One of the best movies from recent years -- and we can quibble about it -- is "Waitress," where Keri Russell takes a turn as a pie-maker who hates her husband. She's a character who fulfills herself in the creative pies that she concocts in her head -- rummaging through all of her daily atrocities involving the man waiting for her at home who's trapped her into an unloving life to find the ingredients, all meaningful ones. The way that everything fits together in her pies is telling and graphic, allowing all of her pains to be expressed through the sugar and the fillings. It's one way to dispel aggression and general sadness. There are others out there. Rhett Miller, in this short story that he wrote for an issue of the beloved McSweeney's, hates his husband too. He takes the women's perspective in an abusive relationship and vows that he's willing to bust the husband's head in with a "fucking" rolling pin. It would do the job. He's relatable and detailed in the same ways that Russell was in "Waitress." It's exactly the way the man makes music, on his own and with his old/still new band The Old 97's -- which just released Blame It On Gravity, a record that deals with so many people dealing with each other the best way they can and giving us the cribbed notes in that typically Old 97s alternative country stride.
"Old 97s Official Site":http://www.old97s.com
"New West Records":http://www.newwestrecords.com