Finals are over. I have to beg and plead w/a professor to try to get into a history class for next semester. Probably won't have any luck but, what can you do. So I watched "Eternal Sunshine" a few weeks ago. It was interesting. Not bad. Most critics loved it, and rightfully so. My biggest problem was that it was formulaic. What I mean by that is the fact that Charlie Kaufman pretty much followed the template in the creation of his characters. Jim Carrey, playing against type, was a buttoned-down shy type. Kate Winslet (so hot!) played the free-spirit. That was what I meant by somewhat formulaic. This matching of the uptight male/carefree female is a universal cinematic archetype. It is an inversion on the proper female/roguish male set-up. You see it in everything from "Pretty In Pink" to "Something Wonderful". These are just two examples, but you get the point. I must admit some fascination with this though. I wouldn't say that I am like the Carrey character, but I am not exactly the extroverted life-of-the-party. I can't imagine what it would be like to be with a girl like that. That sense of whimsy and joy. Remarkable. 
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I still haven't had the good fortune to see Ralph Stanley in person. I suppose I don't have much longer if I want to, unfortunately. Oh! to have been all grown up thirty years ago! I hear he doesn't play banjo anymore, which is understandable considering he's about 100, but he still hits those outrageous tenors in his old-man voice. I think he always had an old man voice.
Bill Monroe is certainly the guy as far as bluegrass goes, but, for me, I can't get enough of the Country Gentlemen. I wouldn't say they were pioneers, neccessarily, like Stanley and Monroe, and they aren't always instrumentally tight, but their harmonies are just fuckin' rock solid. They always chose really cool and interesting songs, too, not all heartache and misery (although there is a considerable amount of that as well).
Anyhow, thanks.