Pomp

"Underwear is underwear! It is underwear wherever you buy it! In Cincinnati or wherever!"

-- Tom Cruise as Charlie in Rain Man

--

The cast is going to Pompilio's tonight. Bonding. Munching. We meet in a half hour, half a mile up the street. It's the famous (?) Italian restaurant where the "toothpicks scene" in Rain Man was filmed. Cruise and Hoffman, man, counting sticks ten feet from our table. Definitely, definitely, definitely...but not going "full retarded." Gotta get the hardware.

The recent debit-card fiasco, however, has cut my available menu in half. I'm looking at salads, soups, and veggie meals, thank you very much. Theft equals thrift, but there's a raft in the rift, and thirds are for turds, anyway.

--

Actors and housemates alike have been sympathetic (as they often are), and not a few of them has had to deal with this kind of bullshit. Advice and consolation pours in from all sides. There's much to do, though, once your bank account has been raped, except to wait nine months and undergo all procedures (legal, financial, personal) and hope the thing turns out okay. Crude and cruel is the money world, where to live in it is to be more livid than loved.

And being robbed makes you fall in love with alliteration, assonance and consonance, all those funky lit terms, all over again. Who knew.

--

Been falling in love with Cate Blanchett lately: I'm Not There, The Life Aquatic, and The Aviator. Whether Dylan, pregnant or Hepburn, the woman is magnificent.

Also watched the first season of the BBC's The Office, the original which spawned the NBC spinoff. Having watched the American version a bit, the British series feels like a condensed hodgepodge, a sort of highlights reel where the same character types call each other "wankers" but basically go through the same things: staplers in Jell-O, fake firings, bawdy clubbing blunders. There seems to be less pop commentary (or maybe I just don't really know British pop) and zany shenanigans, but honestly, that's kinda nice. They make the most of their 180 minutes a season--only six episodes in season one, folks, and only two seasons per series...the BBC is fucking efficient.

--

And last night, our house had our first meeting/meal together, and it was good. We sort of potlucked our way through dinner ("What else can we throw in there?" "I've got green beans!" "Are they still good?" "They smell okay.") and then sort of danced through rules. And then we sat through Juno, which is always good.