Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

hypnagogie and I have an now-annual tradition of attending AMC's Oscar Showcase, where they marathon all of the Best Picture nominees over two consecutive Saturdays (give or take Roma, because Netflix was totally passing AMC nasty notes in study hall or something so now they're not invited to the birthday party, Sheila). It's ridiculous amounts of fun, highly recommended if you're a movie fan, but it leaves me with a whole armload of opinions that have nowhere to go. My original plan was to do the old recap post thing in advance of the awards themselves, but the final movie finished screening less that 24 hours before the Oscars were to begin, and with the crunch on I decided to just let it go, telling myself I didn't really have many things to say.

Then the Oscars happened, and I now have things to say.

So herewith I present the 2018 Best Picture Nominees Wrap-Up post I neglected to write on Sunday, now with the smooth, fruity flavor of indignant hindsight:

Black Panther
I saw this in the theatre when it came out a year ago, and was blown clear out of my socks. I saw it again on Saturday and...well, it was still really good, but my socks stayed on. I think hypnagogie pegged it when she said that the first time we were awed by its newness, and once that newness no longer had surprise attached it lost some of its power. The areas where it truly innovates lie in the production design, the costumes, and the score, the parts that serve to evoke this magnificent place and culture; not coincidentally, these are also the areas where it deservedly won its Oscars. I also admire its willingness to look at race and isolationism head-on in a way that typical popcorn fare usually doesn't. Beyond that, though, it's a Marvel movie that does what Marvel movies do: you've got your hero's journey, your villain, your CGI fighty-smashy, your startling plot twists that stopped being startling eight movies ago. It does these things better than most, sure, and I think Black Panther is hugely important and am delighted it has been so enormously successful. But there's a growing superhero fatigue that's been sinking in over the last decade, and the awe that I felt the first time around didn't hold up enough on the second to completely silence it.

BlacKkKlansman
I wasn't expecting BlacKkKlansman to knock me out the way that it did. I'd heard that it was problematic, that it has a gratuitous opening and a savagely unsubtle ending, that Spike Lee's directorial voice comes in so loudly it's practically screaming. All of that is true, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's what makes Spike Spike, a man who has never had time to hold your hand while you catch up because there's a goddamn war on. When it's time to show you the racism, he shows it all, unflinching, staring it right in the face and not asking your permission before insisting you do the same. All this makes the film sound like a blunt force weapon, and it certainly can be, but the force is employed carefully, thoughtfully, and only when needed. This film is an example of nuanced and mature craftsmanship on every level: writing, direction, cinematography, design, acting (Adam Driver was robbed), music, all of it. What's more, it's entertaining—it takes this combination of one-line elevator pitch and deservedly righteous anger, and somehow makes it suspenseful, engaging, even funny (it has my vote for the greatest spit-take in modern cinema). I clearly haven't been watching enough Spike Lee lately, and I mean to fix that.

Bohemian Rhapsody
Man. I wanted to like this, really and truly. But never have I ever seen an Oscar-nominated film saddled with such a ham-handed, cliche-ridden, clanging-eyeroll-inducing, mind-numbingly bad screenplay. It's the sort of biopic that VH1 used to do in the '90s to bank on the success of Behind the Music. Speechifying about how Queen is "for the outcasts," making music that "crosses genres"? Check. A Conservative Father who doesn't understand his own son's art, who shows up just barely enough to set up a tearful reconciliation at the end? Check. Major Events consolidated to the point that, say, Freddie announces he's changed his name at the dinner where his parents meet his band and his soon-to-be wife, literally 30 seconds before receiving a phone call announcing they have a new manager? Check. A Visionless Record Executive who sneeringly proclaims, and I quote, "Mark these words: NO ONE will play Queen"? Check, check, and check. The whole film, in fact, is a checklist; it's like the filmmakers printed out the Wikipedia page and turned it into a storyboard. Milestones are presented not as milestones but as fan service: we're supposed to cheer in recognition, reveling in our knowledge of a future that the characters can't see yet. Freddie has trouble with the mic stand at his very first gig, so he rips out the boom and uses that as we all know he will for the rest of his career. At a label meeting he comes up with the album title "A Night at the Opera" on the spot after playing some opera as an example of, um, opera, I guess. Now let's all watch as *stomp*stomp*clap* is invented! We know it's going to be a classic! The confused people in the studio don't! Irony!

I get why the film is so popular. The music is wonderful, of course. Rami Malek does a fine job of bringing Freddie Mercury to life—not my pick for Best Actor, but if you're going to award something to Bohemian Rhapsody, he's easily the one you want to give it to. And it ends with the Live Aid sequence, which is exciting and well executed and as feel-good an ending as you're going to find, a perfect last word to take with you to the parking lot. But even there it left me wanting, because it didn't seem, well, real enough. The camera moves and drone shots felt like showing off. Scenes of the audience came off not like crowd of fans but crowd of paid extras, almost like a Pepsi commercial. And cutaways to Bob Geldof in the phone banks and the Visionless Record Executive alone and sad in his office became just more examples of screenplay bludgeoning. The Live Aid segment was great, but more than anything, it made me want to leave and watch the real Live Aid performance instead.

The Favourite
This is the one I was most looking forward to. If you've been avoiding The Favourite because you've already seen this kind of behind-the-throne intrigue-based costume drama: No. No, you haven't. If you've been avoiding it because Yorgos Lanthimos is a weird-ass little art-monkey provocateur...well, you're not wrong, but perhaps the weirdest thing about the film is how weird it isn't. I mean sure, it's got all of the lobster races and uncomfortable sex and grating background music you've come to expect from Yorgie-baby, but it's in service of a story that's surprisingly grounded. (This has a lot to do with the historical setting, I'm sure, which creates the sort of alien parallel world he likes to play in without having to force his actors to talk like they're reciting zip codes and avoid eye contact.) Give me the guy who ruined my week with Dogtooth, drop him in an 18th century castle, fold in dialogue you could dice tomatoes with, exquisite fondant-dipped visuals, and the absolute dream trio of Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, and yes, more of that please, and thank you. Of all the things I saw over those two weekends, nothing has stuck with me quite like that last scene [BIT OF A SPOILER] when Colman places her hand on Stone's head, and we watch as she (and we) slowly realize just what she's created for herself, and the bitter cost. Watch this movie, full stop.

Side note: hypnagogie showed me a tweet that said, "YOR-GOS LAN-THI-MOS, put another dime in the jukebox, babyyy," and now I'm earwormed for life.

Green Book
Raise your blast shields now, readers: NO. No, no, no, and fuck to the capital NO. Seriously, Academy, what in the name of great Hephaestus's nose clippers were you thinking? Of all the provocative, insightful, exceptional films that came out in 2018, even limited to those that got nominated, you're going to honor a backward, bland, mealy-mouthed puff piece on racism that shoves a fascinating real-life artist literally into the back seat, so you can focus on the Good White Guy Who Learns a Valuable Lesson But Also Has Something to Teach You About Blackness, Mister Actual Black Person? This is a Best Picture of 2018 that smells like a Best Picture of 1986, only it's not classic, it's downright regressive. It dances around its own race issues like its shoes are tied together; the protagonist displays one deeply grotesque passive-aggressive racist act in the first five minutes, and then the film goes out of its way to show that he's an all-right guy who just has a few misguided ideas, not like those racists they meet along the way. Whatever prejudice he's harboring is pretty much gone by day 3 of their road trip, so much so that when Dr. Shirley's sexual orientation is revealed, Tony, a blue-collar guy in 1962, greets it with a shrug, and it's never mentioned again. (To be fair, the explanation he gives for his calm response isn't unreasonable, but by then we're in the canonization part of the narrative, so he's only doing woke-person things now.) Even his more overtly racist family decides to get on board in roughly five seconds, because the happy ending demands it of them.

I know, I know, this isn't the only thing in Green Book I should be focusing on as a film lover. The direction is fine if not exceptional, the acting from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali is as excellent as I'd expect from them, the score came from the same bottle they pour over pancakes at the craft services table. But we're well past the "everyone just needs to be nice to each other" narrative, people. I know movies like Green Book make us feel good, but we can do better. We can honor better. We have to. (For further reading, I highly recommend this Facebook post. Thanks to friend Laura for linking me to it!)

Roma
My gods, what a sumptuous wonder of a movie. I want to spend the next fourteen paragraphs describing any number of frames in minute detail (this is the sort of film you want to hang in your living room), but I think everything you need to know is in that very first shot behind the opening credits, with the paving stones, and then the water, and then the reflection in the water, and I swear to you that I gasped out loud at the simple breathtaking elegance of it. Both Alfonso Cuarón's direction and his cinematography won entirely on merit; if we're judging it in terms of pure filmmaking, then Roma should have won best picture of this year, next year, last year, and I'll call you if this string of years ever comes to an end. If there's one thing that kept it out of my #1 spot, though, and I'm just now realizing it, it's that even as intimate as the story is and as good as the acting is, I feel like I could've gotten to know everyone a little better than I did. Cuarón never leans in for the close examination, always keeping the camera at a voyeur's distance. It's part of what gives it such a unique visual identity, but it leaves us perpetually on the outside looking in, even when we're hanging out with the family in their own home. The only times we're allowed in are during the riot, which puts us in the line of fire but strangely isolated, and the utterly brutal hospital scene, where we share the most vulnerable of moments but are left helpless as we watch it unfold. This is also one of the few times Cuarón keeps the camera still, forcing us to bear witness; brilliantly done, but I wish he'd let us in a tiny bit more as the story goes on. Still, this is the sort of film that makes young people want to be directors, which is a high compliment indeed. I need to watch it again. Repeatedly, if possible.

A Star Is Born
Movie of the year. Fight me.

Seriously, this thing wields such an emotional wallop for me I don't even know where to start. I saw it when it first came out, loved it, saw it again, loved it even more, and here we are. I wrote a response on Facebook to my friend Michael, who questioned why anyone would remake this damn movie yet again, and I'm going to cut and paste it here because I don't think I'm going to say it any better than I did then: "Oh, it's a COMPLETELY ridiculous choice for a remake. The story was old-fashioned 50 years ago. Judy Garland's version should have been the last word, and Streisand's should have proved it. To choose it as your directorial debut in 2018 requires ten pounds of hubris in a five-pound sack. But I'm going to quote Roger Ebert here: it's not what a movie's about, it's how it's about it. What Cooper did was to take all the overblown melodrama and ground it, finding the characters under the caricatures. Jack and Ally are fully realized from the inside out, both through the screenplay and two phenomenal performances (yes, including and especially Lady Gaga), and their boots are firmly planted in the real world with chemistry to spare. Jackson Maine is an alcoholic, not a Hollywood drunk, which is a huge distinction, and he acts and reacts and evolves and devolves and charms and disgusts in ways we've seen people in our own lives act out. Ally is no ingenue, goes into this partnership clear-eyed and willingly, sets limits, loves without coddling. And when that downfall comes, absurd as it may have been in the past, he falls like an addict, not like the tragic script convenience we saw in James Mason or Kris Kristofferson. So many remakes are about honoring the story, or the memories we have of the story; Cooper makes it about these people, and truly remakes it into something new.

"One last thing, about That Scene: I'm a performing musician. There is a moment when you're onstage that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been there: it's when you stop being yourself and start being the music. There's a loss of control there, that giving of yourself to the shared moment, carried by the people watching and listening and those around you. It's terrifying and exhilarating, and you realize in the same moment not only that this song, this phrase, this breath, is so much bigger than the room you're standing in, but that you yourself are so much bigger, big enough to hold it and carry it. I'd never seen a movie completely get it right before. 'Shallow' does."

Vice
Meh. A good "meh," but meh. I loved The Big Short from a few years ago, loved the audacity, loved that it dared to teach from within an onslaught of directorial tricks and communicate outrage with a trickster's attitude. Now here's Vice, which attempts the same feat, only now the bag of tricks feels like...just...a bag tricks, and I can't enjoy the puppet show because I can't stop looking at the strings. When the tricks work, they really really work, like the final fourth wall-puncturing soliloquy and the closing credits running in the middle (pure genius, that one; you'll see what I mean). But when they don't, they really really don't, and I left feeling kind of manhandled by the whole operation. The performances were all spot-on, with an unfortunate tendency to drift toward impression rather than character. (Steve Carell is best one on screen for the second Adam McKay movie in a row, and for the second Adam McKay movie in a row he wasn't the one to get nominated.) I do admire the choice to examine Cheney's wish to protect his gay daughter from scrutiny and the sort of legislation his party was wont to pursue; it was a level of complexity that these sorts of operations often lack. All in all, I was glad to see it, and it's a good "meh," but it's still a "meh."

My rankings of the Best Picture nominees:
1) A Star Is Born
2) Roma*
3) The Favourite*
4) BlacKkKlansman
5) Black Panther
6) Vice
7) Bohemian Rhapsody**
8) Green Book**

* = Roma is a better-made film, but The Favourite is the one I'd rather rewatch.
** = Green Book is a better-made film, but Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't make me want to punch inanimate objects while cussing.

fiddledragon is officially nominated for sainthood: she voluntarily surrendered most of her Saturday to take her van down to Providence, pick up hypnagogie's mattress and box spring, and haul them all the way up to Brunswick, Maine. This was very much a mission of mercy, as hypnagogie recently learned her borked-up shoulder has been the result of a six-years-undiagnosed torn rotator cuff, and the bed that came with her rented room (I'm searching for a diplomatic way to phrase this) sucks hairy man-ass. Like, "a comparably sized pile of Reddi-Wip would provide more back support" levels of suck, that's what I'm saying here. The one that got hauled up on Saturday is like memory foam only better, and allows her to sleep without wanting to take hostages when she finally wakes up. Out with the old, in with the new, and all that.

I was already in Brunswick when the bed arrived (see previous entry for details on birthday dinner and didImentionIgotasmokingjacket), and the plan was to haul the old bed downstairs before fiddledragon arrived, in the interest of streamlining the process. I'd assumed that the blob mattress of blobbishness would be the challenging part of the operation, especially since the journey involved a staircase that turns twice followed by a trip through the kitchen and out to the storage room, but that bit turned out to be not too awful. The box spring, however, was...problematic. The item itself turned out to be what you might charitably call "vintage," hailing from the days when the "box" in "box spring" really meant something. We're talking the sort of thing where an accidental drop on your toes earns you a Vicodin script at the ER: hardwood 2x4 construction, weighting roughly the same as the 2004 defensive line of the Indianapolis Colts. When the power grid goes down during the upcoming Apocalypse, this sumbitch will be the first thing they chop up for firewood. Also, let's review: torn rotator cuff.

Luckily, fiddledragon arrived in time to help with that part, which was completed with only a tiny bit of damage to the ceiling plaster, and then it was time to move the new stuff in. This was a good news/bad news situation, because on the one hand, the mattress was considerably lighter and the box spring disassembled into easy-to-carry components, but on the other, (1) up the stairs instead of down, and (2) no handles on the mattress. My thumbs are still not speaking to me, but all in the end is well, and fiddledragon is awesome, and hypnagogie is much less inclined to get out of bed in the morning for all the best reasons, and yay.

That was the main excitement of the weekend, which was otherwise largely taken up by lounging and avoiding the single-digit temperatures that Maine likes to face-punch its residents with. hypnagogie and I took the time to reconnect—if you haven't done one of these in a while, yes, long distance relationships still blow, and Skype can only do so much—and it felt like we'd leveled up somewhere along the way. In any relationship there are those conversations/discussions/arguments that keep happening over and over again, where you can only hope to chip away at the central Thing over time; we revisited a couple of those, only we'd somehow managed to filter out the noise and get right to the signal. Truths felt heard, rather than just brushed against, a gift of time passing or of wintering in or maybe just of us being us for so long. Time was far too short because it always is, but I'll take what we have.

First off, hello and a flappy hand-wave to everyone here from belenen's friending frenzy! I have to say, that post has achieved the miraculous: it got me to spend more time in LJ in two days than I've spent in any given two months since 2014 or so. I've got that lobe of my brain back that scours experiences for stuff to write about, something I've rather missed.

Which makes it unfortunate that I spent my holiday weekend doing precisely fuck-all, plus or minus a laundry load or two. Equally unfortunately, my three days of slack took the form of lounging/bent double against my stately imperial cushion wad in the guest bedroom, alternately doing the aforementioned LJ stuff and wondering what the Hades they've done to Kingdom of Loathing in my absence, which means my lower back is no longer speaking to me. I took matters in my own hands and asked rain_herself for one of her Flexeril tablets, a handy tool for both alleviating body pain and inducing drooling stares into the middle distance. This is great and all, but I realized I might have made a mistake when I remembered that I was also breaking out into hives due to the heat. Usually I treat those with allergy meds. Usually.

rain_herself spotted the problem, too. "Oooh, what happens if you take Benadryl after a dose of Flexeril?" she asked, a little too enthusiastically. "Would you ever wake up? Or would you just, like, sleep until you die? Or...OR...would they cancel each other out and leave you hypermanic all night, and if they do CAN I VIDEOTAPE IT?" My wife, ladies and gentlemen. To have and hold and all that.

And having typed that, the Flesklorillllmrfl (as people call it once it's kicked in) is now doing its thing, so I shall surrender the keyboard for the night. Happy hunting, comrades. Also, mrrrflglrmblrf.

So it's official: this April, we will be moving to Providence, Rhode Island. We've been talking about escaping our Worcester apartment for some time now; the apartment itself is fine, but the surrounding building and rental management company have each been doing their own special version of slow-motion implosion, marked by decrepit everything and surcharged everything else. Last straw came a week and a half ago, when the city cheerfully slapped "WARNING! DANGER!" signs on the doors of two of the quaint [read: old] elevators to our 10th floor abode, leaving one poor asthmatic elevator to do the work of three, which it does with the sort of sound effects you usually hear when trying to winch a stump out of the ground with a chain and an '89 Ford.

Meanwhile, in the midst of our discussions, rain_herself got offered a sweet two-year consortium internship in Providence, which took away our sole reason for staying in Worcester, so away we go. I still work in Lexington, and it might have been nice to get something in that area, but there's no way on any coil mortal or otherwise that we'd be able to afford it without resorting to a dice-roll roommate situation, so we started looking in and around Providence, a town we fell for last autumn during a restaurant crawl. Luckily, Andrea's Google-fu hit the jackpot: first floor of a house, three bedrooms, gas stove, clawfoot tub, on-site laundry, all for less than we're paying for the powder room-size alleged one-bedroom we're in now. There's gonna be a guest room. There's gonna be a library. If it sounds like I'm panting as I type this, it's because I am. Even better, even with its status as an ex-crack house from 20 years ago, it's only questionable-neighborhood-adjacent now, as opposed to our current actual questionable-neighborhood-entrenched situation in MA. (There was a stabbing in our lobby last autumn. Police tape and a cleaning crew. We're leaving now.)

Moving is not among my 98,000 favorite pastimes, but this time out I'm more than willing. Our landlord is an easy-rollin' kinda guy, the sort of private landlord trait that can go either way in the long haul, but at the moment is spectacular in that he's willing to buy the paint if we're willing to provide the labor. This has sent us into full-bore Decorator Mode, going all Christmas-catalog on the Sherwin Williams website picking colors. Andrea has more stamina for abstract design pondering than I do, but I must admit it's been fun playing the "Which do you like better for the bedroom, Jackfruit Sorbet or Bonobo Splendor?" game, at least until she hit the dreaded "Nothing looks good, I think we need to pick a different sofa" juncture, at which point I threw the couch cushions at her. We have pretty similar design tastes, though, and in the end I think we made some good choices. At least until tomorrow, when OMIGOD EVERYTHING IS HIDEOUS WE HAVE TO START OVER. Not sure which of us that'll be.

Anyway, yes, it's yet another State of the Union on our return labels, but it's not really any further from Boston than Worcester is, and they have more restaurants per capita than any other U.S. city. Plus we'll have actual, y'know, space. Anyone wanna come to a housewarming party in a few months?

Me: Unrelatedly, they changed the name placard on my cubicle when I wasn't looking. You may address me under my new name, David Lau.
rain_herself: Well, okay, David.
rain_herself: Or do you prefer Mr. Lau?
Me: Hm. Mr. Lau has more cache.
rain_herself: Fair enough.
Me: Actually, I'm making a lot of assumptions here. I haven't spoken to my new cubemate, so she might very well be Mr. Lau.
Me: In which case, I shall be known as Shareesh Daggupati.
rain_herself: That is much harder to say.
Me: I go by the nickname "Scooter."
Me: This new identity stuff is exciting!

rain_herself: You spilled wine on the humidifier.
Me: Oh! I'm sorry.
rain_herself: 27.
Me: ...excuse me?
rain_herself: 27.
Me: Is...is that the number of times I've apologized tonight?
rain_herself: Yes.
Me: Did you seriously keep count?
rain_herself: Yes.
Me: [stares]
rain_herself: [stares back]
Me: Look deep into your heart, and try to determine how much I hate you right now.
rain_herself: [looks thoughtfully toward her chest for a minute, then smiles at me with hearts in her eyes] Awwww!

She later confessed that she hadn't in fact counted, but the number seemed in the right ballpark. Dammit.

ADDENDUM
Later:
Me: Don't mock me.
rain_herself: I'm sorry.
Me: ONE.

* rain_herself's birthday weekend was pretty close to ideal. (Since I don't think I mentioned it here: Happy birthday, Andrea! Love you!) Plans to hit the beach were scrapped on account of didn't wanna, but we had shrimp scampi and fettuccine Alfredo and too much wine and cake and cookies that she baked because birthday that's why, which we ate while cuddling on the couch and enjoying a Commercial Sex Transactions for Better or Worse Film Festival (that'd be Pretty Woman followed by Wayne Wang's The Center of the World, a.k.a. Bizarro Pretty Woman). On Sunday for her birthday proper we hit Bocado, the local tapas place (courtesy of Chaos), and engaged in more couch citizenship largely because the couch is right under the AC window unit. Good times!

* Speaking of international food options, we finally found a triple-threat Thai carryout place in Worcester that is (a) cheap, (b) tasty, and (c) on the way home from work (essential in a town that doesn't believe in non-pizza delivery). On the downside, their Web menu has what has to be the most unfortunate typo I've ever witnessed:

Chicken Steamed Dumpling $4.95
Minced chicken with onion and scallion raped with flour serve with ginger sauce

Um. Really, thanks, guys, but I'm just looking for some noodles, not a Dusan Makavejev movie. (Oh, for Crying out loud, Adam, when your snotty film references get so obscure that even you don't actually get them without an IMDb lookup, it's time to quit. Sorry. *sigh*)

* CNBC filmed an interview in my building the other day, close enough to my desk that we couldn't use the photocopier for a half-hour. I gave serious consideration to screaming, "NO! NOT THE TASER AGAIN! I'LL BE GOOD! I PROMISE! AIEEEEE!"

* Don't promise me rain if you're not going to deliver. That's a warning, meteorologists.

Those who know me are probably aware that I was tooling around for a while in a car with no-longer-valid license plates. This meant driving could be a nerve-wracking occasion, with even benign trips to the store undercut by virulent skull-banshees screaming, "OH GODS PLEASE DON'T NOTICE ME" in my head any time a police car approached. I finally got new plates, but it still takes a moment for me to shut the skull-banshees up in the presence of the Five-0.

I mentioned this to rain_herself yesterday as I drove her to the Alewife T stop, and I felt that familiar twinge as we passed a cruiser on the side of the road, watching the traffic creep by. "I wonder if that fear will ever go away," I said.

Right on cue, the woo-woo lights came on, and the cop swooped in behind me. "Well," Andrea said, "you're going to get some practice."

For I moment I entertained the idea that he was on his way to an emergency elsewhere, an idea that evaporated when I heard, "PULL OVER INTO THE DRIVEWAY" echoing from the cruiser's bullhorn. Well, fucknuggets. Once I was parked and the cruiser was jackknifed behind me, I could see that he was the sort of man whose photo could easily appear on the Wikipedia page for "Career Boston Police Officer": stocky, silver-haired, bar-fight nose, ramrod posture. He identified himself as Officer I-Wasn't-Paying-Attention-to-the-Name of the Cambridge police, and told me he'd pulled me over for not having an inspection sticker. Ahhh, okay, that makes sense. I told him that the plates were new and that I hadn't had time to get the inspection in, inwardly praying that the seven-day cutoff rule had some flex to it.

After a harried search for the registration paperwork (it was on the passenger-side floorboards), the officer vanished into his car while we engaged in the Flop-Sweat of the Detained, pretending we weren't studiously watching him out the rear-view to see if he came out with more pieces of paper than he went in with. I knew a late inspection was only a ticketing offense, and a small one at that, but I was still hoping for a warning and a Hill Street Blues-esque "Let's be careful out there." When he finally emerged, he had a small license-sized card, a larger registration-sized sheet, and a third item somewhere in between. Dag nabbit.

He ambled up to my open window, and pointed toward the back seat. "What's that instrument back there?" he asked in standard police-issue monotone.

I blinked. "It's a mandolin."

He stood a little taller. "Well. I have never written a ticket for a mandolin player, and I'm not about to start today."

The extra paper was a written warning, no ticket no fine, no effect on my insurance. He told me he'd have asked me to play him a tune if it weren't such a busy morning; I reflected (silently) that if I had played him a tune at my current mandolin skill level or lack thereof, this wouldn't have been just a warning. We were on our way, and I ended up only 15 minutes late to work.

Country Dick Montana, the late drummer for the Beat Farmers, once wrote that if you're ever pulled over in the South, you should be related to the quarterback. In Cambridge, I think we can amend that to having Berkelee School of Music connections. Thus endeth my attempt to find a funny closing thesis for this essay. Thank you. *bows*

I'm flat on my back in bed in dim artificial light, still in New Hampshire, still in the apartment figmentj and I moved into late last year, watching as a Biblical thunderstorm foments outside the uncurtained windows. The bedroom isn't empty, but it's a far cry sparser than it was, with contents of the closet and all non-essential furniture disassembled, packed up and shunted away (at least as far as the living room). Next week is my last at my current job, and hopefully the last in this apartment—certainly the last full one. I've already delivered the first carload of stuff to the new place, and the second will go down tomorrow after a job interview in the western suburbs of Boston. There is furniture to sell off, a truck to procure, a car to sell, packing and cleaning to do, and of course a job to find, although that part is more hopeful than I'd feared it might be at this stage. I miss figmentj. I miss belgatherial. I miss people, although I know that'll change soon enough. I'm excited and terrified in equal measure, and somewhere in between the two I'm searching for that calm that will make everything happen, that will allow me the forward motion I need.

Maybe it's here in this thunderstorm. It's growing; can you hear that? My old Quaker habits are kicking in, or trying to: slip into silence and see what it has to tell you, the silence or the thunder, all the same voice. I stretch, hoping to will away the knots that hold my shoulders fast, and listen. Just listen.