I do and I do not like that Adele subscribes to The New York Times. I like it because it is nice to have a paper to lounge on the couch with and drink your coffee with. But I don't like it because I will have a second and third cup of coffee with it, will eat my lunch as well as my breakfast with this paper, spending so much time reading articles about umimportant things just because they are there when I could be reading other things, books that I have yet to, or even doing things other than reading. But one major plus is the New York Times Style Magazine which comes out quarterly or so, and which the most recent issue, the one that came with today's paper is the Men's Fashion issue. I love fashion magazines for men and don't really get the chance to read them anymore, now that I can no longer filch copies of L'uomo Vogue from the Sarasota Barnes and Nobles, and I can certainly not pay twenty dollars or so for each issue. And certainly, the NY Times Style Magazine doesn't even come close to the hipness or homoeroticism of that magazine, but since I don't have access to it, it is a very nice substitute. So many glossy pictures of dreamy males for me to stare at on this drizzly day.

There is a small little feature about something or other, but which features the gayest lede ever. It is amazing:
Mention the word descamisado — Spanish for "shirtless" — to most men's-wear designers, and they're likely to conjure up visions of Puerto Rican go-go boys at the Roxy.

I just consumed two cultural products of 1996, both of which seem of a very nineties sensibility. I am beggining to realize that there is such a thing, and it's very fascinating. Seventies American cinema has a very specific feel - dark and gritty shots, socially isolated characters. Eighties cinemas has less of a feel for me, surely thanks to Jaws and Star Wars totally fucking up that glorious moment of American filmmaking. There are, of course, those Brat Pack and John Hughes movies. You can usually peg an eighties movie due to the look and haircuts of the characters and the cheap video like quality of the images, but there doesn't seem to be something that you could easily declare as an eighties sensibility running through most of the movies of that decade. But when I watched Doom Generation a couple of months ago, I was so aware of it as this nineties movie, that nineties movies are also really dark, but in an affected manner, that that darkness, that blase, ironic usage of glossy shots of violence and cruetly is something that seem really 90's. Think Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

This line of films seems so unique to the nineties, this stylized violence that is pretty empty behind the veneer. There were countless of these movies that came out after Tarantino opened the floodgates, so many that I saw and remember really liking, but now am sort of bl

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I just talked to Peter for an hour or so about Austin and New York and what I am and not doing with myself and what I'd like to and so really, I don't even have the energy to see where I was going with any of the above, or to edit it for readability, but nor the will to delete it. I was trying to lead up to a discussion of my thoughts on AM Homes and the state of mind I am in these days where I don't think she or Murakami are good writers and how I used to love both of them at the same time, how her book which I just finished, The End Of Alice, is so nineties, is pornography (for me to say that is a lot), and boring, tries to shock, and whatever, I have been shocked before by these things. It doesn't do it. Shock me with displays of compassion, of unreal beauty, of amazing writing. I also watched Freeway last night, which is of a similar, a nineties sensibility to The End Of Alice, but which I enjoyed a lot, because it's a slick movie, a joy to watch and because Resse Witherspoon is amazing as a crazy killer in this movie. Now, let me eat a bagel and ponder the points brought up in that conversation, about what I am doing with my life.