Defying Troutness and Other Weekend Activities

Russell and I bucked our respective troutness and headed out to see the movie Transamerica last night. This is not as defying a move as it might seem, since we first started talking about going on a Friday night in January. So it's taken almost a month, maybe longer, to actually get us out of the house and to Laemmle to see the movie.

I'd wanted to see this movie ever since I first heard about it, firstly, because I adore Felicity Huffman as an actress, and secondly, because it's a road movie. I love the tradition of the road movie. It feels distinctly America, a cultural legacy born of the Kerouac crew and handed down, in different forms, until it arrived on the screen in the shape of a banana colored station wagon, driven by a pre-op male-to-female transsexual named Bree.

We were nervous about our troutness - especially at a late movie - but our nerves were for naught. The movie was a pleasure, the best, both of us concurred, that we'd seen this year. Funny, disarming, challenging, but best of all, excellently written. Much better than our Brokeback Mountain experience, in which the theater was a sweat-inducing temperature and all L.A. hipsters out to see the buzz movie of the year laughed uncomfortably when the lead males even looked at each other. And there's something nonvisual about Proulx's story that didn't translate well to the screen. In Transamerica, the woman sitting next to Russ, probably a mom herself, was so involved with the story, she kept clenching her fists and whispering, "You gotta tell him," over and over.

Other weekend activities include:
The farmer's market (for lots of leeks and strawberries, not to be eaten together)
Any one of a number of music stores (because I got a surprise paycheck, Russ and I each are buying one CD)
Target
(The dreaded) Puppy Class
Thesis Writing
Struggling through at least half of Under the Volcano (no easy task)

But first, a good latte.