Sitting

Stop presses. They’ve replaced the seats in the Film Forum’s best-of-three screening rooms. They’re nice seats. No names on the back though, so I might be confused the first couple of times, because I’ve been sitting behind Dustin & Lisa Hoffman for 14 years. I’ve been reading New York Calling, which the Boxer gave me. As an anthology, it’s necessarily uneven (the piece on Staten Island is an embarrassment), but I recommend it heartily to all of us cosmopolitans. Marshall Berman’s intro is absolutely invigorating, a welcome blast amid the blather dribbled from the corners of the mouth by the likes of Billionaire Mike and his fellow generals of finance who rule the city and pimp it out. Fortuitously, I found a paperback copy of Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy on a stoop, for Davies is always worth reading. Via work, I’m dipping into Christopher Gray’s New York Streetscapes, which, for a guidebook, is fun.