Had a pretty good weekend. Chilled in Austin with a couple friends on Friday night and watched The Big Lebowski while drinking White Russians. “The Dude abides.” Beautiful. I think this was my fifth time seeing the movie. On Saturday, we saw Lost in Transaltion, a new film my Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford’s daughter). I highly recommend it, especially if you dig movies of the ‘artsy’ variety. The dialogue was minimal, which was refreshing, and the cinematography was outstanding. Bill Murray did an awesome job of playing the jaded 40-something businessman, and his costar, Scarlett Johansson, excellently played the jaded 18-25 year-old as usual (reference Ghostworld). An added bonus was the superb introductory shot. A big Thank you goes out to Ms. Coppola for that most excellent welcome. She had me from the very start.

Check out what Semaphoria says on Lost in Translation. Her review is more eloquent and less horny than mine.

I’ve been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream a lot lately. It’s been stuck in my car’s cd-changer for weeks now and I’ve been reminiscing on the old days when all I did was listen to grunge rock and dream of starting a band. What amazes me about the album is the jump in songwriting quality from the Pumpkins’ first record. The songs are tighter, more creative, and a little less predictable. One song in particular has been getting more play than the others: Soma. Zooming in even closer, I finally figured out what it is about this song that gets me. There is a string of notes played in one of the guitar solos that is discordant, yet still very beautiful and melodious. The notes do not seem to fall into any scale, so I cannot describe them as major or minor, but they do exude a ‘minor’ feeling. If you have the cd or an mp3 of the song, pay close attention to 5:10-5:13. These are the notes to look for.