I woke up at 8:15 with the worst headache I've had in ages. I tossed and turned for a bit until I noticed that my stomach started to cramp up and I felt totally nauseous. What a way to start your Saturday morning. I thought I had the flu or something and I wanted to stay in bed, but my head hurt so much that I couldn’t lie down. So after a quick shower I headed down to the store to get a bag of coffee and on my way back I went past a coffee shop to get a cup right away. All this took less than fifteen minutes, so in order to stay outside in the fresh air for a bit longer I went to the top of my building, where we have a terrace. It was grey and a bit cold out, so I’ve probably looked pretty pathetic at 11 a.m. on the terrace clutching a Styrofoam container, while leaning over the railing and looking out over the city. So that was only fun for so long, so I soon went back downstairs. I headed straight for the couch and the remote, but after flicking through reruns and documentaries for a couple of hours (a highlight was a look at Victoria Wood’s career, which ended with The Ballad of Barry & Freda, which I think is a funny song) I had had enough and I popped Beautiful Girls in the VCR.

I think if I had to make a top five list of my all-time favourite movies Beautiful Girls would be on it alongside When Harry Met Sally, Reservoir Dogs, Annie Hall, and Singles. It’s just one of the most well-written, perfectly cast movies ever with a killer soundtrack to boot. I actually felt a little sad, when Ted Demme died recently. Not because I'm a huge fan of his other work (although Denis Leary: No Cure for Cancer is an absolute killer), but because that means he’ll never make another movie like this again (selfish, I know). The script is written by Scott Rosenberg, who also worked on the High Fidelity script, and it has some of the best dialogue (not written by Woody Allen) ever. You don't believe me? Then check out these quotes. Everybody in that movie is great (even Michael Rapaport), but there can be no doubt that Natalie Portman steals every scene she’s in. Maybe that’s why I like the movie so much: Because I understand Timothy Hutton’s character’s fascination with this girl. And I love the conversation he has with the Mo character about waiting a few years until she old enough for him to date, and he says that all he wants is for her to say to him: “Take me with you, when you go” (which may or may not be a reference to a song by The Jayhawks). But he also knows that he’s like a dirty old man (not Roman Polanski, but like a character from a Nabokov book), which brings on the necessary guilt for him to do the right thing.

So after watching Beautiful Girls I actually felt a lot better. I went out for ice cream, made some coffee, and now I’m considering getting ready for my friend’s birthday party. But I have to clean up a bit, because I haven’t shaved for awhile and I look like The Wild Man of Borneo (which my uncle Cathal, after having used the expression, noted was a weird expression, since no one seems to know if there ever was a real Wild Man of Borneo, what he looked like, and exactly how wild he was). And it would probably also be wise to eat something other than a strawberry sundae before going to the party.

I went to the Blogger site, so I could post this and noticed that I (alongside TrendMacro) was one of yesterday’s “Blogs of Note”. I think that’s totally amazing, especially since I’ve only been writing here for about five weeks. So a big Thank You! to the good people at Blogger and to you for stopping by.