So the lady and I watched I ♥ Huckabees Friday. I feel very ambivalent about it. I enjoyed the first 20 or 30 minutes. Then I was severly annoyed for the better part of an hour. Then I enjoyed the end. It reminded me a lot of The Royal Tennenbaums in that you don’t know enough about the characters to care about them so you have to trust that the director will fill in the gaps later. In neither movie do all the gaps get filled in, so it then becomes a question of are you enjoying the action. I did and didn’t in both movies. Also, I was dismayed that Shania Twain played such a large, if figurative, role in the movie for reasons that will be obvious soon.

I spent much of the weekend gobbling up The Kid Stays in the Picture. I think I still have 90 pages left. There’s so many details in it, I don’t know how anyone could read through it quickly. It’s interesting to me how Evans so easily confesses to basically shitty things he’s done, but remains likeable. It’s the opposite of Joe Eszterhas whose memoir, Hollywood Animal mostly confirms what a prick he is. I guess Evans confesses to a lot more great things he’s done, where Eszterhas focuses on the tension.

Hopefully, I’ll finish it up tonight since I just received my copy of Roger Simon’s Director’s Cut and I’m eager to jump into it. I’m going to put The Devil’s Candy on the backburner for a little bit since it looks like Simon’s novel shouldn’t take but a day or two to read.

I skipped a vaguely positive show on Saturday night. I was too tired and too broke to go and have a good time anyway. So it was a weekend of staying in but it felt all right. There’s a couple of shows this week that I’m planning on going to and even though one of them is free, I’ll spend money on beer.

I think I may give The Office another shot. The commercials for this week’s episode seem to indicate that the story won’t be just a re-write of a British episode. That’s slightly encouraging.

Todd K and I played some hellacious ping-pong last week that I don’t think I chronicled. Thursday maybe? Anyway, I think I won a couple of sets and he won the championship.

So, to follow up on a question I asked many weeks ago, yes, it is Hootie in a Burger King commercial. You know, if I could travel back in time ten years and meet myself, I would tell 1995 Todd:

“In ten years, Hootie of the Blowfish will dress in a purple cowboy outfit and sing a song about bacon cheddar ranch for Burger King.”

And 1995 Todd would say: “I know.”