On Sunday I departed for DC, with Max a couple hours behind me, with only my wits and an iPhone precariously propped up on my dashboard for navigation. I got to shamelessly indulge in my favorite parts of road trips, like Ohio Turnpike rest stops and scenic overlooks in the Appalachians. I made pretty good time and the traffic wasn't too horrendous, and I arrived at Max's swinging bachelor pad in short order. 

While he was at work for Monday and Tuesday, I wandered DC, Alexandria, the Pentagon area, and the surrounding parts. I paid a visit to Great Falls National Park, which I was recently informed I have been to before, although I refuse to remember it. Anyway, it was fun to wander the paths alone, appreciate all the natural beauty, and take a lot of photos. It's kind of still off-season, ugly, and chilly there, so all the touristy stuff was pretty empty.

The next day, I accidentally drove into DC and used that as an excuse to go see the Jefferson Memorial, which was a semi-religious experience of democratic fervor, and the lesser-known, awesome George Mason Memorial.

That night Max and I met up with Keith and we had some pretty good Mexican food. They also forced me to drink MORE MARGARITA THAN I HAD PLANNED ON. Only two people were injured in the consequent drunken rampage.

Then I drove home. A good time was had by all.

And then it snowed some more, so it's not shoveled anymore.

We're inching slowly towards the end of this week and the welcome embrace of spring (ha ha) break. For once, I'll actually be doing more with my week off than sitting on the couch and letting Sydney in and out, which is nice. W. Max Eddy's going to be coming up to visit for a couple days and has kindly given me and Zack spare tickets to see A Prairie Home Companion in Detroit with him. Afterwards, I'm driving down to D.C. with him to hang out for a few days, work on my pilot of TV Screenwriting II, and maybe see a burlesque show or something. I'm very excited.

Afterwards, I'll come back to Rochester for a few days of the requisite dog-snuggling. And then it'll be the last half of my last semester and oh God what am I going to do with myself.

It's going to be okay, though. I have a plan. Really.

I've been getting a lot of sleep lately. What a novel idea, huh? Get this--it's really great. I highly recommend it. In fact, I highly recommend most things that will make you not feel like shit. This is how I got my reputation for being sensible.

I feel like I'm being a smart-ass (or "smart-acre"). I'm out of practice writing conversational, lighthearted blog entries. My natural impulse nowadays is to start bitching about how I'm not going to find a job. But I'm NOT GOING TO DO THAT HERE. I swear.

Oh, hey, did you hear that Obama's our commencement speaker? President Obama, not some other Obama, either. I hadn't planned on going before, but now I'm all gung-ho, probably along with every other graduating senior. It's going to be a total mess. And I can just see myself getting sniped accidentally. That would be just my luck.

It's easy for me to say that Twitter drains all my will to blog, since it allows me to broadcast my life whenever and wherever I want and prevents that urge from filling up to blog entry proportions, but I'm not sure if it's actually true. It's certainly a reasonable argument, but that doesn't make it useful. I certainly haven't changed my behavior much as a result of it. And I really should. For all that blogging is trashed in the popular media as being cheap and narcissistic, for me it might well be the ticket to finding employment. These days, that seems to be the be-all end-all for me.

It's another topic I have a lot of reasonable thoughts, answers, and opinions about. I get asked about my plans on a pretty regular basis, so it makes sense that I am well-versed at talking about them, usually with a self-deprecating, sardonic shrug. I am very good at appearing endearingly helpless at the hands of fate and a tough job market. But what good does that do?

In French National Cinema, we're studying Poetic Realism, a pre-war movement that essentially encapsulates the epitome of a French film for most people. A Poetic Realist film might have this dialogue:

What use is pragmatism if it doesn't offer any solutions, if it just recognizes life's difficulties as insurmountable and definite? Very little, to my mind.

This one was an awful long time coming. I bought my first artichoke in November, put off cooking it for a few weeks, and then threw it away when it got mushy. I bought another in December, belatedly remembered it right before winter break, and decided to see what would happen if I froze it while I was gone. It did not end well. Today I went shopping, bought another artichoke, and resolved to make it that very evening.

So I did. The months spent contemplating this mysterious vegetable have involved a good amount of research. Joy of Cooking insists that artichokes are best blanched and then eaten as a finger food, dipped in melted butter. It also claims that you can extract the meat from the outer leaves by pulling them through your teeth. I bought this. It did not end well.

First, in my defense, let me say that I have never prepared or eaten an artichoke before. I looked at diagrams of them, so I had a general idea about what would be inside, but it did not fully prepare me. I blanched it, melted some butter, and then attempted gamely to pull the outer leaves through my teeth and extract their interiors. All that I learned was that artichoke leaves are pointy and sharp and generally unpleasant. Their flavor is "vegetabally" and that's about all I can say for them. I was still not sure I was doing it right, so I hacked my way through to the heart. This dense, white material seemed more promising (after I scraped off the terrible corn silk-like pistols and stamen or whatever). I tried it, but was equally unimpressed with its flavor.

Artichoke, you are a mystery to me. I will leave you to more knowledgeable chefs.

Sautee until wilty and caramelized in a dutch oven or large pot:

• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup celery, chopped
• 1 cup onions, chopped

Pat dry and brown on all sides with vegetables:

• 2 lbs. stew beef

Add enough beef stock and red wine (the ratio is up to you) to cover the meat. Add:

• 1 bay leaf
• 4 San Marzano tomatoes
• rosemary
• onions
• celery
• salt and pepper

to taste. Bring to a boil, then cover and turn the heat to low. Let simmer for two hours or so. Add:

• potatoes
• carrots
• parsnips

to taste and cook until everything is tender. Thicken it up with some flour mixed with cold water. Serve on a cold day.

It's unfortunate that Terry Gilliam's newest Faustian dreamscape of a film is best known as "Heath Ledger's last movie," because there's so much else actually within it for people to know it for.

The premise is this: Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a former monk who began making wagers with Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), the Devil. By winning these wagers, he managed to extend his life for thousands of years. Flash forward to the present day--Parnassus has a beautiful daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), and travels through London in a horse-drawn traveling theater with her, his faithful friend Percy (Verne Troyer), and a boy named Anton (Andrew Garfield) whom he'd rescued from the streets as a child. The show they put on is always the same, and one viewer at a time is welcomed to enter their mirror into the imaginarium, in which they are faced with a choice between baser pleasures and higher aspirations (for example, a seedy bar or a twelve-step program). If they choose the former, Mr. Nick wins their soul. If the latter, Parnassus. The show is not very popular.

It turns out that Parnassus has made a wager that gives Valentina's soul to Mr. Nick on her 16th birthday. Knowing Parnassus wants desperately not to have this happen, Mr. Nick offers a bet wherein the first of the two to win five souls will get Valentina. Parnassus agrees. Valentina saves the mysterious, charming Tony (Heath Ledger), who allegedly can't remember his past, and he joins their troupe and agrees to help gather the five souls.

That's pretty much the simplest I can put it, although there's paragraphs and paragraphs more to write. It would be easy to say that the story is as simple as "man makes an ill-advised deal with the devil," but that's really not true. This isn't a film of simple, clean-cut morality. All of its central characters are at times ambiguous or duplicitous, and the eventual outcome is hardly what you'd expect going into the film. I love its story because it's not similar to how people remember Faust, it's similar to how Faust actually is. Mephistopheles is a friend as well as an antagonist, and Dr. Faust is no saint. Plummer's Parnassus is a weak-willed, blubbering drunk as well as a noble, god-like figure. And all of the people Mr. Nick wins seem to end up happy, despite their apparent damnation.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. There's tons of Gilliam's typical stylized decay, as well as the lush, bright fantasy world inside the imaginarium. Its visual effects are obviously artificial, but the characters still seem to physically inhabit them as much as they inhabit the gigantic, dingy wagon that holds the theater.

I bet you're dying to find out what I thought of Heath Ledger and his three all-star stand-ins (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell). In short, they blend into the narrative beautifully and unobtrusively. There's only one scene where I found myself wishing that Heath Ledger were playing the role when he wasn't. Happily, Ledger has a lot of screen time in the movie, and he does a very good job. It's no Joker performance, but certainly one of the best roles of his short career. The other three do a fantastic job of adopting his mannerisms and voice, and  you can clearly imagine that they're just Tony with a different face.

All in all, this movie comes highly recommended. As Adrian commented to me after it ended, "That totally makes up for Avatar."

I did the usual Christmas decorating and traditions, played a lot of Wii Resort, got a lot of fantastic cooking-related gifts (including a mouth-wateringly awesome Le Creuset dutch oven), made the questionably wise decision to buy an iPhone, saw two movies with friends, made stew for those friends in the aforementioned dutch oven, ate at a fancy restaurant, blew $23 playing slots at the MGM Grand, worked on a blog I've been commissioned to design, destroyed and rebuilt the Gargoyle site in the process of attempting to update Movable Type, watched entirely too much Food Network programming with my family, had Kobe beef tartare (delicious), got to know my sister's boyfriend a little better, slept in til precisely 9:30 every day, went to Frankenmuth, saw the gorgeous Richard Avedon exhibit at the DIA, and a variety of other things.

When written out in a list like that, it looks very impressive, but largely it was pleasantly dull and restful, a good couple weeks of unwinding before I start on my final semester at Michigan. What I didn't do that I should have done was apply for some jobs. I think part of me wants to put that off as long as possible even though I consciously know it's going to be a long, tough process, and I should get started on it as soon as possible. It's comforting that, talking to many of my friends, a lot of other people seem to be in the same wishy-washy, undecided, apprehensive, and overwhelmed boat as me. I suppose the thing to do with this, as in most things, is to tackle it one step at a time.

Anyway, the hovering monster that is job-hunting aside, I'll be happy to get this last semester (and my last two Gargoyle issues) done with. I'm a little sick of school and all other kinds of unpaid labor and ready to get started on my life. It's scary, but also really exciting. Wish me luck.

Directed live for SAC 302