My morning goes something like this:
1. Up at about 5:30, maybe 6:00 a.m.
2. Shacharit, morning prayers.
3. Breakfast: fresh fruit sprinkled with non-fat plain yogurt while reading the Wall Street Journal.
4. Write Seraphic Secret blog. Hope I don’t make an idiot of myself with the day’s post.
5. Work on latest screenplay.
6. Three mile walk. Think about latest screenplay. Convince myself that every word I’ve written is garbage and needs to be revised.
7. Answer email. Make tons of spelling errors.
8. Lunch: Salmon salad with lemon juice dressing. Torture myself over terrifying shortcomings in latest screenplay.
On my walks, with Karen if we can synch our schedules, I carry my iPhone and snap pictures of objects that, for whatever reason, excite my imagination.
And my imagination is inevitably drawn to some pretty weird stuff.
This graphic is on display in many variations in Los Angeles. Oddly enough, I've never been tempted to enter one of these masaage-acupuncture-whatever storefronts.
I love signs. They tell us so much about ourselves. These thematically contrasting wall ads are on display on Beverly Blvd., in Pico-Robertson.
Only in Beverly Hills will you find very expensive Richard Serra prints decorating a parking garage.
An unexpected and totally random image in an alley down the block from, I kid you not, Cartier, Beverly Hills.
The Persian stores along Pico Blvd. display a, um, unique style of art which is the Jewish version of Elvis on velvet paintings: Post-Modern-Rococo-Bizarro. This rendering of Moshe Rabbeinu looks alarmingly like one of my high school Rabbis.
I rarely take nature shots. But this dramatic sunset reminds me of a 50's Technicolor epic. In fact, much of Los Angeles looks and feels like a film set. Which is one of the reasons I love the golden West.
Karen & iWish all our friends and relatives a lovely and miraculous Shabbat.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
21 Comments
A good week to all.
2 Off Topics: For those of you who live in London, if you live or work anywhere near Tottenham, I hope you, your families, and your homes and businesses are safe from the rioters.
For those of you who are fasting on the 9th of Av, I wish you all an easy one.
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Barry – Pax – yoghurt has other benefits – as I have descovered at this stage in my life
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Pax–You are very cute, but you can’t train on yogurt. Something that can be digested and that lasts is what a working man needs. And everyone needs to be in shape. Writers and athletes. Well, everyone in a manner of speaking is an athlete.
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I didn’t mention yogurt, actually, Mr. Avrech did. But since you bring it up:
Yogurt can be digested—indeed, it already partially has been, by the culture-bacteria (that’s why, generally, yogurt, like cheese, doesn’t give lactose-intolerants much trouble). And you may want to tell every other mammal on the planet that dairy can’t be digested and doesn’t last, because the silly creatures seem to think it’s the single most efficient source of nutrition for babies—who have to build muscle-mass at a far greater-rate than any athlete ever born—that’s ever evolved. Oh, no, wait, that’s because it is. Let us leave to one side all the martial artists I know—whose exercise regimen is up there with gymnasts and ballet dancers—who live on yogurt, not just train. Coupled with the fresh fruit, Mr. Avrech is probably getting complete nutrition every morning.
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I avoid starch, sugar, and fat. I eat lots and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. For protein I have fish, white chicken, or prime rib with the fat and bone removed. No soda, or power bars, obviously, and I keep well hydrated with lots of H2o.
A close friend, Dr. Harry Weisman, developed a diet which I happily follow.
Here’s the link: http://www.drharryweisman.com/
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Robert – is your neighborhood a gang-free (tagger-free) zone? Here someone does some nice artwork on a wall and within a week ugly graffiti (graffito?) comes.
I have always felt that good photography comes from the eye (read mind) seeing things most people miss –
You have a good eye!
These days I am up at 5 to walk the dog (alas, not 3 miles but perhaps 1.5-2 miles) before leaving for work at 06:30.
I notice Seraphic Secret hasn’t changed at 05:30 when I have dressed and reading the blogs while eating breakfast – now I know – you are sleeping in
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Bill:
Yup, gang free, except for all the Jews who, as we know, are part of the International Zionist Conspiracy:-)
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Love the hola dancer!
What reminds you of your rabbi – the Xmas robe or the tablets?
Have a wonderful Shabbos.
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Alter:
The halo around his head. My rebbe was convinced that he was a tzaddik.
He was not:-)
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I’ve never been tempted to enter one of these masaage-acupuncture-whatever storefronts.
I’ve never been tempted to go into the topless bars in the French Quarter but that’s because I was warned at a young age that those women dancers might not really be women.
Only in Beverly Hills will you find very expensive Richard Serra prints decorating a parking garage.
But I notice the stop sign painted on the garage deck was not diamond encrusted. Things must be getting pretty tough in Beverly Hills.
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Johnny:
The diamonds were stolen by a William Morris agent. Times are tough at that particular shop.
P.S. Men, really?
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“Think about latest screenplay. Convince myself that every word I’ve written is garbage and needs to be revised.”
So how do you know when it’s ready to show to the producers, studio, etc. ?
Is it a gut feeling of “Now, it’s good, I’m happy with it”,
or do you first then run it by someone you trust for objectivity ?
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Exdem:
I work on strict deadlines that are outlined in a standard Hollywood contract. So, I have no choice but to submit each draft on the timetable agreed upon. I do the very best I can.
In truth, even when one of my films is finished, in the can, on TV, or in the movie theater, I obsess on all I should have done.
To quote Matisse: “A work of art is never done, it is only abandoned.”
I’m not an artist, just a Hollywood craftsman, but the sentiment fits.
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I’ve always been interested in the debate about whether Shakespeare was written by the man from Stratford or by Marlowe, Bacon (Mark Twain and Helen Keller were Baconites) or the Earl of Oxford. What convinced me that the works were properly attributed was the writing process.
People think a writer finishes a script and throws it over the transom where the director and actors follow what’s written word for word. But now as then, plays are rarely not revised from the ‘finished’ draft. Changes are made up to opening night with the writer getting input from actors and directors and anyone else with a stake in the production. As an actor as well as playwright, Shakespeare would have been involved in changes during rehearsals up to opening night. Even Shakespeare, as great as he was, had to rewrite his initial drafts. And I bet even Shakespeare was not completely satisfied with the final version of all his plays.
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Johnny:
The question of Shakespear’s authorship only emerged in the 20th century with the rise of various literary critics who were looking to make their bones in academia. The entire dispute is just “sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Will was a practical man of the theater. If he were alive today he’d be a Hollywood screenwriter knocking them out as fast as possible in order to reach an early retirement.
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Robert: That’s what I thought when I first heard about the anti-Stratfordians. It seemed like another knock against a dead white guy by the PC crowd.
But I found it goes back to the late 18th Century and a man named Edmond Malone. Because Shakespeare did not live in an age of memoir, there is scant evidence of his personal life. In the mid 19th Century Francis Bacon became the leading candidate thanks to the work of an American, Delia Bacon (no relationship). This built into the early 20th Century when Twain and Helen Keller both became Baconites. James Shapiro in Contested Will does a great job of tracing the history of the anti-Stratfordians and rebuts their theories.
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Oatmeal with raisins and two mugs of coffee is a much better breakfast.
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Barry:
I drink one cup of coffee with my fruit bowl and another cup of coffee at about 3 in the afternoon.
I’m interested in nutrition and would like to know why you think oatmeal is a better food than fresh fruit?
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Don’t know why Barry thinks so, but the only reason I can think of is it’s more filling—the only real reason to prefer the “English” breakfast to the Continental breakfast. I’m reminded of the quote “In this sense alone did bacon write Shakespeare.” Not that more filling or more nutritious necessarily matters; Napoleon’s army took every capital in Europe on two loaves of bread and a cup of coffee.
Disputing the authorship of Shakespeare, by the way, actually started in the 19th century—disciples of the German school of biblical criticism applying those methods to English literature—and had already been debunked by the Edwardian period.
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Robert–
Oatmeal provides a high level of nutrition and is easy to digest. n When my wife was well she prepared it for me with raisins and pieces of apple. The idea for it, at least in our family, came from one of Martina Navratilova’s trainers back in the late eighties. I added the coffee for fun, but also because it gets you going. Not certain it’s required later in the day, but if you like it…
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Hi, testing the commenting functionality!
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