Note: Before I get to the more obviously beautiful things of Sept. 6th, I want to say a word about Michael K. Williams. Williams died today, at age 54, in an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
I know Michael K. Williams played other roles. It's my loss that I've only seen him play Omar Little.
I spent significant time today mourning his death and did so by going to YouTube and watching numerous clips of Michael K. Williams in his role as Omar Little in The Wire. If you've watched The Wire, you know that Omar Little was a ruthless killer with a moral code he lived by; he understood that everyone, gangsters, drug dealers, cops, lawyers, you name it, were all, in the own way, in the game. He tells a corrupt lawyer from the stand in court how they are both in the game: "I got the shotgun. You got the briefcase." Omar Little stunned viewers the first time he kissed his boyfriend. His love for Honey Nut Cheerios charmed me. Omar Little's complex character worked because of the life Michael K. Williams endowed him with. It was thrilling to watch as Williams brought to life the sensitivity, ruthlessness, emotional depth, intelligence, moral compass, and simple pleasures of Omar Little.
1. For some unknown reason, I don't enjoy walking east from the house on Cameron Ave and I don't enjoy walking south on Hill St from the four-way stop to about Bunker Ave.
It's dumb.
But, it's enough of an impediment to me getting back into a walking habit that once again today I parked the car at the Kellogg City Park and started my walk from there.
I headed east on the Trail of the CdAs and left the main trail and followed a spur that heads uphill to an area behind the old YMCA building. I make my way to McKinley Ave. and walked on up Main St. to just past Radio Brewing and then walked back though the uptown area to the corner of McKinley and Hill, walked down the hill with Teeters Field to my right, and strolled over to The Bean where I bought an everything bagel with lox, cream cheese, capers, and onion.
This walk took me just under a half an hour to complete. I walked uphill and tested my occasionally sore knee by walking downhill (my knee didn't hurt) . I surveyed both the new businesses trying to gain traction uptown and the empty spots where nothing is happening.
2. Christy, Carol, Paul, and I met on Christy's deck for lunch soon after I returned home. We hadn't joined together for dinner on Sunday, so this was our family dinner for the week.
I've been pretty much out of it over the last week. I asked Christy and Carol to catch me up on the past week's events.
We talked, then, about a wide variety of things: friends recovering from illnesses, the aftermath of the fires up the river, Riley's new harness and his improved behavior, book sale this week at the library, Carol and Paul's entrepreneurial plans, Debbie's and my unformed plans for returning to Kellogg, and more.
It was a mild, sunny afternoon on Christy's deck and a lot of fun to yak together and get caught up.
3. I spent some time in the Vizio room late this afternoon and on into the evening.
I decided to end, for the time being, my DVD subscription to Netflix, but I had one more DVD to play and return.
So the second thing I did in the Vizio room was pour myself a pint glass-sized gin and tonic and thoroughly enjoyed watching Robert Altman's 1982 movie version of Ed Graczyk's play, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.
I first saw this movie in Portland with Jenny, a friend from the U of Oregon I've completely lost touch with, and one of the pleasures of this movie is remembering not only how blown away I was by the movie, but also how much fun I had with Jenny.
The movie has stuck with me over the years.
It takes place in a single setting, a rundown Woolworth's store in McCarthy, Texas and the occasion of the story is a 20 year reunion of the Disciples of James Dean upon the anniversary of his death, and moves fluidly between events in 1955 and those in 1975.
I hate to give away details of stories when I write about movies and I'm not going to give away the (to me) astonishing things that happen in this film.
What I can say is that the story is built around long held illusions different characters have lived by over the years. And, I don't mind saying that a character who left McCarthy many years ago returns for the reunion and begins to peel back the layers of self-deceit that have shaped these characters' lives.
The illusion shattering character is played beautifully by the remarkable Karen Black and she's joined by an ensemble of characters played brilliantly Sandy Dennis, Cher, Sudie Bond, Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin, and Mark Patton.
When I love a song or a movie, it's almost never for objective reasons, almost never because I've applied some set of standards to the song or movie and determined whether it met those standards or not.
So, my love for Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is rooted to a significant degree in what was going on my life when I saw it.
In January of 1983, I taught a four week course at Whitworth called "The Family in American Drama" and it was a mighty success, thanks largely to the openness of my students and their willingness to dig into the literature as well as their own family experiences.
American playwrights throughout the 20th century, at least through the 1970s, were obsessed with the way illusions shaped the American family, both individual illusions and illusions family members bought into together.
In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, for example, Martha insulates herself from difficult truths about her life by living by illusions she's created (what Prof. Clark Griffith called the Grade B movie in the character's mind). When, in the play's final act, her husband George pierces through the illusions to the truth Martha can hardly bear, the play's creator, Edward Albee entitles this act, "The Exorcism".
Albee portrays exorcising self-deceit as painful, but ultimately liberating.
His insight, and similar insights found in other plays we studied that month, invigorated me and I brought that invigoration to the movie theater when I saw Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. So when I loved seeing this movie, I was also loving being friends with Jen, the espresso coffee we enjoyed together afterward when we discussed the movie, and the exhilarating time I'd had in class in January exploring the very ideas portrayed, to my surprise, in the movie. I was loving being in 1983 Portland, spending time with Terry and Nancy Turner, anticipating a trip to Powell's bookstore, and the other pleasures of being on a short break from my work in Spokane.
This is why I could never be a music, film, or literary critic. I cannot, nor do I try, to separate my personal experience from the song, movie, or book I'm writing about. So if someone asked me, well, apart from the good feelings you had about Jen, Portland, and that Jan term class, do you think Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a good movie?
I couldn't say.
I love the cast, the performances, the concept, the directon, the movement of the movie and it's all tied together with the excitement I felt when I was twenty-nine years old and I felt that excitement again as I watched the movie tonight, thirty-eight years later, the excitement of all the things going on in my life that I loved when I first saw this movie.
So when I teared up tonight, was it Karen Black's acting that moved me? Was it the fragility of Sandy Dennis' character? Was it the pain Cher's character finally allowed herself to feel? Or was I longing to be back in an art movie house in Portland in 1983? Or back having the time of my life as a young instructor at Whitworth College?
I can't sort that out.
Don't really need to.
Before I watched the movie, Byrdman had texted me that Novak Djokovic dropped the first set of his fourth round match with newcomer, 20 year old Jenson Brooksby. "What???" I said to myself and settled in to watch the rest of the match.
The second set was epic. It turns out that while the 6'4" Brooksby is not a powerful player -- the speed of his serve is especially pedestrian -- he's very mobile, a terrific counter puncher, meaning he was getting to and effectively returning a ton of Djokovic's shots. The two played one of the most entertaining games I've ever seen in the second set, a test of both players' nerve, stamina, and patience, that lasted twenty minutes, took 24 points to settle, and ended in Brooksby breaking Djokovic's serve.
That game, while it seemed like a high-water mark for Brooksby at the moment, turned out to be the beginning of his downfall. He expended a lot of energy to win it. Djokovic immediately answered by breaking Brooksby's serve and the match's momentum shifted in Djokovic's favor. From that point forward, Djokovic continued to wear down Brooksby and soon it was clear that Brooksby couldn't compete with Djokovic over the long haul of the match and it was over in four sets.
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