OK OK. Flick in question was "The Barbarian Invasions." Ebert called it a masterpiece � this the poster doth large-fontedly proclaim � and Laney boy was deeply moved or whatever, but even though I liked "The Decline of the American Empire" and had been looking forward to this one too, I found myself so disgusted by its smugness and preening, how the film itself seemed to have grown fat and self-entitled on a steady diet of the scrambled eggs with imported capers and truffle oil that the characters eat in one scene, that I had to leave; someone had to register a protest and if no one else was going to step up it might as well be me. Onward to victory! For the uninitiated, the narrative concerns a group of lefty intellectuals who have been friends for many years. In the first movie, they prepare dinner and drink wine and talk about sex. In the second movie, one of the dinner party is dying of cancer and the pals reunite, along with a few of their offspring, to give the philandering old gasbag a proper sendoff. If these people showed up at a party you were giving, they�d be nightmare guests. They�re wealthy and self-satisfied and pedantic and not interested in anything outside their own experience, and conversations for them are mostly an occasion for burnishing their self-regard and adding its other participants to the list of those at whom they have successfully scintillated. Since the characters have known each other for so long, the stilted, mannered and bloodless quality of their interactions are emphasized. They�re unreflectively in love with themselves and each other and the way they are with each other. I hated them all. To make matters worse, the performances, which are mostly of a piece and I suppose that is meant as a comment on the stage of upper-middle-class middle-aged life when one has achieved the luxury of being comfortable with oneself, tends to be appallingly shallow and external. Everyone is vamping and mugging like honors grads of the Kim Cattrall School of Acting, especially the toothy, baying professor with the hot young hippie wife (an insulting single-faceted role; I suspect that writer-director Denys Arcand would be the first to toast his own maturity and the wisdom and confidence it has brought him, decrying the callowness of youth). It would have been fun to play the Hustvedt game, sit there with a pen and write down every name and reference the screenplay drops. This is a movie in which the characters sit on the porch of a country house drinking wine in thoughtful reflection of their intellectual passions of days gone by and one of them, in all seriousness, asks the group something like, "Is there any -ism we didn�t worship?" and then all the rest of them take turns showing off their collective resum� of cleverness by contributing one term after another: Feminism! Deconstructionism! Maoism! Oh, kill me, kill me fast and hide the body. And you know what, you French-Canadians, you are not allowed to get cleverly rueful about the shortcomings of socialized medicine and how it assaults your dignity (i.e., no private hospital room for cancer dude, and among those with whom he has to share a suite are � mon Dieu! � non-Caucasians engaging in the various sociological stereotypes with which their ethnicities are associated) when it's the same system that apparently gives every citizen the right to put his or her job on hold and come hang out in Montreal for as long as it takes an old grad school buddy finally to die. I felt like I was watching an episode of "Frasier" starring French people, an Arbor Mist commercial with one-note intimations of mortality, Lawrence Kasdan�s limp-dicked wet dream. It was during the campfire scene that featured the characters cackling with mirth at their own sophomoric fellatio puns � this was staged very much like the �ism recitation � that I made up my mind to leave, though I was still marginally interested in the bubbling relationship between the dying man�s super-rich prodigal son and the underachieving junkie daughter of one of his former conquests. The next scene opened with her slouching dramatically up the porch stairs with a hypodermic needle held Carmen Miranda-style between her teeth as though this were an everyday state of affairs and one that bored her as much as everything else did, cool, and the actress did this with such physical brio that I reconsidered, I checked my watch to see how much time was left, maybe I could suck it up and stay until the credits rolled after all� and then a minute or two later when I imagine the junkie and the capitalist are about to kiss, they too are having a heart-to-heart by an outdoor fire; his cell phone rings and she grabs it from him and tosses it into the flames � and wasn�t there an Arbor Mist commercial *exactly* like that but with the phone getting flung into a lake? I gathered my bags, put on my hat, and made for the exit without regret.

[Later: Not Arbor Mist. Turning Leaf.]

And now I am wondering, was the first movie like this too and I was, at the time, just too smug and self-righteous and parochial and intellectually protectionist to realize it? I saw it when I was in high school and just beginning to dig a trench for myself in which I could read the books and watch the movies no one else liked and wear the clothes no one else would be caught dead in, building up my gaudy little bulwark against � ha; oh, this is priceless � barbarians I guess, and although I don�t remember it full well I must acknowledge that the crackerish tone of the second movie is something from which, were it present in the first as well, I would have taken nourishment. In recollection, I liked "Decline of the American Empire" because it was talky and brainy and different, but maybe all it did was push my snotty-schoolgirl buttons. I don�t know. Unlike the guy I know whom I ran into at the ticket window who had done so the night before in preparation (?), I don�t think I�ll be renting "Empire" again to try to bring the answer into fuller relief. I have other things I�d rather do with my time, so I am satisfied leaving the matter � and myself to me � a bit opaque. I should have gone to "Cold Mountain." [Later: or maybe not.]

I did learn one good thing from the movie. In French, "proofreader" is correctrice. Isn�t that about ten times sexier? Woof.

Skiing trip. Wednesday afternoon, trying to change a wiper blade outside the Napa Auto Parts in Cle Elum, Steve sliced his hand up and had to go to the emergency clinic for five stitches. Then the wiper fluid stopped working, and we figured it was empty and spent some time looking for a bottle, finally found one and filled the reservoir to no avail, resolved to stop every twenty miles or so to slosh fluid on by hand. Then we got pulled over and although Steve could have gotten arrested for one thing and ticketed for another (seat belt), all Officer Friendly wanted was to let us know that a headlight was out. We didn�t want to keep driving all the way to Okanogan, on bad roads and with that kind of cop bait in effect, so we pulled off the highway and spent New Year�s Eve in lovely Wenatchee. On the second, when auto parts stores were again open, we spent the morning at one in Twisp as Steve bought then installed a new headlight. This was a horrific ordeal, complicated by the bitter cold and by the perversity of the Toyota industrial designers, that took upwards of two hours. I couldn�t feel my toes by the time we headed to the hotel in Winthrop, so I had to run hot water on them for a while before we could go skiing. The next day, Steve�s car wouldn�t start. No dice with jumper cables, no dice hitting the starter with a hammer to knock it slightly out of place and mess with the magnetic polarization. Again, very fucking cold and just punishing to be outside in the wind working on a car (or, in my case, standing around watching it get worked on). We tried some local garages but none was open. I called AAA, who initially said that the tow truck would have to come from Chelan, two hours away, so we started packing for a night in Chelan, and much later discovered another option in good old Twisp. We waited and waited for the truck, time ticking down because it was getting close to noon on Saturday and the garage closed at four until Monday morning. Finally Steve called again and the truck was almost on its way. A few minutes later, he decided that just for kicks he�d try to start the car again, and it worked. We did not push our luck, we packed up and left. I felt bad because this was for me, this was for my stupid dumb coffee-girl temp job I had to beg for the Friday off of and from which I surely would have been canned if I�d called this morning at eight from whatever site of the broken-down car promising to be in as scheduled on Tuesday. But what can you do. One day I will no longer be a coffee girl and I will make up for it. We drove home in often treacherous, near-blizzardy weather over Blewett and then Snoqualmie Pass, arriving home a day early. Now Steve�s car won�t start again, so maybe we made the right call. It was minus eight Celsius last night when we picked Stephen up at the airport. We are having a cold snap.

I�m busy the next four nights and Saturday morning (so must be good Friday, though I have been missing Teachers� Cocktails and suspect I�ll be able to talk myself into dropping by). Tuesday and Saturday = class! They took my money and sent me confirmation of my registration, and tonight I have to go to the U District to get my textbook. I have my laptop with me, and my current plan is to find a coffee shop and stake out a table at which I can work for a while, application letters and writing samples etc., before busing back home. Wish me the resolve to make it so. They�re trying to keep me busy here today: ugh.

New S and the C � Big�s nipples, drink!