"No one gets left behind! No one gets left behind!"

I woke up at the ridiculously early hour of 6:30 PST today; apparently, my subconscious is aware of the fact that I'm leaving Seattle soon and should be awake for what's left of my stay. I'm sitting on my front porch, on a crumbling couch, and my toes are cold because I'm wearing flip-flops and its only 58 degrees outside.

This week is all about tying loose ends: finishing projects at work, saying good-byes, and lots of packing and cleaning. Last night, I caught up with my two friends, Tisha and Andy, who were the only people I knew in Seattle when I first arrived. Despite years living on the west coast, Tisha had somehow never tried Vietnamese Pho, a dish that I associate with Seattle as much as Starbucks coffee. For those of you who also have never tasted this steaming bowl of heaven, Pho is a traditional noodle and meat soup and filled with fresh basil leaves, bean sprouts, chili peppers, and a squirt of lime. And it's ridiculously cheap too. There is something about plucking and adding your own basil leaves, trying to coordinate the soup spoon in your left hand with the chopsticks in your right, and choking on a pepper but being unable to open your mouth
because you'd spray soup over everyone, that makes eating pho a rich process and experience.


We'd been meaning to see the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" all summer, having laughed hysterically at the trailer way back in June. We caught the 9:45 showing at the Guild 45th Theatre in Wallingford, though having arrived at 8:30, we passed the next hour at Murphy's Pub.

This movie is perhaps, the most funny and intelligent film I've seen in a very long time. Perhaps I'm drawn to the road-trip, coming-of-age genre, but I think it's something more. The directors and cast showed absolute control over their craft...like comedians with impeccable timing for their punchlines. It reminded me of graphic designers who utilize the "white space" as a design element; they control the pauses and empty space so that the content becomes stronger than if the page had been stuffed with text and images. The film is filled with absolute absurdity bordering on slapstick, but done so masterfully, that the ridiculousness becomes believable. For example, early in the movie, their van's clutch breaks, and rather than wait for a part (because they'd be late for the daughter's creepy beauty pageant), they learn that the clutch is really not needed for 3rd and 4th gear, provided they push the car until it reaches sufficient speed, or they roll it down a small hill. The brilliance in the plot is that each crazy obstacle is solved with an even crazier solution. It's this unpredictability that keeps the audience engaged and applauding after each scene.

I can't recommend this film enough. Please see it.

"The only losers are the ones so afraid of winning that they don't even try"
-Grandpa to Olive in "Little Miss Sunshine"