moods, written in the city, actually giving me something to claim a kinship with. I could also relate to that feeling of kind of thinking I'm shitty, as opposed to New York's massive "New York is the greatest city" vibe. Philly's got this combination of pride and knowing that most people think we suck ass (especially New York, they're oh so cool) and not quite believing we suck ass, but knowing we're not as "cool" as NY, and thinking we're better for it, because fuck the hipsters man with their coke problems and their Vice magazines and their Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I've been spending this break as a transient, needing to move on constantly. Spent a night at my dad's house, then I spent the day after Christmas with my old friends. We had lunch. Diana remarked that I should write more of my character assassination, and I'm not sure if she meant this blog in general or just the IFuckingSuck entries.

(If she likes the IFuckingSuck entries, there's a little bit of that here, I suppose. It moves on in the end, where I review movies and list CDs I bought, which is interesting to no one. And then it ends really half-assed, with a quote. Does this count as character assassination, this kind of almost-meta commenting on how shitty my blog entries are? Does anything I write about count as character assassination? And what was the fucking deal with the end of that second paragraph? Did anyone not me know what I was talking about?)

Spent the weekend at my dad's, then went over to my brother's for a couple of days, including New Year's Eve. I didn't do anything, as my brother and everyone else went to Tattooed Mom's, the punkrock bar place. Mike's roommate Cecilia left me with the remaining third of a bottle of wine to kill and so I rang in the new year, drinking but not the least bit drunk and watching South Park. Today I left my brother's, because even though I greatly prefer the company of my brother to that of my mom and stepdad, I'm just counting off the days to go back to Olympia, waitingwaitingwaiting.

My plans to see people didn't fall through, weirdly enough, but the plans to see movies and buy CDs kind of did. I went to TLA Video and instead of renting Talk To Her, which was out, I rented the first disc of The Ben Stiller Show DVD, which was pretty funny. My plans worked out for renting Raising Arizona and Raging Bull. The Raging Bull DVD was kind of fucked up with skips and stuff, and I was getting distracted thanks to being hungry and whatnot. I suppose it was OK. Raising Arizona I did indeed like quite a bit, ranking with The Big Lebowski in my mind in terms of top echelon Coen brothers movies that I've seen. I almost forgot, I also saw some movies that my brother rented before I arrived on the scene. Including Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (the director's cut). I would describe it as the worst thing that has ever lived, despite the fact that it's not actually alive, seeing as how it was a movie, and cancer cells could be aptly described as being alive. Apparently, the first one was watchable. But yeah, that sucked just as much ass as I expected. I also saw Stealing Harvard, which it turns out was directed by Bruce McCulloch. It's just as mediocre as you would expect.

When I was at my dad's, I also saw some movies. I rented The City Of Lost Children, which I didn't like as much as Delicatessen, as it's more of this French children's movie/fantasy type thing. It seemed the most Terry Gilliam influenced film in their oeuvre. Visually, it's Jeunet and Caro's best work, with tons of ideas like a brain in a fishtank. I wish I'd seen it in theaters. My dad rented Morvern Callar, which reminded me of Lost In Translation in terms of mood and being all indie-film and kind of boring. My dad also took me to see 21 Grams, which I wasn't feeling that much. It's very drama. It's cut-up and non-linear, it's about death, it's "intense," my dad described it as being "pretty damn good" and I felt like I'd seen it before, even though I hadn't. My dad also rented Secretary, which I've already seen but bring up because a) my dad rented it because he's a pervert (you don't need to be a pervert to like the movie, but that's why my dad rented it.) and b) because it's that same feeling of feeling like I've seen it before. I mean, I don't think that S&M lovestories have been done before, and if it has, I haven't seen it, but there's still that feeling I have of "I know about indie-film, and even though I haven't seen this before, it feels like I have, this doesn't seem fresh."

And when my dad took me to the record store, those CDs I mentioned in the last post weren't there. I picked up The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified, The Beauty Pill's You Are Right To Be Afraid EP, and Ween's The Mollusk. Once I got to Philly I did the record store roaming thing, and found a copy of Silver Jews' American Water for 12 bucks (the cheapest I've ever seen it, hooray for AKA Music) and nothing else.

I also looked at reviews on Amazon for David Berman's book of poetry, Actual Air. One line struck me enough to remember it, and I'll leave you with it, although it's probably just a paraphrase: I refuse to be the middleman in a relationship between you and the florist.