The most talked about film in recent months, at least among film people, is the Iranian film A Separation. It won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and is a shoo-in for the Oscar. It is apparently so good that even The New Yorker's Anthony Lane liked it. I say apparently because I haven't seen it. I live in Broward, the county opposed to foreign films.
At some point we will drive down to Little Havana and see A Separation at the Tower Theater on Calle Ocho. We'll go to an Hispanic neighborhood to see an Iranian film.
On rare occasions we can catch a foreign film without leaving the county: out on Pine Island, or at the Classic Gateway (despite the fact that the theater's new name is reflective of its age, not the types of films it shows). The delightful Cinema Paradiso, just blocks from our condo, does show foreign films, but lately of a less serious nature. This weekend, for instance, instead of A Separation it is showing the Italian film Immaturi, which pretty much says it all.
Yesterday I had coffee with a freelancer friend who is younger than me and his a wife and two kids. To support his family he has been editing books for iUniverse. "They're terrible," he told me.
His one steady freelancing gig is writing up interviews he does with people about their personal fitness training. His most recent subject was one of the women from Jersey Shore.
"Tom," he said to me plaintively, "when I was in j-school this wasn't what I imagined myself doing."
The beauty of Ft. Lauderdale is that it's close to Miami but not so close that you get to know it like a native. After two decades I can still go down and discover something that's been around for more than 20 years.
Last week it was Burger Bob's. I loved the name (amazing what you can do just by reversing the normal order of two words). My friend David suggested it as a change from our normal lunch place Books & Books. (Two more B's, though here the reversal doesn't work as well.)
David directed me to the Coral Gables Country Club and we parked next to the golf course. The restaurant was attached to the pro shop, and seemed to be made entirely of glass, like something Philip Johnson might have designed on, well, his lunch break. We walked past Formica tables with red-cushioned chairs and then waited for one on red-cushioned stools.
Once we were seated, the attractive waitress took my order. She knew David's: one fried egg, grits and English muffin. David told me that she had had her wedding in the restaurant, and that he had been one of the guests.
Halfway through my excellent Reuben a couple stopped by to say hello to David, whom they called Zippo. They had been good friends of his parents. Both were 90. After they had gone, David told me that the woman's second husband had been the owner of the old Everglades Hotel. (He'd spend his winters in Miami and his summers on the French Riviera). Her current beau was a retired admiral. You don't meet people like that at the Floridian.
Went to Laser Wolf last night for the first time and found it closed. Javier had described it as a hipster bar, though he looked more like a preppy, straddling his bicycle in the street and wearing a white sweater with thin blue stripes.
We headed to 2nd Street. Javier's bike was already leaned against a sidewalk table by the time I found a parking space, paid the meter, placed the receipt on the dashboard. He brought us two beers.
He asked if I'd been to Jerk Machine over by the bus station. I said I'd heard of it but I'd never been. He said that the perfect first date would be jai alai in Dania Beach, followed by a meal at Jerk Machine, and then a nightcap at Laser Wolf. "If the girl said, 'That was a great night,' you'd know you had a keeper."
Our neighbors went away for the weekend and asked us to collect their newspaper. (They had recently found a great deal on Groupon for the Sun-Sentinel.)
Yesterday the paper was unusually big and, picking it up, I saw that the bag contained three small boxes of cereal, one of which was Reese's Puffs.
If you subscribe to the Sun-Sentinel you no longer get a full-time classical music critic, or pop music critic, or film critic, or theater critic, or book critic, nor do you get a Home & Garden editor, a Food editor or a Travel editor. But you do get a sugary cereal. Instead of increasing literacy, my old newspaper is contributing to obesity.
Yesterday I drove down to Miami to tape an interview with Joseph Cooper at WLRN. (It will air on March 27th). The subject was my essay in the current issue of The Missouri Review about Palermo and the anti-Mafia organization Addiopizzo.
I am indebted to literary quarterlies for their interest. My first travel story, about the Tatra Mountains, appeared in The North American Review in 1981. Later that decade I published essays - on Warsaw and Madrid - in The American Scholar. These magazines provided - and continue to provide - a home for travel writing that travel magazines won't publish. There is much to be said for publications that aren't dependent on advertising.
The only problem is that fewer people read quarterlies than read glossy magazines, and so travel writing gets a frivolous, boosterish reputation. Not long ago I read excerpts from my Missouri Review essay at a writers' conference. The man who introduced me mentioned my books and then, instead of citing awards and praise (as he had with the poet and the novelist who had preceded me), he said: "The thing about Tom is, he's a great person to talk to about travel. He gets so enthusiastic about places." It was with immense pleasure that I got up and read about the worst slum in Palermo.