A Clear Symptom of Classic-Movie Geekery

I was hoping to write more today---specificially, I was hoping to have, by the end of today, an essay on "Why the Emergent Church Movement Can't Save Evangelicalism." I even --- gasp! --- downloaded podcasts of sermons from Mars Hill church---which started in tune with the Emergent Movement, but seems to be backpedaling now. (And if I may say it, listening to sermons for research only proves, yet again, why I can't go to church anymore. The inconsistecies are too obvious to swallow anymore.)

Anyway, normally when I want to write on the weekend, I go to a bar---usually The Patriot in TriBeCa, because it's the cheapest venue in town ($1.75 for a bottle of PBR, $3.75 for a shot of Kentucky Gentleman), so I can nurse drinks for hours while typing away at my Jurassic laptop.

Today (and tonight) however, The Patriot was home to not one, but two irritating drunks who literally sang random songs at high volume every time there was a lapse in the jukebox, which made it very hard to concentrate. What's more, the simple fact is that my muse is for shit, and after writing 10,000 words during the week (the equivalent of about 40 pages), she all of a sudden gets worn out and lazy. I got, in short, nothing done. Que lastima.

Anyway, the most alarming thing about the afternoon/evening was that, while I was sitting in the middle of the bar, I saw a distinguished, gray-haired, Latino-looking man at the end of the bar, and I actually thought, "Wow! He looks exactly like Jose Iturbi!" For those of you who don't do crosswords, Mr. Iturbi was a famous classical conductor who also mysteriously wound up in a few Hollywood films, the most prominent of which (for my money) is the Deanna Durbin vehicle One Hundred Men and a Girl. And I experienced the acute isolation that occurs when someone reminds you of a trivia fact that no one knows or gives half a damn about. I bit my tongue and watched with amazement as his every movement---the tilt of his head as he spoke, the very cadence of his words--reminded me of this guy that almost no one I know knows anything about. Thank god for blogs! I finally get this out of my system, and now I can sleep.