Okay so I really wanted to crank out a blog post today and if you’re reading this and it’s dated June 2, 2025 then I guess I did though it’s not what I’d intended. Before I go on let me address the fact that it’s in some ways rather silly that I’m so punctilious about maintaining this blog and about how often I write. The fact is that no one cares. I barely do. It’s rare indeed that anyone actually reads it. There was a time when this enterprise was still in its infancy and I wrote mostly about films that it was regularly linked on IMDb and I’d get some traffic and even comments. I average about a comment — maybe two — a year now as has been the case for many years. (This blog is just over 17 years old. It’ll be graduating from high school in year. Wow!) But as I was saying I make a point — against all reason — to keep this damn thing a going concern. You’re welcome. I wanted to have a post here in the first few days of June better to maintain my pace of about seven posts a month. I managed ten last month when we were traveling because I always post during my trips as if anyone gives two shits. The problem is that I’m busy right now preparing a talk I’m giving on Saturday June 14 at the West Berkeley Public Library. It’s about when Berkeley was Finntown. I gave an abbreviated version of the talk at the Finnish Hall at a Finnish Independence Day gathering a couple of years ago. That talk was just under 20 minutes. I’m supposed to ramble on for close to an hour at the library gig. To those who are even worse at math than I am that’s three times as long. Therefore I’ve had to do a lot of research then piece it all together. Not so easy and it’s consuming my “writing time.” I don't even have time to work on one of my many unpublished novels.
So now I’m writing this about how I don’t have time to write this very post or anything else because of the speech. Existential. I’d started to write about the Alfred Hitchcock film, Notorious which I watched yesterday. I’ve written about the picture before as it’s well worth writing about. Here’s as far as I got: "He just walks her down the stairs. Yes, he supposedly has a gun in his pocket but there’s no daring escape, no shooting, no karate chops. Damn if he doesn’t just take her and leave daring the villains to intercede. It’s the closing scene, the climax and it’s bloody brilliant. Not just a little bit nerve-wracking but audacious both in what it shows and that the screenwriter and director made that choice. You make Notorious today and there’s a goddamned blood-spattered shoot out at the end with bodies everywhere. Notorious is a spy film without a single visible weapon. It’s a fascinating film on so many different levels. One is the relationship between co-stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. It’s passionate, it’s tortured. Grant’s Devlin"
As you can see it would have been interesting. Maybe I’ll get around to finishing it someday soon. Maybe not. Ya never know.
You may be wondering — as I have — why I’m putting some much time and energy into a talk at the library that may only draw five people (I don’t know, maybe I’ll get thirty. Like I said in the previous paragraph, ya never know). First of all they asked me and I said yes. I didn’t see anyway in the world that I could say no. Do I really need to explain that? It just seemed like something that was pretty straight forward. Someone asks you to do something and you’re one of a few people who could do it — hell, maybe you’re the only person who could do it — you oblige them. Especially when you think you can do it well. Also they’re paying me for it and it’s a pretty tidy sum for a one-hour talk though given how much work I have to put into it they’re getting me cheap.
It’ll go well, people who attend will be happy with it and I’ll feel good when it’s over. It’s like a friend of mine said when people asked him why he ran: “because it feels so good when I stop.” So, yeah, it’ll feel good when I finish.
(Then again I could bomb, feel terrible and the library might feel ill-used. Ya never know.)
Hey looky here I wrote close to 800 words. That’s legitimate blog post numbers and then some. Mission accomplished.
Blog post cranked out. Now if I could just find someone to read the damn thing....
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