Yesterday was day of movement and accomplishment! I felt extremely brisk and vital.

I had to go into the darkroom, but first I had a couple of errands to run, like getting more wool at the yarn store and going to Tipton Charles and going to the Ricky's downtown to get hair dye because my hair is so faded and ugly that I simply cannot appear at JournalCon looking this appalling. Although apparently I have no difficulty walking around in my regular life this way.

My Christ it was a glorious day. So bright and blue and warm, I took a shnillion pictures. Also, it was nice to be downtown where I never am rather than trying to take new pictures from the same old places where my feet have worn grooves in the sidewalk.

I went to the yarn store and got three more balls of wool, including a beautiful light blue that will be great for Cynthia's scarf, and then I had run out of time and had to skip Tipton Charles and Ricky's and run my ass to the darkroom.

I had been very bad indeed and had never blown up the shots from Melissa's party so she had sent me a firm email the other day and I promised her that I'd do them right after JournalCon, because I could not afford to pay my tab beforehand, but when I mentioned it to my mother, she insisted on lending me the money. Because it is very bad of me! Bad! Very! Which I knew, but that didn't make the money fly out of my ass. Fortunately it flew out of my mother's ass with great force and Melissa will not have to wait another few weeks.

There were twelve or thirteen rolls to develop, not just wedding stuff but Sister Mary and so on, so while they were developing I decided to blow up some random work. I chose the shots from the christening because that was eighteen months ago and the negatives have had plenty of time to marinate properly.

I've gotta tell you, there is something really cool about blowing up pictures from negatives that you have forgotten about. I mean, I remembered the event but not what I actually took, so I was able to look at them with a really fresh eye. And my God, that stuff is great! I was taking them out of the fix and saying, "These are amazing! I am the greatest photographer in the entire world!"

I'll give them to Greg and Elaine for Christmas. That's them taken care of then.

While I was in there, I watched Jesus Christ Superstar singing along happily, annoying those around me I have no doubt.

My heavens, Ted Neely was certainly a whiny, petulant Jesus. What a pill! Always complaining that he wasn't being appreciated and that he could just go ahead and die and no-one would miss him and so on. Of course, this is in the text, but Ted Neely was practically stomping his feet and pouting in the corner.

There's a funny thing in the movie that I have never so much noticed before. I think it is strange that there is no resurrection in the show--in Godspell they get past this by having the resurrection be the curtain call, but there is nothing like that in the movie.

In fact, the movie starts with the actors driving a big bus into the desert in order to put on the show and ends with them getting back on the bus and driving away. All but Jesus. Whom they crucify and then, seemingly, leave behind. So what the movie is actually about is a theatre company elaborately murdering one of their fellow actors and then driving away, leaving him in the desert until he is nothing but a pile of bleached bones.

I mean, Ted Neely is pretty annoying, but I didn't realize that the other actors thought so too.

After that I watched a bit of the other version of Superstar starring Glenn Carter as Valley Jesus. And yes, this was the same show that I saw on my 36th birthday, the one about which Mo said, "Bring back Ted Neely!" and I said, "If the real Jesus Christ were like the actor playing Jesus in this production then we'd all be Jews today. Christianity would never have caught on."

Was it better on DVD? Not really, because of the fact that the one really great thing in the stage show, Tony Vincent as hot-'n'-sexxy Judas, had not moved into the role yet and was still playing hot-'n'-sexxy Simon Zealot, and the guy playing Judas was less hot-'n'-sexxy Judas than dull-'n'-balding Judas. Decent voice, though.

I didn't have time to watch much of it before having to leave so I'm certain that I'll have more to say about it in future.

On Friday I got an email from a movie theatre that I sometimes go to, The Screening Room, and for once I read it without trashing it immediately, and they were playing The Decalogue!

Now, I have been dying to see The Decalogue since I first heard of it some years ago, and it's been on my Netflix list for months and months, but it's out of print and they seemingly only have the one copy that they are passing from hand to hand, but never to me.

What The Decalogue is is a series of ten films that Krzysztof Kieslowski made for Polish television in the late '80s, each one based on one of the ten commandments. Kieslowski is the director of Blue and White and Red and The Double Life of Veronique who died so tragically early a few years ago. And it's supposed to be amazing. The Screening Room was playing them two episodes at a time, and 1 and 2 were being held over a week so I could watch 1-4. So I did!

I really truly cannot recommend them any more highly. If you ever have the opportunity to see these movies, you absolutely must, they are astonishing. They aren't obviously based on the ten commandments, it's not like a Polish live-action version of Davy and Goliath, and in some cases, it's really hard to tell what commandment a particular episode is about, especially if you are like me and couldn't name all ten commandments if I had a gun to my head. I watched almost all of #3 trying to figure out what the hell commandment it was about until nearly the end where I almost leapt out of my seat shrieking, "Bear false witness! It's thou shalt not bear false witness!"

It's hard to explain why it (they? I think I'll go with "it") is as good as it is, sometimes it's hard to understand quite what is going on, it is very slowly paced, but each episode just builds to such an extraordinary peak that you are sitting there, open-mouthed. Each story takes place in the same block of flats, so as Kieslowski is wont to do, people from previous episodes show up in the later ones, just passing through, and you get this real sense of completeness.

The other really interesting thing is seeing this country that I know nothing about, and it's completely different than seeing a foreign country in an American film, it's Poland viewed by the Polish. And the shapes are different and the doorknobs and the light switches and it looks so completely different from everything that I am used to that I was mesmerized by it.

And the best part? There are six more of them to watch. I cannot wait.

When I got home I watched The Bonnie Hunt Show, which I loved but it seems that ABC isn't really re-running them on the Family channel, they just did it that once in order to draw people in. Unfortunately, the show is opposite Buffy and it is out of the question that I watch it.

I hope it lasts, though, as it's really funny and different, and the kids are just so kiddish and I love the relationship between Bonnie and her husband. Funnily, I found myself fast-forwarding through parts of both episodes, but not so much that I don't think that I enjoyed the show anyway.

Today's horoscope:
A change in recreation is highlighted--a brainstorm about a new activity or place to try. Be original and inventive!

One year ago today:
Kelly said that she could feel the waves of guilt coming off them.

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