somuchrain

It's a rather dull update, I'm afraid. Mike's book is still not published. There's no Autonomedia meeting this week due to, of all things, jury duty. lggy isn't here ... not here because she needed sleep and more importantly rest and God knows that such things are basically impossible here. Today has basically been one big asthma attack. And I'm eating fish again, because, really, who the fuck cares if fish are killed? Well ... you know.

An admission: in an ill-advised phase of my youth I thought punk rock to meant something, and being anti-establishment (whatever that once meant) to mean something also. This bred in me a distaste for the rated and loved in culture. I would rather like crap that couldn't sell than gold which could. Silly, I know. Because of this I had never seen 'Casablanca'. I saw it tonight - twice - and now know what all the talk was about. What a beautiful movie. There was something in smoke and looks (not quite smoke and mirrors) back then which made everything so much more maudlin and lovely. It is also nice, however much I miss her, to have a night to drink by myself and watch movies and think. It all makes me miss Jo and Nadine and Ashley, however much they are still, sort of, here. I owe who I am today to each of them, and I miss it all so much.

But, I digress. I have been watching the 'classics' lately, all the things that bored me when I was younger. I watched Sam Fuller's 'Shock Corridor' and was amazed. Hitchcock makes me weep. It's pompous but I am so unprepared for how important and beautiful it all is. My expectations are so low. I may begin to empathize with those pretentious film students hanging onto the banisters at the Angelika masturbating over the fact that a shot has never been so perfect since Fassbinder. The way the themes from "As Time Goes By" work into the music while the Nazis march into Paris ... good Lord. Beware.