Worth Seeing for the Penguin
Monday, July 07, 2008
I had no plans over the July Fourth weekend -- and no money, due to a regrettable dating mishap -- and thus, waking up to the lonely start of said weekend, and feeling a sudden, palpable dread of the void, I decided to take a walk. I packed a lunch and started down 31st street near Astoria Boulevard in Queens, all the way to Queensboro Plaza, then I hooked a right and walked across the Queensboro Bridge, picking up my pace as I went, staring down at the weirdness of Roosevelt island and taking in the disconcertingly vertiginous perspective of the cable-car tram from eye level (as if one could Jump! over to it...but no! no! you'd never make it...), kept walking until I got to Central Park, ate my lunch, fell unconscious for ten minutes near the duck pond. So once again that day I woke with the void opening up before me like so much grey industrial foam, like human sterilization itself, and what could I do? I jumped up and started walking again, deciding just at that moment that my destination would be the Film Forum, where I would see the held-over Herzog film about Antarctica, waves of white and blue cinema to battle the spreading grey, and so I walked through the horrid jumble of Columbus Circle and over to 9th Avenue in order to avoid Times Square and it's afterbirth, which is 8th Ave. I began to feel a little light headed so I had an iced coffee, and I walked until the blocks all registered like musical notes: bodega, bank branch, bank branch, deli, bodega, deli, bank branch, bank branch, duane reade, deli, bodega. Finally got to the Film Forum, paid my 6 dollar member's fee, had time to kill, went around the corner and got a Pabst Blue Ribbon (three dollars, leaving me with a budgeted amount of one dollar left), which I drank in blessed silence, trying not to think of what I'd do with myself tomorrow, just staring open-mouthed at the television as colors sort of swirled and popped on the screen.
Then I saw the movie. My verdict? Not Herzog's best, but worth seeing, especially for the insane penguin.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:36 PM,
