January 23, 2014

January 23, 2014

I woke up early this morning to go to the Broome Street General Store to meet my friend Albert Cossery, for coffee, who just finished a remarkable novel "Laziness in the Fertile Valley."  He just got back from visiting another common pal of ours, Boris, who is an engineer, but works at a paper manufacturing plant, doing something technical.  Both of them has this long-term on-going game of playing Frisbee.  Boris and a friend of his Walter it seemed invented this flying disc, and eventually sold the rights to it to Wham-O.

Albert and I, as we sipped our coffees thought of the other great Wham-O toy products like the Hula-Hoop, and my personal favorite Slip n' Slide.  It is basically a large strip of plastic filled with water, and what you do is you jump on it forward and you'll slide to the other side.  It is perfect for Los Angeles hot weather, but be warned, don't do it near a staircase.  What happened to me was I jumped on and then fell a flight of stairs to a very dry and hot piece of pavement.

It is very rare for two adults to have such a long friendship, but Albert and I share a great deal of common passions.  Both of us are huge fans of the films of Sergei Eisenstein.  We had a passionate argument that lasted for hours regarding Eisenstein.  Albert insisted that Randolph Scott got his start in "Ivan The Terrible."  I told him that is so wrong that it makes a wrong into a right.  We almost came to blows but we changed our mind and instead we ordered another round of coffee.

But since Eisenstein films' were silent, I would show him my 16mm print of "Battleship Potemkin" with an additional soundtrack by Django Reinhardt.  For whatever reason the hot jazz music fits in perfectly with people getting smashed and destroyed in this film.  What became a horror show turned into a really funny slapstick film.

Both Albert and I are big fans of Eisenstein's book "The Film Sense" which is about the idea of 'montage' in film.  But in reality that can be used in an almost everyday occurrence. I can't remember the film's title, but the one starring Jeanne Moreau, where she walks around, what I think is Paris, with cool Jazz music.  If one put in a symphony in that soundtrack, it would have changed the mood.  Maybe even destroy that scene?

As I said goodbye to Albert, and watch him walk away from the coffee shop, I thought 'it is so nice to have such a great friend.'