Day: July 21, 2013

Few and Far Between

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The humid air and briney aroma of Beach Haven took me right back to my first visit here, with my parents and cousins and grandparents when I was 9 or 10 years old. There may be other beachy places with a similar invigorating flavor (Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket) but I’ve got it in my head that Beach Haven owns it. Last night there was a flashing lightning storm over the bay. Lightning bolts and warm gusty winds and whitecaps on the water. We sat on a wooden pier on the bay and just waited for words that might improve on the silence. They never came.

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Castles, Comic Books, Cars

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“Oh my god. I just can’t keep up with that stuff. The internet has developed this thing about me, and I’m not even a computer guy, you know? I don’t know why it is happening. I’m trying not to…lemme say this: I’m now of the mindset that, when in Rome, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” — Nicolas Cage to Emma Brockes in a 7.19 Guardian piece titled “People Think I’m Not In On The Joke.”

And yet Cage also says the following: “There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false. Another misconception about me is that I just do movies for paychecks. For a while there, it was the three Cs — castles, comic books and cars. I just can’t get that stuff off of me.”

Jean Luc Godard’s Contempt

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If I was a big-studio production chief whose survival depended on greenlighting as many dumb-ass, CG-driven superhero-franchise-comicbook bullshit jizz-whiz movies (Batman Meets Superman, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor 2, Captain America 2, Suck My Dick 3) as possible, I would need to get a colonic every weekend just to get rid of the poisons in my system. To say I would be seething with contempt for the tens of millions of fanboys who pay for my lifestyle…that would be putting it mildly. Ahab’s last words would have nothing on me. On the other hand I would donate generously to liberal causes, and I would drive a hybrid and worship my children and eat as healthily as possible.

It Happened One Night

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I’ve crashed contentedly at Airbnb apartments in New York, Paris, San Francisco and Prague. (And I almost snagged an Airbnb Telluride pad a few weeks ago.) Totally down with it. Hotels and motels can go suck it. Ditto Craigslist, which used to be my #1 go-to for temporary sublets. So I was naturally interested in this interview piece with Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky by writes N.Y. Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman.

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