Here's my new child-trailer-hauling folding commuter bicycle on last night's derailleur-adjustment run over the George Washington bridge (and a little ways up Route 9W):



The Xootr Swift replaces my Matrix, which has been awaiting YET ANOTHER WARRANTY FRAME REPLACEMENT for the last FIVE WEEKS, as Dahon continues to sloooowly ship wrong parts to the shop, each by cross-country UPS Ground Molasses, none of them the actual right frame. Dahon sure knows customer service. Much as an old prison inmate knows a new one.

I've never customized a bike as much as I've customized the Swift, and it's not quite done yet. I won't bore you. If you're really interested, go here.

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I read LUSH LIFE and saw Richard Price compared to Honoré de Balzac, so I bought Balzac. I read some Balzac and googled him.

...frequent bouts of writing feverishly for 15 hours at a stretch (his death has been attributed to overwork and excessive coffee consumption)
—Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Here's a Kurosawa interview:

Making Films for All the People
(Links to full article.)

Cineaste: Once you said that the most important thing for young people aspiring to become directors was to read world classics. Do you still believe so?

Kurosawa: Definitely. To read everything is almost impossible, so you must find writers that you like. Then, to find favorite works of these writers, and read them again and again. Therefore, your understanding of the characters in these works is deepened. One’s level of understanding after reading a work once, and after reading it ten times, is naturally different. It is important for actors as well to understand the characters they are going to play.

…The best thing is to write screenplays. This is basic to filmmaking, because an excellent screenplay can become an excellent film even in the hands of a third-rate director; a bad screenplay, however, could never become an excellent film even if made by a first-rate director. Therefore, you have to realize the importance of screenplays. Also, when you want to study filmmaking, using film stock and constructing sets cost a lot of money and usually you are not given such opportunities. To write a screenplay, however, you need only paper and pencils. Especially in Japan, television needs many good screenplays, and in films, they are desperately looking for good ones. If you write a good screenplay, it means immediate money. I have always told young people to write screenplays, but they don’t.

…Balzac once said that the most important thing for novelists is to put up with the boring labor of writing line after line of the letters of the alphabet. These young people are not patient enough.… Furthermore, they don’t want to make the effort even to read novels. Though they believe themselves talented, they have nothing to show for it.

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And last, from the pizza joint at Broadway and 178th:



Sweetest little New Yorker in all the borough.