Virgin bounty

I have the best wife ever. She was at the Virgin Megastore today, where she encountered a massive sale. She brought home for me the following DVDs: The Killing Fields, Logan's Run, Rumble in the Bronx, and Three Kings. (She picked up Ocean's 11—the Soderburgh version—for herself.) She also picked up three newly released CDs: Vapor Trails by Rush and When I Was Cruel by Elvis Costello for me, Blood Money by Tom Waits for herself. Not that I won't enjoy all of the above. Nice that Laura knows my tastes so well.

The shape of things

Interesting to note that Neil Labute plans to score the upcoming film version of The Shape of Things entirely with Elvis Costello songs. Laura and I saw The Shape of Things on stage last year—first row, right where we could see up Rachel Weisz's skirt—and the house music was all Smashing Pumpkins. The playbill warned patrons that the house music would be VERY LOUD. It was.

I love Neil Labute because he's such a bad Mormon, pretending to be good. Laura admires his work but dislikes it, remarking that she wants to send him a bill for having served so often as his therapist.

Two or three years ago, we saw Labute's Bash: Latter-day Plays off Broadway, with Calista Flockhart. That was one fucking intense night of theater. Each of the three one-acts involved one or more Mormon characters who end up performing some of the most heinous acts imaginable. There were moments in all three plays when I laughed at some hilarious, biting Mormon reference—and was the only one in the audience who did.