Your mom puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?

Last two nights, functionally without sleep. Meh.

This afternoon I watched Real Genius (1985) with rushthatspeaks for the first time since a party in high school when I suspect I read through most of it, because all I remembered was a couple of lines and the house exploding with popcorn. It is an actual science fiction comedy. It has repartee as fast as screwball and with the same deadpan slant sensibility. ("I want to see more of you around the lab."—"Fine. I'll gain weight.") The plot is not idiot and the plans aren't foolproof. I love how the name "Pacific Tech" is mentioned exactly once near the beginning of the film and then gotten out of the way so that it won't distract from the viewer's observation of Caltech architecture and graffiti. But what I really love, and I suspect the reason the movie has the cult following it does, is that unlike almost every other movie with brilliant characters, no matter how socially skilled or maladept, it never undercuts them. What's at issue is the protagonists' ability to evolve an awareness of contexts and applications to go with their pure research, which is one hundred percent differentiated from socially normative behavior. There are no apologies or excuses made for Jordan and her breathless, sleepless, hyperkinetic intensity; her technical competence is apparently unlimited (absentminded knitting is one thing, late-night floor-sanding is another, on-the-fly dentistry is something else again) and her romance with Mitch is incredibly sweet and doesn't require any alterations to either of their personalities. They bond over beta-testing her rebreather at a pool party. Mitch himself is a believable fifteen-year-old, shy and studious as he enters CalPacific Tech, but not the point of caricature—of course his emotional maturity isn't as far along as his intellect, but he still knows to flee from the woman who's been collecting the top ten minds in America. I adore Chris' habit of identifying his defense mechanisms ("It's yet another in a long series of diversions in an attempt to avoid responsibility") and then cheerfully continuing with them, partly because it's an early tip to the way in which his situation will blindside him—even knowing the cautionary tale of Lazlo and having dedicated himself to trolling the concept of higher education in general, he's still never stopped to wonder what anyone wants a five-megawatt laser for—but partly because it is just a lovely defining trait: even when he wises up, he doesn't stop being a wiseass. And Ick is a guy with perfectly normal social skills who just happens to be able to make instantly sublimating ice that probably won't explode. Even the villain isn't stupid. Hathaway could have averted the students' entire revenge if his ego had allowed him to admit to a problem, but to call the test off on suspicion of tampering is more challenge to his authority than he can tolerate. And so the spectacular finale. It is always a pleasure to see a movie or read a book that's actually as smart as its characters; Real Genius' title means it.

For dinner tonight, derspatchel and I made: steaks with two different kinds of dry rub, rare-seared in the skillet; creamed spinach with garlic and Dubliner cheese; baked potatoes with two more kinds of cheese; and apple pie with maple syrup and cinnamon sugar glazed on top. All items from scratch except for the spinach, which came already sautéed with garlic, and the pie crust, which we bought from the healthy crunchy aisle at Shaw's. Did we just accidentally celebrate Thanksgiving? Canadian Thanksgiving? Help?

Is it over? Is it over? Baby, it is over

1. My poem "Exauguratio" is now online at Goblin Fruit. I consider it an anti-ghost poem; it was written in January following a comment by ashlyme: "I'm making one rule: no more dead boyfriends . . . No genius loci either." The title is the Roman term for the removal of a god from its temple or other sacred ground, differing from evocatio in that the latter is a ritual of assimilation (and warfare) while exauguratio is more akin to deconsecration or exorcism. Once cleared, the site can be dedicated to another god or returned to secular space, but the initial inauguratio must first be revoked. What happens to the god afterward, unless it has been provided with another home elsewhere, I don't know. Legendarily, when Tarquin the fifth king of Rome built the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline, the ancient gods Terminus and Juventas refused to be displaced by exauguratio and were incorporated into the new site, adding their strength to the foundations and their guardianship to Rome's future: youth and the maintenance of boundaries. They're the only cases I can think of. (And in any case, the temple no longer stands.)

2. Last February after my first 'Thon, I wrote about Dimensions:

The find of the festival for me was Sloane U'Ren's Dimensions: A Line, a Loop, a Tangle of Threads (2011), about which I would actually wish to write when I'm conscious. Last night turned out to have been its North American premiere; I am praying it gets a proper release, but until then: if it screens anywhere near you, see it. It is probably the softest-spoken and most intelligent treatment of a science fiction trope I have seen since Primer (2004). It also makes real use of Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, not just the popular glosses. The setting is Cambridge University in the 1920's and '30's. The attention to both objective period detail and the way that memories warp and flare with grief or nostalgia is astonishing; the invented technology does not look like a contemporary design given a quick crystal-radio polish, but genuinely of its time (and its designer's idiosyncrasies) and therefore not instantly easy for the modern viewer to parse, unless you know something about vacuum tubes and Leyden jars and jangly Edwardian upright pianos. The script is spare, suggestive, full of questions, and I would only change two lines of it—they stick out because the film otherwise explains almost nothing about itself. There is always action you're not seeing. We had a theory afterward as to why.

I never got around to writing the film up more fully, but it now has a very handsome trailer heralding its upcoming release in various formats. I'd have loved to see it playing arthouse theaters, but I'm going to order the DVD no matter what. I'd read short stories like it, but never seen another film.

3. I can't bilocate, so I won't be seeing Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling tonight at T.T. the Bear's Place, because I'll be seeing Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965) at the Somerville with derspatchel and rushthatspeaks, but interested parties should know about the former.

I must sign up for Arisia programming before this weekend is over. I have a writing deadline on Sunday as well. It would be nice to sleep somewhere in here, too.