The second movie in Have You Seen...? was a wicked Billy Wilder number, Ace in the Hole, and I enjoyed it mucho. I watch maybe 80% of movies at home on DVD, so one of my standby AMM's (Awesome Movie Metrics) is how often I lose focus, fall asleep, get up to try frying weird things in the Fry Daddy, check e-mail on my smart phone, or go play bass. I know it's good when I don't check the time elapsed function on the remote. This was one tight unit, with a black-hearted social critique at its core that's as relevant today as it was then. Razor-sharp noirish one-liners cracking me up.

I also watched "Thirst," one of the early Bergman films. (I'm starting at the beginning with his movies.) It had some good laughs too--at peak moments of relationship-driven grimness. I think maybe there was some humor intended there, even though the characters pretty much auger down a corkscrew of doom. In what few Bergman movies I've seen, every moment is mindful and grounded and present and for that they have so far been good to watch. Religious in feeling even if what is depicted is dour business.

Drumming practice this week was humbling--Nikki Sudden's The Truth Doesn't Matter, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring's first album. The first has alot of trashy white soul disco high-hat patterns, mixed with Mo Tuckerisms and Stonesy stuff. I sounded like a real bad Bee Gee for a good bit of that. ECSR is just fast, with alot of staccato kick patterns that had me feeling like a not-so-hot drumming novice. But I kept it up--who gives a crap how bad it sounds anyway.