A few minutes ago I'm sitting at my desk in my bedroom, happily playing email Scrabble, when I hear footsteps underneath my window. Ask anyone who knows my backyard, and they'll tell you it's creepy at night. It's gigantic, and extremely dark, and lined with shrubbery around the entire fence that protrudes a good 10 feet into the yard.
I know I heard the footsteps, because my desk is right up against the window and my window is open. So despite the fact that I can't see shit because it's too dark (I never shut my blinds), I hear them and I stop. I perk up. The footsteps stop, then I hear them again, very distinctly the sound of two heavy feet walking on the dead leaves, going in the opposite direction. And it truly sounds like they're about 4 feet from my window. I have a door in my room that goes into the back yard as well, so first thing I do is look over at the door to make sure it's locked.
My roommate Garrett has a telescope he likes to take out into the backyard sometimes, so I leave my room and go knock on his door, thinking maybe it's him outside messing around, but he answers from inside his room, so obviously it's not him. However, he decides to go investigate with me.
I grab a hammer and a flashlight and we go outside. We scour the entire backyard and of course find nothing, but I swear to god it was not my imagination. Yes, I looked at about a hundred videos of ghosts today and watched Session 9 tonight, which was creepy as shit, but I heard it, and I stand by my story.
Both sides of the backyard have big gates, and the one on the north side is always standing open, and fairly secluded by a garage apartment (and that person has moved out, so I know it wasn't her; it's empty right now), but it's still there. Yesterday I saw two homeless people walking down the street, the state hospital is 3 blocks away, and a couple months ago, as I rounded the corner onto my street riding my bike home from work late one night, some cops had the entrance to the street from the main road blocked off and several cops were walking up and down my street with their flashlights. I didn't ask any questions; I just went inside and made sure all the doors were locked.
So even though it was probably nothing, it's not completely ridiculous that someone could have been in the backyard. And I'm still sleeping with the hammer next to my bad tonight.
Showing posts with label Nip/Tuck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nip/Tuck. Show all posts
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Television Killed the Cinema Star
An early October issue of Entertainment Weekly that I was reading in the breakroom at work tonight had a fluffy, but mildly interesting article (isn't that every article in EW?) about why no gay movies have been made in the 2 years since Brokeback Mountain was such a critical and economic success. Particularly, it noted, since gay characters have become so ubiquitous and popular on television. The article offered several theories for this, like that studio producers and executives tended to be old, white men who have had their jobs for decades compared to TV producers, which have a much higher turnover rate and tend to be much younger and more diverse, and that there simply aren't any good "gay scripts" out there (which I tend to have a hard time believing; or, well, after programming the Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for 2 years, maybe I don't....).
Whatever the case may be, they had a quote from Alan Ball saying that one reason he saw for this was that so many gay films tended to be about issues (AIDS, coming out, discrimination), and that being gay was the main thrust (ahem) of the story. Whereas on television, you have hours and hours and hours to slowly and subtley reveal a character's true, well, character, and make relationships so much more nuanced and realistic.
This is what drew me into television to begin with, and why I think really incredible television shows have pretty much killed my love of movies. Anymore, 2 hours simply isn't enough time for me to invest in characters that I like. I've never been terribly interested in plot, which could explain why I generally hate mysteries, thrillers, and action films. A good story is nice, but I enjoy television and film for the characters and the richness and intimacy that watching people develop over years can bring you.
All of my favorite shows (Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Friday Night Lights) have all been character-based, and about extraordinarily complex and nuanced characters (well, maybe not Sex and the City so much, and only the first 2 seasons of Nip/Tuck; seasons 3 and 4 got very plotty and stupid and totally sucked). And not only that, they've all been set in very specific "worlds" (high-fashion New York; a funeral home; a high-end cosmetic surgery hospital; small-town Texas) that generally have very prescribed ideas about how things should be, and all feature characters either creating or breaking those molds and boundaries. So, in another sense, I guess all of those shows have also been about identity and defining oneself within the confines of whatever world it is the characters are existing in.
With movies everything has to be so glossed over, so quick, so surface. With television shows, relationships can begin and end in real time; people can grow up, or change, in such slow and realistic ways, that when you go back and visit them again at the beginning of whatever show it is compared to the end of the show, you can really see the progress and change, whereas you might not have really noticed it while watching the show. In TV shows, characters don't have to have revelatory epiphanies and a conclusion like they do in movies. That's not real life. I'm not knocking movies here, I'm simply saying for my money, movies just don't cut it for me anymore. I like to be able to grow with my characters and become intimately involved in their lives. (To this day, I still maintain that I've never seen a movie that can rival Six Feet Under for me.)
Which goes back to Alan Ball's comment. A lot of emphasis in the gay rights movement has been placed on being "out" and visible, and how that, more than anything, has helped the cause. Because the more people that know gay people, and realize that they're not all AIDS victims, or serial killers, or political activists, the more the regular population will see them as just being regular people. If a middle-aged soccer mom in Iowa who's never known a gay person can watch Six Feet Under and watch David struggle with his sexuality over 5 years, and become really attached to him, and the show can humanize this character and make the anxiety and fear of that struggle very real to this woman, in a way that a film never could (despite how great Brokeback was, it was still two very famous, heterosexual actors playing dress up, and that's impossible to forget while watching it), then I say, bring on the TV.
Whatever the case may be, they had a quote from Alan Ball saying that one reason he saw for this was that so many gay films tended to be about issues (AIDS, coming out, discrimination), and that being gay was the main thrust (ahem) of the story. Whereas on television, you have hours and hours and hours to slowly and subtley reveal a character's true, well, character, and make relationships so much more nuanced and realistic.
This is what drew me into television to begin with, and why I think really incredible television shows have pretty much killed my love of movies. Anymore, 2 hours simply isn't enough time for me to invest in characters that I like. I've never been terribly interested in plot, which could explain why I generally hate mysteries, thrillers, and action films. A good story is nice, but I enjoy television and film for the characters and the richness and intimacy that watching people develop over years can bring you.
All of my favorite shows (Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Friday Night Lights) have all been character-based, and about extraordinarily complex and nuanced characters (well, maybe not Sex and the City so much, and only the first 2 seasons of Nip/Tuck; seasons 3 and 4 got very plotty and stupid and totally sucked). And not only that, they've all been set in very specific "worlds" (high-fashion New York; a funeral home; a high-end cosmetic surgery hospital; small-town Texas) that generally have very prescribed ideas about how things should be, and all feature characters either creating or breaking those molds and boundaries. So, in another sense, I guess all of those shows have also been about identity and defining oneself within the confines of whatever world it is the characters are existing in.
With movies everything has to be so glossed over, so quick, so surface. With television shows, relationships can begin and end in real time; people can grow up, or change, in such slow and realistic ways, that when you go back and visit them again at the beginning of whatever show it is compared to the end of the show, you can really see the progress and change, whereas you might not have really noticed it while watching the show. In TV shows, characters don't have to have revelatory epiphanies and a conclusion like they do in movies. That's not real life. I'm not knocking movies here, I'm simply saying for my money, movies just don't cut it for me anymore. I like to be able to grow with my characters and become intimately involved in their lives. (To this day, I still maintain that I've never seen a movie that can rival Six Feet Under for me.)
Which goes back to Alan Ball's comment. A lot of emphasis in the gay rights movement has been placed on being "out" and visible, and how that, more than anything, has helped the cause. Because the more people that know gay people, and realize that they're not all AIDS victims, or serial killers, or political activists, the more the regular population will see them as just being regular people. If a middle-aged soccer mom in Iowa who's never known a gay person can watch Six Feet Under and watch David struggle with his sexuality over 5 years, and become really attached to him, and the show can humanize this character and make the anxiety and fear of that struggle very real to this woman, in a way that a film never could (despite how great Brokeback was, it was still two very famous, heterosexual actors playing dress up, and that's impossible to forget while watching it), then I say, bring on the TV.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Really exciting TV news!!
Well, at least to me. Brad Pitt and Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy, are teaming up to create a drama on FX about a transsexual man.
Murphy co-created "4 oz." with "Nip/Tuck" writer Brad Falchuk, and they wrote the pilot together. Murphy, who'll direct the pilot, will exec produce the FX drama with Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner, with Pitt making his first foray into series TV.
Murphy will begin casting the key role of a married man with two sons whose life takes a radical gender turn.
Though FX has only agreed to 4 episodes thus far, Murphy still hopes to stretch the show over several seasons. The first season would deal with the revelation of the doc's decision; the second would revolve around him transitioning to female; the third would revolve around the surgery, and the fourth would consist of his new life as a woman and his attempt to find love.
Oh man, I'm really excited about the idea of this show. Nip/Tuck always had a lot of storylines involving transsexuals, which was great. I'm curious to see where 4oz goes with it all.
Murphy co-created "4 oz." with "Nip/Tuck" writer Brad Falchuk, and they wrote the pilot together. Murphy, who'll direct the pilot, will exec produce the FX drama with Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner, with Pitt making his first foray into series TV.
Murphy will begin casting the key role of a married man with two sons whose life takes a radical gender turn.
Though FX has only agreed to 4 episodes thus far, Murphy still hopes to stretch the show over several seasons. The first season would deal with the revelation of the doc's decision; the second would revolve around him transitioning to female; the third would revolve around the surgery, and the fourth would consist of his new life as a woman and his attempt to find love.
Oh man, I'm really excited about the idea of this show. Nip/Tuck always had a lot of storylines involving transsexuals, which was great. I'm curious to see where 4oz goes with it all.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
The finer points of Swing Out Sister
Saturday night, while we were all three drunk, Jody, Travis and I began discussing the frequency, and content, of our history of sexual dreams (and no one In the Know needs to enlighten me on the extreme irony of this anomaly of an event), and I mentioned that I'd only really ever had two sexual dreams in my whole life, and neither of them were even that overtly sexual, they were just sort of erotic. Travis already knew this about me, but I told Jody about them, and how the first I'd ever had was about George Michael in the 7th or 8th grade, at the height of my obsession with him, and how at night I would pretend to make out with his poster hanging above my bed (if my poor parents only knew; and to this day, I still think aviator sunglasses are one of the hottest things going). But I digress. I explained that in the dream I'd had about George Michael, I didn't even actually get to have sex with him, it was all post-sex, and we were lying together all sweaty and spent (probably because at the time of the dream, I had no idea how to really have gay sex).
So I've always been a little frustrated and a lot jealous when people have told me about how they have these hardcore, really explicit sex dreams about people, and especially about real people that they're actually attracted to! How cool is that?
But then last night, completely arbitrarily (or so it would seem) I was finally visited by the God of Hardcore Sex Dreams. And how! Me and Mr. did everything it was possible to do with two bodies, and then some, and it was fucking amazing. But there was one strange hitch: it was with a fictional character that I don't even find attractive, and whose personality (as presented through his character on television) I find totally repugnant. It was this guy:
who, while not being unattractive, does nothing for me, once more making me realize I am truly turned on and attracted to things I either find disgusting or are really bad for me. (Or maybe it's just further confirming my Doctor fetish. Which goes right along with my Professor fetish. And my cute and dorky Scientist fetish. Oh, wait; maybe it's just a man fetish!) But nevertheless, I was grateful to finally realize and understand what I'd been missing all these years. Only, well, I hate to sound ungrateful, but there's one more major drawback: I've been hornier all day today than I think I've been since I was about 15.
So I've always been a little frustrated and a lot jealous when people have told me about how they have these hardcore, really explicit sex dreams about people, and especially about real people that they're actually attracted to! How cool is that?
But then last night, completely arbitrarily (or so it would seem) I was finally visited by the God of Hardcore Sex Dreams. And how! Me and Mr. did everything it was possible to do with two bodies, and then some, and it was fucking amazing. But there was one strange hitch: it was with a fictional character that I don't even find attractive, and whose personality (as presented through his character on television) I find totally repugnant. It was this guy:
who, while not being unattractive, does nothing for me, once more making me realize I am truly turned on and attracted to things I either find disgusting or are really bad for me. (Or maybe it's just further confirming my Doctor fetish. Which goes right along with my Professor fetish. And my cute and dorky Scientist fetish. Oh, wait; maybe it's just a man fetish!) But nevertheless, I was grateful to finally realize and understand what I'd been missing all these years. Only, well, I hate to sound ungrateful, but there's one more major drawback: I've been hornier all day today than I think I've been since I was about 15.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Queer as in "strange?"
The Advocate this week has a cover story this week on my new obsession, Nip/Tuck, and more specifically, on the new "gay" direction Julian McMahon's character seems to be going.
Although I think it's interesting that the Advocate calls it television's "queerest" series, unless they're using it in the context of the true definition, which is "strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint." Recently I decided that I was going to start using the word queer in its original context as well, which I've managed to do fairly successfully, though I always feel like I have to qualify its use, by clarifying that I don't mean "gay."
Anyway, as far as I know, and I've seen every episode thus far, Nip/Tuck has never had an overtly gay character on the show, unless you count their anesthesiologist, who is an out and proud lesbian, but only about, oh, one show ever has focused on her love life. Which was with a transexual.
Which brings me to another point, which is that Nip/Tuck does have an inordinate amount of storylines involving transgendered people, starting with a major one in season 1, where the doctors were fixing surgeries that another hack doctor was botching, by preying on poor men who wanted the operations. Then season 2 had Dr. Mcnamara's son accidentally falling in love with one, then season 3 had a through-story about how a 17-year-old boy (his son) deals with realizing he was actually in love with a man and coming to terms with that(apparently it's by engaging in gay-bashing and flirting with Nazism), although I think the story-line was handled very delicately and smartly.
Well, I'm very curious to see where this whole gay thing goes on the show.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Saved by the Butts
Yesterday, all the gay bloggers in the land were all in a tizzy about leaked photos from the upcoming season of Nip/Tuck, in which Mario "A.C. Slater" Lopez joins the cast as a third surgeon, and of course he and Dr. Troy start gettin' it on at the gym. Or something.
Naturally, that's the direction Dr. Troy would go in. He's a raging sex addict, a complete mysoginist, and hasn't been interested in a woman for more than 15 minutes, ever. And he's a total narcissist. All that equals latent homosexuality.
It's too bad, really, that I don't find either of them particularly attractive.
I'm very excited about season 4, though, even though I haven't seen season 3 yet. Most of season 2 was occupied by the Carver, which was totally boring and ridiculous. He was basically a serial rapist who wore a funny mask and only attacked supermodels, and raped them and slashed their faces to make some mundane point about how pretty people have life so much easier than everybody else, or some bullshit. At least he was equal opportunity: he'd rape and pillage both boys and girls. So the doctors started taking on the victims as clients (for free, of course, because they're wonderful people) and as the television world dictates, the Carver started stalking them and attacked Dr. Macnamara in his home, after he kicked his wife out of the house for sleeping with his best friend (Dr. Troy) like, 85 years ago, and he'd just finished fucking a blow-up doll made from one of Dr. Troy's ex-girlfriends who was hitting it big in the porn world, because he was kind of in love with her, very attracted to her, and he missed his wife, even though he wouldn't let her come back.
(Actually, the reason he kicked her out and was so mad was because she finally revealed that their 18-year-old son was actually Dr. Troy's, and no one knew but her; meanwhile their son was having an affair with his middle-aged "life coach," played by Famke Janssen, who turned out to be a MTF transsexual, but no one knew that either until Dr. Troy tried to fuck her, and surprise!, she had no vagina. Then Dr. Mcnamara's wife spiraled into an out of control depression and became addicted to mixing painkillers and alcohol, then one night stumbled through a glass door in her new, depressing apartment, cutting her face all up, which her husband had to reconstruct for her, but still wouldn't let her come back home. Which was all extremely depressing.)
Such is the world of Nip/Tuck. So I know the Carver mystery gets solved in season 3, and I still don't know who it is, though I have a pretty good idea.
I should be blogging about school or something. There's a whole in my life now that Six Feet Under is over.
Naturally, that's the direction Dr. Troy would go in. He's a raging sex addict, a complete mysoginist, and hasn't been interested in a woman for more than 15 minutes, ever. And he's a total narcissist. All that equals latent homosexuality.
It's too bad, really, that I don't find either of them particularly attractive.
I'm very excited about season 4, though, even though I haven't seen season 3 yet. Most of season 2 was occupied by the Carver, which was totally boring and ridiculous. He was basically a serial rapist who wore a funny mask and only attacked supermodels, and raped them and slashed their faces to make some mundane point about how pretty people have life so much easier than everybody else, or some bullshit. At least he was equal opportunity: he'd rape and pillage both boys and girls. So the doctors started taking on the victims as clients (for free, of course, because they're wonderful people) and as the television world dictates, the Carver started stalking them and attacked Dr. Macnamara in his home, after he kicked his wife out of the house for sleeping with his best friend (Dr. Troy) like, 85 years ago, and he'd just finished fucking a blow-up doll made from one of Dr. Troy's ex-girlfriends who was hitting it big in the porn world, because he was kind of in love with her, very attracted to her, and he missed his wife, even though he wouldn't let her come back.
(Actually, the reason he kicked her out and was so mad was because she finally revealed that their 18-year-old son was actually Dr. Troy's, and no one knew but her; meanwhile their son was having an affair with his middle-aged "life coach," played by Famke Janssen, who turned out to be a MTF transsexual, but no one knew that either until Dr. Troy tried to fuck her, and surprise!, she had no vagina. Then Dr. Mcnamara's wife spiraled into an out of control depression and became addicted to mixing painkillers and alcohol, then one night stumbled through a glass door in her new, depressing apartment, cutting her face all up, which her husband had to reconstruct for her, but still wouldn't let her come back home. Which was all extremely depressing.)
Such is the world of Nip/Tuck. So I know the Carver mystery gets solved in season 3, and I still don't know who it is, though I have a pretty good idea.
I should be blogging about school or something. There's a whole in my life now that Six Feet Under is over.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Time is crying out tonight for me to leave this town
Unfortunately, my going to Mexico did little to satiate my yearning for adventure and something different; it only piqued it. I'm happy to be back in some ways, but in other ways I feel even more stunted than before. I know a lot of it just has to do with the fact that I currently have waaaaay too much free time on my hands right now, and I feel very aimless. I'm already looking forward to school starting again, because I really enjoy it, and at least when I'm in school I feel like I'm doing something productive and really working towards something real. Interestingly enough, though, and this is something I was working on with my therapist when I quit going to him, is why I feel like I need that outside something to make me feel valuable, and why I can't find the wherewithall or motivation within myself. I'm certainly not immune, however, to our culture's fast-food ideals, and I'm already anxious to be done with school and to be moving on to something else; like grad school, which, in my mind right now, is really what I'm working towards, and really looking forward to. (And I already have my Top 3 grad schools picked out, even though it's going to be at least another 2 years, probably, before I get there.) Patience is a virtue I desperately need to acquire and embrace and to understand. Good things come to those who wait, they say, and I guess I feel like I've wasted so much time in my life, even though that "wasted time" got me to where I need to be, and many great things came out of it (like my wonderful friends, and some fantastic memories and good times). So I know it wasn't truly wasted, but I still can't help feeling that everyone else is light years ahead of me in the Life department. But ultimately, I know I'm doing what I need to be doing, and it's all going to work out in the end, and for me to have the things that I want to have, I'm going to have keep working very hard, not just on my exterior life, but on my inner life as well. Sometimes, though, it just seems like such a daunting challenge that I'm not up to, and every ounce of my being is fighting against it and wants to remain stunted, and where I am, and just keep waiting for someone to come along and rescue me and magically solve all of my problems for me. I wish someone had told me when I was young that growing up was going to be this difficult and had better prepared me for it. But there again, I'm wanting someone else to be the Magic Man.
So, on that note, I mistakenly thought the other day that season 3 of Nip/Tuck had already been released on DVD, and I got very excited to rent them all and sit and watch the whole season in a few days, but it doesn't actually come out until August 29th, which is one day after I start school. Which sucks. I really wanted that to be my summer TV project.
Season 4 starts on TV the week after that, and I wanted to have season 3 done, so I could actually watch season 4 as it happened, but I guess it's not meant to be. But it's just as well, because I'm really bad about keeping up with TV shows as they're unfolding, and besides, watching them on DVD means there are no stinky commercials.
Nip/Tuck fits into my current Miami obsession, however, which is another reason I was excited to watch season 3. I've always gone through phases in my life of being obsessed with certain American cities for whatever reason, usually because of literature, and right now it happens to be Miami. In junior and high school, it was New York, just because it's New York, and when you're growing up in a tiny town in Arkansas, and all you do is dream about getting out and escaping and having this completely glamorous, exciting life, New York just seems like the obvious choice when you don't know any better.
Then in college I started devouring Bret Easton Ellis novels, and became totally obsessed with Los Angeles, and this lasted for years. (Although his favorite novel of mine, The Rules of Attraction, actually takes place in New England, and not Los Angeles; go figure.) I'm still totally fascinated by that city, and its cultural and ecological implications. I used to really crave the fast pace, and "glamour," and the sort of inherent danger that underlies everything about that city. It all just seemed so sinister and cloaked in conspiracies and intrigue. That sounds incredibly boring and silly to me now, but at one time, I loved the drama of it. The real drama.
Anyway, then I eventually moved on to Pittsburgh, for which I have Michael Chabon to blame. So I went there, did that, and I'm over it. Now it's Miami. Part of it is because I've been reading a Joan Didion book called Miami, a collection of essays mostly about the Cuban life and politics there, and how Miami is pretty much the only truly Latin American city in the United States. The Cuban population and the Anglo population seem to live there in an understood non-acknowledgement and prejudice, even though they both influence each other's lives completely (and at least at the time of the book, the mid-80's, the Cuban population there was almost 60%!). It seems like a really interesting place, and if you want intrigue, drama and danger, there you go. In the 80's, the crime and drugs were so rampant that security (like personal body guards, private alarm systems, and weapons themselves) became pretty much the number one economy, and it was about as close to a police state as any American city probably ever has been or will be again. I don't think it's so bad anymore, and I don't think the politics are what they were anymore, either, but I'm not really sure.
Whenever I decide to take another vacation by myself (which I'm really itching to do again), I think Miami is where I will head. Maybe I should have been an anthropologist. Cities fascinate me. Their histories, their politics, the way cities all develop a unique personality, generally stemming from how they began, or their geographic properties (which are often one and the same), how they grow and mutate and create reputations for themselves. And until I can actually get back down to Mexico, or South America, which I'm also already dying to do, maybe Miami will suffice. Which also means, of course, that I'm dying to see the new Michael Mann Miami Vice movie. I hope he captures Miami the way I feel he captured Los Angeles in Collateral. That's the main thing I loved about that movie, was the city's presence. Directors who can absolutely bring you into a city and portray the city as a real character and make you feel like that movie couldn't possibly happen anywhere but where it did, I think are true artists and I really respect and admire that.
So, on that note, I mistakenly thought the other day that season 3 of Nip/Tuck had already been released on DVD, and I got very excited to rent them all and sit and watch the whole season in a few days, but it doesn't actually come out until August 29th, which is one day after I start school. Which sucks. I really wanted that to be my summer TV project.
Season 4 starts on TV the week after that, and I wanted to have season 3 done, so I could actually watch season 4 as it happened, but I guess it's not meant to be. But it's just as well, because I'm really bad about keeping up with TV shows as they're unfolding, and besides, watching them on DVD means there are no stinky commercials.
Nip/Tuck fits into my current Miami obsession, however, which is another reason I was excited to watch season 3. I've always gone through phases in my life of being obsessed with certain American cities for whatever reason, usually because of literature, and right now it happens to be Miami. In junior and high school, it was New York, just because it's New York, and when you're growing up in a tiny town in Arkansas, and all you do is dream about getting out and escaping and having this completely glamorous, exciting life, New York just seems like the obvious choice when you don't know any better.
Then in college I started devouring Bret Easton Ellis novels, and became totally obsessed with Los Angeles, and this lasted for years. (Although his favorite novel of mine, The Rules of Attraction, actually takes place in New England, and not Los Angeles; go figure.) I'm still totally fascinated by that city, and its cultural and ecological implications. I used to really crave the fast pace, and "glamour," and the sort of inherent danger that underlies everything about that city. It all just seemed so sinister and cloaked in conspiracies and intrigue. That sounds incredibly boring and silly to me now, but at one time, I loved the drama of it. The real drama.
Anyway, then I eventually moved on to Pittsburgh, for which I have Michael Chabon to blame. So I went there, did that, and I'm over it. Now it's Miami. Part of it is because I've been reading a Joan Didion book called Miami, a collection of essays mostly about the Cuban life and politics there, and how Miami is pretty much the only truly Latin American city in the United States. The Cuban population and the Anglo population seem to live there in an understood non-acknowledgement and prejudice, even though they both influence each other's lives completely (and at least at the time of the book, the mid-80's, the Cuban population there was almost 60%!). It seems like a really interesting place, and if you want intrigue, drama and danger, there you go. In the 80's, the crime and drugs were so rampant that security (like personal body guards, private alarm systems, and weapons themselves) became pretty much the number one economy, and it was about as close to a police state as any American city probably ever has been or will be again. I don't think it's so bad anymore, and I don't think the politics are what they were anymore, either, but I'm not really sure.
Whenever I decide to take another vacation by myself (which I'm really itching to do again), I think Miami is where I will head. Maybe I should have been an anthropologist. Cities fascinate me. Their histories, their politics, the way cities all develop a unique personality, generally stemming from how they began, or their geographic properties (which are often one and the same), how they grow and mutate and create reputations for themselves. And until I can actually get back down to Mexico, or South America, which I'm also already dying to do, maybe Miami will suffice. Which also means, of course, that I'm dying to see the new Michael Mann Miami Vice movie. I hope he captures Miami the way I feel he captured Los Angeles in Collateral. That's the main thing I loved about that movie, was the city's presence. Directors who can absolutely bring you into a city and portray the city as a real character and make you feel like that movie couldn't possibly happen anywhere but where it did, I think are true artists and I really respect and admire that.
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