OF A GOLDEN AGE

This David Horvitz Daily is my favorite so far.

• Iron Man
• Seabiscuit
• The Contender
• The Big Lebowski
• White Squall
• Fearless
• The Fisher King
• The Last Picture Show

These are the eight Jeff Bridges movies I’ve seen that are really, really great. Fearless, though, is my very favorite movie from my whole lifetime. It’s startling, creative, and unforgettable. Someone on Netflix gave it the following description:

A truly remarkable film that will open your eyes and has the potential to change your life, if you are open-minded and not afraid of exploring your most basic fear.

YES. And the reason for this is Jeff Bridges, who lives in this part without emotional shenanigans or overacting, who makes the potentially clichéd topic of survivor’s guilt into a riveting piece of character work. He goes ice cold and turns inward after a terrible plane crash, and somehow, this intense selfishness frees him to reconnect with life’s exquisite joys. The movie is peppered with characters who are worse people, but Bridges shows us the temporary emotional death of his character and its impact on his bewildered family.

Combine this with the Fisher King and the Big Lebowski and, really, if I could only watch those three movies for the rest of my life I’d be pretty set. Then consider the other four listed at the top of the post, and the numerous other good movies he’s made: Starman, Nadine, Tucker, Arlington Road . . .

And finally, his beautiful, impressive website.

Office supplies elicit strong reactions: many workers cherish particular paper clips, legal pads, filing systems, and so forth, which they patronize religiously. My dad covets a certain type of pen — not even a brand or anything — the occasional pen which just feels right in his hand, which he sometimes decides to take from a restaurant or bank. Recently my coworker Ryan bought a supply of “his brand” of pens for his desk, even though our office manager would certainly buy some for him if he asked.

On the one hand, I couldn’t care less about the pens I use for work as long as they function. A former boss insisted that everyone use classic felt-tipped Flair pens, in black or blue only unless otherwise specified. (We also had to take orders and messages on blank sheets of 8.5×11 white paper, whether the message had two words or two hundred.) We burned through Flair pens like they were on closeout.

On the other hand, when it comes to drawing, I became an obnoxious scrutinizer. Really, one pen works best for ink drawing: the Pilot Precise V5. It has a clean shape and feels good in your hand, with a strong tip that makes consistent and fine-but-not-fiddly lines. In my infrequent bouts of housecleaning I come across a dozen of these and always say, “I should do more ink drawing.” Maybe one of these days it’ll happen.

Writing about Abraham Lincoln the other day brought it to my attention that this is really the year of Lincoln. His 200th birthday is approaching fast and Barack Obama clearly has an epic head-of-state crush on him. This means that for me, a notorious Lincolnphile with a head-of-state crush of my own, these are times ripe for the picking. Here are some examples.

• The New York Times story I posted the other day (“From Books, New President Found Voice”).

• This interactive feature, also from the Times, by which you may compare inaugural addresses from Washington to the present. Lincoln was one of the few presidents to prominently feature the word “constitution” in his speech.

• “Why Doesn’t Every President Use the Lincoln Bible?” from Slate describes an upcoming Library of Congress exhibition of “Lincolniana,” a word that makes me want to hurl regardless of my Lincolnphile status.

• My otherwise-terrible hometown has a beautiful statue of Lincoln, and once hosted him as an overnight guest following a speech. The site of the speech is marked by an engraved rock, while the inn where he stayed tries to utilize this connection. Too bad Oregon is still shitty!

• The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opened in 2005. I still have not been, and this is really a travesty. Of course, I’ll have to lock myself in and never leave, a la From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

I’ve decided to write a series of posts on my favorite things. They will be issued as I get the itch to describe things and why I love them.

• beautiful food
• hot tubs
• extra-long inseams
• down comforters
• the color red
• high heels
• good writing
• the things we say when we’re half asleep
• impromptu dance parties
• old friends
• underlining passages
• noticing things
• this pat benatar song i can’t stop listening to
• emile hirsch
• the elements of editing by arthur plotnik
• diet cherry coke
• my particular brand of madness
• guacamole
• the american beauty score by thomas newman
• how my copy of jurassic park is like the town bicycle these days
• pinstripes
• swearing at belcon meetings
• saltines
• everything is illuminated
• max bielenberg’s handwriting
• a white sport coat and a pink crustacean
• afghans and quilts
• scraps of paper with notes on them
• playing scrabble in the smoking lounge
• ink drawing
• bottlecaps from foreign lands!
• MY SHIRT (as printed by misters f-k and fisher)
• “that lady’s got cigarettes!”
• getting over a cold
• ten more round tables
• steve wright (DUH)
• bass clarinet
• emily miller’s “quirkiness”
• the shawshank redemption
• argyle socks
• those conversations wherein you hear a series of brief, illuminative stories about people whom you do not yet know very well
• gallopy drums
• old postcards and their origins
• this new trend of two beds in one
• living in chicago with nathan after graduation!
• my great grandmother’s homemade christmas ornaments
• how this one time, my mom answered a trivial pursuit question by giving the last line of a men at work song
• really good mountain dew from a soda fountain
• the way eight degrees feels so much warmer than -11
• half-remembered dreams that don’t make any sense
• diet cherry vanilla coke
• patsy cline
• townhouse jay
• surreal nights with funny people
• herb alpert and the tijuana brass
• pool at the chaus
• the idea that potential employers may place any weight on the content of this profile
• frosting fights
• scott’s potstickers!
• acoustic versions
• black pepper
• hating on belcon
• TULLYCRAFT
• goldfish (i speak of the snack food, but the real ones, too, especially the ones with that bubbleheaded business)
• loud patterns
• panda express
• how in my new driver’s license picture, it looks like i am dreamily in love with something just to the side of the camera
• acrylic paint
• round buildings, specifically my cylindrical dreamhouse
• costume jewelry
• large crowds dancing in unison
• www.tvlinks.co.uk, specifically ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK
• charming old books
• fresh haircuts
• ground cumin
• the word “dyspepsia”