Just because I can’t remember always, I sometimes read old chats or emails from people I no longer know, and it always feels a bit like looking at the ceiling from a very hard floor that you’ve just hit. Keep having to re-orient my brain, and I marvel at how many things I’ve reclaimed from the wreckage.  

Good research for a novel, I must say.  Writing isn’t as fun as it used to be, but I’m also not as bad a writer as I used to be. I can’t wait to be 40 and look back and laugh at how terrible I am now, and show my daughters some of my old diaries.  I think I will have a lot of good advice for them, but they’ll laugh, in the end they will have to make their own mistakes.  In these fast-forward memories of the future, we always live in Ross and Ruth’s old house in Redlands and it is always so beautiful there.

I wish I had a picture of that house for you with the long driveway and the mountains behind it, the small tiled ante-room with 60 years worth of desert glass clinging to the shelves. The antique farm sink in the wash room and cold deep freeze filled with hand-cranked ice cream.  The dove hutch with the faulty latch, and the railroad you could ride in next door, and always kittens at every corner waiting to be caught and held.

Part The First, In Which I Posit A Problem

There’s this one interior design blog I read, and I found this person through the design interwebs, and yes, there’s scads of lovely pictures up innit, but the one thing I canna stand is the writing.  Now I have an unusually high tolerance for smarm, ridiculous non-sense, bullshit, you name it, I can handle it.  But she puts forth this really pretentious and fake demeanor, always trying to seem more “hip” and “with ittt” than anyone I’ve ever encountered.  She’s like one of those sad girls you see who bought a tiny, tiny Louis Vuitton bag, just enough to project like they can live the lifestyle but not enough money to actually haul up and drop $3,000. (See also: The Single Hermès Scarf, the Coach keychain, the Marc by Marc Jacobs ring) The

Also reminded of this:

Lucille 2: You must have scrimped and saved for these.

I usually let her posts pile up in Google Reader and the rip through them as fast as I can, because I adore the pictures, but the writing smacks of the most querulous attempts at humour and pretentious bullshit.  Now believe me, I recognize terrible writing since I can, of course, read my own writing, which is sometimes terrible and sometimes authentic.

AS I SEE IT, OPTIONS:

a) just stop reading it.
b) continue as I am, now that I’ve shared.

Notes for the day:

• Interviewing Abbie Cornish tomorrow about Bright Star.  Bright Star is actually my favourite movie this year. More on that when I’ve thought a bit more, but it’s easily the most beautiful film of the year.

• Karina Longworth was praised today because she doesn’t “waste anyone’s time.”  That struck me as valuable advice.

• Pauline Kael refused to call movies “films” because she felt it was elitist. This struck me as infinitely useful. I call them talkies. I love movies. I love the way they can make you feel, I love how the best ones are beautiful down to the very details, how 50 or 5,000 people work together to make something good out of literally nothing but an idea someone once had.

“The funny thing about being smart is you can get through most of life without having to do any work.” – Joel McHale on Community

Yes, someone finally understands.

Laremy did this thing where he’s making a bracket of the best female performances in the ’00’s, and he put Nia Vardalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding up against Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream.

To quote Peter Sarsgaard (who, given our recent interaction, only seems to know one word for “similar”) it does not seem “analogous.” (Sarsgaard has two cats. He said so. He also told a story about how Dirk Bogarde had a motorcycle and chaps and never rode it but would go sit on it in his garage and ask people to take pictures.  This amused him greatly. I wrote this whole Vanity Fair style opening to my article, like.. “Sarsgaard immediately puts the room at ease with his quick wit and sunbeam smile, laughing handily as he confides in me his…” you know.)

(Dominic Cooper, when we were chatting, you know, like we do, said his sort of hot-shot rise to fame was due to the “unbelievable” success of Mamma Mia!, aaannnnd I felt it necessary to repeat “unbelievable” back to him at least twice, and maybe even up to four times. I think he got my point. Yes, Dom darling, I found it “unbelievable” that even the premise survived a first hazy greenlighting session among the blitzed-out studio executives. Please continue to wear skinny ties and do your hair in this coy fashion because whatever you are doing is more than working for you.)

Also… if anyone has a lead on hanging out with Mira Nair in Africa? Now’s the time to speak up, cause I think we just really would get along. We could talk about yoga, and African politics in the 1920’s, for further topics inquire within.

“Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.” – Emily Post

“In Africa, it’s difficult to make movies, not because I’m a woman – it’s never been difficult to be a woman – but because not many movies get made in Africa.” – Mira Nair

I like that.  It’s never been difficult to be a woman.  She either means that it’s never been difficult for her to be a woman, or that in Africa it’s never been difficult to be a woman.   I like Mira Nair, the more I see her films. I just watched about 8 of them in a row for this Criterion review, and Monsoon Wedding is in my top 5 of all time I believe.

That above reminds me Beryl Markham’s words. “There are many Africa’s…”