Dated Sunday November 11, 2007 7:02pm (depending where you are)
Somewhere (once again) in the air between here and there

So I keep having this problem with this one movie. It's this repeated case of …I don't know…Filmus Interruptus? I'm always watching it on an airplane and every time I try to finish it, they take it away. It also always makes me want to write something, which is, by the way, part of the problem.

I was on a flight back from California about a month ago and…you know how sometimes they give you those little DVD players? Well I was on this long flight and I watched this pretty cool movie called "Namesake" about an Indian family and their son's attempts to reconcile his American upbringing and life with his Indian heritage. It's a good movie. You should see it.

Anyway, I was bored after it was over and I went looking in their little case of movies for something else to watch and I stumbled upon this film called "In the Land of Women". I'd never heard of it and I didn't know anything about it but…well, you know, I'm me and they used the word "women" so…I mean if you haven't figured it out by now, that's really about all it takes.

So I started watching it and it turns out it stars Adam Brody and Meg Ryan and Olympia Dukakis, all of whom are pretty great, and this girl Kristen Stewart, who I've never seen in anything before (She's in Sean Penn's new film "Into the Wild. I looked it up). She looks like she's about 17 or 18 and she's really good too. It kind of reminded me of a less whimsical "Garden State". It's about a young writer who leaves LA and goes back to the Midwest to stay with his ailing grandmother for a while and help take care of her. He's kind of heartbroken and a little fucked up and sort of lost. It just has this slightly sad sweet tone to it. I was really digging it but then, about a half hour into the movie, the stewardess came by and said she had to collect the DVD players because we were getting ready to land.

Is there anything worse than someone taking your movie away right in the middle? I fucking hate that. Did you ever go to a theatre and have the projector go to shit mid-film. God, that sucks!

The weird thing was how much I was feeling though. I rushed home from JFK (slight exaggeration there-as if rushing anywhere from JFK was possible) and went straight for my piano. I just finished a record a few months ago. I didn't expect to write anything for ages, but there I am, truly inspired and moved, pouring out all this music. I got up the next morning and called my friend Stephen. We've been planning for a couple years to write a play together but I knew I couldn't focus on writing anything else until I'd finished writing this record. But that's been done for months now so, inspired, I told him I was ready to get started. It's a perfect time because although I'll be touring for the next few years, I won't really have any pressing writing demands.

Unfortunately, I forgot he was out in LA getting ready to direct his 1st movie. In fact, in an epic moment of bad timing, principal photography was scheduled to begin the next day. So that was that.

I still wanted to see the rest of the movie though so I went on Netflix and Amazon looking for it but it wasn't out yet. In other words, I was screwed. The airline must have some sort of deal with early DVD releases.

So I forgot about it, and then about 10 days ago I was flying home from our monitor guy Kory's wedding in LA and once again they gave me one of those little DVD players. I looked through the movies and, sure enough, there it was so I started watching it again. Unfortunately, the fast forward wheel on the DVD player was broken and there weren't any extras so I had to start over from the beginning. It was only an extra half hour though, and I'd sort of forgotten parts of it so the refresher wasn't all that bad a thing. I really dug it again. I guess that kind of mood just really appeals to me; I loved "Garden State" too.

It really moved me and, once again, I was really inspired to write, so much so that I had to stop watching the movie about 45 minutes into it and get out my computer, which led to the beginning of last week's Diary entry. If you read it, you know it was really long and so, of course, it took a long time to write. I don't notice that sort of thing when I'm writing though so I didn't realize how much time had passed until a lot later. When I DID finally realize, it occurred to me that if I didn't put the fucking computer away, I, once again, wasn't going to finish the movie. So I put the thing away and started watching the film again (it starts where you stopped it so I didn't have to go back to the beginning this time). Sure enough, however, about 15 minutes later, the flight attendant (notice the maturation process of the writer as he switches to the newer, shinier, and more politically correct terminology) came by and took the damn DVD player away again.

Now if there's anything worse than having your movie taken away from you 30 minutes into a 90-minute film, it's having your movie taken away from you 60 minutes into a 90-minute film.

I wanted top shoot myself (or whoever these inventors are who can't build a billion dollar airplane that can manage to make it to the fucking ground safely while someone is using a stupid DVD player. I mean, are we serious here or are they making this up? If I was a terrorist…well, I'd be thinking: screw smuggling explosives or guns or a toenail clipper or a tube of toothpaste or moisturizer or whatever passes for a truly lethal weapon of mass destruction these days; I'll just bring along my portable Panasonic DVD player and a copy of "Moulin Rouge", then leave it playing in my seatback pocket as "we begin our descent into Burbank". It's a horrifying thought but it WOULD help do something about the "Moulin Rouge" problem).

I got way off the subject there (I hope this doesn't get me on some sort of watch list) but my point is that I was by that point pretty frantic to see the ending of the freaking movie. I rushed home (slowly) from JFK and, because my room is a disaster and I couldn't find any NetFlix movies to return, I jumped on Amazon and ordered a copy of "In the Land of Women" (it was available by then) for next day delivery. It was a Friday so I had to pay extra for Saturday delivery but I didn't care. I needed to see the end of the movie.

Badly.

It was late and I was pretty tired by then, so, knowing the movie, and all its inherent emotional juice, was safely winging its way to me, I decided to finish writing the Diary entry after I finished the movie the next day and I went to sleep.

Unfortunately the movie didn't arrive the next day. Somehow it came during the one 5 minute period when my doorman was taking a whiz or something and, with no one to sign for it, it went to some holding facility in Jersey. Obviously it wasn't going to arrive on Sunday and the diary entry felt pretty important so I went back to writing it. I got it finished but didn't send it in until Sunday after seeing "Lions for Lambs".

I had to take a train down to DC Monday for my nephews' 5th b'day. I was hoping to watch the movie on the train but it didn't show up before I left so I resigned myself to seeing it when I got back to NYC on Wednesday. But it wasn't there Wednesday when I got back so that night I finally called Amazon. They were really cool about it. Apparently, when no one was there to receive the package on Saturday, it went to Jersey and then got sent back to whatever warehouse in Limbo or Uzbekistan or the North Pole Amazon ships all it's stuff from in the 1st place. They promised it would be sent out free of charge the next day and most assuredly arrive on Friday afternoon.

Cool, right?

Except I had a 6am flight Friday morning from (you guessed it) JFK to SFO for the Cal-u$c game this weekend and there was no way it was going to get there before I left home at 4am so…

Shit (and don't even get into this weekend with me).

But…

…I got on the plane home to NY this afternoon and the stewardess (back to being a chauvinist pig) brought by our old friend the airline DVD player, which I took one look at, smiled, settled comfortably into my seat, opened, sighed, and reached very happily for the copy of "In the Land of Women" so I could finally finish it…

…And they no longer had it.

No, just kidding. They had it and I watched and it was great. And once again it made me want to write. So here I am.

And none of that is actually what I wanted to write about. That is what we, in the PRO-fessional writing biz call a "Pro;ogue" (write that down kids, it's gold).

Actually, now that I look at it more carefully, don't write that down. It's actually called a "Prologue". I have no fucking idea what a "Pro:ogue" is, other than it's obviously someone competing outside the amateur levels of whatever ";ogue" is. In other words, it would constitute an NCAA violation if a school were found to have a professional ;ogue player on their ;ogue team. Sorry Trojans, but it's just the sort of thing your ;ogue team is probably guilty of and as soon as the NCAA catches on to the free houses and SUVs your ;ogue players are being given by all your rich boosters, they're going to probably slap you with some truly serious sanctions like a "good talking to" or perhaps even the loss of several table tennis scholarships and possibly (I shudder to think) a ban on your intra-mural wiffle ball team from NCAA Tournament competition for a year or two. Maybe then you'll finally learn your lesson that cheaters never prosper.

Anyway, write down "Prologue" if you want to, although by this point, who the hell cares?

Can I just get back to what I was thinking about when I finished the movie?

Adam Brody writes a letter to Meg Ryan in the movie in which he basically says that he's been trying to write something really worthwhile his whole life because he figured if he did, then people would love him. So that got me thinking: is that why I write songs?

Because it's a theme in there. Mr. Jones is definitely full of elements about the lure of fame and rock and roll and what it will do as far as changing the way people feel about me. And (admittedly contrary to the reports in the tabloids, which, by the way, you're an idiot if you read them as a source of what we in the PRO-fessional writing biz call, and let me write this in real BIG letters for you, "THINGS THAT ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE IN A REAL, AS OPPOSED TO AN IMAGINARY, UNIVERSE") I've always been sort of a solitary, even (insert plea-for–sympathy moment here) lonely guy.

OK, I'll stop screwing around here. I actually want to talk about some stuff but I got on a roll here and I've been smart-assing it for five pages already, which is fun but enough.

So I started thinking about how much of my life and my songs are geared towards that same goal or even whether they are at all. I mean, I didn't want to be a shy kid but I was. I don't like being alone but I am. I don't want to be single but I am. I definitely thought at one point that SOME of that shit might be solved if I could write a good enough song. But then I got to thinking that all that stuff about being unloved isn't really a problem in my life. Regardless of this bullshit cliché you hear all the time about the biggest problem with success or fame being that "you can't tell who your real friends are", I know who my friends are. I know exactly who my friends are, and I know my family, and I know the women I've been involved with in my life. I know how lucky I've been because most of them are truly extraordinary people. There are some horrific female exceptions that have coincided (coincidentally) with some horrific periods in my life but only a few. And our friendships and love affairs have, at their core, had nothing to do with the band or our success. I've just had great people in my life. I've had assholes too but I always felt you could spot those bottom feeders a mile away, unless flattery really is the thing that keeps your particular boat afloat, in which case you are screwed anyway and what you get is exactly what you deserve. My problem has never been a lack of people who cared for me; my problem has been mustering whatever it takes to give a flying fuck about anyone else.

Nah, that's not really true either. It sounded clever but it's not really true. I was trying to say I have trouble caring about other people and I just said it in an idiotic way, especially because "not caring" isn't really the thing either. I do care. I care a lot. I care about my family and I care about how my friends are doing and I care about whether they're happy or sad or whether there's anything they need or anything I can do to help. I care about a lot of stuff. I don't have a problem with that kind of caring.

I have a huge problem with this kind of caring that involves feeling connected to people because that's supposed to be a more consistent thing and it REALLY comes and goes for me. I guess I'm that way about the world in general. Sometimes it's there for me and sometimes it just doesn't seem real; it seems instead like something taking place that I'm watching from a distance or imagining. That's not such a big problem in a lot of my day-to-day life because it doesn't happen when I'm playing music. If it did, I'd be screwed, but it doesn't. And day-to-day life, if you've got a job you're good at, is something you can get away with living at a distance.

People, as you know, are a different story, and living among the ones who care for you as if, at times, they are just figments of your imagination is a very very very good recipe for spending your life alone in hotel rooms. It's also simply less than they deserve. The movie wasn't much help in this regard. I just liked it. I'm not sure what he learns in the end. What I myself learned is that you can find people who truly care for you without writing a great novel even when you accidentally in the heat of the moment (well, actually the heat of two separate moments) make out with both a really cute sweet cool underage girl AND her really cute sweet cool mom who has cancer as long as you're a really cute sweet arty guy, but, on the other hand, if one of the chicks from "Big Love" somehow turns up as a cute sweet cool waitress at the counter of some diner you're eating at, you're better off having your nearly completed novel with you because, apparently, the way to the heart of a "chick from "Big Love" who's inexplicably working at a Hollywood diner" is (I guess?) through your Mac's word processing program. Does that make any sense?

Oh, and whatever you do, don't date actresses. The film is very clear on that (but I pretty much learned my lesson on that one a long time ago, not that I won't almost certainly be unlearning it at some point in either the not too distant future or the first chance I get, whichever comes first).

I'm making fun of the movie but I really did love it. I loved it so much that I've probably just gone and ruined it for you. C'est la vie.

Anyway, to sum up my day: no progress on the "people may or may not be figments of my imagination" front but I finally got to see the movie.

Which…I just realized, is probably going to be waiting for me in the mailroom of my building when I get home tonight. Guess I won't "rushing home" from JFK tonight. Might as well take my fucking time this trip.

So I guess nothing really happened AND it took me 7 pages to tell you that. Great.

You know what? I thought of something. I think today is Veteran's Day, today or tomorrow anyway. I read in a newspaper last week that this is one of only two national holidays where we actually honor living people. So maybe take a second to think about that during your day off, if you get one.

This is obviously a time of great national divisiveness and veterans are at the center of that. People all across our country and around the world have deep and polarized feelings about whether or not we should be involved in these wars. I just don't think that means any of you should have necessarily divided feelings about our vets. Vietnam was a war so many Americans were against and in that conflict the people who fought it didn't, for the most part, even have a say in whether or not they even went to war, yet many vets were treated with disrespect and distrust when they finally got back home. That was a terrible mistake on the part of the American people and one many of those Vets are still paying for.

I guess my point is that there's a different between foreign policy and the young people who end up halfway around the world implementing it. Whether they belong to your political party or not and whether they agree or disagree with whatever basic social or moral beliefs you have, they're still people who volunteered for a terrifying job because they believed they were doing something good and important for their country. Now, and for the foreseeable future, many of them will be returning home from a very difficult situation straight into another very difficult situation, that of trying to re-integrate and re-assimilate themselves back into a now very unfamiliar and likely surprisingly alien-seeming life back at home. I doubt it's all that easy. Volunteers or not, I can't believe very many of them could possibly have expected what they lived through over there. I doubt anyone who fights in a war is ever really prepared for the reality of it and that's something all of them have to deal with for the rest of their lives. My dad was drafted during Vietnam. He retired a Major at the age of 32 and I thank my lucky stars every day that he spent those years WITH us, stationed in West Texas in El Paso instead of apart from us somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make any big point here other than to suggest you maybe take a minute to consider what Veterans Day really means and try to view it with a bit of dignity and sympathy and respect.


Check out my blog here on MySpace or just go to http://adam.countingcrows.com/ to read this new one and all the others. They run all the way back to 1996.