On dusky Italian starlets and their films

Being a film geek is difficult. I am searching for an italian made film on DVD called "Scarlet Diva", written by and starring Asia Argento, who appeared opposite Vin Diesel in XXX and is the daughter of famous Italian horror director D'arrio Argento (I may have spelled his name wrong). The only copy online I can find is through an Italian online DVD website, offering it for sale for what appears to be thousands of lira. The problem is, the entire website is written in Italian. I don't understand a word of it. I am also a little leary about giving my credit card information to a company in Italy that I may have no recourse in the event of some sort of difficualty since I don't speak the language. Thirdly, I am only assuming that they will deliver it to me in America, but I can't tell for sure. Finally, does onyone know if Visa will automativcally transfer my money from dollars to lira, charge me a fee, or reject me outright? I might very well get some sort of order confirmation from the company and not know what the hell it says.

Thankfully, the film will be subtitled in English. I think.

On Incarceration

Do you believe in Fate?

I haven't told very many people this before. I've been having a recurring nightmare since I was about fifteen about being in prison. Most often it's a situational dream. What I mean is, it's not a shot for shot recreation every time. In these dreams, I am always in jail, and almost always for something I didn't do. A few times I've been on death row. Once or twice I have actually been through some form of execution. Many times I am doing things that I would never normally do in an effort to stay alive. Prison has been my overriding fear for years. I have spent the night in jail before, several years after I had the first dreams of prison, and it made them worse. I've been watching Season One of "OZ" this week, and Shawshank Redemption had the same effect on me. In one dark nagging corner of my mind, I have always felt that I might one day end up in prison.

Sometimes I wonder if that's why I find such pleasure in everyday things. I love to do things because, "That's they way things are done". I won't go to a ball game without my glove (though the one time I accidentally did, it worked out well). I never miss fireworks on the 4th, I never miss midnight on New Year's (though it is my birthday as well.) I don't just carry a Zippo, I can do all the flipping tricks. I don't even smoke. I can tell a 55 Chevy from a 56 and a 57. I know how to teach a dog to catch frizbees. I subscribe to the theory that real men only drink beer and brown liqour (unless you're an international spy). It should snow on Christmas, it should rain in April, and you should watch football, eat turkey, and then nap on the couch on Thanksgiving. Why? Because that's the way things are.

"The only way to live as I see it, is to learn to love the little every day things" - Larry McMurtry

So maybe I am just preparing myself for an inevitable, incarcerated fate? Learning to love little things, so I can get by being deprived of the big ones. Losing my freedom frightnes me, but not as much as the fear that I might be preparing for it all ready. Doesn't that mean I already lost it?

On good music and thrift store clothes...

While people watching at the American Analog Set/Her Space Holiday show recently (which was fabulous and sadly their last show ever), I saw at least one very cool thrift store shirt that I am certain I tried on at a local trendy vintage shop, but decided to pass on. It got me thinking about all the clothes in the club that night that had been in various resale and thrift and vintage shops all over Austin just waiting for the right little indie hipster to discover them, like a fat guy at the beach wearing socks with sandals and carrying a metal detector. I regularly do this myself (cruise the vintage shops, not dig pocket change out of the sand) and I have had a lot of good luck lately. Some of my favorites are pearlsnap western shirts (obviously) good seventies wide collar polyester shirts (long sleeve only, I hate short sleeve dress shirts) and jackets. I am a sucker for a cool jacket. Just about everyone at that show was wearing what looked like some kind of vintage something or other. The greatest hits included a very old t-shirt of Princess Leia looking pissed off, and old school t-shirt proclaiming "Coke is it!" and the western shirt that the short fat kid was wearing, brown plaid with fake mother of pearl snaps that I tried on at The Denim Edge, and said, "nah, too big." I was just wondering how the clothes felt about all of this.

They've already been retired at least once, by someone, somewhere. The thought that someone else might have fallen in love while wearing my shirt, or gone to jail in my jacket, or robbed a bank or seen a great movie or worked hard all day long is a cool thought. Even cooler though, is the thought that the old clothes were just sitting around, thinking to themselves, "I've done a lot, been around the block a few times, but Jeff is on his way, and I am gonna be BACK, BABY!!!!!!" I bet they look forward to that.