Daily Blague

Yippee! It's a quarter past eight, and Kathleen's on her way home!

Returning last night from a weekend conference in Phoenix, Kathleen was on Mountain Time this morning. I couldn't rouse her. Eventually, she came to at eleven, claiming that she hadn't heard my play Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "Guys and Dolls" at a healthy volume. I suspect that she will not be able to stay up for a video, which is a shame, because Scoop just arrived, and if you think that Scarlett Johannson was good in Match Point, wait till you see her second Woody.

I've grown up a lot this year. I bought a reasonably serious (mid-three-figures) self-winding automatic watch that I never take off except to bathe. I sent most of my Bermuda shorts to Goodwill and never wear the ones that I kept outside of the building except in extremely warm weather. (I don't even wear them at home unless I'm doing something manual, such as wielding a feather-duster.) I don't roll my shirtsleeves up anymore. But I cannot make use of my Filofax. To be sure, I only got it out of envy. I didn't even get it myself, actually; I got Kathleen to give it to me for my birthday two years ago. She has one. PPOQ has one (and is so ostentatious about it!) For a while, I tried printing up things on special Filofax paper, but it's a headache. So the thing just sat there, indignantly indigo. Finally, my shame generated an idea. I would use the Filofax as a "project organizer" for my Web sites. Instead of keeping all that information - books to write up, long-term projects (the Ishiguro re-read, for example) - on clever computer pages, something I'm equally bad at, I would write it all down with a pencil in the Filofax. The calendar would be a log of upcoming posts. I would even simulate "creative meetings" by doodling on blank pages. It all sounded terribly thrilling.

Of course, I did nothing right away. That would have been rash. Stuff piled up around the writing table: I'm working on this, I'm working on that, what the hell are these papers? THROW THE DAMNED BOOK REVIEW AWAY! It was last Sunday's mammoth Book Review that finally prompted action. To work with it, I had to clear the table, littering the rest of the room with inscrutable piles. These will now be organized and deposited - somewhere, but not at my desk. I will count on the Filofax to remind me of matters outstanding!

Do you smell electrical fire? Cerebral RAM getting toasted?

What to do, for example, with the Playbill for History Boys? We saw the show in August. I was taking the month off, so I didn't write anything about it soon enough to be fresh. Then I told myself that I'd see the movie, which, most remarkably, stars the very same people! I'm going to keep the Playbill, of course; I keep 'em all. But does it have to be out? Is it a work-in-progress thingy? No it is not, I decide. I'll write about it when the DVD comes out, unless the film, which I plan to see tomorrow (join me at Lincoln Square at 11:05 if you're interested), turns out to be awful, which I certainly don't expect it to be.

So, pardon me now while I do inventory.