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a benevolent proposal
Sunday, November 26 2000
Fargo was on the Superstation this afternoon and of course I continued watching until the end. I realized something during today's viewing: the movie's main strength is how perfectly it depicts human suffering in all its forms. An indication of this was that I could even feel empathy for the bad guy when he got shot in the face.
Then, of course, there's the woodchipper scene. That's reason enough to stay until the end.
In the evening John's friend Fernando was over at our place hanging out as he often does on the weekend. He's a warm-hearted spirit and occasionally proposes benevolent acts, ones involving a little more effort than my idea of simply walking more on the sidewalks of our West LA/Santa Monica neighborhood. This evening he proposed that our little three-person group (which he occasionally likens to a fraternity, one which John jokingly refers to as "Masta-Beta") should join Big Brothers of America and serve as positive role models for disadvantaged kids. There was an awkward pause and then John rolled his eyes and said Fernando was welcome to join Big Brothers if he wanted to, that it's a "really good idea," but that he, John, didn't have the time or the patience, especially in our neighborhood, notable for its complete lack of public space (the one park nearby, in the triangle between Ohio, Santa Monica and Bundy, is completely surrounded by a gateless iron fence). I proposed that I'd be perfectly willing to join a benevolent organization, but only if its purpose was to find positive role models for hot chicks without boyfriends.
Later on John and I were watching that famous teevee cook Emeril (the dude who says "Bam!") as he prepared food involving caviar and vodka. Realizing that we have a big bottle of Absolut in the freezer but no caviar, John proposed that we walk up to Ralphs and get some. And so we did, walking of course, thereby contributing our community-building pedestrianhood to our antisocial West LA neighborhood.
There's a reason for caviar's reputation as a luxury food item. A little jar of about four ounces cost $6. That might have been cheap had we been buying drugs, but this was supposed to be food. John also had a hankering for anchovies and it was good that he bought a tin because it turned out that anchovy was the flavor that we were actually craving.
The movie The Doors was on VH1, and of course we had to watch it, if only for the scene where the dorky Ed Sullivan Show producer asks the Doors to change their lyrics to "babe we couldn't get much better" in "Light My Fire." When the flick was nearly over the hour felt late, like well after midnight, but it was only about 8pm, time for the Simpsons.
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