FIREWORKS

I've actually seen fireworks the last three nights. The village of Delhi shot them off on Friday night, then last night a guy shot off lots of them at his house in Bovina in between egg-spoon races, and then tonight art critic Peter Schjeldahl blasted them off. He blasted off fifty of them at a time, and it was like watching the Vietnam War. We sat with a composer from Switzerland named Yvonna Troxler and her boyfriend, a movie electrician. She told us about a minimalist composer in Estonia named Arvo Part. Part is inspired by Erik Satie, virtually the only avant-garde composer I like because I like the wistful sentiments. Lots of aerial bombardment as the fog drifted down the valley. Many orange lilies in the gardens. I had a slice of blue cheese at one point as the fireworks went off in the air they also went off on my palate, while my kids looked up in the sky. I drank part of a beer since there was nothing else to drink and so was "lit." I think I drank almost a quarter of the brewski.

Came home and Geraldo was on Fox with a two-hour special about the Caylee Anthony case. I have tried very hard not to pay attention to this monstrous breach of etiquette on the part of the mother who was apparently strapped for a baby sitter so offed the child. I switched the channel and Bruce Willis was in a show called The Man, in which he was chasing bad guys and blowing them up but one of them with a scar had a tween with braces that the Willis character loved in the car, and was going to kill her. I turned the channel. I can't stand it when kids are at risk. It's not relaxing.

At church we sang My Country Tis of Thee. Land where our fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims' Pride, From Every Mountain Side, Let Freedom Ring! I wept at every line it was so powerful and thought of Bruce Willis saving the country from all kinds of perps.

My note to the director of Cherry 2000 went through and he wrote back to me. He said it was such a hassle to make it that he almost disowned it. But what a masterpiece it is. He's now going to write a novel. I think anything he does will be genius. I am now his fan. It turns out we both went to Evergreen State and when I was there I saw his student film Eat the Sun, about despotic gurus. Cherry 2000 is a fantasy about a man in love with a robot when he could be with Melanie Griffith, but there is also a background plot about despotic New Age nuts.

It just seemed so funny that men would date robots instead of real women. I laughed. What on earth are people doing? Sex with robots, sex with animals, sex with rodents, sex with aye-ayes. Now this Dominick Straus-Kahn if that's his name is set free because it was only a prostitute that he raped. Or maybe he thought he had paid for the interaction. So maybe he will "get off." People are shocked that a prostitute should have rights. But of course they do, and he made her sad, so he should still be tried, I think, and get the chair. Or whatever they do to rapists. Maids in hotels should be roombas, I guess, so guys like Straus-Kahn can do whatever they want with them, as long as they pay to replace any parts they break. Or should robots have rights, too, to go unmolested by the French? I mean, the French have to molest SOMEBODY. It's in their Constitution.