Weekend Update (Friday Edition): Juggling
The handymen were here this morning to change the filters on the HVAC units. (I think that that stands for “heating, ventilating, air-conditioning.”) The units are positioned beneath the windows, naturally. So is a lot of furniture, and a great deal of terrifying wiring. The wiring is all mine, but I can’t summon the courage to clean it up.
Certainly not today, when I can hardly see straight. M le Neveu, who is in town this weekend, dropped by last night to pick something up, and I looked so tired that he nicely asked if he could grate the block of cheddar that I had set out for macaroni & cheese. No, I thanked him; grating cheese would keep me standing. I might slip into a coma otherwise.
In any case, I had to stay home and move the furniture for the handymen; so, no Friday movie. I went ahead and did my Saturday cleaning, which made all the more sense in view of tomorrow afternoon’s schedule: I’ll be taking some friends on a tour of the Museum. In the evening, we’ve got Waiting for Godot. D’you remember that National Lampoon Radio hour parody in which a bus pulls up and Godot gets off? “Hi, guys…” I don’t think that we’ll be seeing that version.
The Week at Portico: This week’s four new pages: ¶ Yiyun Li’s quietly remarkable novel, The Vagrants. The more I read about modern China (the novel is set in 1979), the better I understand Beijing’s prickly attitude toward Western misunderstandings. ¶ Christopher Hampton’s 1970 comedy, The Philanthropist, with Matthew Broderick, is packing them in at the American Airlines Theatre. The revival had me daydreaming about Alan Bennett. ¶ Faubourg 36 (marketed here, idiotically, as Paris 36) is the first live-action film to command the uncluttered grace of comic books, and as such it opens a world of new possibilities to the movie musical. ¶ This week’s Book Review review — they ought to have put Animal Spirits, by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, on the cover.