It's subtitle is Learning From the Winners: Sideways · Shakespeare In Love · Crash and that is exactly what the book is about, a thorough analysis of these three movies’ screenplays (two of which I really like—Sideways and Shakespeare …; Crash I could do without even though technically, it's also well-written).
Seger's got a practiced eye and ferrets out all the nuances of all these scripts. This can only help the tyro screenwriter get better.
Gardening
A few hours ago, for the first time in almost 20 years, I took up the hoe and shovel and went to work on the soil. Back in Africa, I used to help some of my neighbors with their “farms” which aren't farms in the American sense, but large tracts of land out in the uncultivated forest lands around the cities and towns. I don't believe they even owned the land, just wandered out there and started clearing brush.
We'd load up the trucks and, in a convoy, make the long drive out to the middle of nowhere—that's how it seemed to me anyway. How they found this place time after time was beyond me. We'd take food and plenty of water in Jerry Cans and trek a few miles into the jungle along barely recognizable trails, one person in front of the other in a snaking line through the bush.
After what seemed like forever (especially when you're 15 and it's fucking hot and you're carrying hoes and cutlasses and shovels and machetes and rakes …) we'd suddenly burst through the last, tearing vestiges of brush and into a clearing populated by neat, long rows of earth mounts. Sticks jutted out of the ground next to each mound to act as plant guides.
“Those are for the yams,” my neighbor's dad said, as we put the loads down from off our heads.
I didn't care, I just wanted to get to the “fun” part: hacking away with those machetes. Mainly, we were there to weed and also to plant other types of crops in some other parts of the “farm.” As part of the bush clearing, we planned to burn and to a slash-and-burner like me, this was sweet.
I was in very good shape. Now, not so much … and I got to find out just how bad today out in the backyard, hacking away at the weeds, my poor back muscles working overtime to keep my bended body from toppling over forward while holding my lard-heavy belly in place.
Truly, a fatter bastard would be hard to find. Sigh.
Green Computing
Every time the man said “Green Space,” I felt like taking off my shoe like my dear mother used to do when I'd finally pushed her to the limit and, like her, throwing it at his head. I could only wish that like her, I didn't miss—dear mama was as adept at throwing that shoe as the most fanatical stone-throwing Shiite.
The man was an Intel salesman extolling the virtues of the upcoming 45nm-sized Nehalem chips. Fine, I can understand and even appreciate using less power but enough already. I don't give a shit and shouting the praise of so-called Green Computing is not a selling-point for me.
Green Computing indeed! Bah.
As if to make things even better, my new colleague asked if I knew how much the US “contributed” to emissions. Yes, she actually said “contributed,” as if there was a global emissions savings account or something. I told her I didn't give a shit … and to directly answer her question: possibly not enough.
“25%,” she said with a sneer, “and we're the only major country who didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol, forsooth!” (I added the forsooth part.)
Sigh.
And to think I actually signed on to hire her. :-)
Perfumania
Shopping at the Boise mall found me inexorably drawn to my new Mecca, Sephora, to find my latest “find”: Marc Jacobs for Men.
This one is almost unexpected, with its fig note (like my other new favorite, Diptyque's Philosykos) but mein Gott! I got a sample because I want to see what it develops into with time. Stay tuned.
A little Perfume Anecdote.
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