Rush Movie Quotes

Have you ever heard of Blue Streak?" I blink at him. "That's the name of a movie?" "Romeo Must Die? Bad Boys? Rush Hour? Rush Hour 2? Rush Hour 3? Actually, Rush Hour 3 wasn't that great. Tangled? "That last one, I believe, is a cartoon about a girl with very long hair, inspired by the German fairy tale Rapunzel." Kenji looks like he might be choking. "A cartoon?" he says, outraged. "Tangled is not a cartoon. Tangled is one of the greatest movies of all time. It's about fighting for freedom and true love.

It's nothing like the way they describe it in the movies, like all the stars aligning and fireworks exploding across an ink-black sky. It feels both quieter and bigger than that, as simple as coming home and as dizzying and all-encompassing as the wind rushing in around us. It feels like a thousand banished and buried moments have been building up to this - to us alone and untethered and weak with wanting - and maybe they have.

Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.

I don’t know if I’ve learned anything yet! I did learn how to have a happy home, but I consider myself fortunate in that regard because I could’ve rolled right by it. Everybody has a superficial side and a deep side, but this culture doesn’t place much value on depth — we don’t have shamans or soothsayers, and depth isn’t encouraged or understood. Surrounded by this shallow, glossy society we develop a shallow side, too, and we become attracted to fluff. That’s reflected in the fact that this culture sets up an addiction to romance based on insecurity — the uncertainty of whether or not you’re truly united with the object of your obsession is the rush people get hooked on. I’ve seen this pattern so much in myself and my friends and some people never get off that line. But along with developing my superficial side, I always nurtured a deeper longing, so even when I was falling into the trap of that other kind of love, I was hip to what I was doing. I recently read an article in Esquire magazine called ‘The End of Sex,’ that said something that struck me as very true. It said: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over. You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work, though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble. You’re with this person, and suddenly you look like an asshole to them or they look like an asshole to you — it’s unpleasant, but if you can get through it you get closer and you learn a way of loving that’s different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer and has more padding to it.

These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which were now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.

catalyst, n. It surprised me — surprises me still — that you were the first one to say it. I was innocent, in a way, expecting those three words to appear boldface with music. But instead, it was such an ordinary moment: The movie was over, and I stood up to turn off the TV. A few minutes had passed from the end of the final credits, and we’d been sitting there on the couch, your legs over mine, the side of your hand touching the side of my hand. The video stopped and the screen turned blue. “I’ll get it,” I said, and was halfway to the television when you said, “I love you.” I never asked, but I’ll always wonder: What was it about that moment that made you realize it? Or, if you’d known it for awhile, what compelled you to say it then? It was welcome, so welcome, and in my rush to say that I loved you, too, I left the television on, I let that light bathe us for a little longer, as I returned to the couch, to you. We held there for awhile, not really sure what would happen next.

The tears that rushed to my eyes threatened to spill forth and I was seconds from crying as if I'd watched a marathon of Hallmark movies.

Draft-dodging is what chicken-hawks do best. Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh (this capon claimed he had a cyst on his fat ass), Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General John Ashcroft—he received seven deferments to teach business education at Southwest Missouri State—pompous Bill O’Reilly, Jeb Bush, hey, throw in John Wayne—they were all draft-dodgers. Not a single one of these mouth-breathing, cowardly, and meretricious buffoons fought for his country. All plumped for deferments. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani? Did not serve. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Did not serve in the military. (He served the Mormon Church on a thirty-month mission to France.) Former Senator Fred Thompson? Did not serve. Former President Ronald Reagan? Due to poor eyesight, he served in a noncombat role making movies for the Army in southern California during WWII. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing. Did Rahm Emanuel serve? Yes, he did during the Gulf War 1991—in the Israeli Army. John Boehner did not serve, not a fucking second. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY? Not a minute! Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS? Avoided the draft. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ—did not serve. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn, R-TX—did not serve. Former Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV? Did not serve. Jack Kemp? Dan Quayle? Never served a day. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. These are the jackasses that cherish memorial services and love to salute and adore hearing “Taps.

With so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor.

This was going to be what my kids grew up believing Christmas was all about and I loved it. Cuddling on the sofa watching Christmas movies and drinking hot cocoa while I laid my hand on Blair's stomach and enjoying my boy kick. This was something money couldn't buy. Not this kind of happiness. ~Rush Finlay

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse.

Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have gadgets, when in the end, all any of us will have is our simple beating heart, reaching up for the connection to whoever might be in the room or leaning into our mattress as we draw our last breath?

Well, if 'exciting means drama and people dying and doctors and nurses rushing around like in the movies, then no, it wasn't. But if it means doing something that seems small now but can make a big difference in the long run, then it was.

there are people capable of eating popcorn at the movie of your agony

I knew it was wrong. If we hadn't stopped the process and examined what we were doing, the record would have been terrible. [...] It's like taking a great movie and ruining it in the ending. [...] Some things can't be rushed.

a tidal wave of blackness broke over her head. The entire world was obliterated–for a few minutes. She knew she had gone crazy. She looked around the theater to see if it had happened to everyone, but all the other people were engrossed in the movie. She rushed out, because the darkness in the theater was too much combined with the darkness in her head.

So, where are you from originally?” I ask. Violet rolls her eyes. “A small town you’ve probably never heard of. Chestnut Springs. It’s just south of Calgary, Alberta.” “Sounds like a town in a cowboy movie.” “Looks like one too.” “Yeah? Hot cowboys and everything?” I waggle my eyebrows at her.

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.

You are a rush to me. Every time I make you smile, my heart rate goes through the roof. The way you blush and bite your lip and pretend to be annoyed when I tease you…” He patted his chest. “Straight shot of dopamine. Let’s not even talk about what your laugh does to me. But you’re not just my dopamine hit. You’re my soft place to land when I come back down. I don’t need you to go skydiving with me. Or rock climbing. I’m perfectly happy reading a book. Or hanging out watching a movie with you. But there are times when I’d want us to get out of our comfort zones. Make some memories. I want to pick our moments, whatever they are, and live them.

Todd:I had him! His throat was there beneath my hand. No, I had him! His throat was there and now he'll never come again. Mrs. Lovett: Easy now, hush love hush I keep telling you, Whats your rush? Todd: When? Why did I wait? You told me to wait - Now he'll never come again. There's a hole in the world like a great black pit And it's filled with people who are filled with shit And the vermin of the world inhabit it. But not for long... They all deserve to die. Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why. Because in all of the whole human race Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two There's the one staying put in his proper place And the one with his foot in the other one's face Look at me, Mrs Lovett, look at you. No, we all deserve to die Even you, Mrs Lovett, even I! Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death will be a relief We all deserve to die. And I'll never see Johanna No I'll never hug my girl to me - finished! Alright! You sir, how about a shave? Come and visit your good friend Sweeney. You sir, too sir? Welcome to the grave. I will have vengenance. I will have salvation. Who sir, you sir? No ones in the chair, Come on! Come on! Sweeney's. waiting. I want you bleeders. You sir! Anybody! Gentlemen now don't be shy! Not one man, no, nor ten men. Nor a hundred can assuage me. I will have you! And I will get him back even as he gloats In the meantime I'll practice on less honorable throats. And my Lucy lies in ashes And I'll never see my girl again. But the work waits! I'm alive at last! And I'm full of joy! ps. love the movie the performance that Johnny Depp did was amazing and he sang amazing.

If there was a bad guy we could appeal to the people because, like it or not, we, the huddled masses, want our public figures to be good or bad but rarely allow them to mix the two. Not good an bad. We place people in these categories, which then creates a smooth story-line but also a dichotomy. It's why we like our male movie stars to be either bad boys or heroes, our leading ladies sluts or soccer moms. We like our politicians to be tough guys or saints. What we don't like are any signs of actual humanity, a mixture of the two. So we are left with the question: who is the bad guy? And is the bad guy in control of all that is bad?

The fire alarm went off. Fire engines came racing; we all rushed out on the gravel drive, everyone thinking it was us. In fact, one of the elderly residents of Saltram had left a pan on the oven in her flat. Apparently this happens all the time. The tenant in question is appearing as an extra -- playing one of the cooks.

Lizzie and I arrived in the polluted heat of a London summer. We stood frozen at street corners as a blur of pedestrians burst out of the subways and spilled like ants down the pavements. The crowed bars, the expensive shops, the fashionable clothes - to me it all seemed a population rushing about to no avail...I stared at a huge poster of a woman in her underwear staring down at her own breasts. HELLO BOYS, she said. At the movies we witnessed sickening violence, except that this time we held tubs of popcorn between our legs and the gunfire and screams were broadcast in digital Dolby. We had escaped a skull on a battlefield, only to arrive in London, where office workers led lines of such tedium and plenty that they had to entertain themselves with all the f****** and killing on the big screen. So here then was the prosperous, democratic and civilized Western world. A place of washing machines, reality TV, Armani, frequent-flier miles, mortgages. And this is what the Africans are supposed to hope for, if they're lucky.

Watching movies was, and still is, an opportunity for my heart to rush irregularly while the cost, for me, remains low.

there is a special connection between Billie and DD. A connection you don’t see very often, the kind in books and movies. Her very own Black Beauty.

She’d rather make love to him then watch any movie. “We don’t have to. Did I do something wrong?” That made him turn to her. “Of course not.” “Oh. Then don’t you want to…” She trailed off, a blush rising. “Are you kidding me? More than anything.” His expression softened. “But, Maira, I don’t want to rush you, make you do something you aren’t ready for.” She stared at him. He was so pretty. Was he also stone-cold stupid? How could he think she wasn’t ready for it? She’d already thrown herself at him. Twice now, if he counted the kitchen disaster.

Listen, Wesley, this may sound weird coming from me, since I hate you and all, but you can tell me stuff if you want.” It sounded like something out of a cheesy G-rated movie. Great. “I mean, I vented all of my shit about Jake to you, so if you want to do the same,… well, I’m cool with that.” The smirk slipped for a second. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Then he cleared his throat and added stiffly, “Didn’t you say that you needed to go home? You don’t want to be late for school.” “Right.” I started to stand, but his warm hand closed around my wrist. I turned around and found him looking at me. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine. Before I even realized what was happening, he pulled away and whispered, “Thank you, Bianca.

In history, in a movie, in a book, you can always tell who the heroes are; they're the ones rushing into a burning building, giving crucial testimony in the courtroom, refusing to step to the back of the bus. They're the ones who act the way you hope you would, if the moment came to you. But the movies and the history books never tell you how they felt, those heroes, if they were angry or uncertain or afraid, if they had to think a long time before they did the right thing, if they even knew what the right thing was or just made a headlong guess, just leaped and hoped they landed instead of falling. They never tell you what it's like to stand on the brink, wishing you were somewhere--or someone--else, wishing the choice had never come your way and you could just go back to your safe, ordinary, everyday life. Because you know what else the books never say? Nobody, hero or not, really wants to rush into a fire. Because fire burns.

Audiences see personalities on shows interacting with wild animals as if they were not dangerous or, at the other extreme, provoking them to give viewers an adrenaline rush. Mostly, the animals just want to be left alone, so it’s not surprising that these entertainers are seriously hurt or even killed on rare occasions. On one level, it’s that very possibility the shows are selling.

the old lady to the movies or reading. Once in a while he slipped away to a lecture. He was studying law too. Grammick wasn’t going to be sucked away from all private existence. I went along with this rush,

That night in my apartment, and other nights, too, burrowed under the covers, I watch the shadows on the wall and think of meeting men, meeting men like in movies, and meeting men like Alice and her mysterious friends seem to - seem to at least in Alice’s stories - men met on buses between stops, in the frozen foods aisle, at Woolworth’s when buying a spool of thread, at the newsstand, perusing Look, in hotel lobbies, at supper clubs, while hailing cabs or looking in shop windows. Men with smooth felt hats and pencil mustaches, men with Arrow shirts and shiny hair, men eager to rush ahead for the doors and to steady your arm as you step over a wet patch on the road, men with umbrellas just when you need them, men who hold you up with a firm grip as the bus lurches before you can reach a seat, men with flickering eyes who seem to know just which coat you are trying to reach off the rack in the coffee shop, men with smooth cheeks smelling of tangy lime aftershave who would order you a gin and soda before you even knew you wanted one.

What's the rush? Recognise that with the time at our disposal, there is only a limited number of good books you can read, a few really good movies worth seeing, and a finite number of hours, days, years to enjoy them!

I will start your car when it gets cold. I won't complain about the clump of hair in the shower. I will put my toothbrush back in the holder, and I will try to remember to put the seat down. I will wrap my hands around your toes when they are cold, and I will gladly remove your clothes when you are hot. I will do the dishes on nights you cook...I will do the dishes every night. I will kiss your stubbed toes and smashed fingers. I will tickle you...a lot. And pin you to the wall...a lot. I will be soft, but I will also be hard. I will go fast but also remember to take it slow. Sometimes. I will hold your hand at the movies and push your chair in at the restaurant. I will convince you to wing walk. Not today. Not tomorrow. But someday. I will encourage you and push you. And when you need me to, I will hold you. And when you don't need me to, I will hold you. I will play, I will laugh, I will cry, and I will love--all with you.

If I’m to be forever stared at like that, I really will end up a monster! At length, unable to stand it, I brushed aside the forest of humanity and, as if taking shelter in some cave, rushed headlong into a nearby movie house, a “market place of darkness”—the only safe place for a monster.

I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.

For every person who was alarmed or startled to see an armoured, paramilitary-looking figure rushing past at astonishing speed, there were ten who were simply annoyed or indignant. "Hey, asshole, go shoot your goddamn sci-fi movie somewhere else!" "Extreme sports is California, dude!" "Fuck you, buddy!" New York.

You only get out of something what you bring into it, whether it is your job, your relationships, watching a movie, or reading a book. They all help you to get to know yourself better in some way. The more awareness we can bring into what we do, the less we will rush and miss the things we need to see about ourselves.

Real labor doesn’t happen like it does in the movies. For one thing, it takes so much longer than you think it will. You don’t rush to the hospital the moment you feel your first contraction, already pushing, screaming for drugs while an angry nurse tells you it’s too late, the baby’s already coming. That’s all fiction.

I felt preposterously happy to see him. Felt, in fact, like I was in one of those movies where the woman goes into labor while her husband is out of town and he rushes back, gets there just in time. His face, gauging me, so full of tenderness and respect that you'd think he was my husband, even if he had no idea who I was or what he was doing with me--which makes him, I suppose, like most husbands.

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the self-contemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism. The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them. In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent - not especially - but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Lear-sized yet sonnet-precise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void. Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned.

catalyst, n. It surprised me - surprises me still - that you were the first one to say it. I was innocent, in a way, expecting those three words to appear boldface with music. But instead, it was such an ordinary moment: The movie was over, and I stood up to turn off the TV. A few minutes had passed from the end of the final credits, and we'd been sitting there on the couch, your legs over mine, the side of your hand touching the side of my hand. The video stopped and the screen turned blue. "I'll get it," I said, and was halfway to the television when you said, "I love you." I never asked, but I'll always wonder: What was it about that moment that made you realize it? Or, if you'd known it for awhile, what compelled you to say it then? It was welcome, so welcome, and in my rush to say that I loved you, too, I left the television on, I let that light bathe us for a little longer, as I returned to the couch, to you. We held there for awhile, not really sure what would happen next.

Bianca?” Startled, I focused on Toby again. “Hmm?” “Are you all right?” he asked. My fingers had been toying with the little B charm around my neck without my realizing it. Immediately I dropped my hand to my side. “I’m fine.” “Casey warned me that you’re probably lying when you say that,” he said. I gritted my teeth and searched the dance floor for my so-called friend. She was being added to my hit list. “And I think she’s right,” Toby sighed. “What?” “Bianca, I can see what’s going on.” He glanced over his shoulder at Wesley before turning back to me with a little nod. “He’s been staring at you since he got here.” “Has he?” “I can see him in the mirrors over there. And you’ve been staring back,” Toby said. “It’s not just tonight either. I’ve seen the way he looks at you during school. In the hallways. He likes you, doesn’t he?” “I… I don’t know. I guess.” Oh God, this was uncomfortable. I just kept spinning my straw between my fingers and watching the little waves that appeared on the surface of my drink. I couldn’t meet Toby’s gaze. “I don’t have to guess,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious. And the way you look at him makes me think you’re in love with him, too.” “No!” I cried, releasing my straw and glaring up at Toby. “No, no, no. I am not in love with him, okay?” Toby gave me a small smile and said, “But you do have feelings for him.” I couldn’t see any sign of pain in his eyes, just a touch of amusement. That made it a lot easier to give him an answer. “Um,… yeah.” “Then go to him.” I rolled my eyes without meaning to. It was just so automatic. “Jesus, Toby,” I said, “that sounds like a line out of a bad movie.” Toby shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m serious, Bianca. If you feel that way about him, you should go over there.

You’ve been away for a year and a half, yeah?” “Yep. No TV, no movies, no internet. Not even a radio.” “Damn. You missed the last season of Game of Thrones.” “Was it any good?” “It was real good. Extending it to thirteen episodes so they could properly develop the climax was a smart move, after how much they’d been rushing things.” “Last I heard, they were cutting it down to six episodes.” “Someone leaked the scripts and the internet went crazy. Something about everyone turning dumb, evil or both. They rewrote the whole thing and everyone really liked how it turned out.” “Nice.

How many scenes of blasted terrain, or medics rushing headlong with a stretcher on which lay a figure beneath a sheet, too small, too anonymous, and too deathly still? How long would they mean? Ellie thought of the Japanese photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, who photographed movies inside the cinema. He left the shutter of the camera open in the dark auditorium and the film exposed for the entire length of the screening. The result was not a wildly complicated superimposition of images, but simple white-out, pure light, a flare of nothing. Too many images, layered together, left only a blank.

It was awfully quiet. Chicago only gets this quiet when it snows, he thought. And then he flipped open the phone, pressed the voice button, and said “Katherine.” He said it softly, reverently. Five rings and then her voice mail. Hey, it’s Katherine, he heard, and in the background cars rushed by. They’d been walking home together from the RadioShack when she recorded the message. I’m not, uh. And she uhed, he remembered, because he’d goosed her butt as she tried to talk. Uh, at my cell phone, I guess. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back. And he remembered everything about it, and also everything about everything else, and why couldn’t he forget and beep. “Hey, it’s Col. I’m standing in a soybean field outside of Gutshot, Tennessee, which is a long story, and it’s hot. K. I’m standing here sweating like I had hyperhidrosis, that disease where you sweat a lot. Crap. That’s not interesting. But anyway, it’s hot, and so I’m thinking about cold to stay cool. And I was remembering walking through the snow coming back from the ridiculous movie. Do you remember that, K? We were on Giddings, and the snow made it so quiet, I couldn’t hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it’s hot, and dead quiet again, and I love you still.” Five minutes later, he was trudging back when his phone began vibrating. He raced back to the spot with good reception and, breathless answered. “Did you listen to the message?” he asked immediately. “I don’t think I need to,” she answered. “I’m sorry, Colin. But I think we made a really good decision.” And he didn’t even care to point out that they hadn’t made a decision, because the sound of her voice felt so good –well not good exactly. It felt like the mysterium tremedum et fascinans, the fear and the fascination. The great and terrible awe.

As I turn the corner, I hear Peter calling out, “Wait! Wait! Sir!” He’s following a security guard who is approaching a red backpack on the floor. The security guard bends down and picks it up. “Is this yours?” he demands. “Uh, yeah--” “Why did you leave it on the ground?” He unzips the backpack and pulls out a teddy bear. Peter’s eyes dart around. “Can you put that back inside? It’s for a promposal for my girlfriend. It’s supposed to be a surprise.” The security guard is shaking his head. He mutters to himself and starts looking in the backpack again. “Sir, please just squeeze the bear.” “I’m not squeezing the bear,” the security guard tells him. Peter reaches out and squeezes the teddy bear and the bear squeaks out, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” I clap my hands to my mouth in delight. Sternly the security guard says, “You’re in New York City, kid. You can’t just leave a backpack on the ground for your proposal.” “It’s actually called a promposal,” Peter corrects, and the security guard gives him a look. “Sorry. Can I just have the bear back?” He spots me then. “Tell him Sleepless in Seattle is your favorite movie, Lara Jean!” I rush over. “Sir, it’s my favorite movie. Please don’t kick him out.” The security guard is trying not to smile. “I wasn’t going to kick him out,” he says to me. To Peter he says, “Just be more aware next time. In New York, we’re vigilant. If we see something, we say something, do you feel me? This is not whatever little country town you guys are from. This is New York City. We do not play around here.” Both Peter and I nod, and the security guard walks away. As soon as he’s gone, Peter and I look at each other and break out into giddy laughter. “Somebody reported my book bag!” he says. “My promposal got fucked.” I take the teddy bear out of his bag and hug it to my chest. I’m so happy I don’t even tell him not to cuss. “I love it.

We need to help her,” Bryce panted to Azriel. “I promise you, she’s fine,” Azriel countered, urging them further into the tunnel. Out of the impact zone, Bryce realized. The Wyrm must have sensed the sword’s approach, because it bucked against the bones and claws pinning it to the rock. It managed to nudge the undead creature back, but only for a heartbeat. Nesta raised her free hand again, and the undead creature slammed the Wyrm back into the ground. The Wyrm thrashed, desperate now. With a dancer’s grace, Nesta scaled the undead beast’s tail, running along the knobs of its spine like rocks in a stream. Getting to higher ground, to a better angle. The Wyrm shrieked, but Nesta had reached the undead beast’s white skull. And then she was jumping, sword arcing above her, then down, down— Straight into the head of the Wyrm. A shudder of silver fire rushed down the Wyrm. That cold, dry wind shivered through the caves again, death in its wake. The Wyrm slumped to the ground. The silence was worse than the sound. Azriel was instantly gone, wings tucking in tight as he rushed toward Nesta and the undead beast that still held the Wyrm in its grip. “Take it off,” Azriel ordered her. The female turned her head toward him with a smooth motion that Bryce had only seen from possessed dolls in horror movies. “Take it off,” Azriel snarled.

Cities have characters, pathologies that can make or destroy or infect you, states of mind that run through daily life as surely as a fault line. Chandler’s “mysterious something” was a mood of disenchantment, an intense spiritual malaise that identified itself with Los Angeles at a particular time, what we call noir. On the one hand noir is a narrow film genre, born in Hollywood in the late 1930s when European visual style, the twisted perspectives and stark chiaroscuros of German Expressionism, met an American literary idiom. This fruitful comingling gave birth to movies like Double Indemnity, directed by Vienna-born Billy Wilder and scripted by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain novella. The themes — murderous sex and the cool, intricate amorality of money — rose directly from the psychic mulch of Southern California. But L.A. is a city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments where noir is more than just a slice of cinema history; it’s a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the sense like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day. Noir — in this sense a perspective on history and often a substitute for it — was born when the Roaring Twenties blew themselves out and hard times rushed in; it crystallized real-life events and the writhing collapse of the national economy before finding its interpreters in writers like Raymond Chandler.

I sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it out with the heavy, wooden rolling pin. Once it’s the perfect size and thickness, I flip the rolling pin around and sing into the handle—American Idol style. “Calling Gloriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa . . .” And then I turn around. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Without thinking, I bend my arm and throw the rolling pin like a tomahawk . . . straight at the head of the guy who’s standing just inside the kitchen door. The guy I didn’t hear come in. The guy who catches the hurling rolling pin without flinching—one-handed and cool as a gorgeous cucumber—just an inch from his perfect face. He tilts his head to the left, looking around the rolling pin to meet my eyes with his soulful brown ones. “Nice toss.” Logan St. James. Bodyguard. Totally badass. Sexiest guy I have ever seen—and that includes books, movies and TV, foreign and domestic. He’s the perfect combo of boyishly could-go-to-my-school kind of handsome, mixed with dangerously hot and tantalizingly mysterious. If comic-book Superman, James Dean, Jason Bourne and some guy with the smoothest, most perfectly pitched, British-Scottish-esque, Wessconian-accented voice all melded together into one person, they would make Logan fucking St. James. And I just tried to clock him with a baking tool—while wearing my Rick and Morty pajama short-shorts, a Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt I’ve had since I was eight and my SpongeBob SquarePants slippers. And no bra. Not that I have a whole lot going on upstairs, but still . . . “Christ on a saltine!” I grasp at my chest like an old woman with a pacemaker. Logan’s brow wrinkles. “Haven’t heard that one before.” Oh fuck—did he see me dancing? Did he see me leap? God, let me die now. I yank on my earbuds’ cord, popping them from my ears. “What the hell, dude?! Make some noise when you walk in—let a girl know she’s not alone. You could’ve given me a heart attack. And I could’ve killed you with my awesome ninja skills.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “No, you couldn’t.” He sets the rolling pin down on the counter. “I knocked on the kitchen door so I wouldn’t frighten you, but you were busy with your . . . performance.” Blood and heat rush to my face. And I want to melt into the floor and then all the way down to the Earth’s core.

What’s on your mind, doc?” he asked as he flashed his ID at the staff duty sergeant. “Just wondering why the driver didn’t make conversation,” she said after a moment, following him down the hallway and trying not to feel like she was rushing to keep up. “We don’t take warm showers together, if that’s what you’re asking.” Emily laughed quietly. “Was that a line from Heartbreak Ridge?” “You didn’t strike me as a war movie kind of girl.” Reza stopped short, studying her. “Are you honestly telling me you’ve watched that movie?” Heat crept up her neck. “Before I signed up for the army, I needed to know what I was getting myself in for. I watched every war movie I could find.” Reza simply stared at her, his dark eyes glittering. She was sure he was laughing at her. “You know those were Marines in Heartbreak Ridge, right?” “Of course.” He cracked the barest grin. She supposed it was better than yelling at her, so there was that.

In the climactic scene of many Hollywood science-fiction movies, humans face an alien invasion fleet, an army of rebellious robots or an all-knowing super-computer that wants to obliterate them. Humanity seems doomed. But at the very last moment, against all the odds, humanity triumphs thanks to something that the aliens, the robots and the super-computers didn’t suspect and cannot fathom: love. The hero, who up till now has been easily manipulated by the super-computer and has been riddled with bullets by the evil robots, is inspired by his sweetheart to make a completely unexpected move that turns the tables on the thunderstruck Matrix. Dataism finds such scenarios utterly ridiculous. ‘Come on,’ it admonishes the Hollywood screenwriters, ‘is that all you could come up with? Love? And not even some platonic cosmic love, but the carnal attraction between two mammals? Do you really think that an all-knowing super-computer or aliens who managed to conquer the entire galaxy would be dumbfounded by a hormonal rush?

That is the moment I begin to despise the idea of fame. What does it do for the bearer of the laurel? Who cares if your name is in the paper? Who cares if you are mentioned as one of the top-ten cyclists, boxers, batters, painters, poets, artists, fly fishermen in the world? Who cares if your name is written in history books? When you have died you can't read those history books. When you have died the small trace you have left behind, even if you win a Tony, an Emmy, an Oscar, an election, will lose its vibrancy, fade into an outline. Oh yes, him, I heard of him, I knew someone who read him once. What difference does it make to the corpse if his books are in libraries or not in libraries? Who cares if his plays are revived on the summer-stock circuit for one hundred years? Isn't the simplest touch of a child's arm on the face more important, isn't the good meal, the brush against a thigh, a hand held during a movie, a swim in the sea, aren't those things of equal importance as the sands of time come rushing down on our heads burying ambition and love, good and evil, breath, blood, brains, waste, memory, alike in oblivion?

All my films are about Hong Kong." Wong Kar Wai once told me, "even if they're set in Argentina." While many in the West saw Happy Together primarily as a love story, his compatriots saw it something more timely and relevant: Wong grappling with the meaning of the handover to China. They knew it wasn't coincidental that the film should open in Hong Kong one month before that historical transfer of power. Nor was it coincidental that it should begin with a shot of Hong kong passports and end with Tony Leung's Lai on a train in Taipei, not Hong Kong, heading into an indeterminate future as the soundtrack plays Danny Chung's cover of the pop song "Happy Together" --a title that could be read as predicting a successful union, or as a slash of bitter irony. Even the movie's defining image, the aerial shot of water rushing down Iguazu Falls, is layered with political intimations that cut in different directions. At once thrillingly spectacular and patently dangerous--Chris Doyle, who's terrified of heights, shot it while hanging out of a chopper--the roaring waters that combine in these falls are an expression of the inexorably rushing power of reunion that can be seen as both a symbol of great strength or the downward pull of destruction.

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124

a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling—making investments that the market isn’t yet ready to support. Had Park proceeded more slowly, he might have noticed that with the current technology available, one-hour delivery was an impractical and low-margin business. There was, however, a tremendous demand for online movie rentals. Netflix was just then getting off the ground, and Kozmo might have been able to compete in the area of mail-order rentals and then online movie streaming. Later, he might have been able to capitalize on technological changes that made it possible for Instacart to build a logistics operation that made one-hour grocery delivery scalable and profitable. Since the market is more defined when settlers enter, they can focus on providing superior quality instead of deliberating about what to offer in the first place. “Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell asked in an interview. “When ideas get really complicated, and when the world gets complicated, it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked. “Most good things, it takes a long time to figure them out.”* Second, there’s reason to believe that the kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed. Risk seekers are drawn to being first, and they’re prone to making impulsive decisions. Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering. In a study of software startups, strategy researchers Elizabeth Pontikes and William Barnett find that when entrepreneurs rush to follow the crowd into hyped markets, their startups are less likely to survive and grow. When entrepreneurs wait for the market to cool down, they have higher odds of success: “Nonconformists . . . that buck the trend are most likely to stay in the market, receive funding, and ultimately go public.” Third, along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitors’ technology to make products better. When you’re the first to market, you have to make all the mistakes yourself. Meanwhile, settlers can watch and learn from your errors. “Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.” Fourth, whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly. In a study of the U.S. automobile industry over nearly a century, pioneers had lower survival rates because they struggled to establish legitimacy, developed routines that didn’t fit the market, and became obsolete as consumer needs clarified. Settlers also have the luxury of waiting for the market to be ready. When Warby Parker launched, e-commerce companies had been thriving for more than a decade, though other companies had tried selling glasses online with little success. “There’s no way it would have worked before,” Neil Blumenthal tells me. “We had to wait for Amazon, Zappos, and Blue Nile to get people comfortable buying products they typically wouldn’t order online.

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

Zane continued to look at her. Even better, he kept her hand in his, his thumb rubbing up and down the length of her fingers. Over and over. Up and down. It was very rhythmic. And sexual. Her thighs took on a life of their own, getting all hot and shaking slightly. Her mouth went dry, her breasts were jealous of the attention her hand was getting and her hormones were singing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Obviously she needed intensive therapy…or maybe just sex. Zane’s eyes darkened. The muscles in his face tightened, and he stared at her with a hawkish expression. Had he been anyone else, she would have sworn that he’d just had a physical awakening of his own. Awareness crackled around them, like self-generated lightning. The tightness in her chest eased just enough for her to suck in a breath, which was really good, because the next second it all came rushing out again when he kissed her. Just like that. With no warning, Zane Nicholson bent his head and claimed her mouth. It wasn’t a movie-perfect kiss. They didn’t magically melt into each other. Instead their noses bumped, and somehow the hand still holding hers got trapped between them. But all that was fairly insignificant when compared with the intense, sensual heat generated by the pressure of his lips on hers. That part was exactly right. Not too hard, not too soft. When he moved against her, need shot through her body. Had she been breathing again, she would have whimpered. Had he tried to pull away, she would have fallen at his feet and begged him not to stop. Somehow he released her hand and pulled his free. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him so her entire body pressed against his. The man was a rock. Big, unyielding and warmed by the sun. She wanted to snuggle even closer. She wanted to rip off her clothes and give the goats something to talk about. She wanted-- He licked her lower lip. The unexpected moist heat made her gasp as fire raced through her. Every singed nerve ending vibrated with need for more. The masculine, slightly piney scent of him surrounded her. Operating only on instinct, she parted her lips to allow him entry. She had a single heartbeat to brace herself for the power of his tongue touching hers. Then he swept inside and blew her away.

MY OWN BUSINESS . . . M. O. B. MOB assumes the right of every individual to possess his inner space, to do what interests him with people he wants to see. In some areas this right was more respected a hundred years ago than it is in the permissive society. 'Which is it this time, Holmes? Cocaine or morphine?' asks a disapproving Watson. But Holmes won’t have fink hounds sniffing through his Baker Street digs. If he accepts an American assignment 8 narks won’t beat his door in with sledge hammers, rush in waving their guns “WHATZAT YOU’RE SMOKING?” jerk the pipe out of his mouth and strip him naked. We will make the MOB stand on criminals and crim­inal communes clear. A criminal is someone who commits crimes against property and crimes against persons. We feel that criminals are not minding their own business. Someone who steals your typewriter, starts barroom fights, kicks an old bum to death, is not minding his own business at all. The Thuggees of India, the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan are examples of criminal communes. Strangling someone and stealing his money, throwing acid in his face, lynching beating and burn­ ing people to death is not minding one’s own business. On one side we have MOBS dedicated to minding their own business without interference. On the other side we have the enemies of MOB dedicated to interference. Equipped with new techniques of computerized thought control the enemies of MOB could inflict a permanent defeat. MOB want to know just where everybody stands. Wouldn’t advise you to try sitting on that fence. It’s electric. Your enemies then are the enemies of MOB. You can do more to destroy these enemies with tape recorders and video cameras than you can with machine guns. Video tape puts any number of machine guns into your hands. However, it is difficult to convince a revolutionary that this weapon is actually more potent than gelignite or guns. What do revolu­tionaries want? Vengeance, or a real change? Both perhaps. It is difficult for those who have suffered outrageous brutal­ity and oppression to forget about vengeance, which is why I postulated the wholesome catharsis of MA, the Mass Assassination of enemy word and image. And this brings us to a basic question that every revolutionary must ask himself. Can I live without enemies? Can any human being live without enemies? No human being has ever done so yet. If the present revolutionary movement is to amount to more than a change of management, presenting the same old good-guy, bad-guy movie, a basic change of conscious­ ness must take place.

Sean was watching me, though. And Sean wiped the bryozoa residue from his hand across my stomach. This was the third time a boy had ever touched my bare tummy, and I’d had enough. Through gritted teeth, like any extra movement might spread the bryozoa further across my skin, I told him, “I like you less than I did.” I bailed over the side of the boat-the side opposite where the bryozoa returned to its native habitat. Deep in the warm water, I scrubbed at my tummy with both hands. A combination of bryozoa waste and Sean germs: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Leaning toward worst, because now I had slime on my hands. Or maybe this was psychosomatic. Holding my hands open in front of me in the water, I didn’t see any slime. I rubbed my hands together anyway. Something dove into the water beside me in a rush of bubbles. I came up for air. Sean surfaced, too, tossing sparkling drops of water from his hair. “You still like me a lot, though, right?” “No prob. Green is the new black.” Giving up on getting clean, I swam a few strokes back toward the platform to get out again. What I needed was a shower with chlorinated water and disinfectant soap. I might need to bubble out my belly button with hydrogen peroxide. “What if I made it up to you?” He splashed close behind me. “What if I helped you get clean? We don’t want you dirty.” He moved both hands around me under the water, up and down across my tummy. It was the fourth time a boy had touched my tummy! And it was very awkward. He bobbed so close behind me that I had a hard time treading water without kicking him. I needed to choose between flirting and breathing. Cameron and my brother leaned over the side of the boat and gaped at us, which didn’t help matters. I’d been afraid of this. Flirting with Sean was no fun if the other boys acted like we were lepers. Well, okay, it was fun, but not as fun as it was supposed to be. Obviously I would need to give McGullicuddy the little dolphin talk. I wasn’t sure I could do this with Cameron-Cameron and I didn’t have heart-to-heart convos-but I might need to make an exception, if he continued to watch us like we were a dirty movie on Pay-Per-View (which I’d also seen a lot of. Life with boys). BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE- Sean and I started and turned toward the boat. Still behind the steering wheel, Adam had his chin in his hand and his elbow on the horn. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Damn it! I turned around to face Sean and gave him a wry smile, but he’d already taken his hands away from my tummy. The horn really ruined the mood. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Sean hauled himself up onto the platform. I followed close behind him, and (glee!) he put out a hand to help me. Cameron and my brother yelled at Adam. -EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. “Oh!” Adam said as if he’d had no idea he’d been laying on the horn. He looked at his elbow like it belonged to someone else. I was in the boat with Sean now, and he was still holding my hand. Or, maybe I was still clinging to his hand, but this is a question of semantics. In any case, I pulled him by the hand past the other boys to the bow. We didn’t have privacy. There was no privacy on a wakeboarding boat. At least we had the boat’s windshield between us and the others. As I turned to sit down on the bench, I stuck out my tongue at Adam behind the windshield. He crossed his eyes at me.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

This interpretation of the Gold Rush as a fun-filled and affirmative adventure survived through numerous celebrations, including the 1949 centennial. It lingered in the movies (Gabby Hayes playing the comic prospector) and continues to sustain the ongoing revelry of a flourishing antiquarian drinking fraternity, the Ancient Order of E Clampus Vitus, founded in 1857 and revitalized in 1931 by historian Carl Wheat, which places plaques at historic Gold Rush sites before adjourning to a nearby saloon.

He glanced down at the movie poster art that had been skillfully airbrushed not his custom apron, thanks to Lani's interesting assistant, Dre. He had thought the eclectic collection clever and a fitting contribution to the tone the show was trying to strike, being set in a cupcakery, and featuring its whimsical owner. 'Whimsical she might be,' Baxter thought, 'but when it comes to smoldering sensuality, even Marilyn Monroe in her movie star prime doesn't hold a candle to little Miss Snow White.' He'd been attracted to her drive, her focus, her steady demeanor and steadier hand. She'd been steel wrapped in sunshine, a dependable beacon of light he could rely on and trust in his always loud, rushed, chaotic world. Now he looked at her, with the warm, buttery, bakery sweet scents filling the air, accented with rich, dark, chocolate undertones... and all he could think about was adding the taste of her to the mix.

Just then I looked up to see Chef Pascal standing over our table. "Excuse me for one moment." He reached over me, and I think Emerald and I both gasped aloud at him. He smelled like bacon and caramelized onions and had a movie-star-perfect face, soft but still chiseled. A little stubble. Dark skin and big eyes with long, thick lashes. And the gold streaks in his eyes? Even better in person, luminous and crackling with light. Now I felt like Melinda in the living room, asking me what I was. Was he Egyptian? Mexican? Spanish? But of course he wasn't like me at all. He was closer to a model or an actor than anyone like me. Pascal didn't appear to notice our gawking. He removed the housemade kimchi-ghee hot sauce from our table and replaced it with a new bottle. He gave a soft, barely there smile, then continued to the other tables, leaving almost every girl- and many guys- shivering in his wake. "Ha!" Emerald said, clearly exhilarated. "That was a rush, huh?" "Yeah..." Elliott struggled. "That guy... has a lot of tattoos." I watched Pascal march back into the kitchen. From the pass, where the dining room met the kitchen, I thought I saw him look back at me, too. Yeah, right, Tia, I thought just as quickly. Like that could ever happen.

So many memories come rushing over me as I stand here. They run through my mind like a movie…an old Italian movie. Some scenes are in black and white. Some are in vivid color. Some are silent…just images etched into my memory. Many are filled with laughter or tears. They all bring back the happiness of Terra d’Amore and a life in the paradise of my youth. The sights and the sounds and the smells are all returning to me now, filling up my senses, overwhelming my heart.

Thank you for bringing me out here. If I never see you again, I want to tell you that I had a really great time.” The thought of never seeing her again kills me. I take a deep breath. “What if I told you I want to see you again?” I hold that breath. She says nothing. “Guess not,” I mutter. She shoves my shoulder. “Shut up. I was thinking.” “If it requires that much thought, you’d better say no.” “No.” My heart falls. I should have seen that one coming. Rich girls don’t fall for guys like me. “I don’t want to say no,” she rushes on to say. She sits up and looks down at me. “Unless you want me to say no. Do you want me to say no?” I take her hand in mine. “I want you to say yes.” “What would we do?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. “It would be a date. I have no idea.” “Would…you…kiss me?” I cough into my fist. “Well, I hope so,” I croak. “What else would we do?” “Umm…dinner?” “Mmhmm.” “Umm…maybe a movie.” “Mmhmm.” “Maybe we could take a walk.” Girls like that shit, right? “Could we go on a picnic?” “If you want to.” “I want to. When?” I scratch my head. “When is good for you?” “I don’t have anything to do on Saturday night.” “Seriously?” She nods. Then she squints at me. “Are you just asking me to be nice?” A laugh bursts from my throat. “Sweetheart, nice is not a word that has ever been used to describe me.” “So, we’re going on a date on Saturday,” she sings out and claps her hands. “I’m so excited.” Her happiness is catching. Holy shit. I am in so much trouble. “I had better get you back home.” I’ve enjoyed my time with her and I’m really not ready to give her up yet. “Can we ride some more?” she asks, blinking those green eyes at me. I suddenly realize that I would give her just about anything she wanted. She suddenly leans over and kisses my cheek really quickly. “Thank you,” she says.

Now, he could do without the horror movie that was stubbornly playing in his mind, adding to his overwhelming fear.

Then the center of influence shifted to London, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Who, the Kinks, and all the bands that orbited them. San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana, had its moment in a psychedelic spotlight around the Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but as the 1960s gave way to the '70s, the center of the musical universe shifted unmistakably to Los Angeles. "It was incredibly vital," said Jonathan Taplin, who first came to LA as the tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band and later relocated there to produce Martin Scorsese's breakthrough movie, Mean Streets. "The nexus of the music business had really moved from New York to Los Angeles. That had been a profound shift . . . It was very clear that something big had changed."'' For a breathtaking few years, the stars aligned to glittering effect in Los Angeles. The city attracted brilliant artists; skilled session musicians; soulful songwriters; shrewd managers, agents, and record executives; and buzz-building clubs. From this dense constellation of talent, a shimmering new sound emerged, a smooth blend of rock and folk with country influences. Talented young people from all over the country began descending on Los Angeles with their guitar cases or dreams of becoming the next Geffen. Irving Azoff, a hyper-ambitious young agent and manager who arrived in Los Angeles in 1972, remembered, "It was like the gold rush. You've never seen anything like it in the entertainment business. The place was exploding. I was here—right place, right time. I tell everybody, `If you're really good in this business, you only have to be right once,' so you kind of make your own luck, but it is luck, too. It was hard to be in LA in that time and have any talent whatsoever in the music business—whether you were a manager, an agent, an artist, a producer, or writer—[and] not to make it, because it was boom times. It was the gold rush, and it was fucking fun.

After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush.

This was inevitable, and another unmistakable inkling tells me that I knew it well before now. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. It’s Cecelia’s call that stops me from embracing the dark snaking its way into me. Focusing on her, I allow myself the chance to tell her that briefly, she gave me a glimpse of a happiness I hadn’t thought I was capable of. “Cecelia,” I address firmly, my heart lurching into the rhythm she created. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Tobias attempts to cut in, calling my name, but I refuse him. “I’m talking to Cecelia.” “Yes?” she replies, voice shaking with fear. “After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a life we might have had . . . if I didn’t have so many fucking monsters to slay. “Yeah, and I’ll watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.” Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. “We love rainy days, don’t we, baby?” “We do,” she croaks, voice breaking. Tilting my head at Matteo in challenge, I make my declaration clear to Tobias to ready himself. “We don’t fucking negotiate with terrorists.” Taking another step toward Matteo, Cecelia’s voice reaches me in elevated panic. “Dominic.” “What is it, baby?” “S’il te plaît, ne fais rien de stupide. Je t’aime.” Please don’t do anything stupid. I love you. “Je sais.” I know. Her declaration fuels me as I stand between her and the monster I swore to protect her from while her love sets me free. For a brief time, she was my solace—my reprieve. The only dream of a future I allowed myself to have, but she can’t be. Not anymore. Too many monsters. “Dominic,” Tobias orders gruffly. “Stand down, right fucking now. We’re still talking.” I feel the desperation in his order, in him, as he rattles behind me to stop and think it through. But I have, for far too long, and I’m finally ten steps ahead. Sorry brother.

It feels like I’m moving in slow motion while faceless bodies rush past me like an old VCR tape that’s being fast-forwarded to the good part. But there is no good part in my movie.

Then the heavy lifting began. For the next six months, our employees rarely saw their families. We worked deep into the night, seven days a week. Despite two hit movies, we were conscious of the need to prove ourselves, and everyone gave everything they had. With several months still to go, the staff was exhausted and starting to fray. One morning in June, an overtired artist drove to work with his infant child strapped into the backseat, intending to deliver the baby to day care on the way. Some time later, after he’d been at work for a few hours, his wife (also a Pixar employee) happened to ask him how drop-off had gone—which is when he realized that he’d left their child in the car in the broiling Pixar parking lot. They rushed out to find the baby unconscious and poured cold water over him immediately. Thankfully, the child was okay, but the trauma of this moment—the what-could-have-been—was imprinted deeply on my brain. Asking this much of our people, even when they wanted to give it, was not acceptable. I had expected the road to be rough, but I had to admit that we were coming apart. By the time the film was complete, a full third of the staff would have some kind of repetitive stress injury. In the end, we would meet our deadline—and release our third hit film. Critics raved that Toy Story 2 was one of the only sequels ever to outshine the original, and the total box office would eventually top $500 million. Everyone was fried to the core, yet there was also a feeling that despite all the pain, we had pulled off something important, something that would define Pixar for years to come. As Lee Unkrich says, “We had done the impossible. We had done the thing that everyone told us we couldn’t do. And we had done it spectacularly well. It was the fuel that has continued to burn in all of us.” T

Here’s the deal.” She sat on the bed next to me and grabbed my hand, cradling it in her own. Let me repeat that. Sienna Diaz—movie star, hilarious comedian, and all-round extraordinary human being—sat on the bed next to me and grabbed my hand. And it was not an hallucination. Life is so weird. “I am obsessed with your lemon custardcakes,” she confessed on a rush. “Obsessed. But your bakery hasn’t been carrying them for over a week.” “Oh, sorry about that.” She shook her head quickly. “Don’t apologize. Here’s the deal: if and when you’re feeling up to it, I want to pay you—handsomely—to keep me well stocked in lemon custard cakes for the next six months. And maybe for the rest of my life. And my children’s lives.” I cracked a smile because the woman was funny. “You don’t have to pay me. I’ll be happy to do it for you.” She shook her head. “No. No, no, no. I’m paying you. You’re being put on retainer. I’ll have my lawyer draw up a contract. We’re making this official, because I need those cakes, and I want to be able to hold you accountable in a court of law if you don’t deliver.

And you shouldn’t have called me your boyfriend.” He looks down at me as he opens the door of the restaurant for me. “I’m sorry,” I start. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just wanted her to go away.” And I wanted to stake my claim, even though I had no right to one. He looks down at me beneath the street light. “You shouldn’t have said it because you gave me hope,” he says. I can’t speak. I can’t utter out a sound. “Come home with me,” he says. I shake my head. He sighs heavily. “You know how this is going to end.” “I shouldn’t.” I really, really shouldn’t. “Fine,” he says, and then he bends at the waist and tosses me over his shoulder, just like the night before. Only this time, his hand is on my ass, under my skirt, instead of holding the backs of my legs. It’s hot pressed against my panties. I can’t say a word to him because he wouldn’t hear me. So, I just hang there, all the way to his building and up the four flights of stairs. He opens the door and walks inside. His brothers are there, and they look up. Sam and Pete snicker, and Paul shoots them a look. Matthew is on the sofa, and he shakes his head. Logan puts me down. Apparently, I’m not a sideshow attraction tonight. “Hi,” I say tentatively to them all. “Hi,” they call back. They don’t get up and rush over to me, not even when he sets me on my feet. “You’re back,” Matthew says as he walks to the fridge. He looks better tonight. Not quite as green. Sam walks to the kitchen, and Paul snaps at him when he reaches for a beer. He takes a soda, instead, grumbling to himself. Logan signs something to them. Pete tells him the name of the movie they’re watching, and it’s one I haven’t heard of. Logan points to the TV and then to me asking me if I’ve seen it. I shake my head. He sets my bag and my guitar on the floor and laces his fingers with mine. He tugs me gently toward the couch. Logan bumps Sam’s and Pete’s knees until they scoot over. There’s barely enough space for him, much less for me. “I’m going to go take a shower,” I say. But he sits down and pulls me into his side, his arm around my shoulders. Matt gives me a look I don’t understand. He doesn’t seem completely pleased by my being there. Did I do something to offend him? But Logan looks down at me and smiles, and then he places his lips against my forehead. Matt gets up and goes to his room but not before shooting me a glance that I couldn’t help but take as a warning.

Their lovemaking had been a little tentative at first, but that was only to be expected. It never happened in real life the way it did in movies, with both lovers exploding together in a climax of Wagnerian proportions as fireworks burst, orchestras crescendoed and trains rushed into tunnels. That was pure Monty Python. In real lovemaking, especially with people new to one another’s bodies, there are disappointments, mistakes, hesitancies. If you can laugh at these, as Banks and Annie had, then you are halfway there. If you find yourself looking forward to the hours of practice it will take to learn to please one another more, as Banks did, then you are more than halfway. Afterward, skin warm and damp and tangy with sweat, she had rested in the crook of his arm and he knew then that he wouldn’t wake with a burning desire to be alone. Just for the briefest of moments he gave in to a wave of paranoia and wondered if this was a trap Riddle had set for him. A new approach. Give him enough rope to hang himself.

Myron laughed, and they fell into an uneasy silence. He broke it by trying again. “So do you want to tell me about the threats?” “Nothing much to tell.” “This is all in Norm’s head?” Brenda did not reply. One of the assistants applied oil to Ted’s hairless chest. Ted was still giving the crowd his tough guy squint. Too many Clint Eastwood movies. Ted made two fists and continuously flexed his pecs. Myron decided that he might as well beat the rush and start hating Ted right now. Brenda

Hey,” I say. “I want to take you somewhere special with me.” “Where?” she asks over the rush of the water. “My dad used to take me to this old movie theater. It’s closed down now, but it’s my favorite place in the whole world. We would have to break in, but the last time I did it, the projector still worked. We would just have to turn it on.” She sticks her head out of the curtain. “I’ve never heard you say anything nice about your dad before.” I shrug. “It’s just a movie theater.” “No, it’s not,” she calls back. “I guess we could go one day. Is it the one with the old ticket booth out front.” “Yes.” “I’d like to go there.” My heart warms. “Good.” Her voice jerks me out of my thoughts. “Can you pass me a towel?” she asks. I open the cabinet and get out the biggest and fluffiest one I can find. It must be hers, because none of what I have is this nice. She reaches around the curtain, her skinny little tatted arm waving impatiently at me. God, she makes me laugh. That’s the best thing about Friday. She makes me laugh. I don’t know why, but just seeing her can get me out of a funk.

Oh my God! You have Empire Records?” I grab the DVD and rush over to put it in the player. “You know this movie is cinema gold,” Jackson says as he brings over popcorn and settles into the couch. “This is the best movie ever!” I exclaim and snuggle into his side. “Okay. Before we start watching, if you could be anyone, who would you pick? I’d be Lucas. He’s hysterical.” I smile and grab the bowl, putting it on my lap. “I guess Joe. He’s the boss.” I laugh at his choice. Of course he’d pick the one who’s in charge. Joe is pretty badass, though. “I think you’d be a great Rex. Oh Rexy, you’re so sexy.” I smirk and push play as he scoffs.

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Hannah wanted to take things slowly and not to rush into a relationship again. She wanted to restore the trust between them. Ryan understood. And deep down, he couldn’t deny he felt a little relieved. * * * They didn’t have sex. They didn’t kiss. They went on friendly dates. More often than not, they watched movies. They sat next to each other, their eyes glued to the TV screen, their bodies inches apart. It should have felt familiar, but it didn’t. A month ago, he would have taken her hand. A month ago, she would have put her head on his shoulder. Now there was something awkward in the air, something hard and broken. One evening, he tried, anyway. He took her hand. Her fingers were slim and dainty. Four minutes later, he let go and curled his hand by his thigh. He cleared his throat and said, “You want a drink?” “No,” Hannah said, her tone very neutral. “And you shouldn’t either.” His jaw tightened. He said nothing. They barely looked at each other for the rest of the evening. After she finally left, he grabbed a beer out of the fridge, threw himself on the couch and brought the bottle to his lips.

We continued our drive, not making any permanent decisions that day about where we’d live. We’d been engaged less than twenty-four hours, after all; there was no huge rush. When we finally returned to his house, we curled up on his couch and watched a movie. Gone With the Wind, of all things. He was a fan. And as I lay there that afternoon and watched the South crumble around Scarlett O’Hara’s knees for what had to have been the 304th time in my life, I touched the arms that held me so sweetly and securely…and I sighed contentedly, wondering how on earth I’d ever found this person. When he walked me to my car late that afternoon, minutes after Scarlett had declared that tomorrow is another day, Marlboro Man rested his hands lightly on my waist. He caressed my rib cage up and down, touching his forehead to mine and closing his eyes--as if he were recording the moment in his memory. And it tickled like crazy, his fingertips on my ribs, but I didn’t care; I was engaged to this man, I told myself, and there’ll likely be much rib caressing in the future. I needed to toughen up, to be able to withstand such displays of romance without my knees buckling beneath me and without my forgetting my mother’s maiden name and who my first grade teacher had been. Otherwise I had lots of years of trouble--and decreased productivity--ahead. So I stood there and took it, closing my eyes as well and trying with all my might to will away the ticklish sensations. They had no place here. Begone, Satan! Ree, hold strong. My mind won, and we stood there and continued to thumb our nose at the reality that we were two separate bodies…and the western sun behind us changed from yellow to orange to pink to a brilliant, impossible red--the same color as the ever-burning fire between us. On the drive home, my whole torso felt warm. Like when you’ve awakened from the most glorious dream you’ve ever had, and you’re still half-in, half-out, and you still feel the dream and it’s still real. I forced myself to think, to look around me, to take it all in. One day, I told myself as I drove down that rural country road, I’m going to be driving down a road like this to run to the grocery store in town…or pick up the mail on the highway…or take my kids to cell lessons.

Stop thinking of it as a curse to have been given an enemy in life. It can be a blessing, too. A wise man gets more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

They sounded like two moms, happily waiting on their daughters, and that brought all of my screwed-up emotions rushing back.

We rushed over to Joey’s house after school. Mila even brought a bag of popcorn for everyone to share. Oh, brother. It wasn’t like we were watching Nickelodeon. This was a home movie of Joey Pignattano rolling around in the snow. And making goofy faces. And sledding down the hill. And walking up the hill. And picking his nose. And sledding down the hill. Then up again. Then down. Up. Down. Up. After half an hour, I asked Joey, “Exactly how long is this video?” He told me it was almost over. I hoped he was right. The movie played on. Meanwhile, I tried to decide which was worse: watching Joey’s home movie . . . or having a tooth pulled. With rusty pliers.

And for all of its moments that didn’t age well, there’s just no denying that Chris Tucker is a big bright shining star and one of the most naturally funny and watchable human beings to ever live and Jackie Chan is a narcotically lovable model of masculine warmth, and some things are just greater than the sum of their parts on a level that is magic!

Chris Tucker gives Jackie Chan his LAPD ID and tells him to pretend to be LAPD if anything goes sideways in the Foo Chow restaurant. Jackie Chan looks at the ID with Chris Tucker’s picture on it and says, “This won’t work—I’m not 6′1″!” And that’s just a gorgeously structured classic joke.

Johnson defuses the bomb. Jackie Chan runs around trying to beat up all the guys AND save all the art, which is a 10/10 formula... Then Jackie Chan falls too, but Chris Tucker saves him. NOW THEY ARE TRUE BEST FRIENDS AND THEY GO ON A BEACH VACATION TOGETHER TO HONG KONG. Rush Hour is a flawed thing, a creature of 1998, and it is not my jurisdiction to dismiss its faults. But complicated love is still love.

took them everywhere, even to drive-in movies. While their favorite foods were marshmallows, Mountain Dew, and venison jerky, they were also big fans of live seafood. We used to fill a kiddie pool with a few inches of water and then populate it with crayfish and chubs that we netted from our lake. Watching the raccoons chase around their dinner in the water was better entertainment than anything you’d find on TV. But the problem with raccoon ownership is that the animals begin to go wild and crazy when they’re around seven months old. Critter got so territorial and aggressive that he’d attack you whenever you brought him a marshmallow. He somehow mistook the gesture of offering the treat as an attempt to steal it. He got to be so dangerous to be around that I had to drive him way back into the woods to release him into the wild. Some weeks later a buddy of mine pulled up in his truck and said he found my raccoon. When he opened the door, out rushed a raccoon that was certainly not Critter. The animal ran across the driveway, bit my dad on the leg, and then scurried up a tree. We then had to get a .22 and kill the raccoon in order to check it for rabies. Critter was never seen again, and we came to blame his maleness for his bad attitude. That’s why we got both a male and a female the second time

But two weeks later, American soldiers arrived in her part of the city. The first sounds she heard were airplanes and then explosions late in the afternoon. She rushed up to the roof of their house, following her mother and sisters, not knowing what they would find. When she looked up at the sky, she saw armored vehicles floating under parachutes. “It was like a movie,” she said.1 A few days later, American soldiers walked down the street in front of her house, and Noor ran to the front door to watch them. She saw her neighbors also standing in their doorways, smiles on their faces. The soldiers smiled back, eager to talk to anyone who was willing. “Everybody was so happy,” Noor recalled. “There was suddenly freedom.” Less than a week later, on April 9, her fellow Iraqis descended on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, where they threw a rope over the enormous statue of Saddam Hussein, and, with the help of American soldiers, tore it down. Noor thought to herself, You know, we can have a new life. A better life. Life under Saddam had been challenging. Noor’s father had been a government employee, yet like many other Iraqis, the family had little money. Saddam’s failed war

I remember saying to him Explain to me how I can love someone who has never seen a movie he liked enough to see twice? This had even been a point of pride with him, and it derived from his huge antipathy to repetition of experience in general, to which he attributed his recoil from the prospect of university teaching.

As we emerge back into our lives, we may never again take for granted: Hugging a friend. Shaking hands in business. Flying to another location. Being able to work unimpeded. The roar of the crowd in the stadium. Watching a concert with 18,000 fans. Laughing in a movie theater. Visiting the elders in society. Shopping easily for food. Getting a haircut. The school rush each morning. Sitting on the freeway with others. Dining at our favorite restaurant. Visiting our grandchildren. Enjoying our work at the office. Dancing with your loved ones. Or a walk on the beach. Perhaps when this ends, we will discover that we have evolved more into the people we had wished we were prior to this giant life lesson. And perhaps our appreciation of one another will help us discover the very best in ourselves.

Once we’d wrapped season two, in April I headed to Vegas to shoot my first major movie. I was being paid a million dollars to star in Fools Rush In, with Salma Hayek. To this day, it’s probably my best movie.

Being in a combat zone is almost a constant adrenaline rush, and it should be. The moment you get comfortable and complacent is the moment you lose. When you’re on a deployment, it almost feels like time stops, or maybe it feels more like you’re in some kind of a twilight zone. Your family and friends are all moving on without you while you’re stuck living the same day over and over, like in the movie Groundhog Day. You get up, conduct personal hygiene, report to duty, conduct physical fitness somewhere in there, and do personal hygiene again before you pass out in your bunk for the night. If you’re lucky, you might get to sleep through the night. The base sirens would interrupt other nights, signaling you to grab your gear and get in a bunker. Your friends and family back home don’t understand this. They don’t understand the fear, the adrenaline rush, the twilight zone effect, and it sometimes seems pretty lonely. But you’re not alone. No matter what walk of life you’ve come from, you’re not alone. Everyone out there is in a similar situation and understands what it’s like. They become your new family during the deployment. While deployed, there’s a good chance you’ll see and/or experience things that will haunt you. Some learn to detach themselves from those situations and almost experience them from a bird’s eye view, somehow making them seem less real. Often, soldiers cope by making light of a bad situation. As a result, dark humor runs rampant amongst Service Members. While those on the outside may see that dark humor as cruel, it is just another way that you learn to deal with the atrocities of war. I digress. Let’s get back into it.

not yet allowing himself to wallow in the wave of relief coursing through his body, and pushed through it, ignoring questions barked at him in a foreign language. He galloped down a set of steps, past another pair of cops rushing in the opposite direction, barely meriting a second glance on this occasion. As he left the park, crossing a road that was cordoned off to traffic at either end, he breathed out a long, deep, endless sigh of relief that flooded out of him with the relentless power of the Nile emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. It was only now that he recognized how fast his heart was beating, or felt the beads of sweat dripping off his forehead – both more a result of tension than exertion. “That was close,” he groaned, cursing himself for breaking the cardinal rule of espionage and thrusting himself into the center of attention. “Too damn close.” And it was far from over. He might have escaped the first cordon of cops, but before long the whole of central Moscow would be on lockdown. He needed to get out before it was too late. Trapp fought against his instincts and slowed his pace, walking casually down a side street, past a government building with a small brass plaque outside which read, ‘Federal Agency for State Property Management’ in English letters under the Cyrillic. He kept his head low, pointed at the ground, hoping that it would obscure him from the surveillance cameras that dotted the area, but knowing that it probably wouldn’t. That’s a problem for another day. He cast a quick look around to make sure no one was paying him any attention, and when he was certain that they were not, he ducked into a space between two parked cars, crouched down, and pulled on the neon vest he had previously stowed by his breast. Again, the disguise was skin deep, but if one of the cops he’d just passed managed to radio in a description, then perhaps this costume change might add a layer of distance. It was better than nothing. He started walking again, slowly enough not to draw the eye, fast enough to put as much distance between himself and what was about to turn into a very hot crime scene as possible. As he walked, his fingers played with the rock he had carried all this time, searching for a seam or a catch. He knew that it would not be locked, or contain the kind of self-destruct device so beloved of Hollywood movies. There wasn’t the space, and besides, any competent intelligence agency would be able to defeat such protections quickly enough. Trapp found it, worked the bottom of the rock open, and saw a memory stick sitting in a foam indentation. He pulled it free, put it into the coin pocket of his denim jeans, and dumped the two halves of the rock into an overflowing trash can. It was only then that the question came to him. What the hell do I do now? 35 The village of Soloslovo was 20 miles from Central Moscow, about thirty minutes by car in light traffic, or twenty on a high-powered motorcycle the likes of which Eliza Ikeda rode as she zipped past, around

Tho was Buffalo Bill Cody? Most people know, at the very least, that he was a hero of the Old West, like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson-one of those larger-than-life figures from which legends are made. Cody himself provided such a linkage to his heroic predecessors in 1888 when he published a book with biographies of Boone, Crockett, Carson-and one of his own autobiographies: Story of the Wild West and Campfire Chats, by Buffalo Bill (Hon. W.F. Cody), a Full and Complete History of the Renowned Pioneer Quartette, Boone, Crockett, Carson and Buffalo Bill. In this context, Cody was often called "the last of the great scouts." Some are also aware that he was an enormously popular showman, creator and star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, a spectacular entertainment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been estimated that more than a billion words were written by or about William Frederick Cody during his own lifetime, and biographies of him have appeared at irregular intervals ever since. A search of "Buffalo Bill Cody" on amazon.com reveals twenty-seven items. Most of these, however, are children's books, and it is likely that many of them play up the more melodramatic and questionable aspects of his life story; a notable exception is Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire's Buffalo Bill, which is solidly based on fact. Cody has also shown up in movies and television shows, though not in recent years, for whatever else he was, he was never cool or cynical. As his latest biographer, I believe his life has a valuable contribution to make in this new millennium-it provides a sense of who we once were and who we might be again. He was a commanding presence in our American history, a man who helped shape the way we look at that history. It was he, in fact, who created the Wild West, in all its adventure, violence, and romance. Buffalo Bill is important to me as the symbol of the growth of our nation, for his life spanned the settlement of the Great Plains, the Indian Wars, the Gold Rush, the Pony Express, the building of the transcontinental railroad, and the enduring romance of the American frontier-especially the Great Plains. Consider what he witnessed in his lifetime: the invention of the telephone, the transatlantic cable, the automobile, the airplane, and the introduction of modem warfare, with great armies massed against each other, with tanks, armored cars, flame-throwers, and poison gas-a far cry from the days when Cody and the troopers of the Fifth Cavalry rode hell-for-leather across the prairie in pursuit of hostile Indians. Nor, though it is not usually considered

That same year, Will Smith returned to the big screen after a hiatus, following 2008’s surprise disappointment, Seven Pounds. He starred in a sequel that Sony had been dying to make for many years. Men in Black 3 was a challenging movie to produce with a mature Will Smith. Now used to being the dominant creative force in his productions, he often demanded repeated changes to scripts and never worked with directors who could wield more power than he did. That was fine for Overbrook-led productions, but it became a challenge on the third Men in Black offering, which was made in a rush, to take advantage of New York tax credits. The production was a nightmare. The unhappy Smith holed up in his fifty-three-foot-long trailer, which featured a screening room, offices for assistants, and an all-granite bathroom, while multiple screenwriters reworked the script again and again. The creative conflicts between the star, his producers, and the studio were so severe that production was halted for three months to resolve them. Greenlit with a budget of $210 million, Men in Black 3 ended up costing $250 million and barely broke even.

Life is like a mysterious movie which rushes the blood upside down with the best ending

In those [single-woman-in-Manhattan movies], there is almost always this power-walk shot, in which she is shown striding down some Manhattan street, possibly leaving work during rush hour at dusk, the traffic blaring all around and the buildings rising around her. The city was empowering. Even if a woman doesn't have anything, the movies seemed to say, at least there is the city. The city was posited as the ultimate consolation.