extremes at both ends

[lauralh]

I kind of rushed through Flow My Tears The Policeman Said; I haven't gotten that into a novel since, well, the last Dick I read. Anyway it was so gorgeous that I don't even mind the crappy resolution. I don't mean ending - the ending was good, just that the "solution" I suppose was weak. But the rest was pretty much perfect. I had once thought of writing a book with a similar premise but now I'm just gonna have to give up on that idea. No one can touch Dick.

What's even more interesting to me - and might make an interesting semi-biography, like 8 Mile or Shakespeare in Love - is the essay PKD wrote in reference to the novel. He points out all these crazy coincidences that happen a few years after writing it, and one can either attribute them to divine intervention or um, schizophrenia. I'm going for the latter, especially when he goes into the whole Christ talk. Still it's fascinating to see the process of lunacy.
--
Today I went to see Two Weeks Notice because Hugh Grant is my weakness. Fortunately in this film and of late in general he plays a cad. Cads? Anyway he's charming and witty and a bit of a jerk, and yes indeed Sandra Bullock plays off him great. She was actually cast well in this, I think. I find her and Julia Roberts equally unappealing visually (although I think Julia is a more versatile actress), but she's definitely good as St. Do-gooder Lawyer. And there were enough bon mots for me to be pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Of course I always have to say what I would have done better, and I think that making her put up with him for a year before quitting was managed poorly.

But of course that was nothing to the street theater I encountered on the way to the cinema. I assume they were homeless people on the bus ride, one man, one woman. The man was sitting peacefully when the woman walked up to him and demanded to be allowed to sit next to him. He refused. She was either crazy, drunk, or both; eventually the man got up and moved, leaving her to the seat. The teenage boy that the man sat next to asked if she was crazy. "What's it look like?" he replied.

But the woman heard and jumped up and yelled "Are you calling me crazy?" The boy apologized and things were quiet for about two minutes before she jumped up and started yelling at him and his "bitch" - and got up all in his face and slapped him. He kicked her away and that was the last straw for her. "What the fuck you think you doing KICKING ME?" she demanded, and dropped her 40oz, spilling it all over the floor. The youth insisted he was just trying to sit and relax, but she kept yelling at him, cursing his "bitch" and his forefathers. The man defended him halfheartedly, pointing out that she hit him first, but to no avail. Finally at the next stop the driver kicked her off. The back reeked of cheap beer for the rest of my journey.

(Question: do you still call it "street theater" if it happens on a bus?)

Comments

[das-prompt.livejournal.com]

Rad, PK Dick kicks all the ass. Did you finish Illuminatus? Masks Of The Illuminati is another good one, though quite different.

Also, if you haven't already, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco is a great read.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

I think mainly the Illuminatus! trilogy just made me want to try acid.

[das-prompt.livejournal.com]

Heh, indeed!

I can't remember which came first for me, though I know that I've read passages from the trilogy while on acid many times.

Hrmm... I wonder if I should be admitting that.

[discogravy.livejournal.com]

PKD had a LOT of stuff like this in his writing -- wierd paranoid schizo stuff. I used to be in this band (The Core Division) with these two guys who were the biggest PKD fans evar, and that's how I got into PKD. I eventually traded a crappy amp to the bass player for like 200$-ish worth of PKD books (I have most of them). I would seriously recommend you pick up a book about him that contains most of his old journals called Exegesis (and w/r/t the Xtian thing, PKD became very unbelievably christian after the whole VALIS thing. (read the 4 books in the VALIS trilogy if you haven't already. it's up there with the illuminati trilogy vis-a-vis greatness. There's some new movie out with the tagline "GOD IS NOWHERE....GOD IS NOW HERE" which I think was stolen straight out of the 1st VALIS book.)

[heraclitus.livejournal.com]

I have a .pdf of The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick in my webspace here. It's a collection of a great deal of the more interesting stuff he wrote over his life.

[buckylea.livejournal.com]

my new boy is a big philip k dick fan.

that is all.

[vonpookie.livejournal.com]

I think that as long as the bus was on a street, it should still qualify as "street" theater. It just happened to be moving at the time.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

watch out for him, we're a CRAZY and UNPREDICTABLE bunch.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

you are my hero.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

good point.

[heraclitus.livejournal.com]

I try.