2 + 2 = 5.

1) The long weekend.
I did nothing over my three day weekend and I loved it. Well, let me clarify. I watched lots of movies and rarely left my apartment. You see, it was well over 100 degrees all weekend in the fair San Fernando Valley. That means I avoided the out-of-doors at all costs. So I stayed inside, in the a.c. and watch the following movies (in order): The English Patient, Videodrome, Kiss Me Deadly, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ninotchka, Rififi, Black Narcissus, Blue Velvet, Notorious, Persona, and Wonder Boys. Oh and I ate at the Italian restaurant where Robert Blake and fam ate before he killed his wife. The verdict: it was some good eats but it didn't inspire me to kill anyone.

2) The monologue in Persona.

I finally saw a Bergman movie. Huzzah for me! Loved it. Esp that monologue. Easily the best sex scene without any sex ever. Bovs.

3) "Miranda Over the Valley" by Andre Dubus.
I've never read Dubus until now and I love how lyrical yet unfussy his prose it. And as silly as it is, I love when you're reading a story and you intimately know where it's taking place. (The action in this piece takes place in a dorm on Beacon Street and in a house off of Ventura Blvd. in the San Fernando Valley.)

4) Wonder Boys as hang-out movie.

In last year's "Movie Issue" of The New Yorker, Quentin Tarantino spoke about how he wanted Jackie Brown to be a "hang-out movie" on par with Dazed and Confused. While I had never used that term, I knew just what he was alluding to. Those movies that are filled with characters and scenes and moments and locations that you visit periodically because they make you feel good. Wonder Boys is like that with me. As my long weekend faded away, I was nodding off in front of freezing-cold PA with Katie Holmes in her red cowboy boots, dead Poe in the trunk, Oola serving drinks, and Zimmy on the soundtrack. Not a bad way to end the weekend.

5) Starting off the shortened work week with a drunken e-mail from Josh.
I was grumpy this morning. Monday mornings-- er, Tuesday mornings are a bitch, especially when you've just gotten into the swing of being a lazy, do-nothing fuck. Then you come to work, click on your email and find this:

I am drunk.

Are you?

Love,

J-dawg

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"History books that contain no lies are extremely dull."
--Anatole France, French novelist and Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

May Yaweh bless J-dawg.