I've been enduring a pretty nasty bout of insomnia lately, and I don't know why. It's almost like enduring the bad movie I found on late night TV. It's awful but I can't change the channel. I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep. Can't even seek sleep for some reason.

So here I sit, at almost 4 a.m. watching the movie "Twentynine Palms". Other than a few glimpses here and there of some terrain with which I am familiar, this movie has no redeeming value. It may be on the Sundance channel, but if there is any art to this I can't find it. Coming in to it in the middle probably didn't help.

The have featured numerous shots of the Chevron station in Twentynine Palms I have made a few stops at on trips from Palm Springs to Las Vegas. And there are a few shots of Joshua trees and Mojave Desert landscapes, which twinge my homesickness for the Southern California deserts. But beyond that, it doesn't do anything for me. It's a very boring film with no identifiable plot (again coming in in the middle fo the film probable doesn't help). This couple is out in Twentynine Palms for some reason, looking at rocks and driving around in a Hummer, yet they are styaing at a dive motel, where they go to argue and have sex. Pretty graphic sex too for an R-rated film, but it doesn't particularly look like good sex even.

Even my cable channel's information button offers no help in figuring out what this film is supposed to be about. It seems to be describing a different movie, a different "29 Palms" starring Racheal Leigh Cook, Jeremy Davies and Chris O'Donnel in a "crime caper about a bag of money stolen from a Native American casin and the qurky characters trying to get their hands on the loot."

There's nothing quirky about the one I'm watching.

I should try to sleep. Or at least find a good infomercial. Anything has to be better than this movie.