1. "God is great, you know. God is great. That's I been telling them."
"Yeah, every day, that's what they say. God is great."
"Uh-huh, God is great, every day."
-The entirety of the words heard just now during a one-floor ride on the freight elevator here at 90 Park Ave, exchanged between the elevator operator and a postal employee doing his morning rounds.
You just can't get away from it.

2. This morning on the elevator TV the news page displayed three bullet-point items. First one: "Sen Kennedy still in hospital recovering from seizure." Second one: "China plans three minutes of mourning today." The third one was of course superfluous.

3. Sara wanted me to watch "Angels in America" with her and so I did. It's six hours long, so my doing so does represent some kind of a commitment (though I did once read an 1100-page book at Jocelyn's behest, so this sort emasculation is not without precedent).
Hopefully this is not a sign of ignorance, but I was a little distracted by how gay it was early on. As it progressed, it was perfectly natural, but at the beginning it just seemed like too much. Of course I didn't know that homosexuality was the central theme, so it only made sense that nearly every character was either openly or closeted gay. Nonetheless, it took an hour or more to get used to it (as I am a fan of realism in movies).
It's a well-done movie (can you call it a film if it's made specifically for TV, in this case HBO?) based on a play that forced me to actively wonder how it might have been staged and whether or not the transformation to screen was effective. In the end I decided yes it was good but not great in this regard. The aspect that was spectacular was the acting, but then I guess it's to be expected when Al Pacino and Meryl Streep play large roles. The former is perfect for his part as he gets to do his Pacino intensity thing but he was also effectively kept in check unlike many of his more recent performances where he's just a silly representation of a charater as opposed to simply a character. I particularly enjoyed his speech patterns and general delivery (I think I might be becoming a speech/delivery fetishist regarding movies; this is also one of the main reasons I loved my boy Javier Bardem so much). Streep is also pretty much classic Streep: calm and not always the center of attention but pretty much always the best person on screen and the reason every scene she's in works so well. In this as in many of her roles, she's somewhat underappreciated unless you're looking for her.
The real reason the acting was so amazing though was not the top two names but all the rest. Everyone does very well. It's such a comprehensive display of good acting that I'm forced to give the director and the writer some credit for it. In fact, the only actor I didn't like a lot was Mary-Louis Parker, whom I think a lot of people liked. Maybe the guy who played her husband was just above-average as well, but that would be nit-picking.
Jeffrey Wright in his two roles was awesome. He played a gay queen in the most substantive one and was never ever overplaying it: that is impressive. That role was maybe the most important one in the whole movie and he was amazing. I've got to save some specific praise for a guy I'd never seen before named Justin Kirk who played what I think is the one main central character, if one exists in this movie. First thing I will say is this: I guess it's only been less than five years since this debuted, but I'm somewhat amazed that I haven't heard or seen much else from him in the interim. He played probably the most flamboyant character but like Wright he did it with a measured brilliance. As the movie progressed, I found myself wanting more and more scenes with his character, which I think is saying something considering both the talent he was surrounded by and the sheer length of the movie. I could be wrong, cause this is the only role I've ever seen him do, but if I were making a movie, no matter the subject, I think I'd find a way to get him in it, and that's about the best thing you can say for an actor.

4. In talking to her about the movie, of course encompassing the topic of homosexuality, Sara expressed to me her strong distaste for the way people use derogatory terms--even in jest and privately amongst a few friends--such as fag or retard or the like. Now, this is a definite talking point because the way I interact with people quite often is to say or do things that might knock the person off-balance a bit or make him feel uncomfortable. This can sometimes be achieved through a well-placed taboo word. I never do this in company that would be offended by it, and I'm quite sure (you can't ever be completely sure in our culture) that I don't actually harbor any predjudices or hatreds for minority groups, so I've never felt regretful about using these terms in such a way. Also, I'm actively aware of the power and the ugliness of these words (that's why I've used them for their full effect), so I feel a little more qualified than some ignorant cuss to use them every so often. However, as Sara effectively pointed out, even if somehow used respectfully or comically or privately, a word like fag is still a largely inappropriate word. It only has its power because it's derogatory and necessarily tied to it's insensitive genesis, so even using it as a jarring point in an attempted humorous way still must call to mind the ugly nature of the word, therefore of course reinforcing and perpetuating the ugliness. This is a big thing to realize.
But the biggest argument against my using these words is that, no matter how sensitive and sympathetic I may be to actual stigmatized groups of people, and no matter how certain I am that my usage of filthy words isn't directly injurious to anyone, it's really not up to me to decide whether a word is offensive or not. Since I'm not a homosexual and have never been subjected to the negative emotional impact of the word faggot, I am in no position to decide when it's ok to say it and when it's not. I thought about this for a while and concluded that it's really just that simple. And I can't now really find a way to justify using words like that, so I've resolved to stop doing it. But since it's almost second-nature to use them, albeit sparingly, I've asked Sara to mention it to me when I do slip up. So perhaps you will start to notice this in my speaking going forward. It will not be an accident. I'm curious to see how it goes.