I fortunately got to see it last week since I won't be in town for the AFS screening. It's definitely something that needs to be seen at least twice, if not three times, to make some sense of. But even then, I suspect it would only make emotional, intuitive sense rather than logical sense. Lynch is perhaps the only filmmaker out there who can successfully recreate dream logic.

i'm dying to see it a third time. i think it still crosses my mind at least once a day..

Right there with you, Bryan. Trying to lay a rational explanation atop a movie like this is like confining it to a tiny cardboard box. It works best on that emotional gut level. This film forms a sort of Russian-doll trilogy with Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway; each one is like a dream of its predecessor, and with each generation the logic of reality grows more diffuse. You can sort of imagine whoever the lead character of Inland Empire is watching Mulholland Drive and then falling asleep and then dreaming up this new movie.