Monday, November 19, 2007

California Scenes

Mr. Beale and I are officially on vacation. We’re at the beach in Santa Monica; it’s overcast, chilly, and a little gloomy, which has made for a surreal visit to my hometown.

Probably the oddest thing was seeing Richard Kelly’s “sequel” to “Donnie Darko,” ”Southland Tales,” which coincidentally was filmed almost entirely in Santa Monica and Venice--the very places we had just visited that day. With its post-apocalyptic theme and a storyline involving the rift in the space-time continuum, I started getting this spooky feeling like I had spent the entire day inside a movie I hadn’t seen yet.

I don’t know if “Donnie Darko” fans will like the film, since the two are very similar. But I will say this: Richard Kelly doesn’t like the Republican Party very much! It’s worth catching on DVD, since I doubt the film will come to Nashville.

Today’s a travel day for us, so I thought I’d share some images from the past day, which seem to capture the eerie vibe sparked by the film.

Some graffitti we saw on the PCH underpass:Mitchie Yost surfing in the fog!Arlington West, a display about the Iraq War erected by Veterans for Peace. I saw this while walking down the Santa Monica Pier with my cousin, a Vietnam veteran who still suffers the physical effects of shrapnel he received over 30 years ago. It was quite sobering to tour this exhibit with him.

Each cross represents a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq:

Finally, some grafitti of the "biker rebellion" sort: