Making small, heartwarming connections with strangers

1. At the bagel store, an annoying little kid running around, banging into people bangs into me and generally stands in my way. His mother calls him, and he has the same name as me. "Hi," I say calling him by his name. "that's my name too."

He glares at me.

2. Outside the bagel store in the parking lot a car pulls quickly into the spot next to me as I unlock my door. A little close. The woman driving wears an Arizona State sweatshirt and her window is down.

"A Sun Devil," I say.

She pauses just a moment. "I had no idea what you were talking about," she says.

"I grew up in Tempe," I say as I get in the car.

"I hate it there" she says, and goes into the store.

Samuel Beckett anecdote

A whiff of the apocryphal about this one:

After a rehearsal in England, Beckett, his director Alan Schnieder and a friend are walking across a field on a rare beautiful sunny day in London.

Schneider: It's a beautiful day.

Beckett: Yes, it is.

Friend: Glorious.

Schneider: The kind of day that makes you glad to be alive.

Beckett: Well, I wouldn't go that far.

Pelecanos' 5 Crime Novels

Books: George Pelecanos

NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008

A master of the urban crime novel, Pelecanos was also an Emmy nominee for HBO ' s " The Wire. " His latest novel is " The Turnaround. " His picks for the best of his genre:

My Five Most Important Crime Novels

1. " The Long Goodbye " by Raymond Chandler. A melancholic ode to loss and the passage of time.

2. " The Burglar " by David Goodis. Hypnotic prose and a shocking ending. Call it pulp if you have the need to. It's disturbing art.

3. "The Last Good Kiss" by James Crumley. The post-Vietnam stunner that reinvigorated the genre and jacked up a generation of future crime novelists.

4. "Swag" by Elmore Leonard. Down-and-dirty, this one smokes front to back, and the voice is one of a kind.

5. "Clockers" by Richard Price. My generation's "Grapes of Wrath."

A CLASSIC YOU'VE REVISITED WITH DISAPPOINTMENT: "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo. Except for the page that features Sonny and the bridesmaid. That page never disappoints.

A BOOK YOU HOPE PARENTS READ TO THIER KIDS: "True Grit" by Charles Portis. A great adult novel with a strong, teenage female protagonist.








http://www.newsweek.com/id/160097

"What it takes to make it through this troubled and troubling world is obviously different for a man and for a mouse."

Daniel Robinson, from his lecture series "Consciousness and its Implications."

Dream fragment

At some sort of vacation spot, my friend from my old workplace H. was there too. I had given her something for her kid, a toy or piece of cake, and she came to my door appreciative and friendly thanks to the gesture, and saying, that one more thing would really make the kid happy (or perhaps because she had a second kid). That kid wanted a jar of mayonnaise.

Later in the dream, in a cave a mass traditional baptism was being conducted, and the preacher was close to convincing me to be baptised.

At the drugstore:

Cashier #1: Moses, how much is this?

Customer: It's 99 cents.

Cashier #2 [Moses]: It's 99 cents.

Cashier #1: So I'll ring it in as a dollar.

Cashier #2" How about 99 cents?

"And he couldn't do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here."

- Philip Roth, Sabbath's Theater

( from The Elegant Variation http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2008/09/nota-bene-sabba.html )

Newly Discovered Great Movie Moment

The moment when, in Rat Phink A Boo Boo, about 45 minutes in, when the movie suddenly shifts gears and earns its name. ("This is a job for "You Know" and "Who."") The shifting of gears. It's great.

Dream

Returned home (nothing like my actual home) at lunchtime, to do some dishes. But the major event was that the neighbor's pets came through a hole in their fence, into my front yard, and then in and out of my house. The first was a warthog. After that were a number of dogs, of different species, and it was hard to determine how many. Two? Or was it one? Then maybe Five?

It didn't seem a big deal, but nobody seemed to know what to do. The dogs were more at issue than the warthog, which went uncommented upon.