Eyes are Burning

Hard to be quirky when your eyes are burning... (sounds like a riff from a midnight oil song - though interestingly itunes doesn't seem to have Beds are Burning available)

It's been a full week since the fire and the apartment still reeks of smoke and my eyes are still burning/watering (though you think the two would cancel each other out) So haven't done many quirky things.

Still working on Taste of Tribeca. It's going to be excellent!

Didn't go out at all because of the eyes thing. Did babysit for a friend and realised it's been a long time since I've been near a baby. I forgot about the whole burping thing. Still he was a very sweet boy perfectly behaved. Did watch lots of TV. I love good television. For me, right now, the best television is up there with film, literature, any other work of art. I was enamoured with the Shakespearen breadth of The Wire. And am finding it hard to stick with the slow, sad ending of the Sopranos. Last week's episode just send chills down my spine. O Christopher, there is no hope for you now...

Re other kinds of TV shows (which can't even fit into the same paragraph as the above) - I'm totally over Grey's Anatomy which is just annoying to me now. Ditto Desperate Housewives (which I haven't watched in ages) and Lost (which lost me in the second series.) I'm hanging in there with Veronica Mars, just. And I'm bored with the 600,000 crime proceedurals out there. I feel the need for a new twist or something to engage me once more.

We did go and see Nixon/Frost last week. Not being American I don't have the same relationship with Nixon that the rest of the audience did. Not being British, I didn't have any relationship with Frost either. But as a portrait of 2 men on the edge of desperation, it was worth seeing. There were many parallels that I could see to Bush - a president holding himself above the law or modifying the law to serve his own purposes. Paranoia and grandiosity. And on the Frost side -when your only success is in breaking someone else, what does that do to you... Ultimately I was glad I went but dissatisfied. It seemed that the damaged life that followed was not sufficient punishment for the damage done to democracy.

And watching this just as I am following what Bush has done to the laws concerning the replacing of US attorneys. Whereas before he could suggest but the state government would have to approve his suggestions, now his suggestions have to go in, unopposed or even explored, for the life of his Presidency. A small flourish of the Patriot Act. And why is that remotely patriotic? He is destroying the checks and balances of democracy and like Nixon, can't see that that is wrong. So I watched the play entangled with my feelings about the present and walked out unsettled. Which is a sign that the theatrical experience worked.

Hopefully will go out more soon!