Woke up yesterday morning to find a mass email from a woman – a Facebook friend I’ve never met – excitedly announcing her new book and outlining the various ways I can help her promote it on social media. Drove to Delray for lunch with Hania ($2 tacos at El Camino) followed by a visit to the dermatologist to have the last of my stitches removed. Drove back along A1A while listening to Louis Armstrong sing What a Wonderful World and Genevieve Leclerc sing Je Suis Malade. (The beautiful unpredictability of Sirius XM.) At home I assembled the new umbrella and put it on the balcony, then sat in its shade – not nearly as ample as that once provided by our now denuded palms – reading about Grant Wood in an old issue of The New Yorker. Hania called to tell me she was stuck in traffic on I-95, ending the conversation with, “Someone just hit me from behind.” She arrived home with a slightly scratched fender and four large mangos someone had given her at work. After dinner (salad and chili) I turned on the Marlins game to see Giancarlo Stanton’s return to Marlins Park. Coming to bat at the top of the first, he received a warm ovation, which he gratefully acknowledged before ripping a ground ball single into left field. I switched over to PBS to watch the special about Betty White. All those years watching Password I never knew she was married to Allen Ludden. Before heading to bed I caught Stanton’s extra innings at bat with the game tied and two men on. As if he'd been wearing his old Marlins uniform, he struck out.
One of the many interesting exchanges in Casi 40 is the one that follows the man’s announcement that the previous occupant of his hotel room stole the batteries from the remote. The woman is unimpressed, and tells him that people steal all the time; she gives a partial list of items that are regularly taken from Spanish hotels and restaurants. She adds that this doesn’t happen in Japan. In Japan, she says, if someone leaves a cellphone behind, people leave it so it will be there when the owner returns. The man asks the woman if she has been to Japan. Yes, she says; she loved Japan. He says he suspects people are happier in Spain. “Because we steal,” she says, smiling. It is a line delivered for effect, while the man’s is sincere and probably accurate.
As sad as the death of Aretha Franklin is the thought that, were she starting out today - in a video age that glorifies appearance - she would have a hard time making it.
The idea of a movie with an all-Asian cast seems a bit less novel to someone who watches a lot of foreign films.
T.S. Eliot, as if anticipating the Internet, wondered, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
Had he foreseen video games, he might have continued: “Where is the information we have lost in entertainment?”
There is a scene in Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness in which the 19-year-old author-to-be is summoned to the office of Ben-Gurion because of an article he’s published that respectfully disagrees with one the prime minister wrote, and during most of their 45-minute meeting he gets an earful on Spinoza.
A leader of a country who spouts Spinoza.