Another Rec...

I also recently finished this book, The Sins of Brother Curtis. In the interest of full disclosure, the main character is my uncle, my mom's brother. Funny, huh? But I'd heard from family that, "you know, that book about Tim, it's actually really good!" I agree. It's a true story legal thriller and really well-written. Some of the details are truly shocking, but continued to be a page-turner up through the end.

I'm now in the middle of Nine Lives, there is sure a recommendation coming. At times it gets a little cute (the Orleans Parish DA, Harry Connick's, son singing at a party at age 9, for example) but also well-written and a love letter to a city I also love.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

This movie is a total delight. It's a documentary about streeet art, specifically Banksy's, and it's not at all what I expected it to be. It also challenged me somewhat about my feelings about public art v. graffiti. Banksy does these political murals on the wall built in the West Bank. Art? Absolutely and not something I feel should be criminally prosecuted. The guys spraying paint, hitting each car as a train went by... string 'em up! It's destructive and... that's not art! Like the Supreme Court, I know it when I see it, apparently.

Anyway, check it out, it's on Netflix Instant which would be a really good option for those of you with a reliable internet signal...

poignant

Late the following morning, I picked her up from beside the quad. Her grin was uncontrollable as she got into the car, and her voice, usually measured, was a barely punctuated garble of names and details. Had I read Andrey Platonov’s “Foundation Pit” (she’d been to a class on it)? She met this kid who. . . . It was pledge night for boys trying to get into fraternities. . . . There was a picnic. . . . Everybody’s door was open. . . . They stayed up until after midnight, talking and singing. . . . She played a borrowed ukulele. . . . There was a boy who’d been a year ahead of her at elementary school in Seattle. . . . Everybody said. . . .
She’d picked up the slang and was talking ProFros and RoHos.
“I haven’t seen you like this since you were 7,” I said.
“I’m so excited, it’ll make the rest of high school unbearable if I get to thinking too much about it.”
She calmed down over lunch. Her great worry, she said, had been that she would never again have friends as close as those she made at high school; that college students would keep themselves to themselves and be hard to get to know. Overnight all her fears had been gloriously dispelled. Her two-house life in Seattle had, she said, helped ready her to go away. “At least I know I can survive without one parent at a time.”

This essay made me misty, poignant in a lot of ways.

The end of vacation is always boring. And logistics make it even worse, like when the sweet trip is over, I’d like to just be home in normal life. Flying and waiting for bags and getting the parked car and driving 2 hours home and picking up the dogs the next day is really just insult to injury as far as I am concerned. There’s lots to say about the trip, but for now two things that have made me laugh since getting back to work today:

1. Police report: “I initially thought he had a large piece of food in his mouth, but on closer review it appeared to be a wisdom tooth.” So gross for some reason.

And

2. Letter from client: “Especially here in Arizona, they’re mean here. Or maybe it’s just my bald melon.” (no, it doesn’t make a lot more sense in context, but did make me guffaw out loud.)

Welcome back to post-vacation, post-30 summertime!