p.s.  Hey.  I was really jetlagged and zoned when I put this respite-like post together, but there are some pretty things here and there in it, so I'll just it fly.  I really appreciate you guys getting so into a Todd Solondz discussion yesterday.  It was top notch, and I found it really fascinating.  I guess to try to briefly clarify my own pretty much unclarifiable opinion of Solondz's work, I'll offer this.  When I saw 'Dollhouse' it was in the midst of all the initial hype, and I thought it was pretty good, charming, and I thought, Yeah, I guess American comedy films are generally mediocre enough these days that a sharp little film with edge and style and a fresh protagonist would strike people as cuisine.  The first time I saw 'Happiness', it mostly pissed me off.  Again, it had already been swarmed by big poz and neg reactions by that time, and here I should say that because I spent so many years deciding exactly how best to handle so-called shocking material in my own work, I can be a bit of a hard ass and very subjective about films that tackle that kind of material in a way I'd personally rejected, which is definitely my problem, and which leads me to sometimes feel unfavorably towards films that I understand are actually very good, say 'Elephant' or some of Larry Clark's films, to use the obvious examples.  On first viewing, I thought 'Happiness' was, yeah, very well and stingingly written and very well and cleverly acted, but at the same time I thought it was very facile and easy and superficial.  Not a 'my kid could have made that movie' type thing, but more a feeling that the chances Solondz was taking weren't anywhere as close to the daring or shockingly amoral gestures that people were crediting him with.  I thought the whole thing was very lite.  It wasn't so much the film but the over-reaction good and bad that really bothered me.  It seemed like people had imagined they'd gotten blood from a stone.  But a number of things in the film stayed with me and nagged at me, so I rented it a couple of years later, and without the noise around it, I thought it was a pretty sharp film.  Maybe because I was watching on my TV, I stopped mentally comparing it other creepy, far superior (to my mind) comedies like, say, 'Barry Lyndon' or Woody Allen's best stuff or whatever, and thought of it more as part and parcel of things like 'Jackass' and 'Buffy' and 'Seinfeld' or whatever, and it became a very good film to me.  After 'Happiness', I feel like Solondz's footing has been off.  I like things about 'Storytelling' quite a bit, and its bitterness and self-reflexivity intrigue me, but I think it's misshapen and more interesting as an example of a filmmaker trying to negotiate a meltdown over his own and others' quibbling with his ego than as a film.  I need to see 'Palindromes' again.  I thought it was really irritating, trying way too hard, and while I liked that Solondz was trying to play out his John Waters influence, I felt like he'd gotten way too far away from the underlying melancholy and depressiveness that made 'Dollhouse' and 'Happiness' special.  So that's my general opinion right now.  Okay, ...  **  Atheist, The office and I have been missing each other, so the package remains stored there and mysterious.  I have to pay rent today, so I'll pick it up for sure.  Oooh.  I don't think Klark has retired.  I've seen him co-starring on other sites recently.  I assume a bit of Klark fatigue has set in, and the drop off in new memberships made Klarksarea a money losing proposition to keep updating.  That's a guess.  **  Lost Child, I'll try to aim for around Jan. 25th then, which sounds about right to me in theory.  Hope so. **  Mieze, Hey and thanks, Mieze. How was your US trip?  Anything worth repeating?  **  Porcelain Skull, Why not, right?  If I can find a pedigree among those dogs, I think you can too.  **  Akechikogorou, No, not a word from said Daniel as of this morning.  Here's hoping.  **  JW Veldhoen, If I was going to guess at the story behind that kid pic, that would be the story.  Lucky you on the dimples.  Mine vacated.  That Charlie Rose clip is too long for me at the moment, but hey.  **  Bacteriaburger, Yeah, I don't buy the criticism that Solondz is repeating himself whatsoever.  I think that criticism speaks to the critics' tastes only, and I don't think Solondz is repeating himself.  I think he's struggling with where to go, but that goes along with wanting to work in a evolving way within your own fascinations.  **  Tonyoneill, 'Storytelling' is definitely worth a watch.  It's got problems, structurally and otherwise, in my opinion, but there are some stellar scenes and some very good writing.  **  David Ehrenstein, You really don't like Solondz's films at all?  I wasn't there back whenat LACMA, etc., obviously, but if he was overly into making it, it doesn't bother so much in theory.  It does help explain why 'Storytelling' is so fucked up way beyond the ways he intended, and it makes me think that his having been pigeonholed and written off might end up pushing him somewhere interesting if he can digest his disappointment.  Like I said, I'm not crazy about his work, and I'm yet to get firm about it, but I feel like he's got something special.  **  Adjoun, That's the wall(s)?  It/they need you badly.  What an ice cold looking place.  Yury's 'must to avoid in Moscow' list?  That could get awfully lengthy.  I'll ask.  **  Tosh, I've meaning to tell how great I think your blog has become of late.  For so many reasons, but your Andrew Loog Oldham Day there is killer, for one thing.  Oh, EVERYBODY, YOU NEED TO GO VISIT TOSH'S BLOG.  I love your office.  It's like looking at my own x-ray.  **  Nicholas, Hey.  Thanks for that news, hopefully now outdated, but we'll see.  From everything I've seen, it seems like a go.  But then when I was in LA, a mutual good friend of John Waters's and mine said John couldn't get financing for his new 'childrens' film, yet I've read any number of recent quotes from John talking about the film he's about to make and it's the same one.  It's very confusing.  **  Statictick, The main thing is just get past that concussion.  The rest needs to go get fucked, as it were, until then.  **  5stringsA, You've got the famous 'Frisk' health curse?  God help you.  No, it's probably just that time of the year plus 'museum-style food', which made me shudder.  **  Michael Karo, Jon Lovitz is so fucking great.  He could rule the world if the right directors gave him more shots.  **  Stickitminister, A real pleasure, sir.  I definitely need to re-see 'Storytelling', especially after your thoughts.  I could see that eventually ending up being his most interesting film.  I don't have a problem with his so-called 'cruelty' either.  What a load of crap.  Especially in a world where every time Britney Spears leaves her kid in the car while she goes shopping, some cameraman is there to frame it as a piece of the apocalypse.  **  SYpHA_69, Legs update?  **  Steevee, I couldn't humanly agree with you more.  I just hope some real young radical leftists (or whatever) see the demonizing of those slightly to the left of center as a fun and really easy challenge.  We've got guys like that boring guy who burned the Burning Man figure a few days early as a performance art piece, and meatless pranks like that going on, but where are the, I don't know, new Abbie Hoffmans or whoever to make serious rebelling look like the fun with an important purpose that it is?  People over here in France will say to me, Yeah, Michael Moore is a good seeming guy but he just isn't that interesting an artist or thinker, and I have to say, Yeah, but in the US, we have to take whatever we can fucking get.  I don't know.  Like you, all of this truly infuriates me.  **  Chris, Awesome you know that whole poetry stuff.  I did see 'Grandchildren of Albion', and it was grim, grim.  I love Tom Raworth.  I think I had him read at Beyond Baroque once way back when.  He's my favorite of those poets too.  Yeah, those early 70s days were stellar for poetry, all the bouncing around like you said.  That's why I weighed in with 'Little Caesar' the way I did.  I really thought poetry was going to take over, and 'Little Caesar' was a soldier in the revolution.  Sigh.  Nathan Bexton, now you're talking.  **  Amputaciones, Wow, Porto does indeed look amazing.  Really beautiful pictures.  EVERYBODY, GO LOOK AT PORTO THROUGH AMPUTACIONES' EYES.  Thanks, man, and I do need to get there.  What incredible light!  **  Winter Rates, Hey, you should try to find out if there's any interesting rock or noise music or whatever going on in China while you're there.  I wonder if there are cool underground CD/record stores or anything.  Definitely hit me up with the Trumans Water tour news.  **  Math t, Back back?  Awesome.  What a knock out of a teeze that was.  What else is going to happen to it before it enters posterdom?  Are you still at American Apparel?  If so, can you tell them to make organic cotton/dye based clothes?  **  Katsim, I always think when I'm watching something and start making art myself at the same time, it's a compliment in some way, but I don't know.  **  Joe M, Yeah, we all just need to get what we need from what we want.  Especially artists: you, me, etc.  Old, new, it doesn't ultimately matter.  I'm just, as you can tell by the blog, a guy who's intensely curious and always looking for input, and the new always makes me hungry, I don't know why.  That might speak to my incompleteness as a person or something.  Laura claims she said, 'Good luck,' but it sure doesn't look like it, does it?  Oh, where's Jax, do you know?  He's been gone a while.  **  Wolf, Fireworks?  Some occasion?  What's happening in Brighton sounds intense and a puzzle, well, and beautiful, but I suspect the beauty part was your words' doing.  What do mean about the links not working?  **  Doug Wasted, That makes a lot of sense about 'Storytelling.' That helps explains something going on and wrong in my head.  Well, Brad Renfro's barely been in a movie since 'Bully' as far as I know.  I'm guessing he's become of those insurance risk actors who have to be the 'big name' in extremely 'small' films.  14th to the 16th, cool.  I think that'll work.  I just need to sort a few things out, but that sounds ace.  **  Slatted Light, Excellent thoughts on Solondz, and I basically agree with you, although I obviously give less credit to 'Palindromes', and I do think there's bitterness, some of it conscious but not a lot of it not, in 'Storytelling', which actually interests me about it, or, if I'm superimposing the personal bitterness, I like how that interpretation architects the problems (for me) in how he uses the fiction/nonfiction combo structure, and I don't think his earlier films are at all bitter but rather very hygenic behind the scenes in a strange way that impresses me a lot. I'm with you on John Goodman, especially in Solondz and the Coens, obviously, though he's scared and broken my heart in junk movies too.  I'm taking your B horror movie day idea heavily to heart, speaking of my heart.  I just need to get myself to a place where it doesn't feel too gigantic to begin.  **  Bernard, 'The Art of Crying,' gotcha.  In the same breath with 'The Celebration' gets my interest.  I see Solondz's stuff as having more of an enjambed superficiality than a shallowness.  I'm not sure I even know that I would recognize true shallowness in the negative sense if I saw in art anymore.  It all seems so relative nowadays or something.  **  Laurabethnoble, Except for your back pain, not bad sounding.  Hey, if Greg feels right and good, that's great.  Life's short and college is even shorter.  Let the future worry about what and who were right and wrong things to do.  **  Creative Massacre, Okay, I'm sold on 'Beyond the Darkness.'  Well, on the others too.  Hm, I think I need you to help me out when I do the B horror movie day here, if you don't mind.  You're too great and knowledgeable a resource to work without.  On the 'Hostels', I'll just wait until the second one's on DVD over here in  France and do a little marathon.  Yeah, wow, great stuff, thank you, pal.  **  Misanthrope, You, appalling sir, are why Todd Solondz needs to exist: to expose likes of vulgar, superficial you.   Yeah, right.  Which one was Brendan Sexton?  Oh, wait, Brendan Sexton, yes, of course.  Whatever happened to him, to second Chris's question?  He was the next big thing, wasn't he?  The Jackie Earle Haley of his day or something?  Weird.  **  Don W., No, I don't know the book on Russian tattoos.  I'll check it out.  I'm guessing the Russians get tattoos the way they elect Presidents, whatever that means.  You know what I mean.  **  Dungan, Reading last is the worst, yeah.  Oh man, I'm so excited about the new Silent Movie Theater even though I don't even really live in LA anymore.  It's like the only thing LA lacked.  Well, apart from decent cold sesame noodles.  What happens to you book now?  Is it in stores?  Can it be bought online?  **  Jack, You should have said hi.  Is Frontiers still around?  Wow.  I used to pick it up for the escort ads before I had a computer.  There was this one escort who literally had been advertising his services with the exact same head shot and the same claim of being 21 for over fifteen years the last time I saw an issue.  You know the guy I mean?  Black hair, cheekbones, head in semi-profile, pout, etc.?  Anyway, ...  **  Dynomoose, Despite my earlier snarkiness about John Carpenter, I'm completely ready to be convinced.  I mean that.  But even 'The Fog'?  That Mars movie too?  When you're in the mood, my mind will be ready and opened.  **  I think that's all of you.  So take my musical trip, if you like, and either rest those big brains of yours for a day or keep going right at it.  I'll be curious to see.  Later.