All Extravagant Pretensions Aside

Sometimes sitting on a decision in an incubatory manner is a good thing. You gain clarity and the correct- or incorrectness of what you’re about to do comes at you with the certitude of a sixteen year old who cleaves the world up into yes/no boxes. Which is to say . . . I will attempt to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong and go home again for a few days. I wanted to go West and revisit the mountains, but cooler heads have prevailed and instead I will go check in on a grandmother who seems to be having a rough go of it. When you’re trying to put your feet on solid ground, and the opportunity comes up to immerse yourself in the familiar, choose the familiar that does not involve four-day benders and abdication of certain scholastic responsibilities. The moral-of-the-story seems like a copout, and the glandular system related to my having fun lymph node doth protest, but I figure a change of pace is in order: I have gone balls-to-the-wall in so many of my past incarnations as a human being endowed with average height, beard, monobrow, and a rapier wit. I will break the mold – behavioral, not psycho-physical.
Did I mention I have a two-and-a-half day vacation, paid? Worship at the altar of Education and you will receive precious few material rewards, but here and there a temporal bone will be thrown at your feet.

Cultural Consumption:

Cinderella Man – All indications suggest the Great Depression was indeed depressing. Populism, on the other hand, along with a bit of ethnic pride, seems to hold up well over time as a cinematic antidote to the unnamed and perhaps incapable-of-being-named forces that create situations in which children have no milk for their cereal. There are all kinds of odd ideological subtexts in which this movie traffics, but I can’t trace such subtexts and attempt to enjoy a story at the same time, so . . . .
I had the odd experience of watching this with an audience who was quite worried that Russell Crowe might die at the end, which reminded of the essay on the WTC attacks in Consider the Lobster in which the author comments on a fairly fundamental schism involving innocence/cynicism that is mapped out in geographic and demographic terms. Given my geography, and the demographics of those with whom I watched this movie, I would say that I have cast my life episode’s lot with the old ladies of the story. This can be bewitching and aggravating at the same moment.

Weather Channel website – The fronts are moving in.