1. Lately we’ve been watching seventies movies: Marathon Man, Mean Streets, Charley Varrick. I hadn’t seen any of them before, but the clothes, cars, hairstyles, and interiors all felt deeply familiar. Of course; they’re artifacts of the world that surrounded me when I was tiny.
2. Charley Varrick was clearly influential to the Coen brothers when they made No Country For Old Men. We felt smart for approximately a minute on realizing this, at which point we Googled and saw how many others had previously pointed it out.
3. I don’t write much here about current events. That doesn’t mean I’m ignoring them.
4. I’ve recently rediscovered that when you need to hold it together, clothes with a certain amount of inherent structure and heft can help. Professional drag; grownup costume.
5. I recommend making kale chips. Here is how. Get a bunch of kale. Wash it. Rip it up; discard the stems. Arrange it on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt. Cook at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or so, til the edges of the leaves are browned. Eat.
sara z.
March 13, 2011 at 4:52 pmI love movies from the seventies precisely because of #1. That sense is felt double-deep when the movies take place in San Francisco – like the Dirty Harry movies, or Streets of San Francisco – as that was where I lived during that time of my childhood.