Day: March 26, 2020

It’s odd and at the same time touching that Bob Dylan has decided to open the floodgates of memory and melancholy and just…feel it. 56 and 1/2 years after the fact. The fact that “Murder Most Foul” just kind of trickles out with a half-sardonic tone and a craggy after-midnight voice…settled, no tempo. Piano, violin, string quartet…slightly sung but mostly spoken…”they killed him once and they killed him twice…the age of the anti-Christ….lonely are the brave.” Did the all-powerful twentysomething Dylan ever say a word about JFK’s bloodsplatter in ’64 or thereabouts? Perhaps on some metaphorical level. Did this song happen because “I’m a poet, I know it, hope I don’t blow it” is ten times closer to death now than he was then? The tone is quite sad and affecting. I’ve listened to it three times now. 16:56 x 3. Who’s the piano player?

Excerpt from Woody Allen‘s “Apropos of Nothing“, during the final portion: “Sartre said, ‘Hell is other people.’ I would like to change that to ‘Hell is other people’s taste.”

Bosley Crowther’s N.Y. Times review of Raw Deal, published on 7.9.48: “The end of a fascinating friendship between a fugitive jailbird and the girl who has loyally aided his activities, even down to his desperate prison break, is cheerlessly documented in Raw Deal, a pistol-powered crime melodrama which came to the Victoria yesterday. And the reason for this annulment is that the fugitive meets another girl — a beautiful, law-respecting citizen — while taking it on the lam.

“A transfer of heart throbs of this sort seems distinctly illogical amid all the violent distractions which occur while it’s going on. No one, we’d think, would be able to give much attention to love while keeping one curve on the twisting highway ahead of the chasing police. And no one of average emotions would fret about romance, we’d suppose, while angling to make a double-crosser pay up that ‘fifty grand’ he’d overlooked.

“But this, of course, is a movie — and a pretty low-grade one, at that — in which sensations of fright and excitement are more diligently pursued than common sense. Screeching tires and screaming sirens are more insistent than rational though and clichés of passionate behavior are more viable than truth. And Dennis O’Keefe is the fellow, which to movie fans means, of course, that an equal division of interest between love and luggs is thoroughly plausible.

“To be sure, there is this to be reckoned: Claire Trevor plays the girl whom Mr. O’Keefe gives the raw deal in favor of Marsha Hunt. And anyone watching these two ladies and their behavior in this film might not be inclined to wonder at the change in the gentleman’s choice — even though, as matters turn out, it means that he winds up dead. Except for the usual moral — to wit, that crime does not pay — the only thing proved by this picture is that you shouldn’t switch sweethearts in mid-lam.”

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From “On Coronavirus, We’re #1” by N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman: “It’s hard to believe, but just a month ago Donald Trump and his henchmen were dismissing the coronavirus as a nonevent. On Feb. 26 Trump declared that ‘you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be close to zero.’

“His remark came a day after Larry Kudlow, his administration’s chief economist, declared that the virus was almost completely contained, and that the economy was ‘holding up nicely.’ There are now more than 82,000 cases in the U.S. — we don’t know how many more, because we’re still lagging far behind on testing. But that makes us the world’s coronavirus epicenter, and the U.S. trajectory is worse than that of other countries.

“As for the economy: Last week more than three million workers filed for unemployment insurance, a number that is completely off the scale even as many others who are suddenly out of work aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits. We’re clearly losing jobs even faster than at the worst moments of the 2008-9 financial crisis, when we were losing ‘only’ 800,000 per month.

“Trump’s dismissal and denial played a large role in getting us to this point. And he should be held accountable. But the crucial question now is whether we’re doing enough to cope with the catastrophe.”

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I was so bored last night that I couldn’t go to sleep, but I finally did. I woke at the usual six-oh this morning, but felt so lethargic about life that I went back to sleep. Then I re-awoke but I couldn’t quite come out of the fog.

I finally arose around 10something, but what did it matter? For we are prisoners on a kind of Devil’s Island. Allowed to roam around on the honor system, true, but still residing in a two-person clink with excellent wifi, a big TV, a kitchen full of food, five computers and a Bluray player, etc. And two cats.

Then my new Bluray of Raw Deal arrived at the doorstep…excitement! Then I drove to Pavilions to buy a few things, but the line to get in was long and slowish.

Then we decided to paint the living room walls in a Benjamin Moore color called “Coral Gables.”

Then I decided against paying to watch Joan Micklin Silver‘s Chilly Scenes of Winter because it’s free on YouTube, and then to watch Jean Luc Godard‘s entire Sympathy for the Devil doc, which I’ve only seen in random clips.

I guess we don’t really live on Devil’s Island, but it sure feels like it at times. Our lives are fucked or at least shuttered for the foreseeable future. Maybe until the mid to late summer, maybe longer than that. There ain’t no life nowhere.

A friend writes, “I was feeling down for few days but I am better today. I did yoga at 10 am on line and I keep thinking how much worse it could be, and that I am still lucky. We don’t go much out. Just to a store. I sit by the window and watch people walk , jog, stroll in endless stream. I think I should start making window diaries :)”

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