Mike: Okay, so what if I don't want to give up on her?
Rob: You don't call.
Mike: But you said I don't call if I wanted to give up on her.
Rob: Right.
Mike: So I don't call either way?
Rob: Right.
Mike: So what's the difference?
Rob: There is no difference right now. See, Mike, the only difference between giving up and not giving up is if you take her back when she wants to come back. But you can't do anything to make her want to come back. In fact, you can only do stuff to make her not want to come back.
Mike: So the only difference is if I forget about her or just pretend to forget about her?
Rob: Right.
Mike: Well that sucks.
Rob: Yeah, it sucks.
Mike: So it's just like a retroactive decision, then? I mean I could, like, forget about her and then when she comes back make like I just pretended to forget about her?
Rob: Right. Although probably more likely the opposite.
Mike: What do you mean?
Rob: I mean at first you're going to pretend to forget about her, you'll not call her, I don't know, whatever... but then eventually, you really will forget about her.
Mike: Well what if she comes back first?
Rob: Mmmm... see, that's the thing, is somehow they know not to come back until you really forget.
Mike: There's the rub.
Rob: There's the rub.

Swingers is one of my favorite movies and has been since it first came our 10 years ago. Given the crap I've been going through this past month it felt like an appropriate movie to watch.

On it's surface I like Swingers because it's a funny, dialog based movie, and I'm a big fan of dialog. There are also some other random things, like their repeated inside jokes about movies (including blatantly stealing shots from Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs.) And I like the flair of the well made, low budget movie.

But I think what really gets me about Swingers is that it's a personal story. Jogn Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Ron Livingston were all friends in real life and were all trying to make it in Hollywood when they made this movie together. They all essentially play themselves (for those taking notes, this means Vince Vaughn usually just plays himself since he always plays the character he played here, but that's ok because he's fun to watch every time.) It was a personal story, told well, and personal stories have the ability to resonate with audiences.

There are really two main characters in Swingers, Favreau's Mike and Vaughn's Trent. Mike's the bumbling heartbroken guy trying to move on and have a real social life, while Trent is the slick player who everyone loves. It's funny, because every guy I know identifies with Mike instead of Trent. Sure, many of us like to think we're not as pathetic as Mike, especially when he does his message machine marathon with Nikki, but in the end we side with him.

I think this is because nobody actually feels as confident and slick as Trent appears to be. That's the great secret with guys, we know our job is to be confident and cool, but we rarely actually feel like that. Inside we all feel like Mike, even if we project Trent to the world. Of course, it could just be that the Trent's of the world are jerks and I'm not friends with them, so I don't know that they identify with Trent instead of Mike. But the rest of us feel like Mike most of the time but wish we could feel more like Trent. We envy Trent, but know we are not him. The good news is we also know that being like Mike is better in the long run, since Mike is capable of actually having a real relationship.

Ug, I'm glad February is over. When I look back on this year, I'm gonna wish I could have this month back to do someting useful with it. March should be better though.

Candy doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's candy.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of those movies where I wonder why it was made. Like many remakes, as a movie it is clearly inferior to the original. When watching it, it was hard for me to figure out why I would watch it instead of the Gene Wilder version.

I did watch the whole thing though. Yeah, Johnny Depp and most of the rest of the movie was quite creepy, that didn't keep me watching it. The amazing thing about this movie was the artistry. The sets, the visuals, the camera work - were all amazing. This is a strange and beautiful movie.

As an art exposition it's pretty interesting, as a movie not so much.

I shall make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons of contemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; Halloo your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out 'Victoria!'

I came upon Lost and Delirious because Ebert recommended it as a superior choice to the promising looking (but seemingly bad) Imagine Me and You. Imagine was an indie movie released a few weeks ago, that oddly enough, stars the same woman who leads up Lost and Delirious - Piper Perabo.

Lost and Delirious was a bit strange. It started off promising, but then about halfway though it sort of took a determined turn into cult classic kind of territory. Overly dramatic, over-acted dialog with the kind of feel like the director wanted to make a cult movie. This got really pronounced near the end when a lot of the dialog was like the quote above: quoting classic literature and such.

I'm surprised I don't remember this movie. It released in 2001 and has some pretty serious themes. The basics is a lesbian relationship between two roommates at a high end girl's boarding school (high school ages.) They even include some nudity and sex scenes between the girls too. This is the kind of thing that would get serious protests these days, and even five years ago I would have expected similar noise. Perhaps that's just a sign of how much more organized and public that side of the political spectrum is these days.

The movie does get special bonus points for playing You Had Time, my favorite Ani Difranco song, in it's entirety with a lot of prominence. Granted, I don't think the song really worked in the context of the movie. I think the film-maker was also a fan of the song and kind of forced in it, but I was happy to hear it. (For reference, I quoted You Had Time lyrics in one of my recent breakup posts.)

Also fun, you get to see different sides of some teen actors. The lead, Piper Perabo is best known for playing the main character in Coyote Ugly. Then Mischa Barton has a big part, better known as Marissa Cooper on The OC. And Emily VanCamp has a supporting roll - you catch up with her as Amy Abbott on Everwood.

Little boys should never be sent to bed early. They just wake up one day older.

Just because I was all distracted by my personal life for the last month and a half doesn't mean I wasn't watching movies. I just didn't feel like writing about them. But I thought I jump back into it with a big splash and do quick commentary on some of the movies I've watched recently:

Rumor Has It
This was a fun, but totally forgettable comedy. I enjoyed myself in the theater with lots of chuckle moments but few real laugh out loud moments. But it didn't really resonate. When I thought back the next day I couldn't really remember any of the jokes, and the parts that were supposed to be real and touching just missed. A fine fire and forget rental.

Holes
I love this movie. Watched it again and just had to say once again that it's great. A fantastic, sweet, smart family movie. Unless that concept scares you off go see it if you haven't.

Amy's O
I've owned this movie for a while and it almost got given away when I pruned my library recently. I remembered that I liked it, but it sort of petered out at the end. Since I couldn't remember it all that well I watched it again. Sure enough, it's a good movie (note that it's independent origins show) that sort of loses it's way at the end. In particular, the final scene is a little silly out of character for the movie and the characters. What this movie does best is attempt and explanation at female insecurity - which is probably why many of my women friends like it so much.

Spanglish
A well made drama full of unattractive and flawed people (I should note they're only unattractive in personality: Tea Leoni is a hottie.) But the Mexican characters and universally better people than the upper class family they work for. Heavy handed cultural commentary? Probably. I didn't care, I had fun watching, even though the destructive characters were at time painful to watch.

Raging Bull
I'd never seen this classic Scorsese movie and didn't really know when it was made. When I looked it up and saw it was 1980 I had more respect for it, such a great job of capturing an earlier time. It's well made and acted, and I loved the way he filmed the violence in the boxing scenes, but at the end of the day watching a movie about a self destructive, abusive, male chauvinist isn't all that interesting to me.

The Aviator
Anyone who complains that Leo can't act needs to add this to their list (along with the trump card: What's Eating Gilbert Grape?) Watching these movies about real people is always sketchy business, since I want to know if what they portrayed it true or not. And filming crazy people is tough too. Despite these obstacles I enjoyed this movie, though I thought it was too long.

13 Going on 30
I think I saw this movie before, only then it was called Big and it was much better. This is a cute enough comedy, and I'm sure has a lot of appeal to women who remember that teenage conflicted time in their life (boys and girl both have a tough time as teenagers, but in different ways.) My chief problem is that most of the people in this movie are not good or nice people. Even Jennifer Garner, who has come to realize the error of her ways, then tries to get the one good person in the movie to do something not so good. It's hard to make a feel good movie about unlikeable people.

Love Monkey
This is a new TV show on CBS that's casually about: New York, Male friends groups, dating, and the music business. Many people compare it to Sex and the City but that's just because they're lazy and looking for something to compare the show too. It's much tamer then Sex (it is on CBS), has more drama and less comedy, and appears like it will have longer and more significant story arcs. Sex and the City episodes were more or less self contained, this show hasn't done that so much. But they're only three episodes in so who knows. Anyway, I think it's a well made show and shows a lot of depth and polish for a brand new entry. If it matures as most shows do it should be excellent. Bonus points for casting the likeable Tom Cavanagh (Ed from Ed) in the lead.

March of the Penguins
Nature is frickin unbelievable. This story and these animals are amazing. Just the evolutionary questions are enough to boggle my mind (is that really the best way for them to reproduce? There's gotta be a better way?) The entire movie shows nothing but penguins, a few other animals, and ice - with Morgan Freeman narrating. This could get old, but the movie combats that by being nice and short. The info and shots overlap quite a bit, but I also recommend watching the documentary on the DVD about the guys who filmed the whole thing. Both together will take you less than 2.5 hours. Highly recommended, this is an amazing movie.

Greg the Bunny
This was a short lived TV series a few years ago that you can pick up on DVD now. I find it hilarious and a bit of a treasure, but I think it takes appreciation for oddball humor. I really enjoy it though, and wish they were still making them. Netflix has the DVD's (only two discs, like I said: short lived series) or you might be able to find them at your local rental store. I watched the first disk in the LA airport on my way back from California a few weeks ago and it made the long layover just fly by.

The New World
This movie got a lot of promotion budget in the summer and fall, then sort of disappeared as it was released. My guess is it didn't test well at all so the studio cut their losses and stopped putting money into promoting it. I can see that, this isn't a mainstream kind of a movie. It's slow, and has almost no dialog (I bet the actual spoken by characters on screen script is significantly less than your average half hour TV show.) But the film is beautiful and completely focused on imagining how strange it must have been for two 100% foreign cultures to meet and try to integrate. I found it fascinating, but it's not for everyone. This is the kind of movie that will be hard to watch at home. It's so quiet and slow that anything else happening in the house will distract you and ruin the effect. Find a good home theater to watch this in when it comes out on DVD (I'd be shocked if you can still find it in theaters.)

Finding Neverland
Wow! What a magical movie. I can't believe it took me this long to finally watch it. It was well deserving of all the accolades it got two years ago, and is one of the best movies I've seen in a few months. It showed great imagination to tell this story of how Peter Pan could have been written (I don't know if this movie has any semblance of reality and I don't care.) But then on top of a great concept they had flawless execution. A great film.


That's it. Next time I'll get back to my more standard format...

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
and in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

and when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
for though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.


Today I'm going to talk about some of the reasons blogs are great. You might think I'm taking a break from talking about the perils of my personal life, but secretly they'll come back in full force in a few paragraphs.

Overall blogs are a just a cool thing. They are a low cost/low barrier to entry publishing method. We've all seen the internet do neat things for distribution systems, and this is just one more example. People could always publish things on their own if they wanted. Remember those underground newsletters you read in high school? What about all those holiday letters you get that are mass mailed out? Those are both examples of individuals publishing content. But because of the restrictions of delivering physical media it's a pretty limited affair. There's a reason people only send big letters out to everyone they know at the holidays, it's kind of a pain to do.

Electronic distribution has had a big impact in this area. For a lot of things people have taken to publishing by email instead of physical mail for this stuff. This dramatically reduces the effort involved (mostly because of the big impact on the marginal effort required for each additional recipient) which means we can all hear about what each other are up to more often. But it's still sort of a push scenario. I have to know you're interested in getting the email, I have to add you to the list, I feel some sort of obligation that you care what I'm writing about because I'm pushing content into your space. Additionally, it's not discoverable, there's no good way for you to find out that this email newsletter exists unless I happen to mention it to you or just add you to the list because I think you'd like it.

Blogs don't work this way. Blogs take advantage of the internet as a giant middle ground. I write something on my blog, it then goes out and sits on the internet, and people can choose to come read it if they're interested. This does all kinds of neat things. It's a permanent record, so people can easily find what was written in the past if they'd like to see a progression, or perhaps to get background on the content written now if they're a new visitor. It's public and searchable; anyone who wants to find me can do it quite easily through a simple search. All the major search engines list this site as the number one result for Chris Dickens (in case you are wondering, this is a classic ego check for computer nerds - though I'm small time: real players search for just their first name and try to be in the top 10.) But the most important part is I can just write things, and because I know it's an opt-in situation for all my readers I'm able to write in a more free form way than if I was sending all this in an email to people all the time. There's no way I would feel comfortable writing all this stuff up and pushing it out to all the people who might be interested. But writing it up and leaving it out on the internet where they can read if it they're interested is much lower mental barrier.

Even though this blog does have sort of a topic and focus, it really is a personal blog. It's about me and how I react to things. Sure, it's organized around movies and entertainment, but when push comes to shove its real purpose is so that the people who know me can sort of keep up with how I'm doing. I think blogs are an amazing tool for this. I have many friends who have similar blogs and I subscribe to all of them. It's fantastic, because even if I don't talk with them for a long time, I still sort of know what they're up to. It's like they were sending out email updates all along. Plus, at the end of the day I think the personal and casual things that tend to get written in blogs are more interesting than the stuff that typically makes it into those email newsletters. A blog makes me feel like I'm part of your life; a mass email just makes me feel like I'm getting caught up on stuff at a cocktail party or something.

Ok, here's where we get back to my recent struggles. This blog has been enormously helpful for me in dealing with all of this for three key reasons.

The first is pretty standard, writing stuff down helps. People have been journaling for a long time because it helps, and I sort changed gears here for the past week and treated this like a journal. Some people have been surprised that I did it publicly, but I'm not really ashamed of any of this (though in a year or so I might read it and think I sound kind of pathetic, only time will tell), I don't mind sharing, and having it public makes the next two things possible.

The second reason is now lots of people in my life can get caught up on what's going on without me having to retell the story each time. I like talking about all this with people, but I don't like retelling the basics. It's a hard thing emotionally to tell, and it's hard to do it and feel like I got it right. This way I did it right once and it has served as a great baseline for lots of other conversations (no kidding, some conversations have started with: go read my blog, then let’s talk. It sounds callous, but it's worked well for me - and we kind of get a pass on being callous when we're emotionally distraught.)

The third thing is actually very unexpected, but perhaps the most important: I know that she might be out there reading it. I've had lots of times when I've wanted to call her over the past week, or send her something, or just make contact. The motivations for these have varied, but they typically aren't positive or healthy. With good will power I can get over those. But there is one place that's a little trickier: whenever someone leaves our life there's always a few things we wished we'd been more clear about. There's always stuff we come to realize that we'd like them to know. This isn't such a bad thing.

Of course, there are also those less noble motivations. Often out of vindictiveness or spite we want the person to know that we're hurt, maybe they'll feel guilty about that. We want to show how great a person we are, maybe they'll feel remorse for their part in what happened. The tricky part is to separate these things from the ok things. I don't believe I could do that if I was writing a letter to her. But I feel like by the time I write for a generalized audience here, it's stuff that I think is ok for her to read, it doesn't have those nasty motivations mixed in.

But even if I was able to write all this directly to her, and do it well, I still wouldn’t. The whole point of this ugly process I’m in is to create separation, and while I may think the right thing to for me is to reach out a bit, I have no idea where she’s at (yet another motivation to make contact: is she as torn up as I am?) It’s not really fair for me to push her content, not knowing if she wants it or not. But it is ok to leave content out for her to find if she comes looking for it. And we’re right back why blogs operating outside of the push model are great.

She knows about this site, she’s read it before. And I know that if she wants to know how I’m doing she can visit the site and find out. I didn’t write the last few entries for her, but knowing that she could read them has helped temper my urge to contact her. Similarly, I know that even though she can’t be a part of my life right now, she can continue to be part of my life anonymously if she chooses to. There’s an odd comfort to that.

Lastly, while I’ve written a bunch of stuff out to the world, I do have something that I would write and send to her if I thought that was fair. It’s not, but I think leaving it here is ok. So Chrystie, if you’re reading this, this is for you:


I miss you and think of you often, but I need to move on because that’s the best way for me to be healthy right now. It’s tragic that our timing wasn’t better, but I still think we have great potential. If at some point you feel like you’re in the right place for a relationship, call me and I promise to give you and me another try. Just like, if I feel like I’m in a place where I’d be ok having just a friendship with you, I’ll call you and we’ll see if we can rekindle our great friendship.


I think this marks the end my major repurposing of this blog. I’m curious though what people thought of it. I know it was a valuable thing for me, but did you like it as well? If people liked it I’ll probably start including more personal stuff more often. Not all the time, and hopefully not as heavy as all this has been (for my sake, I don’t want to have to deal with this kind of stuff too often.) Please leave a comment or send me an email with your thoughts.

Thanks again everyone for the support.

I walk around the room
I hate how these stupid things remind me of you
and I try so hard to forget
but I guess I just better get used to it

if it makes it alright, I'll spend the night
with you dear - if you'd only reappear
because everything reminds me of you
and that's just gonna take a little getting used to


It turns out this whole thing is kind of hard, but I'm getting better each day now. The best way to describe it is I still feel like an emotional jenga game (you know, the one with the tower of little wooden blocks.) I start off all stable, but the more time goes by the more fragile things get, until who knows what will send the whole thing crashing down. But then after that I start over strong and stable again. The good news is the frequency of the crashes is going down each time.

I took yesterday off work and stayed at home to veg and let my emotions run their course without those pesky responsibilities getting in the way. That was really good for me and allowed me to actually get some work done today - though not as much as I should have. That's ok, there's always next week. I've also talked to a bunch of friends and family and I appreciate all your support. It's not like this is a new or complicated scenario, but I'm always happy to see people rally to the cause of a friend who's feeling down. I know if I need anything I have lots of great people to turn to.

It's weird, I'm now into that stage where I keep getting reminded of her. She's still sort of in the forefront of my brain - so when I think about things we'd talked about doing together, or see something funny that I think she'd like, or even something comes up in conversation that we'd talked about - I think of her by association. Then I get to remember everyhing all over again; It's good times. The good news is that while I've been tempted to call her (she did make me happy when I was with her and I miss that) I'm still completely sure I did the right thing under the circumstances. So barring the involvement of a large amount of alcohol I should be able to avoid giving in to that urge. And I know that as time goes by she'll move out of my head more and more and I'll be reminded of her less and less. I guess that's just one more tragic piece of all this.

At this point you're thinking: "Wow, you're making a big deal out of all this, you must have really fallen for her." And you're right. I've realized that I fell for her more than I thought I had. I fell in love a little bit. I thought I was safe from that, since I thought I couldn't fall in love with someone who was holding back like she was. But I didn't really fall in love with her, I fell in love with the idea of her. I fell for the her that I imagine she would be (and she told stories about) had she not been in the strange emotional place she was in. We all know that falling in love with something that doesn't exist can only lead to trouble - and alas, I'm dealing with that trouble now.

But in the end it's not too bad. It's only been a few days and I feel like I'm solidly on the upward slope and out of the worst of it. Thanks again to everyone for your support. This blog has been really helpful for me for a couple of reasons, but they're way too long to go into now. Maybe over the weekend I'll flesh it all out.

How can I go home
with nothing to say
I know you're going to look at me that way
and say: "what did you do out there?
what did you decide?
You said you needed time
and you had time"

...

I guess everything is timing
I guess everything's been said
so I am coming home with an empty head.

I know yesterday's post was a little confusing, and I got a couple of questions from friends about it. I have more to say about it all today.

For the past few months I've been dating this girl Chrystie (pictures here.) We really liked each other, and got along famously. But in the end I fell for her, and she just wasn't there. This isn't really a new story.

The different thing about it for me is that she knew she would fall for me if she let herself. But she wasn't prepared to deal with that, so she held back. It wasn't the standard thing where people just want to "have a good time" and so don't commit because they don't think it's really there. If anything, we had less of a good time because she didn't want to do things where she might accidentally fall for me. She was scared.

I stayed around for a while waiting to see if she would come to terms with it all, and finally gave up on her yesterday - though I have been struggling with what I should do for a little more than a month. This has been difficult for me, since I think we have a lot of potential (present tense there is intentional.) I believe that we really could have gone forward if she'd not let the other things in her life come first - I don't think she was just blowing smoke with all that.

This is the biggest problem for me. I just don't understand that. Sure, I get how what she's saying can make sense in a abstract way, but I don't *get* it. I've never felt that way around someone who I care about. This bugs me; I like understanding things (those of you who know me well are nodding right now.) So this is where I can get myself in real trouble. The way my head works, I figure I don't understand because I don't have all the data, or I'm interpreting things the wrong way. This can lead me into spending all my brain power trying to figure out what happened - both to make peace with the whole thing, and so I can learn from the experience. But that's not a productive use of my time. That's how I've spent the last month: being distracted from most of my life. I don't need to toss any more time down that drain. The time I've already spent has shown negative effects at work and with friends (sorry friends!) Observant readers will also notice that the last time I wrote on here was just over a month ago - that's not a coincidence.

My other big challenge is to quash that hope that she'll "see the light" and come back around quickly. You know the one; It's a classic, and clearly an unhealthy thing to hold on to. She may come back around at some point, and I told her to give me a call if she does, but I won't do my emotional health any favors waiting for it. I've already waited for her long enough, with no sign of progress.

The most unfortunate thing about all this is we can't be friends. I'm usually able to be friends with people I've dated - but the key ingredient there is we tried dating, and it was clear we weren't right for each other, so we can be friends because we know the other thing wouldn't work. Chrystie and I didn't get there, we didn't try, and it's not at all clear whether we are right for each other or not.

It's hard to have someone in my life whom I care about and love spending time with - then cut them out of my life. It's a tough process that for me involves listening to sad music, reconnecting with friends I've neglected, and trying to avoid destructive behavior.

Anyway, what I wrote last night is what I was feeling then - and that's about the best way I knew how to express it. Today I had a little more to say. It'll be a long road, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

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