Gramarye

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Well, after taking about a gazillion kinds of transit (actually just AC Transit>BART>Caltrain>multi-system bus), I arrived in Santa Cruz late Friday afternoon for a visit to Andrew here in his Western exile, where he lives in constant terror of our fruit trees, and the unnatural intermingling of deciduous and coniferous trees.

Our activities so far have included grocery shopping, the consumption of fried thing (eggs, tortillas, tortillas containing cheese, beans (re-), a batch of spinach, and, at the Walnut something cafe or other, something called “Old Special No. 1″, which should be distinguished from the new Special No. 1 (there was no new Special No. 1 on the menu) and all the other Old Specials (there were no other Old Specials), watching of highly offensive animated and/or sketch comedy programming (??Frisky Dingo??, ??Venture Brothers??, ??Upright Citizens Brigade??), book crawling, and hilarious reminiscence of all kinds. Also, some drinking.

Also, some snake handling. Also, I gave Andrew a copy of ??Expendable??, with predictable results:

He finished it this morning around 3:30.

This is the description from Apple’s trailer site. These astonishing run-on sentences are marvels the like of which only I am normally capable of causing to be:

In Bruges was filmed on location; Bruges (pronounced “broozh”), the most well-preserved medieval city in the whole of Belgium, is a welcoming destination for travellers from all over the world. But for hit men Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), it could be their final destination; a difficult job has resulted in the pair being ordered right before Christmas by their London boss Harry (two-time Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes) to go and cool their heels in the storybook Flemish city for a couple of weeks. Very much out of place amidst the gothic architecture, canals, and cobbled streets, the two hit men fill their days living the lives of tourists. Ray, still haunted by the bloodshed in London, hates the place, while Ken, even as he keeps a fatherly eye on Ray’s often profanely funny exploits, finds his mind and soul being expanded by the beauty and serenity of the city. But the longer they stay waiting for Harry’s call, the more surreal their experience becomes, as they find themselves in weird encounters with locals, tourists, violent medieval art, a dwarf American actor (Jordan Prentice) shooting a European art film, Dutch prostitutes, and a potential romance for Ray in the form of Chloë (Clémence Poésy), who may have some dark secrets of her own. And when the call from Harry does finally come, Ken and Ray’s vacation becomes a life-and-death struggle of darkly comic proportions and surprisingly emotional consequences.

I’ve been dark here for a while, I know. I’ve been justifiably distracted by all sorts of things, some of them unpleasant, some of them distracting, a few of them entertaining. I shan’t trouble you with excuses.

I will, however, provide this awesome anecdote. I was sitting at Peet’s the other day, drinking tea and puttering about in a notebook. I happened to be dressed all in black, which happens two or three times a month, usually, when a black shirt and pants are what I happen to have clean, and the weather warrants my black hat. I often get comments on this wardrobe combination, usually complemintary, but occasionally with some oddments of additional exposition — for example, a riff on the music and personality of Johnny Cash provided on the Macarthur BART platform.

In this case, an elderly lady who had been sitting at a nearby table with her husband approached me as the two of them were leaving. She complimented me on my look and explained that it made her nostalgic, because it reminded her of her husband, who was a former priest. She went on to explain that she herself was a former nun, and this led to a discussion of the irony inherent in her own clothing choice — a bright red knee-length coat, and the related irony of her current bohemian lifestyle living in Berkeley. She was entirely sweet, and as I said, complimentary — the phrase, “who is this creature,” with spoken with enthusiasm, leaps to memory.

For all my religious speculation, I am not actually inclined by nature to interpret experience theologically in terms of signs and portents, but if I were, I would certainly take this as a sign of something. Of what, I would have a harder time saying; a suggested religious vocation or denominational affiliation, perhaps — or perhaps God thinks I look good in black, and feels it’s important that I be notified of the fact and of its rich cultural significance.

On a not entirely unrelated note, I just went today to buy a couple pairs of pants, because I was down to precisely one pair of pants without holes in them. I kept an eye out for suitable black ones, but didn’t see any, so providence is thwarted for now.