Oh boy, it didn't get any colder today. It's pretty much like sitting in an oven. I'm surprised my computer hasn't melted down. I have a large fan blowing a huge amount of very hot air on me, but it just isn't helping. We're leaving tonight for Morristown. Morristown and central air. Aaaaahhhhhh.
These kinds of days do make me feel good in a weird way. They remind me of growing up in Baltimore, of the pool, the cicadas, the pump house. The Pump House was the snack bar at the country club my parents used to belong to. (Thank goodness they quit that years ago, I quickly grew to view the place as vile when I got a bit older.) Anyway, the Pump House was right there next to the pool, and they had grilled cheeses, ice cream, milkshakes, snoballs, pizza, you name it. And of course the best thing was all we had to do was write our membership number and sign our name and it was ours. Will and I used to skateboard up there in weather like this to go swimming and eat free food all day. It was like some kind of elitist racist paradise.
These sweltering days also remind me of Do The Right Thing, especially living in Brooklyn. I started thinking of them as Mother-Sister Days. Mother-Sister is a character in that movie (in case you haven't seen it. you should.), an old matriarch of the block, with a tough attitude. The whole film takes place on an oppressively hot day in Bed-Stuy, and as the sun goes down, she says something like, "Thank god the sun is finally going down." It's a pivotol moment in the movie, and it always seemed to me to be a great depiction of the relief at felt at the end of a day like this. Of course in the movie it's relief at a lot more than the heat backing off a little bit, but you get the idea.
Oh, we saw Minority Report today. I enjoyed it mostly, though I thought a lot of it was pretty predictable. There was one good twist that caught me by surprise, but then everything that followed from the twist was not surprising. Tom Cruise gets on my nerves a bit, too. He always has that look on his face. So ernest, but so tough and uncompromising. Maybe it's because he's so short. He's got that kind of "just because I'm short don't mean I'm not a badass" kind of look.
I'm happy that everyone, including our friends at Court TV, is excited about my project. I wish I could say I made a lot of progress on it in the past day and a half, since I've been home from work, but it's been too hot. I occassionally wander into the computer area and try to do something, but it doesn't last too long. I added a feature or two this afternoon, when I should really be finishing the features that still don't work.
I will say this: It's the biggest, baddest, most unnecessarily long cgi script I've ever seen. But I haven't seen all that many.
