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Below is the entry I'd intended to post last Thursday, but forgot. It is crucially important because it contains many plot points, he said, half serious, but also knowing that none of it is important to anyone else except for the twin suns in this part of the universe still bound by gravitational force. -- I did not have “shopping for spatulas for a new house” on my bingo card for November of 2025, but no one does. There is no version of bingo in which that’s called out by the person running the game. Imagine you’re in a church basement, marking your five cards, and the last one was 0-64, and that makes four rows ready to go. Your card is just ready to pop. The caller says B-2, and there’s a rill of excitement in the crowd - everyone’s close, so close. “I - shopping for spatulas for a new house,” says the caller, and someone on the other side of the hall shouts BINGO! No one would accept this. But there I was, considering: all one color, or various? Silicon, yes. Wood handles? Eh. Bacteria. Nor did I think I would be helping to sand the front door. Wife’s been on a Wood Improvement kick to make the house pop in all ways before its eventual sale. Perhaps you recall how it started: the back door threshold needed a fresh coat of paint. Then came the back door itself, both sides, sanded down. Wednesday was the last day of the year it would be warm enough.to do the front door. Thursday, too cold. I did some detail sanding, listening first to the end of a podcast about the end of Lord Nelson, and then a tedious podcast with Mary Beard, who knows all about the classics but has a professorial drone that does not make the past come alive so much as it does string it to marionette wands and make it do an indifferent dace. Then, as the sun set and the twilight glowed beyond the trees, we taped up the windows and did the last sanding, working with a sense that time was terribly short and the Nazis would soon be ten miles outside of Paris, and this must be finished before we raced to the Gare De Lyon to catch the last train out. Then I busied myself making supper, asshe stained the door. “Tomorrow will be a day for the topcoat,” she said, and I remarked that it was not as memorable line as the end of Gone with the Wind, but certainly more practical. The morning began with ladders laid alongside the house. Gutter cleaners. They were diligent and inexpensive, although unless I take a drone up there I’ll have to take their word for it all. And so went another cheerful day in the house. Really! Cheerful. Right now I’m sitting out in the gazebo now burning off the last quantity of gas in the Home Depot fireplace, a Chinese product I am surprised to find has lasted four seasons without blowing up. It’s not warm out here, at all, but the fire helps. We sat outside for an hour last night and had a lovely conversation. As I’ve said: I am living in an unreal situation. Why spatulas? Target is next to the gym, and I wandered in to see about some things. Ended up buying no more than dog poop bags (unscented. I don’t think the scented ones are capable of overpowering the hogo of their contents.) At three distinct points in my stroll around the store I was greeted - hello, how are you - by an employee. The fourth time I stopped and asked the employee if there was a new policy that required them to say hello to guests (used the company term to suggest I was Aware of Things), and she smiled in a way that said oh absolutely yes, but declined to give a specific answer. Well it’s great! I said. Keep it up. Then I went to the grocery store, and I had to decide: am I in a jalapeño mood? You might think why wouldn’t you be in a jalapeño mood? Because of the pending rearrangement of my life, that’s why. When I get up in the morning and make my breakfast, I chop a jalapeño, and too often it reminds me of the omelette line at the Cancun resort. No really, stay with me. It used to happen every morning. I cracked the egg with professional precision and raised the egg to let its contents drip, and it reminded me of the guy who manned the omelette station. I was imitating him. Or just remembering his uncomplaining service. , His morning consisted of endless egg crackingwithout a wasted gesture., alternating with deft metal spatula work. For all I knew he was chained at the ankle to that grill. Head down, one omelette after the other. When his shift was over he dropped on a cot and slept restlessly, dreaming of chickens breaking his head open over and over. I would always ask for jalapeños, and would pronounce the word with slight self-consciousness. I mean, I’m not going to lean too hard into getting the vowels and consonants absolutely correct, that’s pretentious, but then again I’m not starting the word with a J sound, so I’ve already committed. Anyway, they were great omelettes and my cheese and jalapeño omelettes remind me, always, of the resort that A) was “our place,” as she said last time, and B) somewhere we won’t be going to, again, because. So sometimes I look at those jalapeños and I’m not happy. Sometimes I look at the jalapeños in the store and think “do I want to go through this tomorrow morning?” I know what you’re saying. Just get some habaneros and get on with your life.
We continue with a small amount of manufactured enthusiasm to explore the trademarks of 1925, because no one else is. NO ONE!
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Have I done this one? I'm too lazy at the moment to check. Doesn't seem as if I have. Yet it does.
We start at a motel, where the femme, who may be a fatale, is at the pool. We see it’s right on the main drag.
She asks the patsy - I’m presuming hes the patsy, since she's flippant and indifferent to him, and he's obsequious - to wipe the suntan oil off her back. He’s the son of the lady who runs the motel, and the femme fatale lives there.
Some shifty mob-type guys show up, and they’re connected with the singer. But at this point I'm just enjoying the outdoor shots. above: Knudsen! Below: a Rambler billboard.
So the guys do some crime and take the hot-rod kid to drive them around, and it’s a love triangle between the bad guy and the morally compromised girl. What we’re here for is the inadvertent documentary. A little piece of 1956 Los Angeles.
Name that building in the back:
Correct. Very good. But where? Another look:
Unusual design. This one?
Probably not. Possibly a repurposed Gilmore Gas station. Anyway. Old-style phone booths, before the flat-top all-glass modern booths with the landlord halo were a national standard.
Take a look at this shot. Does it seem special? No. Now look at it again with the knowledge that the movie was originally released in 3D.
THE TURNSTILES ARE SO CLOSE IT'S LIKE THEY'RE IN YOUR LAP I only found that out after getting 20 minutes in, and it makes you look at the framing and composition through those (cough) lens. Wait a minute. This shot makes me think I've done this before.
I went back and checked. No, it's a different movie where the guy lets one loose when he stands, and the mike picks it up.
Still homeless, in a way:
That'll do! More of the same to come and perhaps less, with more of something completely unexpected. I mean, at this point, that's what I expect.
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That was last week. Sunday, it snowed. Just a dusting. Just a warning.
