Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

LORD HAVE MERCY

Just finished watching Dancer in the Dark, a musical (of sorts) starring Bjork. I don't want to write about this movie. I really don't want to think about it -- I wish I hadn't watched it. If I had recognized the name Lars von Trier as the same person who had made the equally disturbing Breaking the Waves, I would never have rented this movie. My reaction to both movies was the same: they took me in completely for a while, were too long, and left me wanting to throw up after they were over. Waves starred Emily Watson, an actress I am in love with in the way one loves actresses, and this movie has made me feel the same way about Bjork. That von Trier chose these extremely charming and winsome women to play the angelic and maddeningly simplemided characters that he tortures so cruelly -- well, they are good choices as the subjects of torture, if the goal is to wring out the spectator's heart.

I rewind the tape feeling manipulated and misused. The merit of the movie is in the expertise with which I was manipulated and misused. I did not enjoy this movie. I do not recommend it.

Ugh. I now have to leave my apartment for a while. posted by Carlton at 11:22 PM

ATTENTION THESIS/DISSERTATION WRITERS

Where law and academics collide: read this.

(It's long, but you can skip to page 6 and get the facts.) posted by Carlton at 10:35 AM

CELEBRITY JEOPARDY

In the last year or so, we've seen Harrison Ford date Calista Flockheart, Tom Cruise hook up with Penelope Cruz, Ben Affleck keeping company with J'Lo and now, wonder of wonders, Nicholas Cage has married Lisa Marie Presley. This is strong support for the theory that celebrity relationships are centrally managed by a computer that matches them up randomly. I swear, these stars must receive their assignments in the mail. Ben: "Who's it going to be this quarter? tears open envelope Oh, J'Lo. Could be worse."

What's next? Paul Newman and Britney Spears? Puff Daddy and Gwyneth Paltrow? Steve Buscemi and Bjork? Now that the same-sex barrier has been broken (Anne and Ellen), we can match them up TRULY randomly. Wouldn't Gwyneth and Liv Tyler make a great couple? Matt Damon and Jude Law? Franka Potente and Beyonce Knowles? (Wait -- I just can't bear to match Franka up with ANYONE except yours truly -- it breaks my heart.) Why even limit ourselves to couples? Tom and Penelope might pull in Antonio Banderas, or Catherine Zeta-Jones, or John Cusack, or JOAN cusack, for that matter (I'd date Joan Cusack -- she's hilarious). Why not all of the above? (Because it would make People magazine too complicated to read, that's why.)

What is Mr. Cage thinking? He's married a woman whose first husband was a pedophile that owned a CHIMP, for Pete's sake. Her dad is the nexus of the next great world religion and her mom . . . . well, for my money, Nick would be better off with Priscilla. I'm ashamed that I care about this even a little bit. posted by Carlton at 9:47 PM

FREAKY COINCIDENCE

So I went out to the bar the other night with these two women, one of whom, Ms. D, is a friend of mine from work -- the other of whom, Ms. F, I didn't know. Before we went out, they came over to my apartment to drink a little and chat. So I asked Ms. F what she does for a living; and she works at a cancer clinic as an administrator. Turns out, she says, that everyone at the clinic was really depressed at that time because of a particular patient, "Angela Smith", who had just lost a very prolonged and emotional fight with cancer. Ms. F had gotten to know Anglela better than most patients; Angela's struggle had been very dramatic, involving multiple periods of remission and relapse. Finally, though, she had succumbed, just a day or so before.

So we went out and heard a band at a local bar, and eventually the two women and I took our leave of each other. I went home and went to bed, tired old man that I am. The two women walked to D's house, which was about 20 minutes away on foot. On the way, they passed a house where there was evidently a really good party going on -- people standing around in the yard, tiki torches lit, good music playing through the open windows. Ms. F, emboldened a little by drink, insisted that she and Ms. D crash the party -- they just wandered up onto the porch and started talking to people. Somebody handed them beers, they met some nice people and bang, they were at the party. (When you are a friendly and attractive young woman, I guess you can do these things -- parties are made parties by women, as everyone knows.)

Sooner or later, the guy Ms. F was talking to turned to her and said, "So, how do you know Angela?"
"Angela?" said Ms. F.
"Angela Smith, " said the guy. It turned out that the party was an informal WAKE for Angela Smith, the cancer patient that Ms. F knew through her work, and that these were all her friends gathering to have one last party in her honor. Ms. F told her story, that she knew Angela but that she had just been passing by and decided to crash the party at random. Everyone was amazed.
"She must have wanted you at her party," said a guy, and everyone agreed that that must be the case.

True story. posted by Carlton at 12:27 PM

HOW TO BEAT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING (Another boring message)

Shelley asked me if I couldn't just raise the price of my condo by 20% and beat the taxes that way. I suppose I could . . . I'm operating on the assumption that there's actually an upper limit for the price of a one-room apartment. These days, it doesn't seem like there is. I'm not ready to move out right now, anyway. My breakups are always long and painful.

It's expensive here in the city. Young people seem content to live in very small, very heavily subdivided apartments. Grownup people with families (my secretary, for example) live WAY outside the city and commute in, sometimes 1 1/2 hours each way. A law professor told our class that she purchased a house for $40,000 in the 1960s that is now worth well over $1,000,000 -- crazy. If I stay here, I don't see how I will ever be able to afford a house -- not that I necessarily want one, either. Who wants to mow the grass? Not me. But it's something to think about posted by Carlton at 5:33 PM

BUBBLE BOY

Speaking of economic bubbles and my life (as I was, to everyone's delight), I have become increasingly attuned to chatter in the media about the housing bubble that has formed in certain communities in the US. Boston is widely regarded to be the most highly inflated market in this regard. A few days ago, I was reflecting on the possibility of selling my pad and cashing in on all that appreciation that has apparently sprung up overnight. It's really outrageous: a realtor recently told me that she was SURE that my place would go for X, when I paid something like 60% of X a year and a half ago. Needless to say, dollar signs rang up in my eyes like in a Daffy Duck cartoon when I heard that. Interestingly, the amount of gain is fairly close to what I owe in student loans. When I made that connection, one word popped into my head: Freedom.

The hitch is that I have to wait until next May to make this happen without paying 20% of tax on the capital gains. I worry that the bubble will burst in the interim, and all this gain will go POOF! It's roughly nine months until May, so it is like I am pregnant, swelling up to give birth to a pile of tax free capital gains. I could lose the baby of course, which would be sad. I am a riddle in nine syllables.

Oh well. These are the thoughts that fill my days. I think I should distract myself from this mess. As Anna Schmidt says in The Third Man: "You really ought to find yourself a girl." posted by Carlton at 8:42 PM

MUSINGS

A long post on recent events en ma vie just disappeared. I posted it, it went, and now it is nowhere to be found. I can't be bothered to recreate it, so those of you who cannot wait to hear if Little Nell is dead or not will just have to blame the Internet deities.

A saying: A man always remembers the women he could have had. A woman always remembers the men that she couldn't have. If true, this means that a woman who offers herself to a man and the man who refuses her will forever remember each other, and are locked together in an embrace of recollection that is both chaste and passionate. I think thick novels are written about those kinds of relationships.

posted by Carlton at 8:09 PM