I saw The Fabelmans yesterday, and it was very nice. It was a complete dramatic film of the kind I have stopped expecting from Hollywood. It made me appreciate the life of Stephen Spielberg. When I was a kid he was the director the grownups were all raving about. As I got older he seemed more and more boring and he became a symbol of conformist mediocrity and apathy to me. But this movie about his life is so good that I can appreciate him as a person and I want to go back and look through his catalogue to see if there’s anything else there as genuine. I don’t know what it means but it gives me a sliver of hope for Hollywood, although I still think it’s a cesspool maybe there could be a few interesting people in it. There’s no doubt that Spielberg is a good director and I’m inspired to attempt to write rationally about film again, to confront the absurd horrors of the movie business and try to pick out those few examples of civilization that yet remain. We’ll see if this works. But for now at least I started this blog entry, which I plan to develop over time – an experiment to see if there’s anything meaningful to say about movies in these days when the industry seems so utterly devoid of life and conscience.

A darkness is pressing against my mind, but it’s beautiful. I’m very tired now. I wanted to write something to see if it would make sense tomorrow, or next week. My guides are eclipsed.

And now a day later I feel fantastic wanting to grasp every atom of bliss I felt tonight and preserve it forever, and what I want to preserve is the feeling of freedom from the oppressive hostility of the human race. Long ago I wanted to be a rock star. I mistakenly believed that rock people were cool people. Now I have enemies waiting out in the night to catch me. I have things to analyze tonight but I think I’m done just remaining silent about everything. I’m going to start taking little swipes at the public, testing the waters for whatever complete artistic gesture I might make in the future. I want to keep everything in balance, but what I really want to find out, what I’m experimenting with, is ways to make art that will make my life this beautiful all the time, so I never have to come down. How could I preserve the joy I felt tonight? I can’t tell the complete story because so many details of my life are private, but I can push the edges. What do I say that changes who I am in this world in such a way that I get more happiness, more magic transportation? At least I’m addressing the issue, trying to formulate a solution to the problem.

Dustin looked surprised. “Didn’t you know Warren hates us?”

“No,” replied Graylyn, “I always thought he was desperate to have sex with us, way too much of an asskisser.”

“Well he may be that, too,” said Dustin, “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t despise us and plot our destruction. But I guess there was no reason for anyone to tell you, and obviously he’s never talked to you around me. Do you remember Stereo Hut?”

“That funky place in the mall?”

“Right, back in junior high, Warren was trying to impress everyone that he was going to get into computers and make millions of dollars, but it was all bullshit. He’s too dumb, he just thought he’d figured out that you could find secret codes to everything and rip everyone off. All that ended when he tried to rob Stereo Hut. He looked at the alarm system on their door and found the model. Then somehow he got the instructions for it. He made a big deal out of taking us down there and showing us the Bang & Olufson Beocord 9000 in front of the clerk. At the time it was the coolest tape deck in the world. He wanted to make it look like we were after it so he could say we stole it. Then he tried to reprogram the alarm system and come back later to open the door, but he didn’t realize that it notified the police when changes were made and the whole thing was on camera. I’m actually the one who explained to them how he got the instructions off of the old bulletin boards we had been on together. He tried the usual trick of saying that I had got him involved in something shady, but he was too stupid to understand all the ways you can prove who has accessed something like that. He got in huge trouble, but of course his family kept it all secret. Freshman year he came back saying computers were boring and since then he’s been all about the movie business.”

This is the dialogue of the night the Sickies define themselves as a set at Easton Academy. Early 1980s, haven’t decided if it’s before or after the First Party at Stubby’s.

Dustin: Well, I think of us as a set, and if we’re not then I’m a hopeless failure, socially, so …

Drake: Dustin, if I have a set you’re in it. That’s definite.

Dustin: All right, then man (and they shake).

Drake: Chuck, I would have done that with you…

Chuck: No, man, this is totally the way it needs to be. I am in your set, but I couldn’t start anything because of my family. I’m basically dirt that my family owns, like any of their fucking skyscrapers, but now that you’ve started it, hell yeah! All for one, one for all!