Breakfast. And Baggins.

The cracky old cat is laying on the table in a spot of sun, quite content to sprawl out on the new placemat (Nicky’s typical spot.)  I myself am feeling quite fat and happy after indulging my craving for a morsel of a sweet something in the afternoon.  Blueberry pudding cake, which my beloved one shared with me, which made me happy.  Perhaps I’d not have snacked at all, had I not been reading The Hobbit earlier today.  In it, if you’ve read it you know, the hobbits—who I’m quite convinced are my long lost kin about thirty times removed on my Mother’s side—eat several breakfasts and dinners and snacks each day.  (Elevensies, afternoon tea with cakes, and so on.) 

With hobbits merrily munching already in my mind, the subject of what to sup upon this evening seemed an appropriate twist in the conversation.  There hasn’t been a great deal of conversation lately, mind you.  I’m far too hot and midway through the melting process because of the deviously early arrival of summer.  Argue with me if you like, “No, it’s not summer Jeffrey, it’s just a very hot spring.”  Fuck you.  No.  It’s summer.  Then it’ll rain next week, return to spring, then work backwards from there, going to Autumn, we’ll have a few more sunny days (Indian summer) and go in from the picnic blanket to eat Halloween candy, dye eggs, and wrap Christmas presents in heart shaped boxes, because it’s started snowing and without the predictability of weather from former glorious years, we lose track of time and have to celebrate all the holidays in one week so that HallMark doesn’t have to file for bankruptcy and become a government franchise. 

Anyway, as I was trying to tell you before you completely altered my line of thought by asking me about the weather—the subject of dinner popped up (from the living-room land of floating question marks and light bulbs, hidden somewhere between the couches.  I think its under the coffee table…)  It was then settled upon between my Beloved One and I, that it would be breakfast for dinner tonight. 

Three cheers for breakfast!

So, there I was, happily tucked away in my red chair, thinking about a lovely repetition of the breakfast we had for dinner the other night, when I looked at the clock, and suddenly felt quite down.  It was only about half-past two o’clock in the afternoon.  Dinner-time’s a long way off.  Quite down indeed.  Depressing.  Hungry!  Then she reminded me of the treasure in the kitchen, and we decided to break into the golden, glittering, great glob of gooey goodness.  That being, of course, the precious pudding cake.  Blueberry pudding cake, that is.

Now my thoughts have returned to breakfasting, but in a much more organized fashion, and I’m starting to crave cookies for an after breakfast-for-dinner nibble.  It’s a bit hot to turn the oven on, but I could try making some in the tiny counter-top, pizza oven contraption. 

Snickerdoodles perhaps?  It will require more thought than you have patience to read me write about.  (“Hear me talk about”?  “Read me write about”?  Make sense.)

A cigarette for now I think.  Or “a bowl of tobacco out of doors”, as The Hobbit is still scurrying through my mind.

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009

“Elegy”, the pork disaster, and other topics of random.

Well, I haven’t written anything around here for quite the while, have I?  I remember a few months ago feeling so dedicated to the idea of publishing at least one entry each day.  Right, that lasted long, didn’t it?

I have, since last I wrote, inherited a new typing device.  A Dell Laptop, lovely little black thing.  It had belonged to my Uncle.  Although I have called and said “Oh my god, quite a surprise, thank you very much!”,  I am still working on the official thank you letter.  Perhaps I’ll have to dedicate some of this Sunday afternoon to completing that and preparing it for the mail.  Yes.  I should, I did after all buy a new pen and some lovely stationary expressly for that purpose.  It is lovely to have a typing tool of my own, again.  It allows me to blog–as you see I am doing–while my beloved one is adding photographs to her sister’s ancestry website, in the chair next to me. 

Truth be told, it was never as annoying as I perhaps made it out to be to have to share the computer.  But it is very nice to have this lovely little lap-dwelling Dell.

Also, since last writing, I’ve found a new little coffee shop I love…  I’m not going to tell you what it’s called because I don’t want anyone to read about it, and for it to suddenly become popular, making it more difficult for me to find a table…  It is, however, near my Beloved one’s work.  I can drag my typing tool in there, and hammer at the keys while I wait for her to appear from beyond the dark doors of the modeling agency, at the end of the day.

I did apply for a second job, selling subscription packages and some light fundraising for Portland Opera, much like I did for Oregon Symphony.  Alas, I applied too late, someone nabbed it before me.  I did, however, receive a very sweet, very encouraging rejection letter.  I sent a ‘feeler’ email off to the local classical radio station, (89.9) inquiring about any positions, with particular curiosity about what is required to become a program host at some point in the future. . .  The program director wrote back a very helpful and supportive email, but of course, nothing will be happening at any point in the very near future. 

In spite of my absence on my blog, I have been able to devote a bit more time to non-blog-writing.  My novel is coming along nicely, although it’s changed titles and now begins in a different way.  Perhaps when I finish it, (if I finish it) it will be called something else, and begin in yet another way I don’t know anything about, as of yet.  Who knows, who knows, who knows.  I certainly don’t know.  Someone should tell me what I’m doing.  (Not that I’d listen, of course.)

Speaking of books and such: I haven’t read The Dying Animal, by Phillip Roth, but I did see the film loosely based upon it, called Elegy last night. 

ELEGY features Sir Ben Kingsley, and Penelope Cruz

I missed the first third of the film entirely, I was busy creating a dinner which no one (including myself) really ended up enjoying.  (Perhaps I’ll come back to that later.  Sometimes recipes make perfect sense in your mind as you walk through the shop, picking up herbs and vegetables and cuts of meat and bread and so on.  Then you get home and you put it all together the way you told yourself you would and it’s…hmm.  “Missed the mark there.  Why did I spend $30 to make this, when I could have done what I know how to do for $15?”) 

At any rate, I’ve heard mixed things about Elegy.  I have heard that it’s an enormous disappointment, if one has already read Phillip Roth’s The Dying Animal.  However, what I saw of the film put up a fair fight for itself.  I think it–like many films–might have been regarded very highly if there had never been a novel with which it was associated.  If it just suddenly appeared in the mind of a screen writer. 

What I did find very interesting about Elegy was its ability to make me feel very uncomfortable.  Kingsley’s character, reminded me very much of the vision I used to entertain of what I’d end up being like, at fifty/sixty years old.  Having said that, while I watched what I did watch, whilst tucking into the nearly disasterous pork experiment, I really didn’t like that man!  He was not terrible, he wasn’t a villain.  He could obviously do some things well–his work, mainly.  He seemed to play a few wicked tunes on the piano, he hosted a radio talk show about books, so on, so forth.  But he was quite a lonely, cut off, deceitful, sarcastic prick! 

I suppose it was difficult for me to watch, mainly, because it pointed out (again) that it takes some of us a long, long, long time to get where we’re going.  That’s if (yes, if) we do actually ever arrive at some form of honest, well-rounded, completedness or meaning at all. 

Yes, I think we all have an image of where we’d like to go in this terribly humbling chain of events called life.  That’s pretty common place, I’d say.  And, whether or not we get there…  that’s the rub, isn’t it?

I would like to try to see the first forty-five minutes or so that I missed, but, what I was able to see was a little painful.  Witty?  Yes!  I still love Ben Kingsley.  Some beautiful images and lovely lines were sprinkled throughout what I saw of the film.  But it was a little painful, watching someone who–somehow–vaguely reminded me of myself, choose to be wretched and miserable.

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009

The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie.

I interrupt the viewing of the terrible film about corruption and espionage {which I officially gave up watching eight seconds ago when I began typing}, to bring you word of a wonderfully witty book about corruption and espionage.  There is–as you might have guessed, only if youre quite quick–a corruption and espionage theme for this evening’s blah-blah-blogging. 

The film grunting and scratching itself on the screen is Contract Killers which was released today at Blockbuster.  Terrible, insofar as I can judge, in terms of screenplay, acting, cinematography, and pretty much every other category that can make or break a film.  I certainly hope I have no friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of cousins thrice removed who had anything to do with its production.  How embarassing that would be.  {On both levels.  The, “Good God, how could I not have known?” level, and the “Everyone has these bad patches now and again, don’t call me I’ll call you–oops, forgot to get your number” level.}

The book I finished this afternoon, however, was downright delightful.  The Gun Seller, was written in 1996, by British actor Hugh Laurie.  I discovered it quite accidentally {sorry, Hugh} while looking for some of Stephen Fry’s stuff on the shelf.  The Gun Seller was a neighbor and popped out at me with its bright pumpkin cover.  Oddly fitting that, as Fry and Laurie have crossed more than a few paths in their careers.  The thing that persuaded me to pick it up and buy it, is that Laurie coincidentally plays the scruffy star of my favorite television show, House. 

There are a good number of cases of actors writing.  Writing a screenplay they want to do with friends, then directing it.  Writing memoirs.  Writing songs, because what they always really wanted to do was sing.  However, it just feels downright rare for an actor–or anyone who’s already found success in another arena, come to that–to publish a book that functions so well, let alone keeps my interest. 

It’s difficult for books to keep my interest and attention.  The Gun Seller joins the small list of other books that kept my attention, and treated it well.

What makes The Gun Seller work for me, is its instinctive and well paced balance of terrific, witty humor, and believable samplings of sensitivity at other moments.  Yes: satirical, yet sensitive, amazing!  More amazingly, all tucked smartly into a plot intricate enough to have come from Thomas Harris. 

The other, more shocking bit about Laurie’s first book, was that it managed to inspire me to do one of those things I’ve never thought I–or anyone else, for that fact–should do.  It makes me want a motorcycle!  Not a Harley, nor anything heavy and leathered like that.  Something smaller, slighter, zippier.  That is, perhaps, the real accomplishment of The Gun Seller.  The fact that Laurie came up with a character quirky enough to remind me oddly of myself.  Quirky characters do that, sometimes.  But quirky characters inspire us, and this quirky bugger in The Gun Seller inspires me to throw caution to the wind, and do one of the stupidest things one can do.  My cousin was paralyzed from the hip down after a motorcycle snafu.  Yet all of a sudden, I want to buy a bike and hop on and go, go, go, because of how wonderfully fun Laurie made it all sound, and how wonderfully well he wrote about it, and a few other stupid things I now want to try. 

After all, one can dream. . .

© Jeffrey Puukka, 2009.