I'm up, watching movies on Sundance. First time I turn on my TV in a week, and they're showing Sid and Nancy and The Virgin Suicides back to back.

Sid and Nancy's not much more than a fun little punk-rock cartoon -- I hadn't seen it in a couple years, and I liked it better this time than last time. Suicides tears me apart every time I watch it. I remember the first time I saw it, out in Portland on a chilly spring night, and afterwards I just walked around downtown, past all those closed SW office buildings, lunch places, and department stores, cold wind bouncing off the stone monuments and fountains, lamp light providing a frightening flourescent artifice to the empty streets. Air hissing, leaves rustling. I wanted to kill myself... I always think about that in tandem with my memories of Suicides, never just the creepy beauty of those lovely, well-behaved midwestern Christian girls and their drab fortress of grey walls and dying trees, never just the gorgeous opiate of balloons, homecoming tiaras, peach schnapps, "Strange Magic," "I'm Not in Love," "Come Sail Away," secret kisses hidden behind the sparkling tinsel drapery hanging like kudzu down the foundations of the bleachers. There's a beat, one certain beat, towards the end, that makes me cry, always. No exception this time; I was a wreck and I still am. I'll be thinking about death a lot today.