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mallorys_cameraOnce again it looks as though I will be delighting family and friends with a series of custom-designed, hand-crafted Martin Luther King Day cards featuring all the symbols we have come to associate with the great stricken civil rights leader – pine trees, snow, obese Caucasian guys with long white beards and strange red garments – because once again I did not get it together to send out my Christmas cards before Christmas.
Oh well.
The Koenigs actually send out Valentine's Day cards. They do this by design. Valentine's Day cards are ever so much cooler than Christmas cards, of course, but then the Koenigs are ever so much cooler than ordinary people. A charmed family – think Sue Miller's Abbotts before tragedy struck. I like the fact that they live a happy life on that beautiful acreage on a nearby mountaintop, that they continue to thrive, that my own life brushes theirs ever so tangentially.
Elsewise I continue in my funk, which is mostly compounded of worrying about money but with a pinch of existential angst thrown in for flavor. Six hundred fifty million light years from here three (count 'em!) galaxies are converging. Imagine the heat, imagine the violence. Even against the backdrop of this one tiny planet, my consciousness counts for very little. Factor in light years and exploding stars and you can just fuggetaboutit. I'm not even a bean in the hill. But, of course, then neither is Vladimir Putin (Time's Man of the Year, can you believe?), George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Oprah, Donald Trump and whoever just got blown up in a random act of violence on the streets of Baghdad this morning. We are all equally unimportant.
This should be comforting.
But it's not.
In other news, the tidal wave of Internet orders is over and the Little Store is back to depending on street traffic. Which yesterday was miniscule. There's some pride of place in getting skunked, but naught in being nickeled and dimed.
Around two in the afternoon, a Woman From Berkeley strode into the store – that's how she identified herself in our subsequent conversation: "But I'm from Berkeley! And I drove all the way down!"
She took out her camera and began aiming it at the Venetian masks on the wall.
Before she could she could hit the button, I hissed, "What are you doing?"
"Well, some friends of mine are getting married," she chattered gaily. "They're doing a masquerade ball for the reception and they were thinking of buying the masks here. 'Oh, don't do that!' I told them. 'I can make you those masks!' So I'm down here taking pictures to use as models."
Was this woman out of her fucking mind?
"We don't allow photos in the store," I told her frostily. "Please leave."
And this, of course, is one of my favorite things about owning a store – I can make up rules on a moment's notice.
Of course if the woman had a brain in her head, she'd check the store website where all the masks are on display along with their pedigrees, and a short history of Carnevale which for all you people who didn't take Latin in high school translates literally as, "Bye bye Meat!"
What a fucking arrogant dumbshit though.
Also I watched the world's most depressing movie last night which is something called Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. You kind of know that any movie that starts out with Philip Seymour Hoffman doing it doggie-style with Marisa Tomei is going to be a bummer, and this film does not disappoint.
What was truly amazing about this movie though is that generally when a narrative chronicles a progression of misfortune, you hit a point where it all becomes very funny. "Oh, no," you groan, laughing, when Dex gives Ethan Hawke options – either pay me ten thousand dollars, go to jail or get a bullet in your head. "That's what you get for messing around on Uma Thurman, Ethan!"
But in this movie – maybe because the acting was so good, I dunno – the progression never did get funny. It just kept getting grimmer and grimmer and grimmer and of course, you could not tear your eyes away from the screen.
I understand the director, Sidney Lumet, is dying of cancer. Kind of an odd final statement to make, particularly when you figure that Lumet for the most part lived a charmed life. Perhaps he's bitter about dying? But Sidney, sweetheart -- we all have to die.
Oh well.
The Koenigs actually send out Valentine's Day cards. They do this by design. Valentine's Day cards are ever so much cooler than Christmas cards, of course, but then the Koenigs are ever so much cooler than ordinary people. A charmed family – think Sue Miller's Abbotts before tragedy struck. I like the fact that they live a happy life on that beautiful acreage on a nearby mountaintop, that they continue to thrive, that my own life brushes theirs ever so tangentially.
Elsewise I continue in my funk, which is mostly compounded of worrying about money but with a pinch of existential angst thrown in for flavor. Six hundred fifty million light years from here three (count 'em!) galaxies are converging. Imagine the heat, imagine the violence. Even against the backdrop of this one tiny planet, my consciousness counts for very little. Factor in light years and exploding stars and you can just fuggetaboutit. I'm not even a bean in the hill. But, of course, then neither is Vladimir Putin (Time's Man of the Year, can you believe?), George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Oprah, Donald Trump and whoever just got blown up in a random act of violence on the streets of Baghdad this morning. We are all equally unimportant.
This should be comforting.
But it's not.
In other news, the tidal wave of Internet orders is over and the Little Store is back to depending on street traffic. Which yesterday was miniscule. There's some pride of place in getting skunked, but naught in being nickeled and dimed.
Around two in the afternoon, a Woman From Berkeley strode into the store – that's how she identified herself in our subsequent conversation: "But I'm from Berkeley! And I drove all the way down!"
She took out her camera and began aiming it at the Venetian masks on the wall.
Before she could she could hit the button, I hissed, "What are you doing?"
"Well, some friends of mine are getting married," she chattered gaily. "They're doing a masquerade ball for the reception and they were thinking of buying the masks here. 'Oh, don't do that!' I told them. 'I can make you those masks!' So I'm down here taking pictures to use as models."
Was this woman out of her fucking mind?
"We don't allow photos in the store," I told her frostily. "Please leave."
And this, of course, is one of my favorite things about owning a store – I can make up rules on a moment's notice.
Of course if the woman had a brain in her head, she'd check the store website where all the masks are on display along with their pedigrees, and a short history of Carnevale which for all you people who didn't take Latin in high school translates literally as, "Bye bye Meat!"
What a fucking arrogant dumbshit though.
Also I watched the world's most depressing movie last night which is something called Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. You kind of know that any movie that starts out with Philip Seymour Hoffman doing it doggie-style with Marisa Tomei is going to be a bummer, and this film does not disappoint.
What was truly amazing about this movie though is that generally when a narrative chronicles a progression of misfortune, you hit a point where it all becomes very funny. "Oh, no," you groan, laughing, when Dex gives Ethan Hawke options – either pay me ten thousand dollars, go to jail or get a bullet in your head. "That's what you get for messing around on Uma Thurman, Ethan!"
But in this movie – maybe because the acting was so good, I dunno – the progression never did get funny. It just kept getting grimmer and grimmer and grimmer and of course, you could not tear your eyes away from the screen.
I understand the director, Sidney Lumet, is dying of cancer. Kind of an odd final statement to make, particularly when you figure that Lumet for the most part lived a charmed life. Perhaps he's bitter about dying? But Sidney, sweetheart -- we all have to die.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 12:28 am (UTC)But on the bright side, I highly doubt her masks will/would be as beautiful as the real thing. I have a genuine Venetian mask (inherited from my mum, she collected masks), and it's gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-22 05:56 pm (UTC)