"If you need to crash, then crash and burn, you're not alone"

This weekend, I died.

Or I thought I did.
It ended up not being quite the life-changing experience one might think, but only, I think, because I didn't actually come anywhere near to death.

Let me set the scene...I'm driving, after a day of mild boy drama, to go pick up my friend Colin. We planned to go see The Prestige, but I was running late so it was going to end up being The Departed. I was on this creepy stretch of road, being tailgated. Two ambulances, both (I assume) carrying injured people, are coming down the road towards myself and the car behind me. I slow down and start pulling to the side...

One ambulance goes by....then the other...then there's a screech of tires and loud bang of metal. The kind that comes from big crashes, hard crashes. The kind people die in.

I thought the car behind me had hit me. My car was still moving forward. With the siren lights flashing, and the extreme dark from the stretch of road, and my utter shock over I didn't know what had been hit if it wasn't me...somehow, in my mind, I leapt to the strange conclusion: I had just been killed in a car accident.

I thought about all the things I still wanted to do, the things other people still wanted me to do. I thought about Craig, and how neither of us would ever see if this whatever was going to amount to anything -- that was probably the most sorrowful thing I thought. I thought about Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I thought about how Colin was never going to get to see a movie tonight.
All of these thoughts lasted probably a nanosecond, all coinciding in my mind. And then I glanced at the rearview mirror. I don't know where the car that had been behind me was. All I could see was the pickup truck.

All I can figure is the second ambulance somehow must have hit it. The thing went flying across the lane I was in -- I do mean fly, I don't think the tires were touching the road at all -- and into the woods.

And, God forgive me, I slammed on my accelerator and got the hell out of there.

Two movie reviews in one?!

The Departed is hard to write about because it was so amazingly good. Even though it had Leonardo Dicaprio in it. Yeah, even the Sultan of Star-Crossed Lovers and Don of Dumb Ideas managed to get out a good one. More surprisingly? They had a preview for his next movie – and I want to see it! I think Leo’s grown up.

Anyways, back to The Departed…it was really good. Like really good. Occassionally an actor or actress (and only a couple of them ever did, and not often) and that’s basically my only complaint. If you haven’t seen it yet – do!!!

Unless you don’t like blood, guts, and guns. There’s a lot of that, so this isn’t exactly a movie for everyone.

I also saw I, Robot this weekend. Another good movie, but not as good. For starters, I, Robot probably has little to nothing to do with the books by Isaac Asimov, although I don’t know I haven’t read them. They do still have the three laws, which are integral to the plot. And the who-dunnit aspects of the plot keep you guessing right up until the end (unless you’ve seen it before). In fact, there’s a lot of twists. You can’t look away. And most importantly, you cannot be tickled by the person you’re watching the movie with. The movie would have made a lot more sense, I’m sure, if Craig hadn’t tickled me every twenty minutes. The special effects were great, the writing was so-so, and some things just weren’t really explained. Bridge in the middle of dry land? Oh, yeah, but that’s because Lake Michigan dried up. And you’re just supposed to know that, cause they don’t tell you until they show a little plate that says “Lake Michigan” in the middle of dry land in the last scene. Can I tell you how irritated I was with that?

Oh, what a night!

Tonight was great. I loved it.

First, I went to see The Departed with my family, which I'll write up a whole review on tomorrow, but I can't think of anything negative to say about it so it will probably be fairly dull. My brother came down from Boston just to see me! Which is exciting...but makes me wonder what he wants. :-P

Anyways, then I went out to Club Energy tonight. It was a good night -- not as many of my old friends as I had hoped, but I did see Kyle, Billy (who doesn't hate me, which yay, and that's a story for another time), Bill, Eric, and.....John and Kenny!!! That was super exciting. Now, don't get me wrong. I love all my friends from the clubs, but of them all the three I love the most are Neil, Kenny, and John. Not necessarily in that order (although sometimes, I suppose, yes). I feel very much at home, safe and comfortable, with any of the three of them.

One thing I've realized in the past year is that home isn't a place, it's a feeling. And like all feelings, it's brought about by the people around you. Those three...they're like some of the beams in the walls of my house. They hold up the roof above me, shield me from the worst of the world's weather...and in return I try to keep the termites from eating them. (Okay, shut up, it's four in the morning...at least I tried to be deep!)

Anyways, I really enjoyed hanging out with John and Kenny tonight. I met some new people too -- Domenic, Garia (who is fabulous), some Boston girl who's name I forget (I'm *sure* Kenny can tell me, he was all excited), Josh, and another Josh. It was a good time for all! Yeah, Kenny kept like elbowing me and going "I LOVE it! She's from Eastie!" and "I can't STAND it! She's an Eastie!" in his crazy, uniquely-Kenny-way of being excited when he talks. That's something I miss in PA, no one is quite that Kenny-crazy that's so amazing.

John (being John and therefore intelligent) was smart and went and got his and Kenny's jackets while that was going on so he neither had to listen to twenty minutes of Boston-craziness (:-P) and they didn't have to freeze their nips off.

Also, no one will ever convince me that Providence is not one of the greatest cities on Earth. It's not NYC, that's for damn sure...but's pretty amazing none-the-less.