Three Beautiful Things 04/04/08: Igby, Backyard Polo Grounds, Chris Llewellyn

1. I watched an unusual movie this evening: "Igby Goes Down". It's a blistering, cynical, morose, dark comedy about a 17 year old boy played by Kieran Culkin who leaves his privileged but psychologically and emotionally damaged home and moves in with a heroin addict who is his godfather's lover and becomes lovers himself with a Bennington college student only to have his detested older brother take her away from him. And there's more. Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Ryan Phillipe, Claire Daines, and Amanda Peete all play significant roles beautifully.

2. If you've seen the famous catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series that Willie Mays made, back to the plate, deep in center field, over the shoulder, than you know what kind of catch Snug made today when I tossed the tennis ball high, it took a huge bounce, went near the fence, and with his back to me, Snug snagged the ball and stopped, pivoted, and brought the ball back. As if they were fans at the Polo Grounds, the Corgis went wild.

3. Poet Chris Llewellyn wrote a series of haunting poems exploring the The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire of March 25, 1911, and our students read some of these poems aloud and I heard them in unsettling ways I'd never heard them before.