Daily Office Monday
Happy Saint Paddy’s
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¶ Matins: Today’s Book on Monday, Crazy For God, at Portico.
¶ Sext: Bailout or Smackdown? You decide. Meanwhile, I’m back in New York, sauntering down 86th Street minutes before the St Patrick’s Day Parade.
¶ Compline: One reason for not posting a bit more this afternoon was having to watch a rental before it was due back, to wit, Sexy Beast.
Oremus…
§ Matins. Crazy For God is a remarkable book by any standard. Part Auntie Mame, part Elmer Gantry, it’s a portrait of America by a man who was hardly ever here until he was almost out of his teens. Indeed, if you think that the resurgence of the Religious Right between 1970 and 2000 defies rational explanation, this book will prove you half right: it took some bizarre out-of-towners to work the magic.
§ Sext. My weekend host was pissed that her tax dollars were being spent to pay off Wall Street greedipusses. Having no more sympathy for the predatory idiots than she, I nevertheless couldn’t share her outrage. To Bear, Stearns shareholders who would rather hold out for liquidation of assets in bankruptcy, I say, “Sorry, Charlie!”
Home Sweet Home! I had a fine weekend, though. Very comfortable, friendly, and sober. On the train ride back, I sat by the window, with the Black Nano streaming gently into my ears (Beethoven’s Seventh, Mozart’s K 515, Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, just to name a few pieces), and thought about the past in a less pointed way than I usually do. My host, like all my law school friends, has known me half my life; but there are probably fewer than ten people on earth who knew me before law school and have known me since. My life before the age of thirty almost belongs to someone else, someone who isn’t with us anymore.
And yet of course I’m still here.
I took lots of pictures from the train — in the Bronx and Queens.
§ Compline. I think that I said on Friday why I wanted to see Sexy Beast again: so much of The Bank Job reminded me of it. Actually the films have little in common besides the safe-deposit vaults and the whiff of high-end sexpottery. When Sexy Beast came out, in 2001, everyone was gaga about Ben Kingsley’s nightmarish performance as Don Logan, a sociopath who might have outsourced David Mamet’s mother’s-milk. It’s certainly gruesome to watch him stare everybody down, as a warmup for unbearable humiliation, but on a second viewing (after all this time!), I was hugely moved by Ray Winstone’s gorgeous performance as Gal. Gal starts out as your average sensual thug, now in clover, but Mr Winstone underlines Gal’s boorish bravado with a wistful wisdom that makes him someone whom you might actually want to know. If Mr Winstone has had a role as encompassing as Gal since Sexy Beast, I haven’t seen it.