November 05, 2002
All or Nothing
When you are feeling low and unloved in the universe there are smarter things to do on a crisp autumn night than to go see the new Mike Leigh Film, All or Nothing, at the Angelica. Eating popcorn won't make it any easier; bringing your own red vines won't ease the rigors of it. You might as well get a wool blanket, cover the edges with rocks and lie out under it in the rain -- mumble sad songs to yourself.
But if you can make it though the first half of the movie -- stomach the grubby council flats and the characters who wander around in a sad, pre-Prozac torpor -- to the moment somewhere in the middle where they all start holding one another, you will be happy you did it. And when the cab driver shows up to the hospital with his wife and a batch of bananas, you will see as clearly as is possible in film what it is to be happy in this world.
As of Halloween last week I've been in New York for three years, which is longer than I thought I'd make it. We came in on Halloween night and drove through the Greenwich Village parade in a cab and I leaned my forehead against the cold glass and watched the goblins and Pokemans spring by. The driver told us that he had just picked up the pilots of an airplane that crashed that night at JFK, which was, I think, his attempt at telling a ghost story. Unfortunately the girl I moved here with was terrified of flying. The rest of our relationship would be punctuated by problems brought on by flight, ending two years later in September when everything fell away from us, long distance, over a buzzing international line. At the time I was on the couch and starting at the sound of cars in the distance; it was tough to find the right things to say.
But I still love Halloween in New York. This year I went to a party hosted by a group of people who work in and around the comic book industry. There were seven Crows there. Seven. They all stood in a circle in the yard and talked Crow business for most of the night. Everyone was nice, and they punctuated their conversations with pows and booms, like when you were a kid drawing a battlefield making the sounds of explosions to help the picture along.
This is a weblog post, I know. I'm sorry. I promised fiction and there's none. That's in part because I have registered for the November is National Novel Writing Month, and my daily 1,700 word count is now dedicated to turning a bad story once posted here into a novel. It is a disaster and foolhardy, but also fun. Midway through the month -- if I make it that far -- I'll post my progress, provided that you, dear reader, don't mock me relentlessly because of how bad it is. It's a novel in a month. What can you expect?
Since what creative energy I have is being channeled into that project, I thought I'd direct your attention to some other things around the web that you should find enchanting.
Paul Ford, purveyor fine oddities at ftrain, has a good piece up at the Morning News about Sex and the City. He's never watched the show, but his Beckettian interpretation of it is spot on.
1: I doubt I am fecund.
2: I have eaten so little.
3: Where are the men?
1: There are no men.
The Modern Hyena reader has special t-shirts for hipster bands you have never heard of because they don't actually exist. My favorite? Chudloader.
This is my neighbor's weblog. She write super-fine poetry, and she will startle you with lines like this: "... he keeps your hand moored to his/Under the table, / Like a secret kept because it's precious /Not damning."
So go on and read them.
And, if you're visiting, please sign the handy guestbook over there on the right. Scratch your name onto the hull of brokentype, post a limerick, tell me about your site. I spend too much time here as it is, and I'd like to read what you are working on.
