Walking down to the Carlton, whose showing of They Live I had managed to miss, I passed an apartment building with a well-made sign. Enamelled steel? I wondered, getting right up to it. No, just Tremclad. Then I felt the raised lettering (plastic), and walked away while wondering if the font was Thesis. No, Cæcilia, I realized instantly without looking back.
I saw the trailer for an upcoming film in which a Eurasian-American actor affects an ungodly French accent and plans a daring caper that would have him walk between towers of the World Trade Center across a thin cable. That’s just Man on Wire, I thought at once.
I put these two instances together and realized that all the knowledge and experience I accumulated over a lifetime are, like that lifetime, now worthless.
I then watched Best of Enemies, a documentary about a lost era of popular television intellectuals, both now deceased.