Well now I’m ready to write some more for you all. Following Wednesday I continued my sad decline into being sick for longer, and I still am as miserable as I was back then. But I have some news to report.

I went to see Adaptation on Thursday afternoon, which was quite a nice experience. There were some excellent lines from that film, and I confess that Nicholas Cage did his best non-Nicholas Cage performance EVER. Meryl Streep turned in a great performance as the despairing writer of The Orchid Thief, the book that Cage’s character is struggling to adapt for film. The Orchid Theif concerns the life of one John Laroche, a colorful individual from Florida who specializes in orchid cultivation (and thievery). This is a Spike Jonze picture, who did the acclaimed Being John Malkovich and the less-than-acclaimed Human Nature. “Every orchid looks like the insect that pollinates it… once you see your flower you can’t let anything get in the way.” These were some good quotes from good ‘ol John Laroche. At any rate, I’ll let those few of you who haven’t seen it go and see it if you are inclined to do so. Right now I have business elsewhere.

Elsewhere is right here, two lines below my previous paragraph. This paragraph is devoted to raving about Spirited Away, which I had the privilege of seeing in the company of Josiah Shepard and Mike Edwards, who are both sick just like me. In a word: WOW. This film gives you a type of welcome fatigue, because it is so consitently fresh, beautiful and stunning. And the fact that it manages to continue to wow you for its entire 2 hours is amazing. That and it has one of the most unique and creative stories I have experienced in a great deal of time. Go and see it now, or wait for a few weeks and then rent it and watch it and after that buy it and give it to me.

Yeah, my room is rug-doctored now. Cool, huh?