Weekend

I want everyone to notice how right I was on my Golden Globe ™ predictions, except for the ones I got wrong or couldn’t bring myself to care about. I have to give the HFP some credit though, I don’t think the first award was handed out until after 8pm and they still ended at 11pm more or less on the dot. Take that four hour plus Oscars ™.

I went to the weekly staff meeting this morning.

How was your weekend? Did you have a good time?

I didn’t go to the mall or check out the flea market or even do any substantive house cleaning. I wasn’t totally useless, I did do laundry and emptied and filled the dishwasher and walked the dog and colored my hair. I spent a lot of time watching DVDs.

I haven’t rented anything in a while. When did it get so expensive? And when did Blockbuster ™ decide they needed even fewer movies in their stores? I was just taken aback by how shallow the selections were at both stores I ended up renting from – and before you suggest some crunchy, high minded, "peace and brotherhood", independent DVD rental place, I should tell you that those self same crunchy, high minded, "peace and brotherhood" indy places don't locate in the ‘hood and the two video stores I use, I have to drive out of my neighborhood to get to. I guess in the ‘hood we’re supposed to keep ourselves occupied taping incidents of police brutality and probably entertain ourselves watching tapes of our last home invasion outing.

Whatever.

I watched Empire Records again. I think I didn’t see it at the time (1995) because the cast was too young and I wouldn’t have gone to see a movie with even a whiff of high school kid angst when it came out, as I was still suffering from a John Hughes induced High School angst hang over, which is a shame because I think I would have liked it. I never saw The Craft either, for the same reason, but I still haven’t seen it and Gawd knows, if it came out more than three years ago Block Buster ™ isn’t going to have it so it might as well be lost to the ages now.

I also watched an Australian production that turned out to be A Serious Film About The Politics of Marriage and Infidelity with a bad case of Altman envy. It didn't help that through the entire movie it was over cast or raining and no one ever smiled. It was like watching a Bergman film with fewer Norwegians and more shrimp on the barby.

My Mother called me to point out there was a story in the paper about the son of a neighbor, whose death just went from being classified as the death of an unworthy dead drug addict to that of being the death of a worthy homicide victim. When he was just a homeless drug addict found down in a yard they assumed he fell from the roof – cause ya know, why bother finding out what really happened.

From the story in the paper:

Chavis was found at 8 p.m. Aug. 26 in the back yard of 716 1/2 E. Martin St., bleeding from head wounds. Unsure whether an assailant attacked Chavis or whether he fell, Raleigh officers began investigating the incident as an aggravated assault, said Jim Sughrue, spokesman for the Raleigh Police Department. They learned from a surgeon who operated on Chavis that he had been struck in the head with a sharp object, possibly an axe or machete.

Oddly, not a fall, he didn't do it to himself. Hmmm. He died on October 5.

The death was ruled a homicide because the initial attack left him with a severely fractured skull, according to his autopsy. Detectives from the city's homicide unit picked up the case. One of the first things they did was to search for a weapon, which wasn't done during the five weeks of the initial investigation (GOD!! if he were in their eyes a more upstanding citizen, would they have actually done their job? would he have been a victim in need of justice? Would they have checked for weapons and thoroughly investigated what happened if he had been more like me and less like him? aren't we all worth the effort?) when they retunred to the scene they recovered an iron bar, 2.5-inch nail, metal vise-grip, axe, axe head, sledgehammer, lawn mower blade and aluminum baseball bat were seized from the Martin Street house, according to a police search warrant recently made public.

Walter Chavis Jr., 57, has a distinction: He was the only person killed in Raleigh last year whose murder remains unsolved.

Later my best friend from home called first to tell me her mother was dieing and later to tell me she had died.

"I had a good weekend".