Bank-Catcher in the...Sigh

I'm really glad that Clive was in The International because otherwise, I really don't think I'd have enjoyed it in the slightest. Well, that's not quite true but the whole film was decidedly meh--and I don't generally give overly harsh reviews--even taking into account the fact that I got to see Clive running around, talking gruffly, for two hours, I still only gave it 6/10, which is pretty bad coming from me, given that I am entertained by most thrillers I see. 

Clive is Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent on the trail of Some Eavil Peeps in charge of a Very Eavil Bank Which Runs the Whole World. He has a bit of a "past" in that when he was last "hot" on the trail, the Eavil Bankers (who have control over police chiefs and governments and Interpol, and the like) made sure that he was discredited and the case went away. He's working on the case with Eleanor Whitman (I'm not sure why there are all these literary-themed names; actually, I'm sure it's a coincidence because this film is really not clever enough to hide some deep meanings inside the surnames of the leads), the Manhattan DA who is also somehow involved. Because Eleanor is played by Naomi Watts, it's unclear why there isn't the least bit of sexual tension between her and Clive--possibly because other than a brief scene at 3 a.m. where we see Eleanor's hubby and small person trying to tempt her away from her CrackBerry and into bed, neither Eleanor nor Holden Caulfield--I mean, Louis Salinger--have much in the way of a life or personality outside their shared desire to Take Down This Damn Bank.

So, they skip through various scenic Italian locations with a little bit of shooting every once in a while, for good measure, culminating in the big shoot-out scene from the trailer, which takes place in New York's Guggenheim Museum. The climax (such as it can be called that) doesn't need to take place within the concentric, circular, spiralled atrium of the museum so clearly, the director just thought, "wouldn't it be cool if we had a shoot-out in the Guggenheim where people have to move downwards through the spiral, potentially past the people who are trying to shoot them, in order to get out?" 

Also, in the trailer, you can see a woman with long blonde hair in this scene, from behind, whom I assumed to be Eleanor, although she isn't present during this scene so it can't be her unless there was some sloppy editing. To be fair, though, I wasn't at all clear who Naomi's character was from the trailer. I thought she was the wife of one of the Bad Bankers, or someone, whom Clive had sworn to protect (along with her small people). Given that her role is almost completely superfluous in the movie itself, this isn't too big a deal.

There were some random interjections of levity in the script too, which led to bathos at the very part when they should have been working on the suspense. Suffice to say, I didn't find it overly amusing when Clive and co. burst in on the apartment of a stoned, orthopaedic surgeon, who was convinced they were going to arrest him for being on drugs, when really they just wanted access to his patient records. Clive had some quality lines, though. Some of my favourites?

Bad Guy: What do you want?

Clive: I want some f*cking justice.

Dude: [makes dying noises while spurting blood]

Clive: Don't f*cking die on me.

Dude: [Sez something incomprehensible and then dies.]

Bad Guy: You can't arrest me [mwahahaha]

Clive: Who said anything about arresting? I'm simply going to talk in this gruff, Coventry voice and then wait for my ambiguous moral dilemmas to be solved by deus ex machina. By the way, given that this Turkish rooftop scene is pretty similar to the opening scene in Casino Royale, I'm hoping it will also serve as my audition for the Bond films if Daniel Craig ever steps down.

You get the idea. Luckily, even with a load of shit dialogue, Clive's delivery more than made up for it. Other than that, though, the plot managed to be both overly complicated and really insipid at the same time, there was no sense of development of any of the characters, half of the characters were superfluous and the ending was unsatisfying--not in a good way.

But I did get to watch Clive for two hours!

40 Days and 40 Nights

I don't see many movies that I give a score of under 6/10 on IMDb, although of those rated 5/10 or under, a high proportion of them are films I saw on a plane or on TV late at night when I had insomnia and a TV. Even taking into consideration the fact that Josh Hartnett (an erstwhile crush of mine) was in it, 40 Days and 40 Nights only got 5/10; I should add that his presence in the film gave it an extra point only because I thought he was hot then, not because I thought he was a good actor.

Perhaps, then, if I really wanted to practise the art of self-discipline, I should give up watching films I know I will enjoy, for Lent, and torture myself with Josh Hartnett's back catalogue (OK, Sin City was great but not because of him). Instead, I am going to deny myself chocolate from tomorrow morning until April 12th for no reason other than the fact that I felt like a challenge, given that it's been about a year since I successfully went cold turkey on nail biting. Posting on here makes my renunciation of all things cacao more official, of course, no matter how few people actually read this. The only exception will be chocolate powder on the top of a cappuccino if I've forgotten to tell the barista not to add any, firstly because I don't like having chocolate on my caps anyway (there is to be no mixing of chocolate and coffee in the Bex canon) and secondly, because I refuse to waste a good cappuccino simply because it has been tarnished by the incompetence of the barista. However, the ban will include (although is not limited to): chocolate cakes, chocolate brownies, chocolate ice-cream, chocolate milkshakes, those yummy little M&S chocolate-flavoured mini meringues with chocolate chips, chocolate sauce, pains au chocolat, chocolate mousse, Nutella, weird savoury Mexican dishes that involve chocolate, and the gorgeous praliné macaroons from Paul, which aren't, as I first assumed, just hazelnut but chocolate-and-hazelnut.

Of course, most of the time I don't consume any of the above. For me, a small chocolate bar a day keeps the doctor--and my sweet tooth--at bay and on the rare occasions that I go out for a nice meal, I will usually have a pudding and it will usually be chocolate-based. I can't really remember when I acquired my chocolate-craving tendencies. 

Now, though, I have removed all chocolate from the house, including the Green & Black dark chocolate bar (which is probably a waste as I don't really like dark chocolate very much; I definitely don't crave it) and provided myself with a few sweet, non-chocolate alternatives, like Wine Gums and a flapjack (I'm so tempted to order a Meg Rivers traybake). At the moment, though, I'm feeling confident that I'll be able to make it until April 12th; 4 p.m. is usually my flagging time (especially as it's really too late to brew another pot of coffee) but I've stashed some blueberry flavoured Nutrigrains in my desk at work so that I can raid it should I need to.

Maybe I'll even find that I don't miss chocolate at all or that I no longer crave it in the same way post-Lent. I seriously doubt it though.

I Caved

OK, I give in. Here are my choices in each of the major categories of tonight's Academy Awards. This isn't necessarily how I think the actual Oscars will be awarded as it's hard enough for me to choose my favourites, let alone the favourites of the Academy. Besides, any such predictions would undoubtedly be confounded by all of the predictions I've been hearing from various critics (the Grauniad cunningly decided to confuse me by publishing a huge grid with the predictions from several critics and film writers, as well as their thoughts as to who/which films should win and should have been nominated).

This is, at least, easier than last year as Frozen River, Tropic Thunder and Rachel Getting Married are the only films nominated for the major awards that I haven't seen, which isn't bad going. I've already seen 25 films this year so perhaps next year's choice will be easier.

• Best Picture -- Slumdog Millionaire [It taught me to spell "millionaire," for one thing]
  
• Best Actor -- Sean Penn (Milk) [Despite the fact that I saw him moaning that he's 40 years old and hasn't done a thing about 17 times in the trailer before watching the movie and still enjoyed his performance.]
  
• Best Actress -- Kate Winslet (The Reader) [I was wavering between Winslet and Meryl Streep for Doubt;I really wasn't sure, but I found Winslet's character more interesting, although the two were perhaps equally conflicted.]
  
• Best Supporting Actor -- Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) [Of course.]
  
• Best Supporting Actress -- Penélope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) [She absolutely stole the show (not that that's difficult when Scarlett Johansson is around), just as my interest was starting to wane. Her character was fabulously, passionately bonkers!]
  
• Best Director -- David Fincher (Benjamin Button) [Maybe it's just because Fincher is such a dry, funny guy that I picked him over Danny Boyle or maybe I just liked his descriptions of the Benjamin Button body doubles looking like Smurfs. Or maybe I was amused by the fact that he refused to even look at the shortened, "aeroplane cut" of his 3h45 minute whopper because he didn't think it was possible to edit it further.]
  
• Best Original Screenplay -- In Bruges [I saw this not knowing quite what to expect but really enjoyed the banter between Colin Farrell's and Brendan Gleeson's characters so much that even Ralph Fiennes in "geezer" mode didn't ruin this clever, complex and dark film.]
  
• Best Adapted Screenplay -- Slumdog [I haven't read the book--nor have I read the books, plays and short stories on which the other nominated films are based--but I'm not really sure I need to; it's the kind of story where the rich, colourful contrasts are very well suited to the big screen.]

Predictably Unpredictable

It's good to know that some things never change. The football team that I (nominally, at least) support was nine points clear of the Championship in December and have now only one once in the past games (amazingly, we're still three points clear). Wolves need to blow away ghosts of 2002, sez the BBC Sport website, although it's not really just 2002 but pretty much every other season (OK, not all of them have involved being nine points clear and then almost getting relegated, but they almost always seem to lose momentum part-way through the season and end up in a decidedly mediocre position in the table).

John Bray's article is quite amusing, even if it does hit home a little hard in places (certainly for Maman who has supported Wolves for over 40 years):

Apprehension breeds frustration, and that leads to anger - and that's a familiar scenario for those of us who've followed Wolves for the last 30 years. The nationwide view of Wolves fans is probably a fickle band of moaners. But I don't buy that. We are passionate - but have become accustomed to despair. Betrayal is a strong word, maybe too strong. But even when we ended 19 years of hurt to reach the Premier League in 2003, we were let down by a club not brave enough to spend the money that would have kept us up.

He goes on to add:

There's probably something in the psychological make-up of a Wolves fan that anticipates pain and heartbreak - but in our defence it's happened so often in the past.

Actually, though, supporting Wolves isn't so different from supporting the England football, rugby or cricket teams or watching Henman's attempts to conquer Wimbledon--and the world!--although that mantel, at least, seems to have been handed over to Andy Murray now. It's not that Wolves--or England--are bad; most of the time they do pretty well. Yet, disappointing fans who had so much confidence in the ability of their team is what Wolves--and England--do best. Losing to a better team is one thing; almost getting relegated when you were at one time nine points clear of the division is quite another. Supporting Wolves thus comes naturally to anyone who has followed any major English sport long enough.

As for tomorrow's match against Cardiff, maybe it will finally be time for us to turn our game around. I'm not getting any hopes up just yet though--for a Wolves supporter, getting one's hopes up in February is always a very dangerous game...

Big in Japan

Today, I saw two movies, both made in the style of a documentary, and while I initially thought that they didn't have much else in common, given the very different topics, themes and mood, I had to revise that view as they share several other key ideas.

One was the real behind-the-scenes expose of an '80s metal band still aspiring towards glory 25 years later and the other the tale of a year in the life of a class of 14-year-olds in a rough suburb of Paris and the teacher who wants so desperately to inspire them--or at least for them to learn something. While Anvil! The Story of Anvil is an actual fly-on-the-wall, Entre les Murs (The Class) just plays out like one (it was loosely based on the memoirs of teacher-turned-novelist, François Bégaudeau and confuses the boundaries between reality and fiction as Bégaudeau also stars in the film and the actors playing the pupils in the eponymous class were also recruited from a school in a similar Parisian locale, have the same names as them and after regular meetings with the director, discussed the characters and the film to such an extent that many of the lines are actually improvised--most of the pupils' parents are played by the parents of the actors).

I went into Anvil! expecting it to be just like This Is Spinal Tap and to some extent it was (although less funny) or, rather, it was like they were making a film, which would have been the perfect basis for Rob Reiner to build his parody on had Spinal Tap not been made 25 years earlier (I've also been watching some Terminator films so my time travel paradox sensitivity is a little screwed). It's also an amusing coincidence that the director and mockumentarian star of Spinal Tap shares his name (plus or minus a b) with the drummer of the band Anvil. I'm not exactly a big metal fan but I'm not completely ignorant either and yet I'd never heard of Anvil before yesterday. 

The documentary opens with some footage of a huge rock festival in Japan in the mid 1980s where many of the world's biggest rock bands (Scorpions, Bon Jovi, etc.) played and then went on to great things, while Anvil...did not. Fast-forward 20-odd years and the lead singer, Steve "Lips" Kudlow is celebrating his 50th birthday. His hair has barely changed since 1984 but he is now married with a child and works at a catering company but still rocks with his band mates--especially his BFF, Reiner--in his spare time. 

This movie documents the band's attempts to get back into the spotlight and to finally gain some of the fame and acclaim pretty much everyone interviewed in the film says they deserve. Inevitably, it all goes a bit pear-shaped, sometimes amusingly, sometimes poignantly. The film is held together by the friendship between Lips and Reiner and by Lips's unwavering belief in the band and their music. Lips is basically a very nice guy with a very big dream, although the way he deals with his disappointments at various stages in Anvil's "European tour" and after unsuccessful dealings with record companies seems to mirror perfectly the obvious attempts of some of the Spinal Tap guys to try to convince themselves--and everyone else--that it will all work out for the best. I'm not really interested in metal, as I said, but I still thought the film was funny and perfectly constructed.

The events of The Class also take place over the course of about a year and, as with Anvil!, there isn't really much of a plot--at least in terms of big events, anyway. The pace is slow and thoughtful, allowing us to get to know the pupils and the teachers so that we do understand things more precisely when the climax--if you can even call it that--takes place. 

Bégaudeau plays a young but savvy and sometimes provocative teacher of a culturally and racially diverse class of 14 year olds. Large proportions of his French lessons are often taken up with his attempts to get them to shut up, sit down, stop fighting and just do what he asks. His pupils, though, are also smart and sharp, even if they aren't interested in his attempts to get them to learn their irregular verbs. They aren't afraid to put him on the spot either--one of the pupils asks whether he is gay, another asks why he always uses "white names" in the example sentences he writes on the board. Many of the sharpest lines are improvised by the young actors; when Bégaudeau is trying to convey the importance of the imperfect subjunctive given that the pupils all say no one they know ever uses it, one girl denounces it as, "bourgeois language" (well, isn't it?).

Each film has a protagonist who is passionate about what he does. Lips wants to make great music and have an awesome time with his buddies but he also dreams of fame and world-wide acclaim (seeing the band's elation when at a gig in Japan there are actually thousands of fans when they were worried that only a handful would show up is a beautiful moment) but he settles for small, everyday triumphs to distract him from the realities of his mundane job in Toronto. 

Bégaudeau knows he has a tough job even getting his class to sit down quietly for more than a couple of minutes at a time, let alone teaching or inspiring them. Several speak French as a second language and most of them are aggressive, spiky and quick to anger but Bégaudeau takes pleasure in the small victories he wins, like when Souleymane, one of the most disruptive boys, produces a decent photo collage as part of a "self-portrait" project and you can tell that Souleymane is a little proud himself, even though he feigns ambivalence. Bégaudeau isn't perfect but you get the impression that he may have got through to a few of the pupils--maybe he even inspired them--and he would probably say that all of the stress and the hard work would be worth it for that. Just as Lips and co. would say that being big in Japan made the failed European tour seem worth it.

Yellowcumpinky-Blue

Thanks to my grandfather, I believed that yellowcumpinky-blue was a colour until about 1991. So, I was excited when, on a visit to the treasure trove that is the stationery basement at Gibert Jeune in 1990, I picked up a highlighter that had yellow, pink and blue nibs so that you could vary your highlighting colour depending on your mood. (Naturally, aged six, I had plenty of important documents and papers to highlight). If you took off all three lids at once, you could theoretically highlight in the mythical colour known as yellowcumpinky-blue. Of course, anyone who has ever painted will know, the closest real colour to yellowcumpinky-blue would probably be dishwater grey or muddy brown. And here was the hard lesson I learned: just because three colours are pretty by themselves, it doesn't mean that mixing them will make something pretty. 

I started thinking about this past disappointment because of this blog post I read recently, which reads something like, "there's probably no magenta. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

The blogger explains, "The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence." Excluding yellowcumpinky-blue, the obvious answer, she writes, is magenta (a rose by any other name would look as pink). Maybe I just spent too much time with my Crayola set but I was wondering where Burnt Sienna, Chartreuse and Turquoise were. Of course, sienna, burnt or otherwise, isn't a neatly defined part of the spectrum of visible light (although I learned from the Crayola website that Burnt Sienna is one of America's top 50 crayons, its "celebrity" is Billy Crystal and its "music" is Brown Eyed Girl) and so it doesn't count a proper, fully fledged colour.

The English language has very many words for colours--which is probably why Pantone and Dulux are so successful--far more than most other languages. But even when you look at the basic words for colour in a given language, there isn't any kind of cross-linguistic uniformity. English has a relatively high number of colour words but from the basic colour terms, we have blue, while Russian has dark blue and light blue, but not just plain blue. Some languages only have four basic colour terms, some have only two (the equivalent of "black" and "white" but "black" often means "things that are dark" or even "things of a certain texture").

If any academic work pushed me in the direction of linguistic studies, it was Berlin and Kay's 1969 Basic Color Terms, in which the researchers report a hierarchy of colours that allows you to predict which colours might be found in a language. Does our language determine how we perceive colour? Or does how we perceive colour determine our language? They found that the order was thus: two colour terms = black/dark and white/light; three colour terms = red; four colour terms = yellow or green; five colour terms = yellow and green; and then come blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey, in that order. This hierarchy is the reason I can never remember the order of snooker balls.

Berlin and Kay worked out these "basic" colours by having native speakers of different languages pick from a selection of coloured chips the chip that was, say, the reddest red (although no colour terms were actually used). Although speakers of a language might know different numbers of words for types of red (or be able to distinguish different numbers of separate colours within a class of reds), they generally tend to agree on the number of "focal" or basic colours. Mum and I still can't agree whether the bracelet I sometimes wear is green or yellow but most English speakers would probably agree that while this is green, this is yellow.

I found this topic fascinating and tried to weave it in to several essay questions in my final year exams, most notably my History of the Italian Language paper. I spent over a third of my essay on the evolution of the Italian dialects talking about how bizarre it was that some Italian dialects preserve an almost Latin-like system of basic colour terms (with one word for blue and for green) while in others, the word for blue does not exist, even though there was a perfectly decent word for blue in Latin. This meant that these dialects had carelessly manage to lose a basic colour term over time and this retrograde evolution was certainly not expected. (The 1980 study about this was published by Kristol in Language: Color Systems in Southern Italy: A Case of Regression.)

Speakers of those dialects of Italian would still be able to talk about the sky, of course, and about other blue things by using noun-based compounds: sky-coloured eyes, eyes like the sea, a chocolate-coloured jacket, etc. To some extent, we do the same in English, but we can at least say "sky blue" rather than "sky coloured"; alas, the latter isn't very satisfying when given in answer to the question, "What colour is the sky?" Conversely, answering "grass green" to the question, "What colour was the traffic light?" might seem to flout Grice's Conversational Maxim of Quantity: it doesn't matter how green or what kind of green the light was, only that it was green, most of the time.

This post has been a surprisingly tangential trip down memory lane and while I don't really care whether or not magenta is a "real" colour, I was interested to read Henrik Zollinger's 1984 paper in which he argues that turquoise may eventually evolve into a basic colour term; the references list a whole range of other turquoise-themed research. As turquoise is by far my favourite colour, I like this idea better than the Great Magenta Hoax.

The Bridges of Madison Avenue

I was slightly worried as to how I would cope over the next month while Gossip Girl goes on hiatus (Americans are muttering something about sweeps; I can't be bothered to find out what that means)--how could they just leave us hanging after the young, female teacher, minutes after getting fired as she is falsely accused with having an inappropriate relationship with a male student at her school, ends the episode by consummating said previously non-existent inappropriate relationship? Actually, it's not that much of a cliffhanger and more than anything, I'll probably miss Daily Intel's weekly Reality Index blog post.

Fear not, though. As I have to be watching exactly one TV programme at any one time, Mad Men has thoughtfully deigned to return to the small screen in the UK next week, so I will still be able to watch my token episode of the week (although not on TV, of course). Now, finally, my patience will be rewarded and I can watch the show in relatively high definition, compared to the crappy quality I would have had if I had streamed it while it was playing in the US. Now, finally, I will be able to find out what happened after the emo-fest that was last season's finale. Given that the new series is said to be set at least a year after the end of the last, I'm guessing that everyone's season one angst will have been resolved--for now, at least, until it resurfaces in a heartbreaking fashion--and replaced by season two levity, bright smiles and the hiding of emotions. 

Of course, the show can't stay emo-free for long so there will be new traumas and new woes. New amazing clothes and hairstyles and new indiscretions. New sharp scripts and sharp suits. New women for D-Squared (I was going to give him until at least episode three but episode one appears to be set on Valentine's Day so there's no chance of that, especially if Betty is "[running] into an old friend"). Having spent last weekend with myriad mad men (and women), I can only imagine...

Two More Broken Rules

Two movie rules were broken tonight thanks to Barry Lyndon:

1. No period dramas.

2. No Kubrick films.

Actually, the second rule was relaxed in about 2005 when Trinitah College had their free Kubrick season, coinciding with the time I decided to start educating myself cinematically and stuff, and so went to see Lolita (which I loathed, having read the book and seen the Jeremy Irons version), A Clockwork Orange (great film to watch late at night and then slip back home along dark, deserted streets, even in Nowheresville) and The Shining. Eyes Wide Shut was on Sky once back when I still thought Tom Cruise was hot so I saw that and S convinced me to watch Dr Strangelove once but I think I would enjoy it more the second time, if only because I seem to remember being resistant to the idea of watching it. 

Anyway, Barry Lyndon is long. Really long. Like, three hours and ten minutes long. As ever, around the 15-minute mark, my eyes went into, "I think it's bedtime so I'm going to sleep now," mode, although luckily it only took ten minutes to persuade myself it wasn't sleepytime. It felt even longer--not in a bad way; I wasn't bored--even though there was plenty of action. Barry Lyndon (né Redmond Barry--incidentally, if I were called Barry and were changing my name, I wouldn't keep the Barry part) is a social-climbing arriviste who cheats, lies, dodges and charms his way to the top (first half), marries a rich heiress, following which ensues his inevitable tragic downfall (second half). 

The film is so long, there was an intermission card shown for about 20 seconds this evening. The latecomers who missed the announcement that there was no intermission jumped right up and dashed for the loo/the bar only to realise they had to come back. I do like a cinema that punishes latecomers! And one where grumpy old men in the row behind me can ask me quite loudly if I can ask the very tall person sitting in front of me whether he'd just sit himself down more (the guy heard perfectly, of course, and slunk down in long-legged shame).

Barry isn't very likable--none of the characters are, really, from the damaged, vengeful stepson to the wife who just sits there looking miserable and sad, without speaking, for 90% of her screen time but she is played by a former model who probably had plenty of practice; her wigs and outfits were enough to rival Keira, even if she couldn't quite manage to achieve the same wooden performance of The Duchess--but at least during the first half, he manages to pull off the "lovable rogue" angle. In the second half, he's just selfish, irritating and cruel, ignoring his chequebook wife (who doesn't even get a name, though she signs her cheques "H. Lyndon" -- women's lib--c'est quoi?) and lavishing all his attention on his son (perhaps his one redeeming quality). Also, Ryan O'Neal's Irish accent is quite funny, especially when he's an American playing an Irishman playing a German, and so on; quite a change from Oliver Barrett IV, anyway.

It felt like the film lasted so long solely because Kubrick intended it to be. Almost every scene opened with an establishing shot that would focus on a close-up object--a table or a woman standing in a doorway--and then zoom...out...very...very...slowly to reveal the wider scene. It's very arty, I'm sure, but it mainly made me feel seasick, especially when at the beginning of every scene, I started bracing myself for the zoom-out, which didn't always happen. Yes, a very clever little detail, but I prefer to be impressed by dialogue and acting than by technical details, though the film as a whole was a big romp over one beautiful canvas after another, spanning right across Europe and back again. The music was good too, although the reprise of the main theme seemed a bit clichéd as I could tell at which moments it would start playing.

But I enjoyed it. I might have given it a higher IMDb rating if it hadn't been so long--a three-hour film has to do more to earn its rating than a two-hour film, as though to justify my time expended watching it; sunk costs or none, I don't just give away 8/10. I still need to see 2001 and there are a couple of others I would watch but really, then, I've done all the Kubrick I want to--which is plenty, really...

Mad about--and in--New York

Last night is surprisingly memorable given the amount of alcohol I consumed. We went for pre-dinner drinks at Pastis in the Meatpacking District, which remains on my to-do list as an eatery. Then it was off to join some others from the gang for dinner at the Old Homestead. The staff were incredibly accommodating given that the original booking was for seven and by the end there were about 18 people there, including several who had had to leave early to go to another event. I had some Champagne, some delicious red wine, two oysters (my first--I blame the booze) and a gorgeous filet mignon. Then it was off to some bar in the Flat Iron District for over-priced cocktails. 

I stumbled out of the taxi and into the hotel at about 3.30 a.m. Woke up at 7.30 with an aching knee. Couldn't fall back to sleep so started packing and then, for some reason, decided to go running (decided was perhaps the wrong word as I wasn't really sentient at that point). I think the 27 degree air refreshed my head enough to stop the world from spinning and lurching. A strong coffee and a shower made my head feel just about about tolerable.

I love this city even if it's crazy and makes me do crazy things!