rainy days & sundays don't get me down

yeah, i've been battling a low pressure system of my own.  call it the blues, or the blahs, or 'a case of the mondays' [phrase taken from the film office space (1999)] .  nothing major.  & not much to talk about.  & yet, when i awoke this morning i looked outside the window.  the rain spattered glass.  a fair wind blowing.  & the air smelling newly scrubbed & my spirits lifted.  just like that. 

well, not quite just like that since we celebrated nick's 16th birthday yesterday.  & my blues had already begun to change colors on nick's special day.  i am astonished, happy, & humbled & proud to be his father.  a most remarkable young man with a keen intellect & kind personality.  i think nick gets his mind from his mother & his empathy from me.  however, i am a biased father who is amazed beyond reckoning that our son is growing, & developing, into his own human being.  it is, again, humbling, & wonderful to watch.

the rain.  how i love the rain.  as a young man, around nick's age, i loved to take long walks in the rain.  preferring walking to driving, or riding my bike, or riding my skateboard.  walking is a slower route.  you can daydream when you are walking.  you can see things that are a mere blur if you are driving, or bike riding, or skateboarding.  things slow down.  if for a little bit.  

but so, anna & did some household things.  i took a longish nap.  who'd have guessed that naps would be a source of great pleasure in middle age.  i was reading/listening a bit of tom verlaine, formerly leader of the 1970s punk band television [i've said this before, i'd love to read a book written by verlaine (his last name taken from the 19th C symbolist poet, & lover of arthur rimbaud, paul verlaine)].  i think the guitarist is an artist's artist where he disappears into his creations.  just as eliot said that the artist must lose his/her personality.  of course, tho, an artist who takes the name of an older artist is not exactly disappearing his personality but i get verlaine's drift.  he's a dude whose both shunned the spotlight all the while making art that is singularly his.  like catullus did over 2000 years ago, & cavafy did a hundred years ago.

now, i'm watching on youtube a TV movie called this house possessed [1981] starring parker stevenson, slim pickens & lisa eilbacher.  what & who?  this flick was made & released right before the video cassette era took off.  made for TV movies were common productions pitched to fill valuable air time on time slots, like monday & friday nights, on networks when the number of viewers was relatively modest.  sometimes these networks produced some gems.  sometimes the networks made movies that had the viewer wondering what the fuck were they thinking.

this particular flick was one that stuck in my mind long long after seeing it.  indeed, in the early days of the internet i'd google for it without remembering the name of the pic.  finally, some years ago, i found it.  lo!  it was uploaded to youtube.  is it a good movie?  so far, not bad.  but stevenson's character, gary, an overworked rock star in need of a vacation, is a stretch.  pickens is a damn good actor.  in nearly everything he's been in.  it is eilbacher i remember the most.  she plays stevenson's nurse.  they rent a large house that, well, spies, thru cameras installed in the premises, on our young couple.  & sets up some mischief. the house is possessed!  eilbacher is so lovely.  i had a huge crush on her.  & she can act rings around stevenson.  she set my teenage heart a-fluttering.  & is the main reason why i remembered this movie for so many years.  

& that is where i'll end this rant.  

back to the flick!