I dunno, I thought Colin Farrell did an okay job. I flinched when he tried on Don Johnson's accent, but other than that, he knew better than to upstage Jamie Foxx or Gong Li. Elizabeth Rodriguez had the best line, or at least the closest approximation of Clint Eastwood, which is half the point in these things.

Ali points out that the film bore out the "bad hair rule," which states that the bad guy with the least attractive hair will be most likely to take the fall. She also caught two or three of the plot's submerged contraptions that I missed. The guy next to me was reading the New York Review before the trailers started (seen The Prestige leader twice and it holds up, the Scorsese thing gave me jitters, I'm guessing I'll see IdleWild twice, and if they can edit Julianne Moore out of the Clive Owen baby apocalypse movie I'm there); NYRB guy chuckled and jumped the same places I did so I'm assuming I caught most of the other trap doors.

Those scenes on the water's edge, all I could think was, good thing they got those places on film before the next few hurricane seasons.

Incidentally, I couldn't tell if it was the violence, the icebox a/c, or the pretzel bits and coke snack, but I was twitching for a good half-hour after the credits.

So hot this morning, so humid I could feel it in my bronchii.

Read the first batch of tinysides on the train in. I think I'm getting the hang of reading Jessica Smith's work -- she uses the page like an open-fielder but that's not exactly how she thinks, or makes music. For some reason I hope not sexist I thought of Maya Deren's cuts and choreography. Stephanie Anderson's relationship abecedary in quatrains I'll also be going back to -- the form reminded me of the novelty hit "88 lines" (about 44 women), and also of Max Winter's uncollected profession poems -- and I also got to wondering how much of these recurring people problems could be attributed to imagination. Then again, maybe once you've dated a yodeler and a quarterback you go looking for an ichthyologist? Mark Lamoureux's piece treads in some of the same territory as mine, namely what are we poets going to do with all these amazing place names in the gazeteer. While I'm doing this dumb trick of placing everybody's work with some unlikely precursor I will say that I get completely what Bill Corbett likes in Mark's work -- he can be a sweetheart objectivist with an eye and ear for detail. The Duncanesque interest in the Greek afterworld I myself find completely boring. This is my failing, and I hope you will pity it enough never to mention it to me. Dustin Williamson's transit poem par avion SF to NYC has some terrific phrasal music ("palm malls") and generally shows that General Manager Coletti was wise to draft this prospect.

The tinyside format -- a broadside in chapbook form -- works great. I really felt every bump and glide in each of the pieces, without that irritable reaching for the next page, the next experience. It's a great idea. Editor Maureen Thorson's projects sell out quickly. Of her own work I recommend "Mayport" without reservation. Naturally I'm biased to love any publication that includes me in its inaugural run. I love these tinysides and hope that her law career doesn't get in the way of her making fifty or a hundred more.