October 15, 2006

Hitting mid-semester snag, lack of enthusiasm, late-night paper grading enduced stupor... Thinking to myself, man, you could pass the civil servant exam and be a mailman. There's more money in it than the current gig, and you could go home after hours and have worker's play time like Billy Bragg used to sing about. Then Jorge, ever diligent, reminded me of the goodness of my gig and threw out Bukowski as a perfectly disgruntled example of the modern American postal worker (twice disgruntled).

By happen-chance got Bukowski at Bellevue, filmed 1970, in Netflix mail the day before and decided to watch. B&W on what must've been the first generation of video recorder: crappy but to interesting effects. Bukowski here is shot as a real poet and given that consideration rather than focusing on/buying into the tough/drunk etc. that later features...well...feature. Poet versus the (self-made?) myth. And the poems stand, the stronger at least, and the kids look somewhat bored (or is that what paying attention looks like?) and yes, Mr. Sakkis, they tried to shoot at least one of the women in the audience sexy.