"The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends."
Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen said that once. Or maybe she wrote it. Hmm. Anyway, sizable post this time, coming in somewhere under 600 words. Sorry about that...

I'm back in Ames, which probably doesn't mean much to readers not from this specific region of the United States. Just moving from one slice of nowhere to another slice of nowhere, right? Right. It's a ten hour drive, and not terribly interesting for most of the way. Notes from my most recent visit to the "Star of the West":

1. I forgot to mention Dancer in the Dark in my last post, and I regretted it almost immediately. Dancer in the Dark, often called "the Björk movie" because of its Icelandic lead, is very easily the anti-musical. I won't sit here and criticize musicals, because the term "musical" is very broad, as are the terms "coal miner" and "wallpaper", but it is enough to know that I have held a personal grudge against the medium for many years. That grudge vanished when I watched the DVD release of Dancer in the Dark. You would think that Lars von Trier hated musicals even more than I do from watching the movie, for the central story of the film is that of Selma Jezkova, a woman who creates vivid musicals in her mind from the daily routine of her life to make that everyday experience bearable. Yet these incredibly choreographed song-and-dance numbers, in which the people in Selma's life burst out into nonsensical song and dance with the requisite oversized fake genuine smiles, are always ended with a horrible jolt back into reality, a reality that grows worse with each song until the grim final scene that makes the film earn the moniker anti-musical. It is the perfect antithesis to Woody Allen's upbeat Everyone Says I Love You, which I wish I could find locally on DVD... Anyway, if this is not enough proof of Dancer's mightiness, the music is so good even out of context that mighty spasms of disgust and pleasure racked my body when I found some of the tracks on AudioGalaxy. Yow...
2. Props once again to Jesse, by the way, who pointed Dancer out to me in the midst of a New Year's Eve renting binge and more recently made a valiant journey to Mankato, Minnesota. Good luck, man...
3. I think Christie Sandvik is out of intensive care, meaning everyone from the Rapid City Stevens debate team who was involved in the January 3rd car crash has pulled through. If I'm right. Which I most certainly hope I am.
4. For prairie fans: NWI's Hot Type is running a very rare television interview with Garrison Keillor. The NWI site is very minimal, and offers little information, but there are show times at least available on the show's web page for a day or two more. Looks like it will show again tonight (as in Sunday) one final time.
5. Great googly moogly, Haley's voice sounds twice as skillful every time I hear her. Just... wow.
6. The 'fish has webmail available for use now. Hooray for Dreamhost! So once again, if you are in need of email, just ask for one. Please. It would be a great favor...

I think that's more than enough, eh?