Sunday 10/27/19
1253 days without a drink. Walked three miles. Only climbed the Monument three times, but for the first time, I ran the entire obelisk without stopping. What I normally do, for each of my climbs, is run the first 100 steps. I don't stop moving after that, but I'm walking. Hit the top, hustle back down, run the first 100, walk the remainder. Repeat. The number of steps ran on each ascent can change--sometimes it will go to seventy-five or fifty. Put it this way: if you climb five times and you run the first 100 steps each time, you are doing okay. Really well if it's ten climbs and you ran 100 each time. The most I had ever run at once, in a single climb, was 200. I honestly didn't think I could run the whole thing. But I got in there, and despite having some chest issues lately, I felt pretty strong after fifty stairs, thought I'd do 150 or 200 once I hit 100, but then when I got to 200, I tried to power through, and once I'm at 250, that always signals just about the end to me. From 250 to 294 goes fast. I wrote a new short story this AM, a hilarious "future fable" called "The Brittle Star," involving a crow, turtle, fox, beaver, and an otter whose behavior is less than ideal. The story takes place after people have ceased to exist. The people who exist right now would love it. I would conclude, though, that even if I was not the most hated person in this dying industry, and was in fact beloved, no one would have the balls to put it out, despite the whole thing about it being easily loved. It's too new, too different, it is way not politically correct, but man, people would flip for this. This afternoon i braved the gale to go to Cambridge for a screening of Hitchcock's Lifeboat on 35mm at the Brattle. Need to work and fight hard this week. War and art.
I would put up the one-sheet poster for Lifeboat here, but it bothers me. Canada Lee, the black member of the cast--and remember, it's not a sprawling cast, it's some people in a boat--is not included on the poster. That's pretty bad. He's not the only one. You can't even tell who some of the depictions are of, and there are white characters not on it, and the Nazi is not on it, who is obviously a big part of the plot. His role is problematic as well. The black guy, for instance, is counted on for his pickpocket skills. Which would be one thing if this man's character suggested that he'd be good at that, but the character is not drawn that way. And the script has him reverentially turn his eyes to heaven whenever anyone solicits his opinion on what they should do next. The actual heavens. It's a good film, don't get me wrong, and this is not a 2019 thing, because anyone would know I recoil at the fake ass sententious of this age. As a rule of thumb, the more that someone bangs the social justice all day on social media (soon, by the way, I will share the results of my Facebook experiment in adding 1000 friends in a couple weeks), the more evil they are. The more base, brutish, selfish, prejudiced they are in their own personal conduct and morality. And that person had not a peep for anyone else in the universe four or five years ago, and those peeps, which have been converted into a cacophony of ego and narcissism, are pure bullshit now so that you will look at them and compliment them and they can call themselves great when they are human offal and the worst kind of hypocrite. But this was a problem in this film in 1944 as well. So instead I will put up this 1950 radio adaptation, which was also directed by Hitchcock and again stars Tallulah Bankhead.
On Tuesday on Downtown I will discuss horror film that are great--or very good--which most people have never seen. The roster: Haxan (1922), Curse of the Demon (1957), Eyes Without a Face (1960), The Vampire (1957), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), The Mascot (1933).
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