Watchmen

I know at least one reader will appreciate this preview of the Watchmen film.

Mushrooms

Yesterday when I picked A. up from school, there were two men there I had never seen before, fathers, evidently, picking up children usually picked up by their mothers. The first one had a lean and hungry look bespeaking a life time of poverty. The second was dressed in a business suit with an expensive haircut. He started talking to the other, at first about the weather, but within two minutes he had elicited his interlocutor's whole life story (he was born in small town in Indiana and had eventually come to St. Louis to find work where he was doing day labor), then their conversation turned to a detailed discussion of the intricacies of mushroom picking, which it turned out they both practiced: it was the case, the second one advised, that the weekend following the height of the spring season could be just as bountiful if one drove a hundred miles north because of the way the season spreads out across the continent. The ability to create this rapport must be connected with a lifetime in sales work: the ability precedes the career I would guess.

It was an amazing tour de force, and one I am sure he just could not help making, but not a very gratifying one to witness.