What I wanted to write about this afternoon was the very different lights that David Cannadine and Anna Russell shine on the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. But I’ve got to re-read Cannadine first, and there hasn’t been time. I spent the day with Ray Soleil, or the afternoon, anyway, and I’m off to babysit with Will in a little while.

Ray and I were very industrious. He measured for, and I bought, a set of Venetian blinds for the blue room. It might not appear to make much sense, buying blinds for a room that is rather dark at all times and that it’s hard to see into even from the balcony, much less another apartment, but I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to wonder how I ever lived without them.  

I had decided not to go to the movies tomorrow — I still haven’t written about the two films that I saw last Friday — but then I peeked at Movie Showtimes and saw that Cowboys and Aliens will be showing at the Orpheum at 10:20 in the morning. Pretty irresistible, even though I’m not really curious about the movie. It’s Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde that I want to see. I ought to stay home, though. There is a lot of little stuff to take care of, the kind of little stuff that I simply don’t get to if I don’t attack it first thing in the morning. And I’ve been almost operatically unproductive this week.

I did finish two books — more to write about, when I find the time. Although I’m going to have to re-read the thermodynamics/Maxwell’s Demon chapter of James Gleick’s The Information, because I really didn’t get it the first time around. Most of it seemed to be 100% wrong, which shows how backwards my head is screwed on about physics. I have never been able to grasp the idea of entropy; there is something unthinkable about it. On a broader frame, I had a terrible time with Gleick’s disposition to treat all information equally — to strip meaning out of the equation. I understand why Claude Shannon or any other electrical engineer would want to do that, but only instrumentally, professionally. It seems a misguided thing for anyone else to try. When I mentioned these problems, she asked if I’d been reading The Information late at night, which is to say after a few glasses of wine. I don’t think so — perhaps that would have helped. I found the book pervasively uncongenial, and positively trivial in contrast to Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human.

The other book that I finished was Judith Martin’s Venetian memoir, No Vulgar Hotel. I drew a vulgar satisfaction from watching my current-reading pile drop significantly this week, what with Christianity and The Information; you might not think so, but No Vulgar Hotel was just as fat. That’s because I couldn’t read it without having the Rizzoli Treasures of Venice near to hand, along with a foldout map. Now I can put all of that away. 

At lunch, Ray and I regaled each other with stories of all the mischief that we got into when we were boys. Ray had me weeping with laughter about the puzzlement that he and his brother caused their mother, when they took to building elaborate little structures out of shirt cardboard. But all she had to do was to ask her husband why the boys were building “dollhouses” out of cardboard for him to perceive the gleam of pyromaniac thrill that was motivating this project. He could probably smell the smoke! “I don’t know what they do with them after they build them,” their mother said to their father. “Do you think they’re giving them away?” The tears were popping out of my eyes,  I was laughing so hard. That’s really why I haven’t been able to get anything done this afternoon.  

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 6:00 pm.