one thing today

I am about to begin a portrait of my friend Lise's son, Luca. I have known him since he was born. He's 22 now. A handsome lad. Kind of looks like Gainsborough's Blue Boy. The slender cheeks and lean, wide smile and intelligent, seeking eyes. A quiet way. I hope it turns out good. That's what he deserves. If I really like it I will give it to Lise. We shall see. Maybe you'll see.  Sometimes God comes so quickly.                                                                                               Blanche Dubois

I'm gonna start a regular post ... maybe weekly ...   its hard to believe ... hard to believe what people say and do or don't say or don't do or know. it hits me hard more and more lately, almost daily.  the other evening in my playwrights group, a full grown grown up man, round 40 I'd say ... I ask him if he's ever read Portnoys Complaint ... he says no ... he's never heard of it and he's never heard of Philip Roth   ... and this is an educated, city guy actor who thinks he knows what he's doing and whats been going on.  I tell him he's written 30 books or so ... and he's maybe/arguably the pre-eminent American novelist of the last gone century ... lots of movies made from his work ... up there with Updike and Bellows re: the novel king of kings.  might be me ... but hard to believe.  I  was in the country with friends one weekend a long, long time ago and With a Little Help From My Friends came on the radio.  and a guy said wow, that's ki...

I love good design. Especially small, quotidian things ... pencil sharpeners, bags, lighting, writing pads, packaging. Speaking of ... here's an eye catching cool container that makes me want to transform it into something that'll stick around my apartment for a while. The cookies they hold are French. Found them at Trader Joes. Tasty cool look, huh?

It's hard to make a faultless, perfect movie. Take Moonstruck for example. Pretty close - but after Johnny tells Loretta that he can't marry her and she throws the ring at him and Ronnie then proposes ... they cut to Johnny on his knees and he's does a too fast and faux surprised kneel up straight and it becomes a situation tv comedy moment for a moment.  I know. slow news day.

Flannery O'Conor was living in New York City when Mighty Joe Young was released in 1949. She borrowed aspects of its campaign for her novel Wise Blood. Specifically, she based Gonga the Gorilla off of the campaign's use of men in gorilla suits. Also in the novel, the character Enoch Emery watches a film in which an orangutan rescues children from a burning orphanage, reminiscent of Mighty Joe Young .

I've stopped into Saint Francis a few times lately. It's beautiful inside - with good lighting and high lavishly plastered cream colored walls, a lot of gold stuff, old wood, stations of the cross. And I am amazed at how many men are in the church. When I was a kid, there was just a very small, old, stooped lady of course in black who spent most of her days cleaning the candle stands where people lit candles for their  faithfully departed and those people of theirs who are still breathing and need some kind of physical or mental uplift. But from what I notice now, there are more men in attendance than women. And they are not old, which is just as much a surprise as the fact that they are men.  This afternoon, I was sitting in a pew reading Portnoys Complaint for the second time - the first in college - writing a paper on it and receiving an A but only outrage from my father who was paying the tab for my getting him good.  So I am in church today and in walk two of the mos...