Click images for desktop size: "Hotel By A Railroad" by Edward Hopper My NFL picks turned out to be incredibly dreary, although the games were not. I still like the way football has evolved.
It's adjusted to societal pressures and mores and become a faster more intricate more creative game.
But my picks were astonishingly ordinary.
I found myself thinking clearly about Michael Mann's debut flic, "Thief".
When it came out it looked like here was a serious talent, one who might pick up where Karl Reiz and Jimmy Toback had failed.
Instead Mann gave us "Miami Vice."
It doesn't change how impressive "Thief" was. It starred Jimmy Caan, back before he became a parody of himself, as a middle aged high tech, high powered thief.
He pulls down major scores and gets so rich he has to start business, bars, car lots, the gamut.
He is a superb thief. But he's human and he has human cravings with out the human needs.
He constructs a life for himself. he picks Tuesday Weld to be his mate. They adopt a child. They buy a luxury house.
Unfortunately he's done this and brought himself to the attention of the mobs and the cops. They threaten to take control of his life from him.
It's his mode of remaining what he is, his determination to keep his self image that makes the film powerful and have meaning.
He gives Tuesday Weld the baby and a million in cash and throws her out. He then blows up the house.
He proceeds to burn down his businesses and to blow up all the cars on his car lot.
Then he goes and coldly and without rage or anger and he kills all those people he has had contact with, people who threatened to transform his perception of self.
The movie ends with him walking away. Bashed up, empty, with nothing but himself.
That's enough.

I go into depth about the little film because I realized that is the way I feel.
I've been told to ignore it. It's the psychological side effect to the treatment. The warning I find so amusing.
I've felt this way before. Without drugs.
Always when I'm around people who want to remake me, who don't accept me for who I am. Who want me to be their image of me.
That never works.
I've been warned to not make any serious decisions until my blood has stopped burbuling or whatever it is it's doing.

I took my puppy to the Blessing of the Animals today.
It was sweet.
I felt to wretched to even shower today, so I wore a cap which always makes me look like a serial killer - but a serial killer with a painfully cute puppy.

Click images for desktop size: "Work"It was a touching ceremony. I'm always so stupidly proud when my puppy behaves in a good and positive way.
She reinforces the parts of me that I recognize. She makes it clear she'd be happy if the world were just me, her and maybe a few puppy playmates, but only a few.

Groucho Marx was born today.
I always like to acknowledge the positive effects Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Moe, Larry and Curly have had on my life and the world.