Wilfrid

I found the Come Walk With Me at Discovery on Ave B.

History is Made at Night (1937). Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer in what might be a romantic comedy if not for the ice-cold psycho performance by Colin “Frankenstein” Clive as her abusive husband. I offer it here because Boyer’s character is a supremely skilled restaurant Maitre D’, and the extensive restaurant, bar and club scenes are fascinating. Not that it’s quite Ratatouille, but what is? Criterion Channel.

Mouthfuls, the site where you can tell Heidegger jokes and someone gets them. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics - the animal is poor in world. I think it’s the only place he addresses animals, which don’t have the mode of being of Dasein but which also aren’t just rocks or trees or briefcases.

Played that loud last night to drown out the damn fireworks.

A bonanza time for Jeremy Prynne fans. He just turned 84, and what a sprint he's putting on. At least two books last year, three this year already, with two more already announced. But also, we now have a late Prynne style. He long ago squeezed the lyricism out of his work, turning to obscure and scientific and technical vocabularies. The result was forbidding blocks of verse with rare glimpses of meaning. Starting (I think) with 2019's Of Better Scrap, he introduced new sonic qualities, working at the syllabic level: not just occasional internal or half rhymes, but multiple variations of them, sonic attention to vowels and consonants. This creates a remarkable music when the verse is read allowed, even though meaning is utterly allusive. It's as if he has not just the English language, but all its niche idioms at his fingertips, and he can play it like an organ. Rather inspiring. (There's also Parkland, a book-length prose poem like nothing he has written before.)

The CEO, and right down the management chain. What also helps is to have women, POC, Jewish people, etc actually on the staff, and preferably in management positions too.

Me 2.

Dinner at Foxface last night, a couple of hours under a canopy rather than under the stars (a bit rainy). Home-cured coppa, Long Island oysters, a hefty lobster with drawn butter and mayonnaise, spiced-cured-smoked duck breast with skin crackling and braised radishes. A glass of fino, a glass of the charmingly named Come Walk With Me and Wonder a Little, and a glass of red. Of course it was all good. Remarkably keto-friendly menu too.

Is that a Heidegger joke?

Walking around downtown yesterday, there were dozens of people engaged in outdoor seating carpentry projects.

I haven't followed the Meehan story very closely, but it is actually possible to be a good, thoughtful, considerate manager, and have your staff like you, even under the crushing heel of capitalism.

I remember reading about it. A curious project.

I was thinking of making a trip to NetCost. Headcheese craving.

I read a library copy, and I just ordered one to keep. It’s great.

I am on it.

Dick Van Dyke has been paying tribute. He's only 94.

I would have classed them as powerpop.

A wholehearted recommendation: Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati by Ryersson and Yaccarino. You might have come across references to Casati if you spend any time with memoirs of society or the arts. In the first decades of the 20th century, she went everywhere, met everyone, and was painted or photographed by many of them. In a nutshell, she looked like a living Aubrey Beardsley figure, dressed in spectacularly outlandish costumes (if at all), and created the white face/dark eyes goth look seen everywhere from Theda Bara to Lorde. But the important thing is that every page of this book has some hilarious, outrageous, unbelievable scene or incident. It's just the most sheerly entertaining book I've read in months. Great illustrations too.

Fish & Eddy's is open, so I can at last replace that broken saucer.

Yes and no. As a writer I could work from home, but in 2019 I was the kind of writer who traveled endlessly to meet people and report stories. That’s a kind of writer.

No, Hinds sold out? I need to check this.

Yeah well first you need to get me some more.

Oh, sure.

I think the last three months gave me a glimpse of what retirement would be like (although it would hopefully include travel). Well, it's over. I've taken on a new job, and a bunch of other heavyweight projects; the city is discernibly opening again; there aren't likely to be any more days I don't go out at all (as long as the numbers don't shoot up again). So farewell four or five hours of reading a day, farewell exercises like listening to the 100 "best" debut albums or ploughing through an A-Z of classical musicians for Musical Corner suggestions, farewell reorganizing every cupboard and drawer in the house and keeping them reorganized. Farewell dressing in t-shirt and pajama pants every day. Farewell watching TV shows I would not normally consider watching. I am keeping the daily poetry reading, but it won't be the Paradise Losts and Maximuses any more. And I am keeping my Criterion Channel subscription, but there won't be hours of bingeing on the Marseilles trilogy, or Les Mis. Of course, I understand we may have to do this all over again.

And to be fair, they were different characters. 😄