Overheard on the L train -just before Bedford Avenue, naturally....
"I just finished Atonement. You know, Ian McEwan..."
"Yeah. Yeah, I didn't like that?"
"You didn't? Oh, I loved it. I couldn't put it down."
"Nah. But then I didn't like any of his stuff."
"Oh?"
"No. Didn't like Angela's Ashes, 'Tis...."
"Right..."
She didn't mention whether she'd read his latest, Teacher Man's Day Off.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
"No! No more Limerick questions! Please!"
Saturday, February 25, 2006
This is our city?
Woke to these pictures from Dublin this morning. They don't look real.
So, apparently, some 300 protestors opposed the loyalist "Love Ulster" parade which was due to happen today. ("Love Ulster", by the way? Is it just me, or does this not sound somehow comically cutesy...or like Gay Pride come early?)
Though it looks chaotic, disgusting and extremely upsetting, there haven't been that many injuries (although, actually, 14 is too many ...even if Charlie Bird is among them). I just want to know how many of these "rioting youths" are actually protestors and how many of them are just the cud-chewing troublemakers hanging around the city centre who'd throw a rock or a beer can at anything that moves, given the opportunity. I can't help feeling that this could have gone off peacefully. That the biggest problem here is not actually the tension provoked by a parade like this, but the fact that Dublin has become such a scummy city, all by itself.
Friday, February 17, 2006
"You were saying something nice about me, I can feel it."
I found this photograph of Samuel Beckett and his American publisher Rosset online. It's by Bob Adelman. I also found this snippet, which shows Beckett at his spiky best:
The door is imperceptibly ajar. Thus reads a stage direction in one of Samuel Beckett's plays. One director, endeavoring to honor Beckett's meaning to the letter, labored over this direction for many minutes, painstakingly experimenting with varying degrees of ajarness. Eventually Beckett himself, watching in disgust, strode onto the stage and slammed the door shut. "But it says ajar," the director protested - whereupon Beckett turned on him and snarled, "It also says imperceptibly!"
The title quote, by the way, comes from Beckett's 1947 play Eleuthéria., unproduced and unperformed, and only published after much trouble was taken by Rosset and others. It's not his best play, but it just might be his most interesting, and I think Rosset is right...Beckett would eventually have consented to having it published, and maybe even performed, if he had lived longer.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
*burp...bang!!*
Poor Dick Cheney. All them nasty meeja types are givin' him a hard time about maybe havin' a coupla beers and then just happenin' to shoot his buddy in the face (and, um, heart...) with a hundred pellets.
They don't understand nothin'. How's a man meant to aim without havin' a cold beer to steady his hand? What did they want him to do, miss?!
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Monday, February 13, 2006
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