Catching Up 3 January 1999

12:35 PM: Now here's a funny coincidence: All through this vacation time, I've been outside in the daytime maybe 3, 4 times tops, and that usually during the last hour or two of it. Despite all well-laid plans I found that, when it came to it, leaving the house was a ledge I just couldn't get over. But, January 2 arrives - the first full day after all the holidays are dead and buried - and pop! I'm awake at 9 AM, out of the house by 10 to spend the entire day walking around outside, doing things and seeing people, buying and reading and movieing like a madman. Then home to fall right to sleep, and again this morning, repop! I wake up at 9, out of the house for breakfast and shopping. Although I forgot to buy laundry detergent but only Allah is perfect.

Curious, hmm? Wonder why.

What did you do in the war, Great-Uncle? I went to grade school*, thank god. Yesterday's marathon started with The Thin Red Line, and once again I am amazed that any of those guys came home even close to sane. I suppose, though, the ones that weren't so obviously bonkers that they were pulled out just mostly got killed. Cripes.

The movie itself, I liked greatly. It's a trance film. The seeing is all-important, and the music is perfect, a rare change for big-budget pictures. It's a movie-head movie. Analysis would shred it, so no accident that critics find themselves looking at tatters and aren't impressed. Does that mean that it's not a really great film? Sure. On its own terms, though, it works. Go see it on a really big screen, with good sound, and sit up front.

Movie #2 was Shakespeare in Love, and I loved it unreservedly. Didn't go in expecting to like either Joseph Fiennes or Gwyneth Paltrow particularly, and they were both superb. It's very funny, quite sad, and incredibly romantic, with almost no false notes or forced moments. Not easy. The only times I found myself out of sync were connected to a running gag concerning Christopher Marlowe. I can't really spell out why without stepping on a plotline, but I can say that as it turned out, my reactions weren't out of place in the end. I was surprised at the end to see that it had been co-written by Tom Stoppard. It makes sense, though. The touch of the author of the 5-minute Macbeth is all over it. And Judi Dench as Good Queen Bess kicks butt.

The plan was to then head out to A Simple Plan, but by the time I got there it was sold out. So I ended up at Life is Beautiful instead. This is the Robert Benigni film about a very silly man who winds up in a concentration camp with his boy, and tries to protect him by convincing him that it's all a big game. I know some people who are uncomfortable with the idea of a comedy about the Holocaust, and I understand that point of view. All I can say is that I thought it worked. For one thing, the first third or so of the film is just about the courtship of Benigni and his eventual bride, and that part is nothing but charming. It's hard to imagine it in any language except Italian. The syllables pour out of Benigni nonstop, but it's a relaxed, gentle kind of madness, never over that boundary that similarly manic actors in America routinely shoot through where it stops being funny and starts being tiresome. The anti-Mike Myers. And when it does get to the camp, it never makes light of the situation itself. The father is joking constantly, but it's no joke.

So, what else has been happening? Idiots from out of town came and messed up my city for New Year's Eve again. When we secede, the Drag Patrol will know how to handle these yahoos. I saw my friend Amelia, now of New York City but formerly a fellow refugee from Napa, back in those long ago days before punk rock and video games. That was fun. It makes perfect sense that I, the space nut, ended up working for a magazine while she, the journalist, worked for NASA for years. She's straightened that out at least, and is at Prentice Hall, formerly of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, now at some other Jersey colony whose name escapes me. She was very excited to see The Bar, so frequently mentioned in this humbl jrnl. Now I'm going to have to be consistent in my geography, though, dang it.

Um, let's see... otherwise, I've just been reading and hiding. Tomorrow is back to the grind. We'll see how it goes.

And I still haven't heard that Prince song. The waiting is killing me.

* That's the Vietnam War I'm talking about, you young punks. I'm not that old. Yet.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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