This Thing Called Love

I probably shouldn't be late night blogging, but then again who notices the redundancy of my redundant posts blogging late at night like I probably shouldn't be doing at the risk of getting redundant?

I was sitting in a brainstorm stupor this morning with a few plot twists wagging around my pen when it occurred to me that I'm already too old to cash in most of my juiciest stories, for the simple fact that life blogging has turned the entire world of relationship genres into a cage fight no one could possibly outnumber. Or so I pondered.

On one hand you have the cool velvet on satin finish of guitarist boy Arin Crumley meets artists girl Susan Buice in Four Eyed Monsters (their catchy name for all of their friends who paired off in relationships never to be seen or heard form again by the lonely singles) which is incredibly detailed and well done despite the fact that it's two starving artists and a few pocketfuls of shiny molten credit cards. They've been featured on Apple and were finally released to DVD which is a real plus for anyone who didn't get to see them curiously investigating their unexpected relationship with dual cam corders in theaters. They're in Borders now, which is pretty amazing considering those stack of credit cards have cooled into shiny swirls of goo a long time past.

On the other side you've got atomic little films like Opie Gets Laid (AKA SUNNYVALE) which granted, doesn't have the mesmerizing two years of constant method acting Aaron and Susan have been transforming themselves with, but gets a mention for Ricardo's sharp acting and for having whip smart dialog like "I wanted the curtains to match the carpet" as well as an artistic director who's comfortable with bed scenes that dare to break from Puritanical moralizing and dip below the neckline for at least a remote attempt at sincerity -- without being sleazy. You can tell the writing is more solid in a thirty second clip than most attempts in this genre manage in half an hour, which is a promising lead for Portugese-Norwegian writer-director James Ricardo. It's the follow up to HEY DJ his '03 film on the Miami-Ibiza club culture.

Then somewhere in the epileptic shade of the mini-bar at dance floor right you've got wickedly funny stage veterans out spanking the intern in the sort of subconscious desktop advertising Apple never dared dream possible in films like N0BEL S0N, which showed rattling the cage can work wonders with the right broken branch against the right fence post and the right pair of sneakers. Intimate knowledge of Mini Coopers and forensics a plus.

I mean really, what ground is left to cover? Gigolos? We've got Duce. Trannies? We've got the Hedwig (and whatever's left). And then it occurred to me what so many people in my generation find astounding and fresh. The mystery of why people like each other at all. I mean the whole thing. You meet someone. You fall in love. What's that about anyway? Years later, you still wake up next to them, and you still don't feel any different. In a world like this, how does it possibly work? And yet it does. The day a writer solves that mystery we'll press an Oscar in her hands so fast she just might have to drop the flag. (After the 2012 logo from Wolff Ollins, come London and our track runners, there's no way we will.)