More The Goods

Reading: Started Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford, a biography of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Ms. Milford also wrote a biography of Zelda, Fitzgerald's wife. When I was in grade school I read the same autobiography of Amelia Earhart ten times. I was the only one who ever checked it out.

Watched(ing): Ric Burns' documentary series, New York. We watched Episode 6 last night. I liked the parts about handsome mayor Jimmy Walker. There's a biopic about Jimmy Walker starring Bob Hope.

The Goods

Watched: The Brown Bunny, at last. I had seen the famed blow job scene on the Internet months ago, so that wasn't a surprise. What was a surprise was how good it was. I found it beautiful and meditative, a movie about lost love and the constant, softly obsessive need to try to fill it again. And the confusion of that. Vincent Gallo is a narcissist; and this movie is incredible because he lets that drive it. The artistic cohesion of it, as a result, is strong. And the impact of the love story in it - isn't love a lot about narcissism, anyway? - is imprinted hard, hard like the tread of a racing motorcycle on a track, or something.

Also watched Ghostbusters, and you know what? Not as good as when I watched it fifteen times as a kid. It didn't seem as awesome. The song still kicks ass, though. Bustin' makes me feel good.

Reading: I finished White Noise. I'm floundering - it was so good. I don't know what to follow it up with. I'm going to read tabloid newspapers, like those found at checkouts in supermarkets, for a while, I think.

Wanting: To go here.

Goodstuffs

This is a good site. The Scriptorium, an index of authors who "push the limits," is a stallah resource.

http://www.themodernword.com/

Word.

The Goods

Watched: The Last Laugh, directed by F.W. Murnau. Discovered that Emil Jannings, who starred, was pro-Nazi, made pro-Nazi films, and as a result was one of the highest paid actors of his time. Will drool in front of Nosferatu soon.

Reading: Finished Auster with tears; slight green-lit detour to Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby (much better than when force-fed in high school); slowly onto DeLillo's White Noise. It's hilarious.

Hearing: The Bee Gees, greatest hits. Purchased at Aboveground Records while on bikes on Martha's Vineyard. We saw a punk metal band called Unipigeon at a Greenpoint block party Saturday. They were fucking up reality and shit and sweet.

Wanting: To eat at Angelica Kitchen all the time.

Good Signs Bad Signs

I passed by the Park Luncheonette on Saturday, on my way to Bedford proper to go clothes shopping, and I saw a yellow sign on the gate saying they were closed until August 18, for filming. I recalled how they were closed several months earlier, also for filming, and wondered how the owners managed to score so many shoots. Brief entertaining of the notion that maybe the owners have mob connections (ah, imagination), call to imagination to calm down, continuation of hot trek to Bedford.

One trip to imdb.com later: The movie being filmed in the restaurant, "The Departed," is a Scorsese gangster thriller with Jack Nicholson and Leonardo diCaprio. The fact that I thought about the mob, and then that the movie is full of the mob, really have nothing to do with each other, but I like the connection. Nonetheless.

It's hard to think about the Luncheonette - which has good food, organic eggs even, and a sweet misspelled sign - without thinking about the ugly condominiums cruising up across the street. They're so tall you can see them well from the BQE.

It's hard to think about the Luncheonette without thinking about Oznot's Dish, another good Williamsburg restaurant with a yellow sign on its window this weekend. Except Oznot's sign was sad: they're moving to a new location, forced from their current one at Berry and North 9th Streets by - all together now - raised rent. Twelve years ago, when they moved in, they helped usher in the Williamsburg Revival, and it's sad that they're now a victim of it. Where is the love.

Also sad, but in a different way: Along this shopping excursion, while not looking at signs, I purchased American Apparel gym shorts. So have three-fourths of all Brooklyn girls.

Watching: "Curb Your Enthusiasm," from the beginning
Reading: On the "tri" part of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy
Wanting: So I like gangsters