2001-11-26 | 6:46 p.m.

corduroy licorice liked to get all his ducks in a row. he usually achieved this by starting spurious rumors around the pond. pretty soon the gullible wetland fowl were at each other's throats.

***

holidays are glorious things. time off from work is a glorious thing. tradition and fatty foods are glorious things. it is of thanksgiving i speak.

my sister and i drove up to visit the folks in their new retirement community. hoy boy. it's nice and all. and convenient and all. and warmly familial and all, but my gosh...it is the beige-est place i've ever been. like surburbia isn't cookie-cutter enough without removing the different colored frosting and sprinkles. it reminded me of the old song my mom used to have on one of her '60s albums called "charlie the midnight marauder." the song was about this guy who came home to his lookalike surburban community late one night and mistakenly ended up going in the wrong house and kissing the wrong wife. hey, maybe this whole ecru aesthetic is a subliminal campaign to encourage senior swinging? or maybe it's the start of a campaign to change that generation's nickname from the baby boomers to the beigy boomers?

well, the lack of manmade color was quite made up for by mother nature's luscious paintbox. the long drive home took us past some beautiful landscapes...curvy blonde hills with their green roots showing, fall leaves in full regalia, romantic vineyards, papery-cloud-streaked cornflower blue skies and a double rainbow! (i thought that only happened on ice cream labels.) my heart just soared at the sights. it made me remember an alice walker quote i read recently: "i think it pisses god off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice." (just for the record, i noticed, big guy.)

***

so my convivial sister and i, despite having spent a family weekend plus a total of 15 hours in a car together, ended up hanging out all day sunday, too. we decided to see audition. a kind of japanese horror romance. i knew it would be good because my favorite movie reviewer mike d'angelo gave it an A- grade and no "easy A" giver is he. (plus, his review got quoted in the newspaper ad! i saw his name in print, gasped and had a total jeff spicoli "i know that dude" moment.)

it was a great film...but freaking-ass grisly. i think the fact that the ad showcases a girl holding a hypodermic needle was a pretty good head's up, but still...it's hard to prepare for what's gonna go down. just make sure you see it on an empty stomach. dude! it made fatal attraction look like nothing more than a bad first date. i was worried my sister would sucker punch me for taking her to such a bizarre movie, but she enjoyed being freaked out.

it was a veritable filmic sonata (no i did-int) that began with the palest of wry humor and then built to a helter skelter crescendo that still rings in my ears. i loved the way the lead actor's apartment symbolized his state of mind and state of life. it was dimly lit, closed-off and suffocated. a soul euthanized. dark, pulled drapes. cracked old leather chairs. the lead actress's dominatrix nurse get-up was too cool for school (my next halloween costume? that's what i'm thinking.) the director's timing was deft and his sense of horror brutally satistying. in his review, mr. d'angelo called it a "mindfuck" (that's not the blurb they quoted in the ad, though) and it most certainly was. most certainly, indeed.

it presented some interesting ideas on infatuation and what we want to believe about our love objects, not to mention our desire to possess and tendency to obsess in matters of the heart...and other parts of the anatomy. ahem.

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