Mulder, Moody, Jones

I have a new and lasting love for dear Mr. David Duchovny. I'm new to this bandwagon, having never been a fan of the X-Files, and my new found obsession began with his role in Californication. He stole my heart playing the lead role as writer Hank Moody. Heartwarmingly depraved and wonderfully perverse, this bad boy steals every scene with his abrasive expulsion of mystery in a snarky, sardonic demeanor superimposed with wit and unfaltering love. What could possibly be more thrilling and desirable than a hard-shelled man with a soft, gooey (and savory) center? Mr. Duchovny's recent role in The Joneses plays on his quiet, more body-language oriented acting method that leaves the audience holding its breath waiting for a moment of Duchovny thrill that never really arrives. While the idea for the film is almost original, and its commentary on consumerism haunting, it leaves little for its starring cast to work with. Its build up is left expanding with no exhalation, a rich, dry cookie with no milk to accompany it. If better expanded, perhaps with small elements of the dead-pan humor that Duchovny works so well with, it could have been a real gem in the catalogue of film. Alas, the idea remains an unpolished diamond, waiting to be snatched from the coal mine and cut into a park avenue beauty.

Yes, that's how terminal velocity works, but did you want fries with that?

It's nearly five in the morning, and instead of glancing at the clock and blissfully curling back in a sleep induced fetal position, I'm calling a cab company. No, the cab is not to wisk me off to some great destination, but for a homeless teen who needs to get to school in the morning. I'm the overnight at a shelter for homeless and runaway teens, trudging through the night hours along with some nocturnal creatures out in the woods of upstate New York. In between bed checks, laundry, setting up breakfast, doing paperwork, cleaning, spraying, generally sanitizing most surfaces, faxing, and anwering the rare phone call a week I read or knit while watching a movie on my laptop. This week I'm reading Tolstoy and knitting woolly scarves, waiting for the sun to rise or a kid to set something on fire.
Tonight, I slip out onto the fire escape for a brief and cold cigarette to watch the albino skunk, my only companion at this hour. I'm almost certain that this unusually large, undoubtably smelly, friend is blind. I have named him Manfred, after Byron's character, not the wolly mammoth from Ice Age. Manfred consistently bumps into a tree stump, the picinic bench, and a myriad of other obstacles, after which he rights himself.
During this cigarette I contemplate the injustice of the world, the unemployment, or ill employment of my friends and myself, and cringe a little at drab future of no occupational advancement and a lifetime of under appreciated social services, and from the chill breeze from the second floor. I also contemplate the injustice of Manfred's blindness, and gently scold myself for being entertained by antics caused by his helpless hindrance.
When I mention that I work at a shelter for homeless and runaway teens I'm often give the sympathy head-jut-forward-and-tilt, "oh, that's so great" to which I frequently roll my eyes and find a drink to sip. It's not that I don't like my job, because I do, or that I'm not grateful for the employment, because I am, it's just that I feel of so little use. By this I don't mean that social services is of no use, but in terms of my personal life I feel that I'm of little use. All I seem to do is work, eat, sleep, and read with unbelievanly little monetary gain. Living below the poverty line I can afford the essentials, including food and an apartment above a garage. This, of course, almost never includes clothing, traveling, and the general splendor of entertainment. I look at the peep view of my generation through my cohorts and find them all to be enitrely too well educated to work in delicatessens, restaurants, social services, and child care. Perhap we, like most who graduate or come of age in a time of economic recession or depression, will be all the more appreciatively ambitious once given the opportunity, or maybe we'll be another stint of sell-outs, working as corporate whores just to pay the bills and have a little fun from time to time. Corporate whoring has health benefits, right?