…I’m waking up without any particular excitement about what day it is, about what’s going to happen or what I need to prepare for or anything along those lines. It’s all flatline these days. Because in this hellish, suspended-animation nothingness it’s hard to believe that anything matters. A Sunday morning is a Thursday or Tuesday morning, ad infinitum.

I do the same thing every day no matter what (and I love it!), but before the pandemic there was always stuff to explore, things to attend, places to go, a bar or a restaurant to visit, a plane or a train to catch, etc.

A KL Studio Classics Bluray of A Thousand Clowns pops tomorrow, and for one brief shining moment I was reminded how much I once love the late Herb Gardner‘s dialogue.

Don’t forget that Martin Balsam won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Arnold Burns, the sober, boringly responsible brother of Jason Robard‘s Murray.

Murray : “Five months ago I was on the subway on my way to work, was sitting on the express same as every morning looking out the window watching the local stops go by in the dark with an empty head and my arms folded, not feeling great, not feeling rotten, just not feeling. And for a minute I couldn’t remember, I didn’t know, unless I really concentrated, whether it was a Tuesday or a Thursday or a…for a minute it could have been any day, Arn.

[Stands up]

“I gotta know what day it is. I gotta know what’s the name of the game and what the rules are without anyone else telling me. You gotta own your own days and name ’em, each one of ’em, every one of ’em, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. And that ain’t just for weekends, kiddo.”