harold pinter dies
Nobel laureate and celebrated British dramatist Harold Pinter has passed away at seventy-eight. (thanks to Beth in Roanoke)
movies i liked
Here are ten films I saw this year that I recommend:
- The Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson. A surprisingly effective look at the travels of three quirky brothers to find their mom in India.
- Michael Clayton. Tony Gilroy. Tense thriller about a legal fixer who makes bad things go away and gets involved with an agri-business giant who want a lawsuit go away.
- The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Jeff Feuerzeig. Documentary on the talented but disturbed singer-songwriter and artist.
- Juno. Jason Reitman. Sixteen-year-old Juno is pregnant and she decides to give up the baby to a loving couple.
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Julian Schnabel. A man with locked-in syndrome tries to tell his story.
- Caramel. Nadine Labaki. Sweet film chronicling the lives of four women working in a Beirut beauty parlor and the neighboring tailor and her mother, the crazy Lili—that actress Azeeza Semaan, should have won some award or other.
- Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Erik Canuel. An Anglo cop and a Quebecoir cop get involved in a series of horrific murders involving hockey owners.
- Under the Same Moon. Patricia Riggen. A resourceful Mexican boy heads for America to find his mom in LA when his grandmother dies.
- The Band’s Visit. Eran Kolirin. A police orchestra arrives in the wrong Israeli desert town for a concert and is welcomed with unexpected hospitality. Great performance by Sasson Gabai as the leader of the band.
- Taxi to the Dark Side. Alex Gibney. Documentary of the systematic torture of American war prisoners.
Number eleven, of course, would be To Live and Die in Dixie by John Philbin.
hot links
Some book recommendations from me. And a link to Requiem, Mass.
found story, day two
I did not find the photograph of Keysha and our incarcerated correspondant, but I did find the envelope! Pito's real name is Prince Bingham, and he is an inmate at the Watertown Correctional Facility in New York. I Googled his name and found two Prince B's in trouble with the law. The first Prince was arrested in Hanover, Jamaica, for throwing stones at his neighbor's house. He pled guilty, but explained in court: "Mi and har don't talk and she always a see mi and a throw har word. I was going to a show wit a friend dat day and she si mi an call out to mi and den she throw some substance out of a chimney and sey: 'teck day bway." I get ignorant and I throw a stone and it bounce, snd through di winda balde neva screw up it slide out, Your Honour. Your Honour, I decide to fix it back."
As much as I'd like to believe he was our Prince, I think it's more likely that the Bronx Prince arrested outside Rochester, New York, is our man. He was caught buying video game systems with fake credit cards and bogus drivers licenses. One of the stores he robbed was in Irondiquoit, where Cindy's from. Anyway, Prince pled guilty and testified against his accomplice, which may explain his jailhouse anxieties. he's twenty-eight, which seems a little young for all his ailments.
happy birthday, keef
Keef is sixty-five. If he can do it, so can we!
wife shoots hubby
Today's short story waiting to be written.
found stories
Today on my walk I found two pieces of writing. The first is a page ripped out of an address book--the letter J, no addresses on either side, but a color photo of catamaran sailboats on a beach. On the reverse side, just the words "laxative effect" in red ink.
The second is a three-page handwritten letter in rather elegant script, full of capitalized letters and flourishes but with shaky spelling and frequent usage errors. The letter begins "Salutations Eric" and thanks Eric for a recent gift of money and hopes that God (underlined four times) will "Keep You Under His Wings Of protection." Eric, we learn, was unable to attend the writer's (his cousin) mom's wake. We also learn the writer recently married Keysha. He asks Eric to keep what he is to say a secret. The reason for this letter is that no one in the family can accept collect calls and this is his only way to make contact.
The writer, Pito (it looks like, maybe Dito), is in dire physical straits: "My kidneys Are Failing which can collaps in Any given moment . . . I also have a weak Heart and my Eyesight Is So Bad that I'm Literely blind . . . I have no Apitite to eat to the point that I'll go 4 to 5 Days Without Eating . . . And this Cancer is Spreading throughout my body . . . " Not surpisingly, we learn that Pito is suicidal.
And he needs help with another issue, but he doesn't want to hit up Eric again, so he asks Eric to tell Chunkey that he needs "$340 Dollors." But he then addresses Eric again, dropping the whole Chunkey pretense: "This is my first time in a long time I've Communicated with you and now i'm asking TO get me out of a Life or Death Situation once again . . ." He refers to an enclosed photo (which I did not find, but will look for tomorrow) of he and Keysha.
"And if anything happens to me through the hands of another prisoner or By my hands, always remember that your Big Fuck up Cousin loves you and we'll see eachother On the other side. . . And please don't think of me as a Weak man Cause I'm not, I'm just tired of Breathing . . ." and he signs off: "With Blood in My Eyes."
Whew!I found each page of the letter separately, each about twenty feet beyond the previous.Tossed out a car window?By Eric? Were there more pages?
Later on in the walk along the Intracoastal, I suddenly caught this overpowering smell of patchouli. I turned but no one was there or even close by! No, it was not an olfactory flashback. About five paces after that I saw a dead Eurasian collared dove dead on the grass. Looked like a little damage had been done to the neck--but no missing feathers, so probably not a hawk. Was he, like Pito, just tired of breathing?
ain't no sunshine
I've always suspected that the iPod shuffle function did not operate randomly, but how it worked I had no idea. Today, as I drove back from lunch at Les Halles in Coral Gables, my iPod played three versions of "Ain't No Sunshine" in a row! First by Bill Withers, then by Eva Cassidy, and then by Bobby "Blue" Bland. And then, since I had no other version of the song, the iPod went looking for the colloquial contraction and found another "ain't" with Aaron Neville's version of "Ain't No Way" written by Aretha and Carolyn Franklin. By then I was home. When I turn the iPod back on I expect I'll hear Tom Waits "Ain't Goin' Down to the Well" or Daniel Johnson's "Ain't No Woman Gonna Make a George Jones Outta Me." I'll let you know. Meanwhile here's Bill Withers:
gas
There’s an Edward Hopper print on the wall above the popcorn cart. Gas. He’s not a mechanic this slight man in vest and tie, bald as a Binghamton poet. Proprietor, more likely, checking the sales’ figures on these tall red pumps. Triangles of adamant light spill from the neat clapboard filling station onto the driving lanes. Across the narrow blacktop road a sandy ditch and a wave of palomino-colored grass lapping at the trunks of mute and glorious fir trees. The lighted sign above the station advertises Mobilgas. Pegasus seems about to leap the trees. Pegasus, the winged horse sprung from the blood of the slain Medusa. Pegasus, who opened the fountains of Hippocrene with a kick of his mighty hoof. Le cheval volant, Pegasus, chez les narines des feu! Pegasus, steed of the Muses, always at the service of poets, poets like Hokey Mokey, love’s self-appointed watchman, and like us kids on O’Connell Street in Requiem, Mass., when we would walk by Jolicoeur’s Mobil station and scream at the top of our unpuddled lungs, Up your ass with Mobilgas!
In a moment, the proprietor will take in those cans of motor oil, stack them by the windshield-wiper display, will cut the lights on the sign and in the station, will lock the door. He’ll drive home. He lives alone. His house is cozy, neat, but unadorned. He’ll fry eggs and bologna, listen to the radio as he eats, listen for the news from Europe where the Germans have claimed the Sudetenland. He’ll save the milk he has not finished. He’ll wash the dish, the fry pan, the glass, the fork, and the knife. He’ll read a book in the living room. Zane Gray. The bartender announces last call, tells me she has to be at her day job at seven. She’s an LPN at a convalescent home. I walk back to Room 128.
--from Requiem, Mass.
kerouac and burroughs
The Guardian's "Digested Read" of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
how to write the perfect disaster movie
In ten simple steps! (thanks to Richard in Coral Springs)
land of lincoln
Three recent Illinois governors have served jail time recently. Not only is Florida looking good, but the felonious-gubernatorial superfecta is now in play.
the woman of the house
A new William Trevor story in the New Yorker.
stand by me
John Lennon October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980
a hero of sorts
A new flash fiction from Merle Drown.
