Having grown irritated with the necessity of work, I started fashioning a small-scale clay model of the reliquary I'd like to build for my baby teeth. It took an hour or so to fully remind me of how much I hate clay. It seems pliable in the moment you most want it to be resistant, and vice-versa. The whole situation was made worse by the fact that I was using cheap modeling clay. Eventually I resorted to placing it intermittently in the freezer to regulate its plasticity. Also, the model I was sculpting was too small for me to work comfortably, because I was being cheap and trying to save on my already-cheap clay.
In the evening Susan and I decided to go out and fulfill our social obligation to see The Phantom Menace. We drove to what is by far my favorite moviehaus in the whole city, the Uptown. I once watched Vertigo from the front row of the balcony there -- the fatal open space just in front of me made the move a real gas. As we neared the Uptown, things were clearly amiss. Police cars festooned the block. Two news vans were stationed nearby, and there was an unusually high concentration of people talking on cell phones or aiming television cameras. In DC, where the Presidential helicopter roars over our house and drowns out conversation on a regular basis, I've gotten used to the notion that something Important is always happening nearby. But this seemed to be more than the usual clot of reporters.
As we sat in the small traffic jam created by the hubbub, we watched one cameraman film the ubiquitous news establishing shot: whirling police lights with the Scene of the Crime in the background. One of the news vans disgorged its extendable satellite antenna. It looked like a large animal getting a spontaneous erection at the alluring sight of news.
As we parked and strolled back to the Uptown, we began to wonder if this might mean the movie was canceled. Regardless, we figured that gawking would offer some reasonable entertainment. Reporters were interviewing a police official directly under the marquee. The cop explained into the microphones that a gunman had robbed the box office and then shot an employee. About then, we noticed the theater's cleaning staff behind us, pouring bleach on the sidewalk and swabbing at a dark blood stain. A fire truck arrived, and swiveled its ladder over to a store front across the street so cops could look for a stray bullet that lodged there. Apparently the assailant drove off and was chased by police. He fired his gun at the pursuing cops as he fled, then crashed into a parked car and was apprehended.
The 10 PM movie was understandably canceled. We hung around for a while watching the news media harvesting their goods. There was an air of restrained fluster to their newsgathering. The camera men tended to stand out in traffic to get the shot that they wanted, heedless to the negative effects on traffic or the potential danger to themselves. We could easily spot the television reporter by her standout coif, perfect clothes, and frightening thinness. She looked like some kind of alien amidst the casually attired bystanders. Meanwhile, a slightly pudgy radio reporter with scruffy hair stood on the curb giving his report into his cellphone. I had a moment of affection for radio -- a sheltering home for live-media journalists who lack the divine gift of good looks.
Eager to see how our impressions of the scene matched the mediaplay, we drove home to catch the 11 PM broadcast. It was odd to see the very marquee where we had stood less than an hour ago on the television screen. It seemed to be another place entirely, similar to the Uptown we knew but transformed by being News. I remembered a strange feeling I once had just after a car accident, when I thought the whole terrible event unfolding around me must be a dream. I expected to wake up at any moment, and was perplexed when the world around me failed to dissolve into just another morning. Similarly, what we saw on television seemed like a dreamed version of the scene at the movie theater. I couldn't quite make it match with my memories.
In this media dream, the skinny, overdressed reporter is normally attired and proportioned. The story begins with the shot of whirling police lights and the theater in the background. A uniformed man fills the frame and explains what has taken place. He uses that familiar overwrought lexicon of police officials: the suspect attempted to flee the scene, discharging a gun an undetermined number of times. I saw this official less than an hour earlier, but this isn't exactly the same man. In the way of dreams, he is and isn't the one I know; he said the same words but they sound different in the microphone. There are more images of the theater's front -- that's when the camera man was standing in traffic, but that part disappears when you see it. Some bystanders, looking shiny and nervous in the camera light, say how surprised they were, shrugging slightly. Then the reporter, looking normal in the normalizing dream of the camera lens, reappears to explain that the theater employee was shot in the foot and is in good condition. In another moment, the relentless eye of the dreamer has moved on to another place.
Bic therapy
I had a terrible dream last night, and to cheer me up Susan wrote humorous things on me in ball-point pen. I felt immediately better. I recommend this treatment.