How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home?. . . .

. . . During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

i know that i’m dreaming, for whatever that’s worth

the pink-haired girl checking on our friend katrina, who was sad in seattle

meanwhile i was lying on the floor dressed like this:

lol cool

Listen: When I was in Portland a few weeks back, me and The Pink-Haired Girl went out one beautiful night and saw ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, which has a really good poster by the way:

Hell, it was so cute. We went to the Laurelhurst Theater and everything. That’s a good movie theater, don’tcha know. We sat at the end of the middle row and had us good old fashioned SIT DOWN. For 161 nut-busting minutes I let this here movie wash over me. I thought, you know, here we are, me and The Pink-Haired Girl, and it doesn’t get much better than this. At some point we even had the whole row to ourselves because, uh, weirdly enough, I witnessed all of our row-mates leave during some Completely Inoffensive Scenes. Maybe they were just bored. Oh well!!

Anyway: If you asked my father how he felt about a movie he saw and liked, he would say something quaint like, “You know, I liked it. It was pretty cool, man.” I love that a lot. The man need not articulate his thoughts anymore then that, though he would if you asked him to.

I say this because that is the very same review style I will employ here re: This Movie. Which is to say: It rules a lot, and I had me a good ol time with this thing . . . and so did the PHG! I don’t wanna say much more than that yet because it just came out and I don’t want to spoil anything. But maaaaan what a cool, nearly-three-hour-long, chiefin-on-a-fat-doob-with-your-pants-unzipped buddy hangout movie. It was not at all what I thought it would be. It was better! Definitely go see it, h’okay??

I think I’m gonna go see it again at the Berkeley Theatre in downtown Berkeley this week, like on a Wednesday when no one else will be there. Or maybe I’ll just wait and see it this weekend when my dad is here. The film takes place in the summer of 1969, when my dad was 14 years old. It has a really good soundtrack that Moonshine Kate and I keep talking about, and would have been shit my dad grew up listening to. Man! Yeah, I’m definitely going to wait until he gets here. I’ll bet he loves the hell out of the thing. And when we get out, I’ll bet he says something like, “That was a cool movie, man.” Yeah!

(P.S. Will some of y’all please quit sending me these dimwitted think pieces about how this movie betrays history or something? For god’s sake. I love y’all to death but, like . . . come on. How many “it’s dangerous to glorify the past” clickbait articles have these cheese-eaters written at this point??)

((Also, I go see literally one or two movies at most a year at a movie theater. I am completely willfully ignorant of any movie outside my own narrow radar. So I spent my precious Movie Theater Credits on this one. I trusted Tarantino to make a good thing, even if the man himself is an insufferable jerkoff weirdo. It was a good call. OK??))

DID YOU KNOW: I am often accused of having a Howard Hughesian aversion to germs? I reckon it’s true enough. I’m not necessarily weird about being dirty / unwashed. Sometimes I myself go a few days without bathing and shaving, and my hair is pretty greasy a lot of the time. But it freaks me out when people put their fingers in their mouth or don’t wash their hands after they use the restroom, and so on. And see, I wash my hands after I eat, even in a restaurant, and I don’t touch anything in a public restroom. I use my foot to open the door and I use a paper towel to turn the sink on and off and when I touch the door handle on the way out. I compulsively have to wash my hands after I shake someone’s hand . . . especially when their hand is warm and moist. Ew!!

My friend once introduced me to her new boyfriend, who came over to my house and ate a few slices of pizza next to me on the couch. In my peripheral vision I watched in absolute horror as he proceeded to lick his fingers clean of pizza grease afterwards, and then wipe his hands on his pants!!! I felt like throwing up. After he left, she asked me about him: “So what did you think?” I must have grimaced when I said, “Uh, he’s OK.” She pressed me further. In the name of honesty, I said, “The guy sucked on his god damn fingers after he finished his pizza!” She closed her eyes, and, as if it pained her to finally acknowledge a truth she had been avoiding, said, “I know.”

I cannot abide. To paraphrase DREDD: That’s an automatic fail!!

Wow! I have THE AVIATOR on, which is what inspired me to write this. And just now there was a scene where Howard Hughes is grossed out in a public restroom (lol):

Though yeah, in conclusion: I am not at all afraid of dirt, or someone’s natural body odor, or anything like that. What gives me bone-deep chills are the disgusting germs on people’s hands because of poor hygiene and gross habits.

And just to be clear: Yes, like my hero and spirit-brother Howard Hughes, I would absolutely lock myself in my own private movie theater for four months and piss into milk bottles. OK?? Now wash your fucking hands!!!