SOL DE JUSTICIA
i took a walk through the less-glamorous parts of sunset park (anyone who has been to sunset park understands that this denotes a serious, serious glamor deficiency) and i finally understood the part in THE POWER BROKER about how building Route 278 down Third Avenue blighted the neighborhood.
SHIT-COVERED NISSAN
the bourgeois-democratic vista behind me of a shitty, small, broken sports field named after a priest under the on-ramps to the BQE was more amazing but couldn’t really be captured fairly via cell-phone chromographics. this entire car dealership appear to have been abandoned. a lot of the cars had bird doodle on them, but this one appeared to be the primary crap magnet
NUPTIAL SCRIPT IN YOUR COMMUNITY BRANDING INITIATIVES
i wrote most of a poem about watching 15 minutes of the 1989 Tim Burton Batman but I got a haircut and I think all the ideas in my brain escaped into the cold
new poem:
you think i waited for you to use the bathroom at Q’Doba because you’re attractive
not that you aren’t
i waited because i was reluctant to resume living my life without the coffee you sold me
from your artisanal ice-cream truck
by the way
can you put this dollar in your tip jar
i’m not hitting on you
i swear to god
Relatively complete list of the movies I saw in theaters in the year 2009, as constructed using forensic ticket-stub analysis:
Andrei Rublev†
Bam Gua Nat
Bigger Than Life
Brighton Rock
Bruno (seen in Washington DC)
Day of Wrath
Diary of a Country Priest
Drag Me to Hell
Fat City
Gomorrah
In a Lonely Place
In the Loop
Inglorious Basterds
Invictus
Johnny Guitar
Leon Morin, Priest
Made in USA
Miracle at St. Anna
Odd Man Out
One Parallel Movie†
Rashomon
The Reckless Moment
The Road
Sherlock Holmes (seen in Cleveland, OH)
Silent Light (seen at Facets in Chicago, IL with Sam Exoskeleton)
Sin Nombre
Slumdog Millionaire
Star Trek
The Thief of Paris
Terminator Salvation
Tokyo Story
2012
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
The Vanished Empire††
They Drive by Night
Waterloo Bridge
Wild River
The Wrestler
Yasukuni
You, the Living
FAVORITES (not bounded by actually being released in 2009)
The Vanished Empire
Odd Man Out
Tokyo Story
Day of Wrath* (I actually also saw this in a theater in 2008 as well but fuck you)
Diary of a Country Priest
† The only two movies i walked out of in 2009 were both at Anthology Film Archive. One Parallel Movie was bailed on after a ten minute shot that was just Rip Torn in a construction elevator talking to himself; Andrei Rublev was fled because of a squabble between me and the person I was seeing it with and it’s four hours long and I’ve seen it before and I really most wanted to see the balloon sequence at the beginning. And sometimes Anthology smells like cat piss. Only sometimes.
†† Only movie that made me cry in 2009
APPENDIX A
My average monthly rent in 2009 was $687. I spent about $0.94 an hour to keep a roof over my head, not withstanding utilities, heat, etc. I saw forty movies in 2009. I don’t want to get too scientific about this, but according to my rough math, it cost me about $5/hour. But that included free heat/AC and entertainment. And cleaning and a bathroom (well, a half-bathroom) and MOVIES.
