I woke up this morning to see that snow is literally HIGHER THAN MY WINDOW. I can’t see out my window. This is like a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, except that I have … you know … a radiator that is blasting heat. But I haven’t seen snow that high in … years. Kinda cool, actually. It’s still coming down. They were not kidding when they said “blizzard”. So what does one do during a blizzard?? Post excerpts from … Edward Gibbons’ masterpiece. Of course. Makes total sense.
Is there any other place on the Internet where one goes from Michelle Kwan to the Roman Empire? I didn’t think so.
And look out. I’ll be working on a piece on Bill Pullman today, and why I think he is one of our most wonderful and most UNSUNG actors. As a matter of fact, if they were going to “remake” Bringing Up Baby (and please: DON’T GET ANY IDEAS – DON’T EVER REMAKE THAT FILM … I’m just saying IF they were …) – I would cast Bill Pullman as Dr. Huxley. He’s got that thing. He’s got that Cary Grant thing. That kind of baffled sweetness, and the feeling that … he’s always thinking about something ELSE, which gives him an air of distraction and makes him, on occasion, clumsy. As we all know, men who have an air of distraction tend to drive women NUTS with desire … because women want to break through the distraction … and make the men FOCUS, and LOOK at them … and so we turn ourselves inside out to get their attention. This is part of Cary Grant’s charm in those roles. Women literally go INSANE trying to get Cary Grant to focus only on them. (Ahem – Only Angels Have Wings … but also Bringing Up Baby.) Bill Pullman has that in SPADES. Along with an underlying sweetness. A devastating combo. He’s also very very funny. So.
More on Pullman later.
Re: Bill Pullman
> Who would dare give me the raspberry? LONE STAR!
Look forward to it.
hahahahahahahaha
Cullen: have you seen Zero Effect? It’s my favorite Bill Pullman role and nobody really knows about it. He plays a paranoid agoraphobic detective, kind of a really psychologically damaged Sherlock Holmes type … It is SUCH a good performance. My brother turned me onto it – telling me how good Pullman was – and he was right.
I highly recommend it – it’s really really fun.
I’m actually jealous of the snow. They were calling for it all week down in my neck of the woods. Then, it just rained all night.
Zero Effect’s a great flick. Pullman’s great, and I think it’s one of Ben Stiller’s best comic roles. I lent my copy out, and the girl I lent it to took it with her when she moved to Missouri.
I think I need another copy.
I need to see it again, Tommy – it was so enjoyable – a really good crime-fighting flick, but also: an amazing psychological portrait of this guy!!
I saw Bill Pullman on Broadway in a new Edward Albee play called The Goat – with Mercedes Ruehl. He is SO GOOD on stage. It felt, to me, like it was his natural milieu – which I never would have guessed, because his filmwork is so good. But he is fanTASTIC on stage.
He’s always struck me as one of those guys who’s capable in both a dramatic and comedic capacity…somethingg that’s not always true.
I’m a screen guy, because, well, we get just so many stage productions down in Bumfuck, Tennessee.
So, take what I say with a grain of salt, but it just seems like those who excel on stage are more capable of doing both drama and comedy. It’s the comedy I’m thinking of. Maybe it’s performing in front of an audience that’s immediately responsive that helps hone comic timing.
That is an AWESOME point, tommy. Never really thought of it that way but I think you’re right.
And yeah – he does seem to be able to do drama and comedy – and he never seems to be straining for effect. I’d love to see him in a nice big dramatic part, something where he can really show his stuff.
I think he’d make an awesome CK Dexter Haven as well – maybe in a revival on Broadway??? Now THAT would be something I’d stand in line to see.
I have yet to see Zero Effect, but I do know about it. One I’m gonna have to add to the queue.
Big freaking blizzard!
I wish it would snow out West.
Pullman kicks Kwans ass.
A haiku! hahahahaha whoo-hoo!!!
Stickler for grammer.
Forgotten apostrophe?
Kick Kwan’s ass myself.
P.S. I had a haiku year myself, in 1996. I am IN LOVE with your 40 days of umbrella haikus.
hahahahaha I love that other people went through “haiku phases” – even “haiku years”. Makes me not feel so crazy.
I realized after I hit “send” that my haiku year was actually in 1999, not 1996. I wrote at least one a day for a little over a year. It was part of my daily routine, much like your umbrella haikus were. I had a little journal (honestly, it was “little”–it was, like, 3″ by 3″, PERFECT for haikus) that I would keep in my pocket and jot down a haiku into whenever I felt the urge. And all of my friends knew I was having a haiku year and if they ever felt the urge, they were free to jot one down in my little journal. And a few of them had haiku years themselves. Oh, and I also wrote a play in haiku verse–actually, not entirely in haiku verse, just the love scenes were written in haiku–the play was about this Japanese woman, Akiko, who was obsessed with the novelist Richard Brautigan. (Have you read Richard Brautigan? Some people love him, some people hate him, some people think he’s Beat-lite. I’m in the “love him” camp, but his most famous book, Trout Fishing In America, is my least favorite of his. If you’ve never read him and you’re going to, I would start with In Watermelon Sugar.) Anyway, I think that the haiku dialogue actually worked for the play–it forced me to keep everything spare and simple, which felt right for the story I was trying to tell. I haven’t looked at that script in a really long time. I wonder if it holds up. Gosh, I guess all of this was to say that your love of haiku is not so crazy, or if it IS crazy, well, you’re not alone. What is it that they scream in Freaks? “One of us! One of us!” There you go.
erik – genius. I love it.
I can just picture it. You run into a friend you haven’t seen for a while. You are shocked by the friend’s changed appearance. Dark circles under eyes, a lunatic gleam in the eyeballs, pale skin … You say, “Hey … how are you?? You don’t look so hot.” The friend says seriously, “I’m okay. Just havin’ a haiku year, know what I mean?”
“Just havin’ a haiku year, know what I mean?”
Totally, I love that, it makes me want to have ANOTHER haiku year, and then say that to the next person who asks me how I am.
“Just havin’ a haiku year, know what I mean?”
And I think that all of our problems should be solved by 40 days of haikus left on answering machines. That’s truly the most brilliant thing ever. If they had answering machines back in Shakespeare’s day, I think it’s something he mighta done. Cuz it’s so brilliant.
I spent so many years being really mad at my dad about a lot of different things and recently we’ve begun to connect in a totally new way and it’s really good, it’s like we’re finally both in a place to accept each other for who we are and not expect the other person to be someone else–but I wonder how different our relationship would be if, years ago, I had left him 40 haiku messages. I bet we’d have gotten to this place of wanting to get to know each other A LOT SOONER. Or my dad would have put me into a looney bin. Hard to tell. But you’ve inspired me and the next time I need to work something out with something, I’m going the 40 days route.
“work something out with someONE”
Did you hear? Kwan quit!
Hughes didn’t pull a Harding.
Hope she gets the gold.