I arrived early for the Broward Bulldog fundraiser last night so I took a walk along the river and worked on the talk I'm giving tonight in Boca Raton (on the anti-Mafia movement in Sicily).
It went well until I came upon two women and felt self-conscious, walking along and talking to myself. Then I saw a man out walking his two dogs. He was talking quite loudly into his cellphone. Nobody gave him a second look. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cellphone. Without turning it on, I put it to my ear and continued with my talk.
Of the seven films I saw at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, only two were a waste of time. One of these won Best Florida Feature and the other won Best Foreign Film.
Last night I sat outside Laser Wolf drinking my Wynwood IPA and eavesdropping on the three young women sitting at the table next to me. One was Hispanic, one was Asian-American, and one was Midwestern. At one point the Midwesterner complained about how uninteresting she was, being, as she explained, white and from the Midwest. This struck me as odd; in my travels I have met my share of bores in Latin America and Asia, and a number of interesting people in the Midwest. I have never considered skin color, or geographical provenance, to be an indicator of personal fascination. But as the Midwesterner continued to talk, which she did 80 percent of the time, it became clear that her assessment of herself was accurate. It was also obvious that she didn’t believe a word of it. For if she truly regarded herself as uninteresting, she would not have monopolized the conversation. Why bore people with your self-evident dullness? She would have eagerly listened and learned from the people she had declared (disingenuously) to be more compelling.
As I drove home from work Friday the car died just as I pulled into a parking space at River Reach. First the radio went, then I noticed the air-conditioning wasn't working, then the engine starting making an unconventional sound before falling silent.
We took Hania's car to possibly the worst movie either of us had ever seen, though it's difficult to say because we walked out after the first 30 minutes. We drove to Las Olas where our favorite restaurant there, Wild East, was closed. On Friday evening of boat show weekend.
We walked the boulevard. All the sidewalk tables at Cheese Culture were occupied, and inside it felt like about 60 degrees. At least they have the excuse that they're keeping the cheeses cool. We ended up at a place we had not been to in over a decade, a place we'd always associated with clueless tourists. What did we have to lose? We sat on the terrace and enjoyed a fine meal.
South Floridians have a reputation as whiners. A number of years ago a local magazine ran a cartoon in which a waiter approached a table of eight and asked: "Is anything OK today ladies?"
Yet yesterday I was having my weekly lunch at Greek Islands on A1A when a man came through the door pushing a woman in a wheelchair. He greeted the waitress cheerfully. (Not a hard thing to do at Greek Islands.) Then he rolled the woman up to the table behind me and said, "I'll put you right here."
"I love it," she said.
"Now you can see the world," he told her, "and the world can see you."
"I love it all," said the woman in the wheelchair.
The blond woman standing on the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard urged us to check out the new Cinema Paradiso and, having already bought tickets, we stepped inside. We walked through the small but high-ceilinged lobby and down a side corridor. About 80 large seats faced a screen that seemed a bit too low.
Two couples arrived, speaking in Russian. Then a trio speaking Spanish. Two older women in the front started recommending films - this was the first week of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival - to the couple sitting across the aisle. The Russian speakers called down to them, in English, to speak a little louder. We were like a little impromptu film society.
The film, Italian Movies, was about the night cleaning crew at a television studio in Italy - almost all of them immigrants - who start a successful business shooting videos of other immigrants that they can post for loved ones back home. The story was so delightful, the characters so genial, that I sat there for most of it with a smile on my face.