Last night I rewatched "The Royal Tenenbaums," easily my favorite Wes Anderson movie and possibly my favorite Gene Hackman performance. I loved the tombstone "Royal" wrote for himself and gave to his ex-wife to "proof-read", and wanted to share it with anybody who can use a laugh:

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Funny story. So I tried to share this announcement on Facebook and they prevented me. Here's the photo. I'm pretty sure it's the only time in ten or so years of Facebooking that I was prevented from making a post. I have temporarily closed my Facebook account until the boycott is over.

P.S. This time through, all the references/imagery about the beautiful woods being filled with nightmarish forces kept reminding me of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.”

And this:

"Evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure."

Here's another:

"Fathers are always forgiven. In the end they are forgiven. Had it been women who dragged the world through these horrors there would be a bounty on them."

Coming close to the end of McCarthy's excellent penultimate novel, THE PASSENGER, and keep seeing passages to read out loud. Here's how a man toasts his friend in a bar:

"Stay slightly ahead of the curve. Try to keep the more common miseries at bay. Don't look luck in the eye. Cheers."

Cheers!

It's a very small catharsis, but these days I'll take all the cathartic moments I can get.

3-4 February 2025 Fritz Lang’s FURY (1936)

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