I limited my walking this weekend to somewhere around 10 or twelve miles, a far cry from the thirty-plus i've been pulling for the last few weekends in my peregrinations into the northwestern suburbs. I needed a break. Well, actually, what i really needed was to get the fuck out of boston and see friends or family, and i entertained thoughts of either making the trek back to NY or dropping into New Haven for a day, but ultimately did neither. Today i spent several hours working - prior to and at the union meeting, and then again after my lonely dinner at the ethiopian place on treemont, which was prety damn good, but i miss lalibela anyway. The Incredibles, which i saw by myself at the AMC Fenway this afternoon, definitely carried the strong stench of Ayn Randian attempts to ressurect rule by divine right and lambast the liberal consensus as vacuous communists intent on making all the geniuses as mediocre as the rest of us. While the film was on the whole enjoyable, aside from the tortuous moments of preachiness, I'm sure i will regret having read Atlas Shrugged, as i have since before i even completed it, six and a half years ago, for the rest of my life, and i really don't need Disney rehashing it for me and my loved ones in the form of easily digestible pixelized pulp fiction (complete with sam jackson.) That is not to say that i want my cartoons fascistically pure of right wing ideologies - the animated cartoon's ties to imperial circuits of knowledge go back a long, long way and there's a formal(ist) critique of animation to be made as well, though i am too tired and or dumb ot be the one to make it. Maybe i'm just being utopian. but when i am feeling depressed and lonely, sometimes i want a movie that will make me feel good, and when my escapism is tinged with other isms more immanent and more dire, that doesn't happen. But maybe that's just the point, that escapism is not an innocent pursuit or categorized end of cultural production.



Reading Roth's new novel, The Plot Against America, and wishing i'd had the foresight and the money to get the fuck out of here this weekend. Tomorrow dealing with the health inspection records, writing a letter to an elected official, and, I'm sure, the usual bout of self-loathing. Oh yes, and figuring out how the hell i'm applying to graduate school out of the blue in the next four to six weeks.