camp liu-anna-wanna

i've declared a staycation of sorts. not necessarily the kind where you sit by a hotel pool, dipping your toes idly while reading a dogeared novel, dreaming about the riviera while figuring out what mbta bus route to eventually take back home. but rather one of the emotional getaway, one where i declare summer camp is now: it's my party and i'll macrame if i want to.

so every day this week, i will spend my evenings on something performative and enjoyable--a film, a concert, a furtive harmonium wailing in someone's backyard, whatever--rather than the constant oot and abootness that usually characterizes the liu. not to say i'm not aboot, but doing so as a solo act. it's commitment.

tonight i went to see (500) days of summer at the harvard square cinema, and absolutely adored it. oh, it was heartstring-pulling and teeming with sharply timed dialogue and endless flirtations with the audience that makes it impossible to hate. the acting was impeccably strong on both accounts. and can i please, please, please have summer's pastiched, art-strewn, toile-papered apartment? long-lashed girl has serious, vintage-drips-sex style that's real, yet irresistible. her pants wrinkled after a work day; her face gloriously un-botoxed in a smile; the you-can-draw-on-my-arm candor.

i think what i loved so much is that, watching it, you really get the the-world-can't-be-more-perfect swellings of infatuation and the subsequent burn-and-crash catastrophe of confusion, breakup and constant rumination. i literally felt the rush in my heart, deep and fast, with the grandiose zig and zag of the narrative. a sensation at once intimately familiar and, alternatively, a vicarious deal. this isn't anything new, but for some reason it was especially resonant--perhaps because the protagonists are pretty much of 'my' 'generation'. it unleashes the escalation of anxieties after you finally come to the realization that life only moves forwards, never backwards.

not sure if the director meant this, but in hindsight, it almost seemed like an american version of amelie--in a good way. the artful reinterpretations of tom's perspective in different cinematic modes (the french scenes emphasized this connection). the interplay between reality and fantasy with overlapped graphics; the moment when amelie melts, heartbroken, into a waterfall that splashes dejectedly in the cafe is translated here when tom angrily busts out of summer's rooftop party and disappears at a standstill, black silhouette against a misty void of the city. the recollection of each of the characters' upbringing, with that-explains-it childhood quirks and parallel do-all-things-lead-to-this-fateful-moment framing. also: tom and summer (not to mention amelie) watch a lot of films together. and i imagine many couples in various stages of their relationship are watching (500) days of summer; watch the ripples go!

the ending-ending is endearingly silly, but the end of the '500 days' is extremely moving. my heart still sort of hurts thinking about it. but somehow we all manage to find the strength to say goodbye, get off the bench and prepare for the next day: (1)

in other news, i'm doing a little simultaneous experiment: 7 days of dry. or would that be (7) days? it's the best way to research mocktails, which are totally the new bacon-wrapped cocktail.

after the film, i met up with the lish and some industry people i haven't seen in a while at the bar at clio. todd fixed me up a nameless frothy concoction with raw egg white, lime juice, lemon juice, dash of grenadine, and ginger ale. shaken like crazy and served sans ice in a collins, the foam floated deliciously about halfway down the glass. a sip revealed the drink's bearings as super-fancy version of middle-school prom punch--totally reminiscent of fruity sherbet scooped into a vat of citric soda. kinda fun, kinda sweet, and incidentally fitting right in my grown-up summer camp shtick.

hit me with any and all suggestions for what else i should see, attend, or sip this week in terms of pleasure-seeking. at the moment i may not have a bonfire to toast my s'mores, but impaled food? now that's a given.