So I did end up winning those two tickets to see Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut last Thursday at the Lefont Plaza, which looks half-Fox Theater and half-mobile home and is down the street from Clarke and Jimmy Carter. The screening was posted by 99X, which meant they hired some tooly DJ-wannabe to be the MC and give away t-shirts before the show. The audience was way too hip for this 99X bitch, and they let him know as much by muttering ironicisms and referencing obscurities to each other (as hipsters are known to do). There was a middle-aged woman who sat next to me and Thomas, though, who had toted a whole sack of just... stuff you really don't need to bring to a movie theater... and she was really into the MC without, you know, being self-conscious at all. Anyway, the low point of the evening was when they cheerfully earned the audience that anybody parking at nearby Publix would be towed, and I was one of the dozen saps who fell for it and raced to move my car before all the t-shirts were given away. Then I realized that they probably say this in front of every movie at the Plaza because of the Publix goons from next door roughing up the emo ticket-sellers. So, for the record, I ended up moving my car from Publix, a powerful corporation with more parking spaces than they need, to streetside in front of a defenseless split-level residence around the corner.

Besides that, the movie was good as ever. Still a mind-fuck. There weren't really enough updates to ruin it or make it better, except for the part that included Watership Down (the cartoon, too!). I just wished they'd left "The Killing Moon" to play as the opening song.

Now fast-forward to some road trip updates. I bought all my tickets online two nights before, and it really took a cut out of my wallet. Get this: I'm spending $65 to get from Atlanta to Chicago-Midway on AirTran. Then I'll stay around UChicago for the night while Thomas stays on the North Side with his New Trier friend, then we'll leave the morning of the 10th for Palo Alto via Iowa-Denver-Cheyenne. Four days later we'll be at Stanford, and the morning of the 15th I'll take a Frontier flight to St. Louis for $159. Four days in St. Louis with Kristen will bring me to my return trip, a $217 ticket back to Atlanta. Essentially, the shortest leg of my trip is the most expensive, because Atlanta's a dick and pissed off Southwest Airlines when they were a start-up company. Moreover, that $217 ticket switches from United to American via CHICAGO, and it was the second cheapest behind the 6:30am flight.

Well, that's what summer jobs are for.

So far we've got Dyersville, Iowa planned for the trip, which to the Kevin Costner-ignorant is the original set from the movie Field of Dreams. We're actually gonna go have a catch at the approximate place where Ray Liotta once spit! Then we'll make it to a Colorado Rockies game, hopefully, because Coors Field is supposed to be quite the stadium, and I've never seen Denver. It just occured to me, also, that I should see if the Platte River is on the way, in respect for Levi Zendt and James Michener (and... Angry Beaver, was it?)... Centennial, ho! Finally, we'll see Cheyenne, which... wow, it'll be Cheyenne. That's so cool! If anyone's got any suggestions for stops, preferably non-Mormon-pilgrimage related but on par with WORLD'S LARGEST PEANUT, it would be much appreciated.

Also, three new CD's have made this dreary month bright: Oh, Inverted World by the Shins is like Garden State: The Prequel; Being There by Wilco brought me the great song, "Far Far Away" which has the line that references Chicago's CTA; and Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News is phenomenal, especially since I burned it from Thomas whom I'd persuaded to buy it. Check out "Blame It On the Tetons."

Five more workdays at the Bucks, and only 7 until I leave for Road Trip 2004: Lacking a Subtitle. God it's too far away. Also, an alert: if I was to visit UGA this Saturday night, would someone be kind enough to show me a good time?