Friday, February 13, 2009

Whipping the Beast

The Dufflebag asked about the Ernie Kovacs dvd collection Charlie lent me. So, after a breakfast of steel cut oatmeal with chocolate chips, we watched a few scenes. He seemed fascinated and even laughed. This proves something to me, but I'm not sure what.

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My bank account was thoroughly depleted this week. The unemployment check hasn't come yet. I'm almost out of gas. If it wasn't for Jess helping me out and supporting me in my attempt to get my writing and teaching career back on track, this would no doubt be a bleak time.

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We watched the Wrestler yesterday. I liked it very much, and am glad Aronofsky is learning the value of restraint. He's getting better. I suspected that, during the filming of Requiem for a Dream, he was as amped up on meth as his characters. There is a difference between trying to portray human sorrow and simply dredging the audience through it. The scene that rang least true for me was when the Ram, in a fit of anger, thrust his own thumb into a meat slicer. That was the old, bathetic Aronofsky to me. "You want cheese? Get your own fucking cheese!" Good line. But the movie has so much to recommend it, I don't want to come across as petty. A sincere attempt to cultivate human sympathy and understanding? I'll take it. We need more of that.

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For dinner, I defrosted the second half of the giant salmon fillet and blackened it, heating the skillet to a whitish color before dropping in the spitting, snarling cuts. I've been only semi-successful in my previous blackening attempts, but his time I made sure the skillet was hot and I sliced the servings in half to make them appropriately thin. I marinated them in lime juice before dipping them in melted garlic butter that would help the spices stick.

Every last hidden bit of garlic was eaten up, and the family moved over to the skillet when the meal was over to look for stray nuggets of fishflesh. Goo Goo, working his magic.

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And now I'm turning to the novel. I had to leave off in the middle of a scene yesterday to go to the orientation but it's time to finish that section and keep whipping this beast closer to the home stretch.

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