What I’m reading: Less Than Zero
What I’m listening to: The Singular Adventures of the Style Council
What I’m watching: I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale. Because when you only made 5 movies before your death, and the weakest one was The Conversation, you deserve a documentary. The other four? Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and the first two Godfather movies. Wonderful documentary, albeit too brief at 40 minutes. Bizarrely, Israel Horowitz looked younger than just about every other interview subject, esp. Al Pacino, who seems to be heading toward the Phil Spector level of odd looks. Also, we watched the deleted scenes from In The Loop, after I stumbled across this totally NSFW montage of great Malcolm Tucker moments from the movie:
Most of the deleted scenes warranted cutting, but there are one or two that would’ve made the movie even more awesome. I admit that Jamie “The Crossest Man In Scotland” McDonald’s great monologue about There Will Be Blood is tremendous, but it would’ve just eaten up too much screentime.
What I’m drinking: North Shore #6 & Q-Tonic
What Rufus & Otis are up to: 
Handling a couple of days without their dad while I was at a press event in Chicago (and Madison, with a stop in Milwaukee on the way home). Also, Otis demonstrated his complete disregard for my authority when I took him to a kiddie-park and threw a squeaky tennis-ball about 50 feet away. He chased it down, caught it on a bounce, and proceeded to run all over the park, squeaking and leaping. Not once did he listen to me when I called his name. Eventually, he settled down and chomped on the ball while Rufus & I watched. A day later, he and Rufus did a bang-up job as ambassadogs at our local farmers’ market.
Where I’m going: Nowhere! I mean it!
What I’m happy about: That I stayed in the same hotel in Chicago as Common and Kanye West last week. Also, that my room had a Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin
What I’m sad about: That Zeppelin speaker is $600.
What I’m worried about: As ever, getting the Top Companies issue done in time.
What I’m pondering: Why Less Than Zero was a success. I’m about halfway through, and it’s a remarkably flat piece of writing. I mean, I get that that’s the point, that 18-year-old rich kids in L.A. led flat lives in the 1980s, and I enjoy some of the time-capsule aspects of it, but it’s simply not a very interesting narrative and the prose itself is artless. Maybe it gets better in the second half. Or maybe our literary standards were just as shitty 25 years ago as they are now. Maybe I’ll find out when I read that sequel.
If you would like a slightly less flat piece of writing by Mr. Ellis I recommend American Psycho. I’ve read some crazy shit in my time but that book takes the cake and smothers kittens with it.
I read Less Than Zero around ’88, after the movie was made, mostly as a documentary work. What probably reads as lousy writing now I experienced as the inherent hollowness of that existence. I found the subject matter intriguing, so I didn’t need the narrative to do anything besides not put me to sleep, and it didn’t. It might be sufficiently authentic that it just seems dated now. I hope you enjoy it more as it goes on. Question: Is it age or reading for a living that makes one so much fussier as time goes on, when it comes to choosing leisure reading?
Living under the stifling, self-congratulatory cultural rule of the Baby Boomers for our first 18 years, people my age would have welcomed absolutely anything ostensibly “for us” no matter how hideous, boring, or sloppily presented.
Also: Bright Lights, Big City sucked worse.