Letting the alcoholics into the booze cellar

[muckefuck]

So we're having our irregular book sale now and this is staff preview day. Not much that I felt I couldn't do without and that wouldn't still be around after the used-booksellers descend and snarffle titles up by the bagload. (Linguistic studies of the Jin dialects not exactly something with so much draw it can't wait until Bargain Day.)

There was a sizable biography section, which is not one that I was accustomed to perusing, but my experiences with Pamuk's, Tanizaki's, and (ahem) García Márquez' autobiographies have forced me to reconsider this bias. I told my co-worker that in order to get these really flying off the table, we should circulate salacious fictions. "L. Frank Baum? Nazi paedophile! Margaret Fuller? Cross-dressing assassin. The first female American ninja, in fact. It's all in here!" She suggested just telling everyone they would all be made into movies. Ah, the Samuel Beckett biopic--the world has waited too long!

Speaking of Irishmen on film (or, rather, "fillum"), I've determined that I absolutely cannot miss "Kings" at the Film Centre this coming week. Seriously! A movie in Irish? With Colm Meaney? Ní thiocfadh leis bheith fíor! So what if the plot isn't the most original. ("A bunch of guys meet in a bar after a funeral and talk about their lives," as I told monshu. "Hasn't that been done to death?" he asked. "Yes," I said, "but not in IRISH!") The brilliant thing about being at this level of language learning is that I'll get a bit of a thrill with every little phrase I puzzle out.

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Speaking of Irish film

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I caught the tail end of the Susan Hayward melodrama (wait, does she do anything other than melodrama?) To Thank a Fool. Our Miss Hayward portrays an Irish doctor, jailed and removed from practive for committing a mercy killing, in the quasi medical employ of her prosecutor and new love Peter Finch. Peter Finch's wife dies of an overdose. Oh the drama! The second murder takes place somewhere in the west, I missed the beginning, and all sorts of locals are heard muttering in Irish at the funeral and the inquest. They call it local color, like the dye job Hayward was sporting.