I am enchanted to see a really gray day. There has been a spate of sunshine in my life in recent months: endless good weather in California and then many sparkling(if New York can be considered sparkling) days since I came back here. So it is a relief to have the clouds and the overhang of gloom over the too high rooftop of the building going up on 57th Street that is offending everybody but the Israeli(I am ashamed to say; I assumed it would be an Arab) who is building it. 101 stories I think they are planning, and it was or rather is an Arab who supposedly bought the top floor-- yet to be built- for supposedly a hundred million or something like that, a figure that would be tossed aside or sent to the Galapagos by Mitt Romney.
I am so sad for my country, that such an empty suit could be an actual candidate. But oh well, as my son would say, actually believing that he will not be affected by the election. I am particularly sad for my Republican friends, of whom I have several I actually love, but cannot speak to during these days, because I know the best of them would find this unsupportable except they have to support it, so it is better we don't communicate. I had a new friend I really liked who put on her Facebook, more's the public pity, that she liked Mitt Romney, and I don't know if that makes me sadder, or the fact that she is on Facebook. As those of you who have actually read this blog will be aware, the only thing I have been able to celebrate these recent months is the fact that Facebook had a visible failure in the marketplace, which made me believe that in spite of all signs, discrimination had a future.
I have been deeply disappointed by my few but costly forays onto the not-that-Great White Way, with little to look forward to but a personal miracle I am not counting on but could happen, with a less than ferocious appetite for even the movies that are being lofted(or lowered) onto the screens. Most touted of course was The Master, where I genuinely looked forward to yet another surprising performance from Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, who did not disappoint me but must have disappointed himself. Peter Travers all but peed on himself in Rolling Stone, and the New York Times did the same, in their excitement that here at too long last was a real movie. The theater was chock-a-block--not an empty seat-- with happy souls, many of whom slouched out onto Broadway when it was over, wondering what the fuck was that? My pal Rex Reed was the only one who dissed it, and I feared for him going in, but breathed a deep sigh on the way out that he still had all his judicious marbles. There may be worse charlatans on the loose than L. Ron Hubbard.
I am trying to believe that the dictums of Benjamin Franklin may yet prevail, and that Abraham Lincoln, still our most impressive president, what with his cultivated but unlikely intellect, deep wisdom, and fine bone structure soon to be arced into place by Daniel Day Lewis, was right when he said You could fool some of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. But I can't be sure anymore, and will not know I can breathe a sigh of relief about this once great country until after the election. Because I am afraid you can buy enough of the people some of the time, and that would be a true tragedy. In an empty suit.
