W;t

One of my favorite quotes of all time:

(Vivian Bearing walks on the empty stage pushing her IV pole. She is fifty, tall and very thin, barefoot, and completely bald. She wears two hospital gowns - one tied in the front and one tied in the back - a baseball cap, and a hospital ID bracelet. The house lights are at half strength. Vivian looks out at the audience, sizing them up)

Vivian: (In false familiarity, waving and nodding to the audience) Hi. How are you feeling today? Great. That's just great. (In her own professional tone) This is not my standard greeting, I assure you.
I tend toward something a little more formal, a little less inquisitive, such as, say, "Hello."
But it is the standard greeting here.
There is some debate as to the correct response to this salutation. Should one reply, "I feel good," using "feel" as a copulative to link the subject "I" to its subjective complement "good," or "I feel well," modifying with an adverb the subject's state of being?
I don't know. I am a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne.
So I just say, "Fine."

Bill Murray talks about Gilda Radner

This is a beautiful story Bill Murray told about Gilda Radner (both on SNL):

"Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine (Newman) had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she'd already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn't seen her in a long time. And she started doing, "I've got to go," and she was just going to leave, and I was like, "Going to leave?" It felt like she was going to really leave forever.
So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for awhile. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way --- over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour --- maybe an hour and a half. --- just carrying her around and saying, "She's leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda's leaving, and remember that she was very sick -- hello?"
We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, "She's leaving, I don't know if you said goodbye to her." And we said goodbye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.
And because these people were really funny, every person we'd drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I've ever been to in my life. I'll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her."





Recently:
*I found out my mom's official work title is "Controller." Hahahahaha.
*Discovered youtube has a ton of bloopers and inside jokes from Whose Line is it Anyways? If you're a fan of the show and have a couple minutes to spare, do a quick search and find one of the many playlists.
*I've been meaning to send out a mass e-mail about my new condo and moving, etc., but this is also finals week for me! So a Hebrew final comes before writing the e-mail, sorry.

Reading: Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
Listening to: The Muppet Alphabet Album. And yes, it is incredible.

Your move, chief

I will only post a giant block quote once in a blue moon, but this is one that makes the cut. It's from a movie called Good Will Hunting (extremely quotable film):


Sean: Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me... fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and haven't thought about you since. Do you know what occurred to me?
Will: No.
Sean: You're just a kid, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talkin' about.
Will: Why thank you.
Sean: It's all right. You've never been out of Boston.
Will: Nope.
Sean: So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan right?
[Will nods]
Sean: You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.





Recently finished reading: Looking for Alaska by John Green (Which I absolutely recommend)
Recently started: F.E.A.R. 2 (it's a video game)
Recently saw in theaters: Push (I hadn't been to a movie in theaters for the longest time and wowsers I actually really enjoyed it)
Currently reading through: Genesis