one thing today

my annual dream account  In real life , for many years, I would lose shirts and sweaters and scarves and other clothes items at work. I suspected a support person of mine - who thought I should be supporting him. A dream last night. I accompany my mother to an event that takes place in a convention hall in New Jersey that was transformed into a faux beach. We have to remove our shoes. When it's time to leave, I can't find my shoes and notice a man following me. He tries to not be seen. I confront him and ask why he's following me. He points to a wall and says ... don't you remember what happened right over there. I tell him I've never been in the place before - that he's wrong about whatever he's talking about. I ask him ... is that why you stole my shoes? He throws me a pair of black shoes and says ... try these on ... I do. They are much too big on me. He's knows he's been wrong all along.

  A friend of mine told me she had a good kiss with a new maybe. She says she likes him because, among other things, "He does something you do.  When we walk across the street together, you always take my arm. "

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, too.  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...

... downright deplorable - the thing they  have in common. My mother was a stickler for good grammar. She drilled it into her half dozen kids for more than a dozen years. It took. And now when people say me and Mary instead of Mary and I - nails on a blackboard .    I'm officially an old nutty who-cares-what-I-think man with too much time on my paws.  but Richard Hell ... aka Richard Hell and the Voidoids and a great book lover/ writer who wrote the best sex scene I ever read in his novel Go Now ...  and Al Pacino , a great actor and lover of words and language ... and Michelle O Bama , well, she's Michelle O Bama ...  and Robin Roberts mega millionaire anchor of a national news show ...  I've recently heard them fuck up with the me and Mary thing and its hard to believe these achieved people do it and I think its a shame and indicative of the overall fall of American civilization right word.  just writin'. have a good day.

  A small but obviously dedicated group of realists has forged artistry, anger and some horrible truths into "On the Waterfront," as violent and indelible a film record of man's inhumanity to man as has come to light this year. And, while the explosive indictment of the vultures and the meek prey of the docksides, which was unveiled at the Astor yesterday, occasionally is only surface dramatization and an oversimplification of the personalities and evils of our waterfront, it is, nevertheless, an uncommonly powerful, exciting and imaginative use of the screen by gifted professionals. Although journalism and television already have made the brutal feudalism of the wharves a part of current history, "On the Waterfront" adds a graphic dimension to these sordid pages. Credit for this achievement cannot be relegated to a specific few. Scenarist Budd Schulberg, who, since 1949, has lived with the story stemming from Malcolm Johnson's crusading newspaper articles; ...

Life is and: the accidental and the immutable, the elusive and the graspable, the bizarre and the predictable, the actual and the potential, all the multiplying realities, entangled, overlapping, colliding, conjoined - plus the multiplying illusions. This time this time this time this ... Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?                                                   -Philip Roth, The Counterlife

  I wish I could tell my dad I changed my mind about John Wayne. He was his favorite actor and I told him he was horrible. In Stagecoach he's as beautiful as Claire Trevor/Stella Dallas, the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold who takes care of the newborn baby and has a great updo and tailored plaid dress and gives Wayne a rifle when he most needs it. The music is great, Monument Valley is great ... those things - I have to look up what they're called - those mountains with flat tops ***   - they're beautiful, too. I saw them when my friends and I drove from Flagstaff to Telluride for the film festival. We did it a few times - the last - in 1995. I love Andy Devines raspy, screechy voice. And all the fab closeups of fab faces. What a great movie. Watch it. You'll see. * ** Buttes are isolated, steep-sided, flat-topped towers of rock formed by the erosion of mesas or plateaus . They are taller than they are wide. They're protected by a hard top layer called ca...

Maybe it was the time of day, the light, my mood ... but so many people in the park yesterday looked cool and wonderful and so very much their very only stylin' selves.