Beret

Yesterday I listened to Where The Wild Things Are on vinyl from '85.

I hope some hipsters explode with synthetic nostalgia.

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World - Perennial ed. Foreword

I broke a window today.

I saw Fahrenheit 451 (the movie adaptation from 1966) at the Guild a few days back. It was a free showing sponsored by the NEA Big Read along with the SFO(!?), the city libraries, and rather curiously: comcast.

The plot was significantly different from the book; many elements were removed for presumably technical reasons such as the mechanical hound & jet-cars. Clarisse & Faber the professor were gone too. Clarisse was replaced by a teacher. The fireman’s pole refusing to work for Montag was substituted for the growling mechanical hound’s threats. In the movie Montag just used the stairs.

The story still maintained some continuity though and the scenery helped establish the harsh yet bright dystopia. After the movie let out there was a table with copies of Fahrenheit 451, reading guides, bookmarks, etc.

I grabbed a book (encircled w/ caution tape) to offer to friends who hadn’t read it yet. When I mentioned the novel to one person they remarked that they knew Fahrenheit 9/11’s name was referencing something but they had never remembered what (until I mentioned it). I was rather surprised by the amount of people who had either never read or never even heard of the book.

secret movie tip: as the stairs descend from the monorail watch for a jump in the film and a change in the cloud speed. It’s where they spliced together clips from a model and a full size mockup stairway.

“‘I hate a Roman named Status Quo!’ he [my grandfather] said to me. ‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,’ he said, ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.’”

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 pg. 157

I read Bradbury & Poe on my flight to ABQ.

“You would not have bought this book and read this far into it if your food culture was intact and healthy.”

Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food, p.134

Buy it.

I suspect more adjectives were dumped in just so they could fit her bosom on the spine.

“As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert—from Kansas clear to the Pacific Ocean—as the “jackass rabbit.” He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a jackass.”

Mark Twain - Roughing It Chapter III

You can learn so much from old books.
I have no clue why the library was discarding it, but its mine now.