1. I never read a movie review to determine whether I should see a movie. Sometimes, after I've watched something I will, out of curiosity, see what some reviewers thought. For example, after finishing watching the last two episodes of Pretend It's a City, I could tell from a headline or something that Brian Lowry of CNN had a different experience with these seven episodes of conversation between Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz than I did. I read his piece, and, indeed, about this series of seven short films, he wrote "it would take a great pretender to act like it's worthy of the time devoted to them."
Well, Mr, DJ, please cue up The Platters because I am a great pretender! Not only did I think watching and listening to Fran Lebowitz was worthy of the time I devoted to these seven short films, I would have happily watched and listened to seven more and possibly seven after that!
I love listening to Fran Lebowitz riff on everything from people texting while they walk in Manhattan to the glory of reading books. I laughed, I thought harder about things, I loved how often she just killed off Martin Scorsese, often making him bend over he was laughing so hard, and I enjoyed that she has the encyclopedic knowledge about New York City and the many years of experience in Manhattan that she does -- and lets us know all about it!
So, see? How about if I'd read Brian Lowry first and not realized that I have a nearly insatiable appetite for listening to Fran Lebowitz and that I enjoy listening to someone as magnetic and intelligent and experienced as Fran Lebowitz improvise, roam around, riff, and take us half way around the world as she discusses what's on her mind? And believed him? I might not have watched it.
But what I've learned over the years is that when I watch things I, as best I can, let them be what they are and give all the effort I can to enjoying it. I don't impose notions of what I think the movie ought to be. This approach helps me enjoy a wide variety of movies and approaches.
So, I will repeat for the 400,000th time on this blog: I would make a lousy film or book or restaurant critic.
About 98% of the time, I just like stuff.
I went a step farther with Pretend It's a City: I loved it!
2. With a short pour of Crater Lake Prohibition gin and a little ice in hand, I tuned into tonight's Tree House Concert and enjoyed another hour of Bill Davie playing and singing and reading poetry. He fulfilled a request from a friend regarding what poetry to read. Without looking, maybe even blindfolded, Bill went to his extensive poetry library and blindly pulled two slim volumes off the shelf for tonight's reading. He blindly grabbed Ron Padgett's poems off the shelf.
The poetry break came after Bill powered up his concert with the great "How Long You Gonna Wait?" to open, later played the very timely "The Sun in the Windows", and ended the first set with one of my favorite car wreck songs, right up there with "Dead Man's Curve" and "Last Kiss". Actually, Bill's "The Man in the Dead Machine" is my favorite car wreck song because the car gets killed but Bill survived. The second set featured the great on my lips song, "Learning to Say Goodbye" and was begun and ended by two especially heart touching songs, "Father to Father #2" and "Night Sky".
3. The last two nights, instead of reading in bed before conking out, I've watched short features on Netflix. Last night, I watched two episodes of Pretend It's a City. Tonight, I watched two episodes of Midnight Diner. It had been a few weeks since I last watched Midnight Diner and am I ever happy I returned to this show. Tonight's episodes were both man and woman meet each other at the Midnight Diner stories. Both were sweet and tender and very different from each other. I really don't want to give any of either story away. I'll just say that I loved how both episodes opened up elements of day to day life in Japan that were interesting and contributed significantly to both love stories.
What foods were featured? In Episode 6 of Season 1, Master served Katsudon, a rice bowl featuring deep fried pork cutlets with egg and Oyakodon, or "parent and child". It's chicken, egg, and scallion in stock and soy sauce served over rice. Episode 7 featured Master's tomago sando or egg salad sandwich.
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