I didn’t sleep well last night, due to a too-light dinner and a heavy workload. Nothing like waking up at 4 a.m. with hunger pangs and the usual dead-of-night conviction that ALL THE WORK YOU DO IS SHIT, AND SOONER OR LATER THE WORLD WILL DISCOVER THIS.
I read the iPad for a while, dozed off, got up for good at 5:30. It’s amazing how many people are updating their Facebook and Twitter at that hour. There are really only a couple of hours in the very dead of night when my stream is dead. I know this because one of my Twitter follows is @big_ben_clock, which does nothing but chime on the hour. When two or three of those stack up, I know the United States is sound asleep, coast to coast.
I should follow some Europeans. At that hour, the day is already moving at full speed over there. (And yes, I could simply try to go back to sleep like a normal person, but how can you do that when the world is thrumming with news and information?)
But as usually happens, my wee-hours fears were for naught, the day went well, and I just finished a salad-and-pasta meal with two glasses of wine. I would very much like to watch “Bachelorette” on demand, but fear I’ll be taken down before it’s over. Carbs + alcohol = an early bedtime for me.
In the meantime, I’ll tell you about the fall movies I’m planning to see. Roger Ebert reported a bit from Toronto this week, and says he’s willing to bet “Argo” will be the year’s Best Picture Oscar winner. On the list? Why, yes. Also, “The Master” and certainly “Cloud Atlas,” because I lurved the novel so, so much. Roger says: Stirring and grand, and maybe great, but maybe not. Honestly, as usually happens with books I love, I’m less taken with the plot — although the plot(s) in “Cloud Atlas” are mind-boggling — than I am with the author’s prose style, which movies generally don’t deal with.
And yeah, I think “The Sessions,” but that will probably be a wait-for-DVD. And likely “Lincoln,” although if I can’t go as Brian Stouder’s and Jeff the MM’s date, what’s the damn point?
Did any news happen today? We had a little office chat about Nate Silver, who is so bullish on Obama’s reelection that he’s either going to make his career on Election Night or be struck with the urge to take a long vacation. He was scarily right last time, but who knows what that means?
I was perhaps too flip yesterday in dismissing Jonathan Kozol’s own too-flip observation about homelessness. At the time he made it, I recall a changing world in which great wealth was flooding into the nation’s large cities, closing the SRO hotels that had housed the addicted fringe. They were driven into the street with the freed mentally ill, and walking among this cohort in places like New York, Chicago and even Columbus, it was easy to get frustrated with anyone who suggested a simple solution. As many of you have pointed out, housing is the solution to homelessness, but it has to be the right sort of housing, and it has to be bolstered with appropriate support. If I oversimplified, I apologize.
Tom & Lorenzo have been at Fashion Week and critiquing actresses at the various Toronto film festival premieres, and I’m enjoying both very much. Adding to bucket list: Once, just once, inspiring a smart fashion eye to say, “Bow down, bitches.”
September 11, 2012 — an odd-year anniversary, but discuss if you like.



