Candy II. Revenge. Stranger Song. God Bless Christina Ricci. The Mayor of Simpleton. Golding Knows. Links.

--After class there is a bag of candy at my office door. It is not just candy, but Laffy Taffy. And not just Laffy Taffy, but banana flavored.

My favorite.

There are the kinds of people that learn those things about you. And they want to make you smile.

I am teaching myself not to be afraid of gifts. I’m teaching myself not to always assume that a gift is a bill in advance. I am teaching myself not to say “no thanks”, but simply “thanks”.

Thanks.


--I remember a girl, MJ, who kept a bowl of Jelly Bellies in her basement apartment. It was a small bowl. That made them seem more precious. She burned candles in that apartment and it was always warm. This was at the beginning of winter and I spent nights with her.

When I first started I was really first starting to understand what boy and girl together meant. I don’t mean the idea of fucking, but the idea of crawling together into the cave and lighting the fire and shoring up against the world.

There Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song”
“…And then leaning on your window sill he'll say one day you caused his will to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter And then taking from his wallet an old schedule of trains, he'll say I told you when I came I was a stranger…”

Of course, the point to the song is captured not in those lines but in those that follow.

“…You tell him to come in sit down but something makes you turn around The door is open you can't close your shelter You try the handle of the road It opens do not be afraid It's you my love, you who are the stranger It's you my love, you who are the stranger.”

--My experience with women has been that they always give up one step too early. They turn at that last possible moment.

During that final fit of bucking.

In that darkness before dawn.

When I am near ready for surrender.

--And should I hold it against them?
I do.
I plot my revenge.
My revenge will be to live sweet, to hold one like them in the way they wanted finally to be held, to demonstrate some reward for perseverance, to suggest that I am capable of the acts of the man they once thought I was.


--Watch Last Tango in Paris.
See how we stumble around on the balcony.

--Watched Sleepy Hollow. I’ve not admired Burton as much as other people seem to, a director more concerned with set than character, with Elfman than performer. And this film has been especially annoying to me as it is a complete corruption of the original tale and the cartoon, both of which have held places of fondness in my heart this time of year.

But I’ve accidentally seen Sleepy Hollow three or four times now, so that it has taken on some kind of momentum and now seems to carry nostalgic value for me.

I watch it this time of year.

Depp proves himself adept at playing a different kind of dandy than that one he played in Pirates (reportedly he based his Icahbod on Withnail from Withnail and I—and excellent film).
I don’t know if either performance really requires one to actact, or if it just that Depp masters a series of mannerisms, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And Christina Ricci is miscast. In fact, she has almost always been miscast. Which it to say that after Wednesday Adams, people wanted, for some reason, to do something with her, but nobody but Vincent Gallo ever did.

Perhaps they tried to make her a star because she is that she is that odd combination of the grotesque and the angelic.

I never know how I feel about her, but invariably if I’m watching her on screen I get the urge to see her naked.

Too bad she didn’t make it into Brown Bunny.

--Mayor Menino of Boston responded to the death of a 21 year old student of journalism at Emerson University—she was hit in the eye with a device meant to explode and spread pepper spray—by declaring that liquor may be banned during and after the World Series games. “Since people won’t accept responsibility, I, as mayor, will take it into my own hands.”

There is a certain sort of self-congratulatory smugness to that statement that makes you want to—I don’t know—slap Menino or something.

But I suppose that would be illegal.

Anyway, good luck controlling chaos, Menino.

I’m sure that now you’ve taken it into your own hands, as mayor, the people of Boston can rest assured. It’s a shame you didn’t do take responsibility before somebody died.

--What is it that makes fans riot? That makes celebration ugly?

How does it happen that the people—most of them sane and happy—are one side and the police on the other?

-- William Goldman, Lord of the Flies. “The tears begin to flow and sobs shook him…great shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body…Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”


--this looks like an interesting short film: dollysdog.com

--interesting blogs:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/4803951 (Val Ransopher’s blog)
http://artsydiva.blogspot.com
http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=jmm4648
http://jmm4648.blogspot.com
http://meincentralasia.blogspot.com/
http://noorster.blogspot.com/