nothin’ special

Okay, so. Last weekend, I skipped out on a lot of things in order to rest up and chill by myself. It worked out well for me.

• I rented and watched The Butcher Boy in anticipation of the upcoming Patrick McCabe reading (brief review: stories about psychotic children don’t generally do me that well, but the film itself was well put-together — glad to have watched it, won’t watch it again).
• I rented and watched Wordplay, which was nice, but I think since I like crosswords a lot, and also I had been anticipating this movie since before it was in the theater and that was almost a year ago probably, I had expectations that were a little too high. There were good parts and boring parts. I enjoyed spotting the guy (Scott) who was the champion on Jeopardy! for a few days last week.
• I went with the mother to a lecture on crossing the United States by automobile in the 1910’s. It was by a guy who’s written books about the Lincoln Highway and about Zippy-style roadside weirdness. He was fun enough to listen to, and talked about the earliest incarnations of the Lincoln Highway and of Route 66, and the trips rich people made across them. My job is teaching me that there are enough cheap/free lecture type events going on all the time in this town that you can get away with not having the History Channel if you’re just willing to leave the house now and then.
• Speaking of history and local things and TV, last night was the premiere of the new Rick Sebak special, Underground Pittsburgh, which is about Anti-Flag. Just kidding, it’s about things that are underground, literally: basements, mushroom farms, catacombs underneath Alcosan. My favorite line was from the guy who was down in the “basement kitchen” with his buddy, making sausage (a “sausage party” for literalists), while their wives were upstairs making keilbasa: “Just makin’ sausage. Once a month, once a holiday thing. Just makin’ sausage. Nothin’ special.”

On tap for this week: the McCabe reading, maybe catching Laura Mulvey at Pitt (undecided as to whether adjusting my workday would be worth seeing her talk about a movie I’ve never seen based on a story I’ve never read), looking at another apartment (this is getting to be a routine for me), writing, staving off the scary demons.