For a guy who's been so looking forward to quiet time spent in his new apartment, I'm not getting much of a respite from the world at large. I've been (happily) busy lately, so I haven't been able to spend a whole lot of time hanging at New Aerie with Truckstop.
This past weekend was a bit of a whirlwind... I paused for a moment to think about exactly what it was that I'd done, and couldn't remember any of it. I don't know if that's a sign of my advancing age, or what?
Some folks from work had planned to go out for drinks Friday after we'd all finished for the day, but my sore throat, which has been hanging on and bouncing back and forth between Eustachian Tubes since the beginning of February, was particularly annoying, and I was really run down. On top of that, I'd ridden my bike to work and all I could really think about was getting home and crashing on the sofa. So I blew my friends off and started on an adventure... or at least an odyssey... the likes of which I've not seen in quite a while. An Odyssey of self-exploration, mixed with about three-fourths of a bottle of wine. In my experience, this particular type of odyssey is usually mixed with some form of alcohol.
Anywho, I biked home uneventfully enough; the ride managed to re-energize me a bit, and left me restless once I got home. So after a nice long, hot bath and a change into fresh clothes, I realized that I was in a don't-wanna-go-out-don't-wanna-stay-in kind of mood. I didn't have any Netflix rentals lying around, so there was no TV watching on my horizon, so I decided to compromise with myself (and lemme tell you, that was a protracted negotiation... I'm obstinate!). Eventually, I settled on just going across Flatbush Avenue to Bistro St. Marks - the restaurant in the building where I used to live (you can see it by clicking on the photo to the right) - to have a single glass of wine and chat with the bartender, the lovely Paula, before retiring early.Ah, my friends. The best laid plans....
I was sitting and enjoying my glass of wine when these two girls came in and sat down at the bar next to me. They had a hard time deciding what they wanted to drink, and I shared my wine list with them. Well, we got to talking, exchanging politenesses, and they started telling me how the Bistro was one of the girls' sister's favorite restaurant in all the world. One thing led to another, we all relaxed and joked and talked for a while, until the girls whose sister loved the restaurant so much finally felt comfortable enough to reveal that she and her cousin (the other girl) were in town from Miami and Philadelphia respectively to clean out her sisters apartment, because her sister had passed suddenly at the beginning of February.
At first I had a sort of distanced sympathy that any stranger might, but as the conversation wore on and the girls went on about how great a person their sister/cousin was, and the tribulations she'd been through before she died, and where she'd come from, I got thoroughly caught up in their story. And then came the clincher: They told me just how this relatively young (she was 41) woman had died. She'd died of exactly the same thing that took my brother, Bill way back in the 70's. A brain aneurysm.
Needless to say, I'd found some soul mates and we ended up pretty drunk together. We closed the restaurant and talked about more subjects than I could ever recount. I ended up buying their drinks (not that they drank that much - we were all lightweights - but it's something, let's face it, I can't really afford to do), and then I sent them on their way and returned home and collapsed into bed.
I had some pretty weird dreams that involved Billy and my inability to keep up with him as he strode around our neighborhood... not, I suppose, surprising, since when he died I was 11 and he was 13 years older than me. I tossed and turned a lot, and all that movement is no doubt what convinced Truckstop that I was in the mood to play with him. He kept pouncing on my head all night.
Oddly, after meeting those two women, I'm a little more appreciative of Truckstop.
Saturday was a delight, 'cuz I got to spend the whole day with Kenny Bolden. He called in the morning and thankfully we agreed that we should meet around 3 p.m. for a showing of Monster. Wow. What a movie.I haven't been that uncomfortable watching a movie since, I think, Aliens. There's something about the way the filmmaker slowly ratchets up the tension and brings off the conclusion of Aileen Wuernos' story that's just almost too much to bear. I suppose the fact that I was pretty familiar with her story - having seen Ken's friend Dee Peltier do a play about her last year - didn't help my tension level, since I knew where the story was going. But by the time she killed her last victim, I was practically sick to my stomach watching it. Oy.
And, man. Kudos to Charlize Theron! Pretty amazing performance. There were some things about her version of Aileen that struck so dangerously close to home - things I see in members of my own family (not the crazy-serial-killer things, mind you) that just made me squirm from the moment her braggadocio started. Really a remarkable and unsettling film. Kenny put it well when he admitted to being very ambivalent about Aileen. He felt really, really sorry for the fact that she'd had such a horrifying childhood, but what, he asked, do you do with someone who pathologically kills like that?
Good question. Wish I had answers. I guess I've come to firmly believe that the State has no business using murder as a punishment for murder, and if it ever comes to it, I'd vote to abolish the death penalty, but in the meantime I'm hardly gonna sit here and tell victims' families that they don't have a right to want to see a killer die for taking a life.
Hard, hard questions.
Anyway, the rest of the day was a little more light-hearted.
I'd gotten a call from Topher in the morning asking if I was available to help him out with a favor. He needed to work on the second act of his play The Spectre Bridegroom, and wondered if I was available to come and read the first act with some folks. He'd planned on calling Kenny, but hadn't gotten him so I, knowing Kenny was kitty-sitting in Tribeca, volunteered us both to help out. Nice of me, no?
So we did that, which was fun, and afterward went with the gang of people Chris had gathered to his local diner for dinner. By the time we finished dinner it was getting pretty late, but Kenny and I decided to strike out on our own and see another movie. We settled on Twisted, with Ashley Judd. The previews had looked interesting, and I generally find her charming.
Well, let me tell you, friends: This movie blows snot. Charming actors forced to work on a script that just drips from its soaking in the cliché pool. And, man, talk about stilted dialogue?!? I'm thinking to myself, "Samuel L. Jackson did not just have to say that line!!!!" I was wrong, of course. Multiple times. Awful awful awful. And by the way, did I mention it was awful?
After brunch, I went back home and was a cleaning dervish! I mopped all the hardwood floors in my apartment, dusted, and generally straightened up (or, as we'd have said back in Pittsburgh, "redd-up" - which I believe is some sort of horrible bastardization of "ready the room"). It was nice to just sit back and contemplate the delightful, ordered environment that was my living space.
That night, I trooped over to Eric's apartment, where we watched the Academy Awards. Boy, talk about a blow-out! It sure didn't suck to be anyone associated with the Lord of the Rings, huh?
Actually, I thought the movie(s) was very deserving of all the praise that was lavished on it, but as much as I loved it, my subversive spirit would have liked to have seen a few upsets during the evening, especially in the acting categories, where LotR:RotK wasn't even nominated.
Not that I think any of the winners in those categories were undeserving. On the contrary, I thought they were all wonderful in their films. But we always know Tim Robbins and Sean Penn are gonna be great actors (well, okay, there was Howard the Duck and Shanghai Surprise), but when is Bill Murray ever going to have another shot at an Oscar like that again? His work has grown so much over the last few years, and his performance in Lost in Translation was so subtle and layered. I know he's getting a reputation as a much better actor than he was when he just did post-Saturday Night Live tacky comedies (Stripes?), but I'm not sure he's ever going to come across such a wonderfully fortuitous collision of script, director and actors as he had on this film. Ah well. Maybe I'll be proven wrong and he'll have another serious chance at it someday.
I have to believe there's hope for him... 'cuz in a roundabout sort of way, that means there's hope for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment