Today’s soundtrack: let me down the easy way
Today at 10:02am: going through a revolving door



When it comes to writing I don’t enjoy going to “File” and clicking “New,” not when I’m conscious of it. I don’t like the way the cursor just sits there and blinks at me. It’s much better when I have an idea and just do the mouseclicks automatically on my way to putting letters on the page.

Today The Corporation finally called me back, but they only had six hours of work, which I managed to finish in three. It’s stupid to work fast when you get paid by the hour but I don’t like dragging work out.

So to get some cash flow I’m in the process of gathering every single thing I can sell on eBay. Gotta get rid of stuff. I’m the type of guy that enjoys throwing things away (CDs, my past, old books, my future) so I might as well try to make a couple bucks.

After I came home from work I hit the keyboard like Ray Charles. Tried to, anyway. Tickling the plastics, banging out paragraphs instead of chords. The book-fellowship application deadline is this Friday and I’ve got a college gig this Thursday, so there’s plenty of writing to be done.

Eventually, prompted by my inner child’s screams I went out and got myself dinner. Only dropped $1.75 (thank god for Chinatown bakeries). Brought it back to the house and popped in a Netflix black-and-white. Only it wasn’t a black-and-white; North By Northwest, I discovered, is in color. I didn’t see how that was possible since it came out in ’59 and Psycho, which came out in ’62, was black and white.

The funny thing is I come home from The Corporation on Park Ave and stick North By Northwest in, and the first shot in the movie is of Park Avenue, a few blocks from where I just was. Except that that particular camera crew was on that sidewalk around forty-five years ago.

Now it’s almost half a decade later but the streets really haven’t changed that much. I mean visually.

One of the establishing shots then showed the revolving doors at the hotel across the street from The Corporation, the hotel I’d stared at this afternoon and countless others while taking my cigarette breaks.

Topping it off, when Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are on the train to Chicago and he asks her what she does for a living, she says “I’m an industrial designer.”

I’m an industrial designer. That’s what I’ve blown the last decade of my life doing up at The Corporation.

I also took that same train line to Chicago, but I didn’t shag anybody right before it went into a tunnel. Probably because I don’t look like Cary Grant or have the interpersonal skills that qualify as charming. Trust me, I don’t. You might be on this page because you enjoy something about my writing, but I guarantee you if we met in person the conversation would get cold before the coffee would. You’ve had better chats with pets and seven-year-olds.

Anyways. Blondes ain’t my type, but man, that Eva Marie Saint is really something, in black-and-white or color.

During the course of my recent classic movie education I was also disappointed to learn that Audrey and Katharine Hepburn are not, as I believed, sisters. They’re not even related.

Well, this is why I’m not a homicide detective. Even if I do have the vices, shitty sleeping patterns and poor diet of that vocation.

Another thing I’ve learned: Citizen Kane is so dull I couldn’t even finish it. I’d rather have anesthesia-free dental surgery than sit through the first three-quarters of that movie again.

Something about Orson Welles’ face is eminently punchable. And yet there are people calling this The Best Movie Ever Made. So I’m either crazy or I have Orson Welles issues.

I go to “File” and click “Close.”