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A wretched steak and unexpected day off
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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Tuesday, an unexpected day off, the text while I'm at the gym and just leaving for work, plans now that I have it free, to go the library, do some slight work, then for dinner - treat myself to a steak at the Diner on Baker, and I should have known better, the steak, it's an ordeal, not a treat, chewy, tough, with no great flavor, it's wretched really, but I suck it up and put on a happy face for the server.
Followed by the Poetry Slam, now in the Royal, busy, I always preferred poetry in Cafe's, but I must be a beatnik, the bar, this bar, it's nearly full, and the stage is a proper stage and they have some guest readers, some old faces, some new faces, and - mercifully, most of the poems are short so when quality fails you're not being tortured long.
Follow this with a trip to the liquor store, I'm in need of my medicine, the ambulance whirring across the street to Narcan another overdose, this - 3, 4 times a day, note all the new migratory homeless faces...the ambulance, it's; going 3-4 times a day, and this in a city of 10,000...
Lately
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The past week few opportunities to write, working longer hours (phew - as much as I hate it I've made no progress on any of the financial battlefronts and now, with a clear objective to work toward it's time, it's time). The weather this week has cooled, rainy, Father's day, despite the reservations a non-starter, Pa being taken for dinner by his adult children or grandchildren or wife, and always, always, it's Pa paying the bill.
Work has begun interfering with the Gym, days off are precarious and announced an hour or so before I'm due to start, the new hires, T* and H*, aren't working out, T* abandoned work due to pressing personal issues, H* is a princess who only wants to work when she wants to....
And it rains. God we need the rain, every day overcast, clouds ragged and low on the mountains, when they part you can see snow upon the peaks that wasn't there before, evenings watching movies on my phone, catching up on culture.
The cool weather, damp, humidity, it cements the smells into my vehicle, the scent of tobacco, sweat, vodka, coffee, before work beachcombing new flints and finds, the rain is good for this, every day something new...
Time passes...
Garden State
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
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Don't know how I ended up watching this, I suspect largely due to it's soundtrack.
Anyways, a depressed young "Largeman" returns home to attend his mother's funeral, only to confront the unresolved reasons he left in the first place and reunite with old school friends. Looking for all the world like a young David Duchovny, it's got a sort of Millennial Rom-Com feel to it, reminding me of John Cusack's "High Fidelity", or any of a number of similar films from a generation before.
Not bad, not great, merely amusing.
Starring Natalie Portman, Ian Holm and a young Zach Braff (who wrote and directed the film. He later died of Covid Complications in 2020!!!).
The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
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This was a curious movie. Set in 1950, it seeks to (from the wiki):
The film's inspirations were varied: it was partly inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, by early drafts of Anderson's There Will Be Blood, the novel V. by Thomas Pynchon, drunken Navy stories that Jason Robards had told to Anderson while filming Magnolia, and the life story of author John Steinbeck.
Starring Joquin Phoenix & Philip Seymour Hoffman - who turn in amazing performances (the acting & cinematography are first rate) - well, no spoilers. A curious film, about a relationship between two unlikely friends. Different from most of my other watching this has some weight.
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