A quiet drink before the film, elbows on the marble, fingertips buttressing the beer glass, when through the tall not un-screen-like windows the patrons all turn at once to watch a wind whip up the trees, and a minute later an onslaught of hail crash down. Bringing boughs with it, ice-stones the size of jelly-beans thundering on roofs and car-roofs and asphalt. A startled jogger ducks in. Could our super-stressed-ness really fall from the sky this sudden way?
I knew that particular bassline from “Ice, Ice Baby” before I knew its original—choke on it, snobs. That and an instrumental “Where Is My Mind” rule this film, the latter first played for me by a girl I met in San Diego, and explained by her, too: “It’s like, where is my mind, right? Like, where…is…my…mind?” Like, what if the truly crazy place is outside the asylum, and a weird version of sanity reigns within? Our hero finds high school (Stuyvesant?) so hectic he checks himself into the ward where Zach Galifiniakis is king. No brutal authority like Nurse Ratched or unhinged demon like Angelina Jolie, he’s rather a Falstaff to our Hal—group therapy looks like fun. To go before the circle and attest. The kind of magic Wes Anderson could make with an iPod and the DSM IV.
Inmate #3 is Daniel London, who I think is a co-op member, and in the flashback sequence the kids run right under the ol’ green neon sign. O, to after rooftop access fly out, or let the heart fly out, over Brooklyn. The crazy night’s not done, I see a car in the middle of the traffic circle, between the benches where the down-and-out go to suck car exhaust and loll, and its stove-in front end coincides with the base of the obelisk, now toppled onto its side, a war memorial someone’s just taken out, and all at once three fire engines pull up, and I stop a minute to gawk…
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