Resigned to the unhappy reality that I may never again enjoy a weekend freely enough to attend a midnight screening of The Room at the Music Box Theatre, I finally relented and rented the thing on digital video disc (from Odd Obsession [this Friday {which was my birthday!}]). I watched it at my friend Robyn's last night.

Can I just say: WOW.

Robyn's DVD player is really cheap, and there's no remote control for it, and at first we were disappointed because we couldn't shut off the subtitles.

Can I just also say: WOW. PLZ WATCH WITH SUBTITLES.

The great thing about the subtitles is, the lovemaking R&B soundtrack is ALSO subtitled, and if you aren't paying attention to the lyrics, whooboy, are you ever missing out.

The movie gave me a giddy sort of schadenfreude, but I want to explain that here I mean a kind of delight that was not at all malicious or ill-tempered. It was a little bit like watching a movie made by children -- insolent ones, though, but well-meaning. I agree with my friend Garrett that something about the movie is exhilaratingly wild and pure, like naive art, so that in the end it is really perfect and beautiful, and also terrible.

I also love that Mark's beard grows three thousand times its original size from one day to the next, and that nobody ever goes to work, but we know either Johnny or Lisa is in the "competitive computer business," and that whenever someone asks another character a worthwhile question, the other will reply, "Don't worry about it," "I don't want to talk about it," or "You plan too much!" And then the querent will say, "But you were the one who brought it up!" which is fantastic because it's like the movie is basking in its own writerly failings and uncertainty.

Oh, gosh, I want to say so much more about this movie.