Annnnnd We're Back.

Sorry for the downtime, folks, I was out East on family affairs. I rarely get out there anymore, and so I had forgotten two crucial things:

1.) Boston drivers always obey the rule that "Safe following distance" is two car lengths. However, Boston drivers count, within that distance, your car and their car. Jesus, it's like four days of driving with a tow-line.

2.) In many places, drivers have bumper stickers proclaiming how much they love their local sports team. Massachusetts is one of the fiew locales where they gleefully exhibit bumper stickers declaring their deep and abiding hatred of the team from some other city entirely. It is, of course, a public service to remind people that said team (Yankees) are indeed inferior (they suck). To wit: YANKEES SUCK.

Now that I know we're actually going to shoot the thing, after my jet lag fades I'll continue the inside scoop on writing the freelance script. Also, I got an e-mail asking, in a somewhat annoyed tone to be truthful, "what the hell are you reading?" I will use this to begin foisting some lists of books I'm reading onto you, in the spirit of that Friday Top Ten IPod thing most bloggers do. But without the risk of embarrassing emo revelations.

Oh, and Grey Gardens really crosses the line into operetta. It's pretty audacious of a crappy screenwriter to hack into Doug Wright (and I thought I Am My Own Wife was pretty damn stunning), but only Christine Ebersol's virtuousity in playing Little Edie in the second act in any way justifies that looooooong first act. That said, she's amazing, and the set design is a thing of beauty. But be prepared to glance at the watch a few times on the way to the intermission.

If you haven't seen the Grey Gardens film, there's a new Criterion DVD release, so you have no excuses now. There's a rather odd dichotomy in attitudes toward the film between straight women and gay men, but I can smell one of my long, split-topic posts coming on, so I'll refrain and adress it another time.