(no subject)

[sanpaku_backup]

I think they should rename HBO the Ocean's Eleven Channel. That movie is on there every freaking day. Three times in the last week alone. And they've been doing this since the summer, at least. I think I've seen this film four or five times in its entirety and maybe 30 to 40 times in bits and pieces. Because it's apt to be showing on weekend afternoons when I am watching the baby crawl around, and it's always the best thing on. Which is not to complain. When you get down to it, it's a small, modest, but very well crafted flick. Mildly addictive, even.

It's becoming clear to me that this journal isn't serving my needs, because I'm not writing about the few non-work-related thoughts in my mind these days, which mostly concern what the kids call "geeking" about being the Religious Services chair at my synagogue. They are drowning and need my help with everything and they are pulling me down with them. It is a depressing but oddly profound experience.

So I have this idea of setting up some kind of web diary about that, which would not be encumbered by the mindset I have here of giving some kind of complete accounting of my life. I even have a model in mind: the hilarious, depressing Amen: The Diary of Rabbi Martin Siegel, if any of you have read it. So maybe I will start that in the next day or two and backdate it to include all of the weird things that have happened within the last two weeks. It would be something to do, at least.

I have to go to DC for a boring, nonstop three day meeting tomorrow. I am not looking forward to it.

Comments

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I even have a model in mind: the hilarious, depressing Amen: The Diary of Rabbi Martin Siegel, if any of you have read it.

I haven't read that, or even heard of it before, but it sounds intriguing. And it further sounds like you could write an incredible novelization of this phase of your (and their) existence. If a place like your synagogue has to go down, its descent might as well be put to literary use. :-} (I'm kind of put in mind of Harry Kemelman's Rabbi mystery series, but I suspect that's an entirely different sort of community portrait.)

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

It's a really great book, basically of how little many congregants care about religion and how strangely equipped seminary makes you for what actually takes place in a rabbi's life. I'm not sure about a novelization, but a lot of the recent past has some "stranger than fiction" qualities, and I want to use 'em for something, it's true. At least I figured that you would find it interesting, given your situation!

Speaking of which, say hi to Melanie S. for me. We saw her last week and talked a lot about your shul, which I continue to sorely regret not finding when we lived in Boston.

[cellio]

I would be interested in your "geeking" journal. (You probably knew that already. :-) )

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose I had you in mind! I'll try to get it up this weekend or so.

[one-11.livejournal.com]

There are worse movies to show a million times. Ocean's Eleven is one fo those flicks I can stumble upon at any time, at any point in the story, and be perfectly happy watching it until the end. I just love how unapologetically hip and breezy it is. It's not even all that suspenseful -- there's never one second when you don't know for sure the heroes are gonna win. The only question is how? And meanwhile you get to watch them and Soderbergh be utterly cool in a totally inoffensive way that I think the world needs more of, somehow. So I say Yay. Sorry.