Read This

I was just watching The Safety of Objects, a movie based on a book of short stories by AM Homes. The book is brilliant. The stories have this incredible immediacy and voyeuristic appeal. They're all glimpses into the minds and hearts of "ordinary" people whose lives are anything but ordinary. The movie's a mish-mash of the stories -- the story lines intersect and overlap. The book reminds me of Raymond Carver but the movie isn't nearly as good as Short Cuts. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess because it was just on and it made me think what a great book it is. Read it.

Speaking of great books -- I finished My War today and it's fucking great. If you ever wanted to know what it's like for the infantry in Iraq, read it. I think everyone in this country ought to have to read it. Especially if you've got a yellow Support Our Troops sticker stuck on the back of your SUV. Then you should have to memorize it. Buzzell tells it like it is and owns every single action he makes over there. He doesn't call himself a hero and he doesn't gloss over the nastiness or the confusion or the fear. It's one of the best war books I've ever read and I've read a lot of war books.

I'm just starting Beasts of No Nation and I'm really excited about it. It shouldn't take me long to read since it's only about 200 pages long. I read the first few pages and it's told in this lyrical, poetic first-person style. This kind of stylized first-person narrative reminded me a lot of Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks (another great book that you should read or re-read immediately). I like it when authors give you the full-immersion treatment and the language really puts you inside the protagonist's head, Catcher in the Rye style.

So, tomorrow is the last day before the MTA strike. The deadline is 12:01 a.m. Friday. I wonder if they'll put a slowdown on the trains. Shit. It'll probably take me forever to get to work but at least on Friday I'll have someone from work come pick me up. Then I don't have to work again until Jan. 3. It's pretty sweet. Two full weeks off. Next week, I'm going to try and hook up with some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while, take in some movies, read, write, take it easy. I guess if there's a transit strike, I'll be taking it a lot easier than I normally would -- cold weather + no trains = stay at home and do shit here. I still don't know all the details about this strike -- what the union's bitch is and what the MTA says. It's all been kind of a blur. I did catch the part about the bus drivers only have a 4-minute turnaround at the end of their runs, which is fucked up. They should definitely have more than 4 minutes to stretch their legs and go to the can and eat a snack or whatever. I'm sure there's some crooked motherfuckers on both sides of this debate and they're the reason the negotiations are going all to hell. It's the same old story -- the bosses argue with each other and the workers (including all of the workers who have to figure out how to get to work when these dudes go on strike) get screwed. It's so typical. It ought to definitely shake things up in this city. There hasn't been a transit strike in a long time. Maybe it'll be good for everyone in the end, but it's going to SUCK on Friday.

Today at work I pitched this: H. says "You're going to take advice from some orthodontist who thinks he's going to L.A. to be a photographer hobnobbing with Tinseltown's brightest?" F. says, "Hobnobbing? There hasn't been any hobnobbing in Tinseltown since Bogart and Bacall were knocking back sidecars at the Brown Derby." I thought it was pretty quick, but they ended up cutting this entire part of the scene in the rewrite. C'est la vie.

Holy shit. I just read that Chris Whitley died on Nov. 20. Damn. I really liked that guy. His album Living with the Law was a soundtrack for my life for about two years. My (then) wife turned me on to him and he was exactly what I was looking for at the time -- bluesy, junk-addled, country rock. RIP, amigo. Enjoy the Big Sky country.

Okay, I gotta go lay down. My head's fucking killing me and the souvlaki I got from the Greeks is sitting like a rock in my belly. Time to go get down and dim.