the heat is on

so the flood that was spring is behind us and low and behold it is summer...but somewhere along the way we skipped right to august...heat...humidity...rain...crappy movies...i am generally not the blockbuster type...i don't need to see the prequel of the sequel and part v where we meet the superhero's fifth cousin...henry cavill was beyond hot in "the tudors" but i think for me it will always be christopher reeve and margot kidder...today...actually this morning...i went to see "before midnight"...11am at a multiplex i think i shocked the guy at the ticket counter who had gone brain dead from the repeated chant of "monsters university"...there i was the weirdo and the single ticket for some angst and drama...this the third in a series...i know this contradicts all i wrote before...but this one was not intended as a series...it started as a small indie gem, "before sunrise", that featured a much younger ethan hawke and julie delpy and a one night romance...or was it?...nine years later the director, richard linklater, and hawke and delpy brought us "before sunset" that explored a second chance meeting, and second chance at love...and now nine years forward again...their characters now in their early forties grappling with work, kids and life while trying to keep the spark going...it was so dead-on at points that i felt i was intruding...a lot to think about...maybe too much for summer...maybe it would do better as a fall release...the wheels in my head always turning...and as i left the theater for the shvitz-bath outside i thought...hmmm...if they make another one in nine years...the characters would be fifty..."before menopause"...yeah, that's the ticket...

snap crackle...pop...

another father's day coming to a close...as i looked at facebook today and saw all the pictures looking back at me...all the dads...recent pictures and vintage black and white...men who i do not know...and those i remember well...i couldn't help but feel a little catch in my throat when i read the words that were with all those pictures...i felt a kinship with these friends and family...our memories both vivid and vague...and the desperate need to hold on to them...and so at a family barbeque today as i watched my nieces and nephew, and my daughter...spending time and laughing with their dads...i took a moment or two to remember mine...and the pictures that played in my head were fast and furious and kind of out of order...and then vague...and i began to resent that other father....father time...realizing how powerless i was in some ways to the reality of aging...and so today i grabbed this laptop to write...and vowed to keep writing...we need to keep telling our stories...and as best we can the stories of fathers who can't write them down anymore...and if i wrote this one while inhaling a chocolate egg cream...all the better to keep my story going...and that of my father, carl...he wouldn't have it any other way...