Nina Zero

Nina is still fresh on the lam at the hotel. She is getting ready to leave. Before she does, she elaborates on her new look, becomes bolder with her make-up and putting on urban-cool clothes. Nina Zero is now a punk-rock girl, going out on the mean streets of Los Angeles, alone and wanted - dead or alive.

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I examined myself in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. It always seemed to me Los Angeles was about being somebody you weren’t to begin with but maybe could be with a little work and a lucky break or two. People drifted here from all over the world to change who they were. I was no different. I searched the reflection for old signs of myself. Only my eyes looked the same, centered in a new face. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

-- “Shooting Elvis” by Robert Eversz

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Hot

Wow, 101 degrees! That surprises even me. I was thinking 98 for the high. It's only a few minutes after one o'clock; this could be a 105-degree day. I'm glad I got back in the habit of getting the cats inside in the morning, even though that means starvation rations at night. The worst of summer isn't over yet.

Hot

"Animal heat!" That is what I mutter to myself as I stand out there watering the elephant ears, but I cannot think of any animals that can love this heat. That heat is hostile to life. It is too much of a good thing. It threatens to overwhelm us for good, to burn us up, to rid the universe of our bootless cries.

Woody Allen

We have a couple of excerpts from a recent interview with the great man.

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What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

[...]

It's just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don't have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we're just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it's Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There'll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.

-- Woody Allen