...that awkward age...


(...these are just my very first impressions upon seeing "L.A."...I don't mean to offend anyone or come on too strong and also I hope this doesn't contain any spoilers for you...)


I just finished watching this incredibly hard-to-forget movie. I feel sad and disconnected and wondering. It's not that the acting wasn't great (it was) or that the underlying idea of the suffocation that comes with "playing it straight" didn't threaten to undo me with huge, racking sobs. The scenes with Simone and the boyfriend she didn't love broke my heart--what closet lesbian hasn't been in a relationship she never wanted in the first place?

What I had a problem with was the unlikely source material for romance and the potential double standard. I don't think many directors would do a film about a male teacher who fell in love with his 17-year-old student...certainly not one where it was seen as romantically painful and hopelessly inevitable. It's true that "Loving Annabelle" IS about more than sex and it's not at all sleazy (it's, in fact, powerfully touching at times) but I can't seem to get past the fact that Annabelle isn't an adult and the woman she's pursuing so zealously is old enough to know better than to eventually give in.

Though the way Simone looked at Annabelle is the way many people wish that special woman would look at them, I didn't find that the actresses had much chemistry. Individually they both are worthy of the affection they inspire in each other (the teacher is the strong, private, sensitive type who longs for true love but would never admit it and the student cares about her classmates and being true to herself no matter what the cost), but together...well, I didn't feel the kick I have in other love stories.

But that's just me. I mean I love "Xanadu" (the original film) so my taste in movies is up for debate:)...

I remember I was home from school sick in bed when my sister came in my room to tell me she'd just heard Andy Gibb had passed away. It was March 10, 1988. The news made me sad since I had really liked his music in the late 70s and adored his brothers, The Bee Gees. "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" was probably Andy's biggest hit and it had always put a smile on my face with its earnest sounds and declaration of love...the kind of innocence you don't get too much in today's music. For me, his death struck with the same kind of shock Karen Carpenter's had a few years prior.

Mid-1989 the Bee Gees released their underrated album "One," which contained a beautiful track called "Wish You Were Here." It was dedicated to their brother (whom they had hoped to bring into their fold as a singer before his unexpected death) and to this day is still one of the saddest songs I've ever heard. It's not limited to the grief of someone's passing, but the loss of a relationship you know will never be revived again...

Aimee Mann has come a long way from her new wave hair days with ‘Til Tuesday and their monster 80s hit, "Voices Carry." Here in the 21st century you’ll find that while she’s a lot less angry, she more than makes up for it in sadness. The reviews for her new album (what exactly do you call it, by the way?) are overwhelmingly positive and why not? Her voice is both completely natural and unnervingly dispassionate, much like Karen Carpenter’s, the 70s vocalist she’s been compared to more than once in her solo career.

Anyone familiar with Mann’s deceptively lightweight sounds on "Bachelor No. 2" and "Lost in Space" will appreciate how the title @#%&*! Smilers is a sly wink at those who dare to question her never-ending parade of somber songs. On the most haunting of the tracks, "True Believer," you can’t help but wonder if emotional heartache is best served by detachment until it hits you that detachment IS the price you pay for a broken heart. My favorite verse goes: "really when you come into the room it’s not helping me"…that hits a little too close to how it feels when you’re trying to get over someone and you thought you’d never have to see them again, but then you do. Love’s really all just a complicated mess sometimes, isn’t it?

On another stand-out, "Looking for Nothing", Mann sings with swaggering indifference:

Oh I’m not looking for nothing
Just spend my money and go
I’m not looking for nothing
To put me in the rodeo

And on "31 Today," where the singer wonders what has happened to her life, the apathy continues with lines like "taking shelter in the black cocoon" and the more tell-tale "I pretended that I felt a spark." It may cross your mind that’s it’s just too bleak to listen to an album so jaded by someone so young, but the beauty and peace of Mann’s music is well worth soaking in the sorrow. The album closes on a relatively (and I stress relatively!) upbeat note with the slightly cute "Ballentines." It sounds a little Beatlesque – think "When I’m 64" – but even a faster beat can’t turn a frown upside down.

Because I'm a sucker for almost any bad movie (whether original, straight-to-dvd or theatrical release) that ever airs on SyFy (oooh, the new name STILL makes me shudder in slight pain) I wasn't expecting "The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations" to be any good...

but it is...or at least it's good enough to not make you roll your eyes or laugh in inappropriate places. Rachel Miner takes a fairly decent stab at playing the shut-in sister of Sam, an amiable loner-type who gives the local police important leads on various crimes by traveling through time and "observing" the past...though he tells the cops he's "psychic" since that's FAR more believable than jumping through time:)...

The violence is often far too garish (but what else can you expect in a serial killer slasher that borrows the concept, but not the story lines, from the previous two Butterfly Effects) and some of the twists you can see coming a mile away...nevertheless there was something about "The Butteryfly Effect 3" that made it hard for me to stop watching...of course, you can say the same thing about traffic accidents and train wrecks so don't go by me.

...underneath the beautiful and innocent sounds of every almost every song on this album is a lot of darkness. Of course, with an album that covers everything from suicide to rape to drug overdoses that continually put the singer's (on the sweet and sorrowful "Last Dance") loved one in the ICU, you'd have to sugarcoat things a little, right?

I shouldn't find this cd so oddly comforting, but I do...maybe it's like my thing with zombie flicks and disaster movies and sad songs...where it's only when you can't fall any farther, that you finally can start to relax and think about getting back up...

"In and Out of Control" is aptly titled and most certainly one of the best listens of 2009!!