--THERE'S NOTHING I WOULDN'T DO FOR YOU

…Today, right this moment, I am listening to Patty Griffin, specifically her album “Flaming Red.”  I love Patty and this album.  There are some terrific songs, especially “Tony” which will break your heart a few times.

…Christmas finally came down at our house.

I got out the big blue tubs from the storage room and while there came upon one of those cardboard boxes we likely all have around somewhere, the ones with old photographs and clippings from high school and college, maybe even earlier.

It was interesting seeing myself as the boy I was—long hair, flared jeans.  In one box was the plastic picture insert that goes in your wallet and every photo was a girl.  Now it’s not because I was a Lothario, because back then I was very, very shy.  But it’s interesting that the only friends I had were female.

I used to have a column in the High School newspaper.  It was called “Word For The Wise.”  I’d saved many of the issues and read a few while I was procrastinating packing up the holiday doo-dads.

Boy, I was a shitty writer back then, not just in my column, but all the other articles I’d written for the newspaper—and there were many—were pretty atrocious.

Maybe I’m still awful and in twenty years I’ll find the stuff I’m writing today and think it’s gibberish.

I sure hope not…

…I saw “Zero Dark Thirty” in a crowded, amped-up theater that charged $14 a ticket because the seats were nice.  The film was pretty much what I expected, with the same esthetic stylistically as “Hurt Locker”.  It rambled and was slow in parts, yet it overall it was compelling. 

I’d give it a  B-.  It might get a lot of nominations, though I can’t see it winning many Oscars.

Jessica Chastain is a great actress, but maybe her part demanded she be a little restrained.  It didn’t allow her to go much out of a certain range.

It really makes you think about torture, however, I’ll tell you that.

…Here are a few things I like on the start of a rainy, blustery day:

"Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will—through work—bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea.’ And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you’ll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere." —Chuck Close

"Change means movement, movement means friction, friction means heat, and heat means controversy." Saul Alinsky

"And when I see you happy, well it set my

heart free.

I'd like to be as good a friend to you as you

are to me."

--Joni Mithcell

"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach

them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try

to follow where they lead." Louisa May Alcott

“We all have our dark sides, and that’s what makes us human.”

“No one ever succeeded by quitting.”

“Failure is the first step to success.” --Robert Dugoni