After that movie, my brain hurts.

September 20, 2003

I just finished watching the movie “Memento.” It’s the second time I’ve seen it, and I still don’t know what to make of it. For those who don’t know anything about it, it’s about a man who has no short term memory. He has memories up until a point in his life when something gave him brain damage, and now he can’t make any new memories. Things just sort of fade, or as he says in the movie, it’s like waking, and you don’t know where you are or what’s going on, and if he talks to someone for too long he’ll forget how long they’ve been talking, what about, and who they are. His mission, however, is to find the identity of the man who gave him the brain damage and raped and murdered his wife in the process, and then of course, kill him. He has tatooed information all over his body about the “facts” of the case that he’s uncovered, and he goes through life checking his pockets and finding Poloroids he’s taken, notes he’s written, etc.

So anyhow, it’s an extremely interesting movie (number 14 on the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 Films List that I use as a good guide of movies to watch), but it still leaves me confused thanks to the unique method of telling the story backwards, beginning with the conclusion and working backwards in 5-minute blocks. The result is that each segment leaves you as confused about what just happened as the protagonist. Having seen it twice now, I still don’t know what to make of it, what *really* happened. I highly recommend it, although make sure you have some Asprin to take later since I can almost guarantee that you’ll have a headache. I’m not saying since I can’t understand it you won’t understand it, but the movie is designed to make sure that you won’t fully understand it. It’s like “2001″ and Stanley Kubrick’s response to someone who came up to him after the premiere–if you say that you know what happened in the movie for sure, then you really have no clue whatsoever.

Yesterday was a nice day. I took MAX back downtown to the Rock Bottom Brewery to meet my Dad for a couple of beers, and I got there right when we agreed. I walked in, said that I was meeting someone, went to the bar since it was happy hour, ordered a pint, and watched the door for my Dad. I started drinking my pint, waited, and then a few minutes later my cell phone rang. I knew it was my Dad, but he kept breaking up, and between our mutual choruses of “Can you hear me now? Hello? Can you hear me now?” I managed to catch him saying “Mmmm…beer,” and then we were disconnected Well, after trying to call him back several times, I figured that it must mean he was already there. I had spoken with the hostess as I walked in and she said that no one had left their name and was waiting for someone else, but I didn’t see him anywhere. So I craned my neck, and there he was, not twenty feet away from me, on the other side of the partition. Oopsie.

We split a pitcher of the “cask conditioned” IPA (which was like Bridgeport’s hand cast beers), but it wasn’t nearly as good as Bridgeport’s IPA, but good nonetheless. After that, we decided to stop by the Whole Foods store on Burnside since they have a huge selection of rare beer (rare as in not findable elsewhere), so we bought four bottles of interesting beer to try this weekend. We bought two bottles of Belgian beer, one of a local Oregon brew, and then one of British called “Fiddler’s Elbow” that I thought sounded good. We drank the Fiddler’s Elbow and the MacTarnahan’s Tripel (no, that’s not a typo) today, but we thought that was enough. You see, the Belgian beer we’re going to have tomorrow and the MacTarnahan’s are all special beers, 9-10% alchol, which is just like the Old Knucklehead from Bridgeport. Not too thick, but lots of alcohol, at least twice as much. Whew!

One of the reasons I came over to my Dad’s this weekend is I think he was curious about my fantastic pizza that I made last weekend. So I made another one with the same recipes, though slightly less garlic this time. I did roast another head of garlic, but let me tell you this: if you thinking chopping garlic makes you hands sticky, try squeezing roasted garlic onto pizza. I was trying to get the garlic out of the head and onto the pizza, but I was on the phone at the same time, cradling it to my shoulder. I set the phone down for a second, but then suddenly I realized I couldn’t pick the phone UP again without getting it all messy. It’s like handling glue. The pizza came out all right, thankfully, though I knew it would. The crust was actually better this time around, though I’m not certain what it was. Better kneading? More time for the dough to rise? My stepmother said tonight that I should run my own pizza place, and my dad said “Well he had a chance to!” Not really, Papa. I was given the chance to MANAGE an already-existing franchise chain, which isn’t the same at all. But believe me, owning my own place would be pretty silly. I don’t have anywhere near the experience or knowledge to do something like that. Although….

I did hear back from the Salem job, finally, though in letter form. My Mom read it to me over the phone, and it said that they didn’t pick me. Well DUH, I knew that already. Still back to square one–and I don’t mean the TV show I used to watch every day when I was a kid. I’ll keep looking. I think I’m done for the night, so I’m going to settle in and watch television for awhile…some more. What a rut.

Good to hear from you, Adam. Glad you’re keeping up with my site! My army of readers grows ever larger.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General