“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in

I’m tired, and it’s Kelly Braffet’s fault. Her winningly creepy first novel, Josie and Jack, kept me up until 5:00 last Sunday morning, when I reached its perfect last sentence, dropped my head, and drifted off into dreams that were comparatively mundane.

This is how the book begins:

The worst hangovers come on the sunniest days. Even at sixteen I knew enough to expect that. The day when Jack drove me into town to buy aspirin, the sun was shining and the sky was the brilliant blue of a crayon drawing.

That’s Josie narrating. She and her brother Jack live nearly alone in an isolated, sprawling old house in industrial Pennsylvania; their father teaches physics at a college some hours away, where he spends his weekdays. Josie has only Jack in the world; though Jack is also devoted to her, he is ferociously charming and relishes the easy work of bending others to his will. The two don’t go to school and, up to the point where the novel begins, they don’t otherwise interact with anyone outside their magic circle. When they first do bring an outsider halfway in, the trouble starts. When they sally forth into the world together, it compounds.

While the sly Braffet keeps her cards close to the vest, her narrator Josie is a na

I’m up for OGIC’s challenge (see above), so here goes nothing. I should add that I drew up my list before I saw hers:

1. “I was misinformed.” (Casablanca)

2. “Build my gallows high, baby.” (Out of the Past)

3. “You were a very apt pupil!” (Vertigo)

4. “Closer than that, Walter.” (Double Indemnity)

5. “Men are all either dates, potential dates, or date substitutes.” (Metropolitan)

As I headed down to Broadway earlier this evening to see a press preview of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I passed another cab with a sign on the roof that said TILT. Omigod, can everybody tell? I thought.

What’s with me, you may ask? Well, as Dr. Johnson might have replied, you may ask. On top of showing my dear departed houseguest the town, I wrote and filed five pieces in the past six days, which is way the hell over my quota. Nor am I quite done: I still have to write Friday’s Wall Street Journal drama column, finish the lectures
I’ll be giving in Washington next Monday and Wednesday, then go to Washington and give them, briefly returning to New York to attend the Tuesday-night press opening of New York City Opera’s revival of Candide and file a review the following morning. Then I’m done, meaning that I can resume work on Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong.

Yikes. Arrgh. Sheesh.

What happened? Perhaps the fact that I’ve been so outrageously happy of late caused me to let my guard down and forget that I don’t really control the weather. Whenever that happens, I have a nasty but predictable tendency to say yes to people–friends, editors, publicists, strangers on the phone–with no less predictably exhausting results not long after the fact. Which is where I am tonight, which is why I’m feeling slightly bent out of shape, as in not unlike a drunken gymnast.

Alas, there’s not a whole lot I can do for the next couple of weeks but keep on keeping on. Then I’ll have six days’ worth of breathing room before I return to Washington on March 22 to attend my first National Council on the Arts meeting. My plan is to spend a couple of those days holed up in my favorite undisclosed location. I know, I know, if you want to hear God laugh, make a plan…but this time I’m soooo not kidding.

And will I do it all over again? Probably. But the intervals between my spasms of pathological overwork are slowly but surely lengthening. That’s progress, right? (Right.) What’s more, you’ve doubtless noticed that I’ve eased off the blogging pedal in recent days, which is another kind of progress. In addition, I’m getting a reasonable if not excessive amount of sleep–and I haven’t forgotten to laugh at myself, either.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll get through this in one piece, and I’ll even learn a little something about myself in the process. Meanwhile, I promise to blog along the way. When I have time. And only if I feel like it.

Later.

“Chris was not so innocent as to believe that perfectly requited love was the only kind that lasted. As counselor he had listened to a hundred tales of one-way love, unilateral love, hopeless love. Of course there were love stories with happy endings and there were love stories that never seemed to end at all (for years after Chris’s mother died, his father went on loving her memory), but Chris knew that love for some was a continual giving without getting, love spilling from the heart like water from a hillside spring, love bubbling up from a vast reservoir and coursing off as unrestrained as a river to the sea.”

Jon Hassler, The Love Hunter

Alas, I’ll have to extend my absence from this space for one day more. I don’t have a hundred deadlines, and the dog didn’t eat my homework. Story is, I’m entertaining tonight–something I haven’t done in an embarrassingly long time. So there’s cleaning to do, recycling to schlep, groceries to buy, pasta e fagioli to make. What’s the occasion? You might well ask. If you’re the least bit television-aware, you will probably be able to guess when I tell you that:

a) all of my guests are of the female persuasion, and

b) meow.

On the other side, I’ll have laugh-out-loud Henry James (really!), a new blog meme (if it doesn’t exhaust itself by then), and a very enthusiastic new book recommendation. Tomorrow, my lovelies.

“In our street we have friends with lots in common. We discuss new books, films, popular culture, politics–everything except serious music. That shuts everyone up. I don’t think they even know what I do.”

John Adams (courtesy of oboeinsight)

In the end, I don’t care what the Academy does. Hell, I might even take a certain satisfaction in seeing my favorites robbed of what I think they deserve. But in the moment, it’s gratifying and honest to put your heart out there for the underdogs you love and to experience the punch in the gut when they lose. So I did right by Sideways tonight: let myself really hope it might win a few, and let myself feel the sting when it mostly didn’t.

Meanwhile, Michael Blowhard finally saw Sideways–just in time to see the Academy give it the dismissive little pat on the head that was its single award, for Best Adapted Screenplay–and we should all be glad, because he’s written a wonderfully perceptive appreciation. His post deftly breaks down a pivotal scene in the film, giving it the really close reading it merits, and then turns into a wider-ranging reflection on the joys of the movie close-up:

My one small film-pedant reflection on seeing this film? I was grateful to be reminded of how powerful movie closeups can be. Sandra Oh isn’t in the movie as much as I hoped she’d be. But she and Payne sketch in a convincing portrait of a confident yet vulnerable, frisky yet intelligent woman with just a few well-chosen actions and closeups.

The film’s most beautiful closeup is of Madsen. She and Giammatti are on Oh’s porch, getting used to each other’s company. Payne gives Madsen a short monologue about what wine has meant to her, and he discreetly moves the camera in as she speaks with feeling and reverence. Everything is quiet. It’s evening in wine country. Your senses are awakened; the fragrances in the air are gentle, the night’s sounds are distant, the evening’s food and wine are having their effect. And a luscious, generous woman is–with warmth, fervor, and grace–opening herself up. I don’t know how the audiences you saw the movie with reacted to this brief passage, but some of the people around me were sniffling. Wait a minute, I was sniffling.

I think we weren’t moved because the scene was sad, except in its awareness that life itself is finally sad. (Payne is of Greek descent, and he seems to me to have a Mediterranean, deep, and inborn acceptance of life’s tragic sides.) I think that people were moved instead by the moment’s combo of beauty and gentle appreciation. Without utilizing any advanced-technology whoopdedo, Payne and Madsen were working magic. Something transfiguring was happening; radiance was pouring through the screen. (The Wife whispered to me after the scene was over, “That’s my kind of special effect.”) When Giamatti bolts–he can’t handle what’s being unwrapped and offered to him–we know for damn sure how deep his sad-sackness and depression go, and how far he’s got to come back. We’re left alone for a second with Madsen, feeling the moment fade away.

Movie histories tend to make much of careers, spectacle, economics, business, and technology. Important topics, of course. But the fact is also that closeups have always been experienced as one of film’s most amazing gifts…

Read the rest! I’m tempted to quote more, but better you go read it over there. Sideways-wise, I’ll just say that despite my stubbornly voting for both Virginia Madsen and Thomas Haden Church while knowing they were bad bets, I still won the pool at the party I attended. The prize was made out of chocolate, which is always okay with me.