"From the illuminable catacombs..."

RIP, J.D.

Priorities

“It’s more convoluted, more bleak — more of the sort of thing that some people will find praiseworthy,” he says of “The Thomas Berryman Number” [his first novel]. “The sentences are superior to a lot of the stuff I write now, but the story isn’t as good. I’m less interested in sentences now and more interested in stories.”

-“James Patterson Inc.”

On Commutation: An Introduction

In recent months I have grown uncomfortably familiar with the Metro-North Railroad.  Until this Autumn, our relationship had been a casual one, and pleasant.  We met on daytrips to New York and travels to and from school.

Now I have joined the ranks of commuters who pile on each morning, groggy and morose, clutching travel mugs and briefcases and purses.  I shiver with them on cold train platforms and vie with them for choice seats.  Sometimes, united by travel’s small indignities—crowded trains, unforeseen delays—we exchange sympathetic looks and remarks.  I have gotten to know some of them, my fellow travelers, not by name, but by sight, and I share with them some tenuous, glancing camaraderie.

Still, it’s easy to feel like an impostor sitting next to conservatively dressed professionals in your unwashed jeans and wrinkled Oxford and interesting socks. They don’t judge, though, knowing full well that at any given they could nod off, only to wake up in Grand Central Terminal with saliva on their spread collars.  The train is a fundamentally liminal space, and so this kind of thing is all right.  Women wear comfortable shoes, heels concealed in their purses; they put on make-up, too. Windows are mirrors, and everyone’s prose to gaze now and again.  In the last minutes of the journey, as the train lurches into Manhattan, there is much tie-straightening and skirt-smoothing.  Hands are run through hair and mints popped into mouths.  The last remnants of sleep are banished.  Work, the office, judgmental co-workers beckon.

But work’s a long way off.  The train’s only just pulling away from the station.  If they hadn’t electrified the trains all those years ago you could watch the smoke trail behind you, but they did, so you can’t.  Don’t worry about it.  There’s plenty to see inside the cars.  It’s a strange little ecosystem in there.  Consider me your not-so-qualified guide.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - Trailer

ericapolis:

SO EXCIIITED

I couldn’t agree more.

Now get these iguanas off my coffee table.

EDIT: It looks like Manohla Dargis was similarly smitten by the cute, chimeric lizards.