Howard Hughes at the Sea
The heat seems finally to have broken. Today is overcast, and the high is only supposed to reach 76˚F. But the humidity is at 76%, and my office is still a bit swampy.
Yesterday, the lack of sleep and the heat had finally taken such a toll on me that I wasn't even going to pretend I could try and get work done - as I had pretended on Thursday and Friday. Instead, we headed down to Conanicut Island and Beavertail, possibly for the first time since 2014. The sun was almost blinding, soaking the world in white, and the tourists were almost unendurable. We stayed at the lighthouse a little while, and looked inside the tiny aquarium they keep there - tautog, lobsters and crabs, a sea robin, and other creatures from the cold waters just off the point. Outside, there were mockingbirds and red-winged blackbirds in the dog roses and blackberry briers, there were huge swallowtail butterflies and tiny cabbage white butterflies. There were gulls, of course, and cormorants. Sailboats everywhere. We made it back home by six.
Back home, I watched The Magnificent Ambersons (1941), which I'd not seen since my twenties. It's as heartbreaking as ever, that butchered film, knowing what it was before Robert Wise and RKO cut fifty minutes from it. That it is still so brilliant a film is a testament to the genius that was Orson Wells. That happy, tacked on ending is a perfect mirror of the happy ending tacked onto the original theatrical release of Blade Runner. They're both lies, in essentially the same way.
I went to bed around eleven thirty, an almost unheard of early bedtime for me, but I was so tired I was ill. Still, I didn't get to sleep for a couple of hours. But then I finally slept, a good six and a half or seven hours.
Night before last we saw a very decent little science-fiction film, Young Ones (2014), with Micheal Shannon and Elle Fanning, directed by Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth's brother. And also Wilem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara's artful 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011).
On my movie list, I've reached 1962.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. I have to go write something for Sirenia Digest #126.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast
Yesterday, the lack of sleep and the heat had finally taken such a toll on me that I wasn't even going to pretend I could try and get work done - as I had pretended on Thursday and Friday. Instead, we headed down to Conanicut Island and Beavertail, possibly for the first time since 2014. The sun was almost blinding, soaking the world in white, and the tourists were almost unendurable. We stayed at the lighthouse a little while, and looked inside the tiny aquarium they keep there - tautog, lobsters and crabs, a sea robin, and other creatures from the cold waters just off the point. Outside, there were mockingbirds and red-winged blackbirds in the dog roses and blackberry briers, there were huge swallowtail butterflies and tiny cabbage white butterflies. There were gulls, of course, and cormorants. Sailboats everywhere. We made it back home by six.
Back home, I watched The Magnificent Ambersons (1941), which I'd not seen since my twenties. It's as heartbreaking as ever, that butchered film, knowing what it was before Robert Wise and RKO cut fifty minutes from it. That it is still so brilliant a film is a testament to the genius that was Orson Wells. That happy, tacked on ending is a perfect mirror of the happy ending tacked onto the original theatrical release of Blade Runner. They're both lies, in essentially the same way.
I went to bed around eleven thirty, an almost unheard of early bedtime for me, but I was so tired I was ill. Still, I didn't get to sleep for a couple of hours. But then I finally slept, a good six and a half or seven hours.
Night before last we saw a very decent little science-fiction film, Young Ones (2014), with Micheal Shannon and Elle Fanning, directed by Jake Paltrow, Gwyneth's brother. And also Wilem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara's artful 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011).
On my movie list, I've reached 1962.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. I have to go write something for Sirenia Digest #126.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast