Dear Diary,

It's Madeleine Kahn day here at 440, dunno why. Except that it started, as everything does, with Blazing Saddles (mumble "I'm tired" once and it rings in your head). She made really interesting musical choices, Ms. Kahn, had a cool repertoire I admire a lot. I ended up YouTubeing through really neat stuff: Porter, Sondheim, "Ain't Got a Home," which we all try to shriek along with but she actually does, way up high and down low too. Then I started Sondheiming, got all verklempt, found the Dench Clowns, got all Stritchy...had to cut myself off. Gotta getta gimmick.

Work continues on the Calatrava Spire scant blocks from my home. I'm not sure which nearby construction project it is that does this--the spire or what--but these days everything in my apartment vibrates gently with a slight, but constant percussive hum. All the time, even through the weekend. That's the minimum noise input from all that construction (obviously sometimes much worse). Sometimes the hum gets so loud that I think my VCR is rewinding or a pot's over-boiling and the lid's rattling. It's annoying, it's loud, and when I connect the irritation/sound in my mind to the Spire I imagine they are drilling into the center of the earth to anchor it, the way people in the 70s gouged into their ceilings to wrap the chains for Pier 1 hanging basket chairs around a joist or beam. They will swing the cable for this building around the steel form center of the papier mache earth and pull it back tight. Don't worry, it won't fall, hop on in.

This weekend I found myself wondering how we've been able to survive without Frank Sinatra, without his world-weary wisdom, his phrasing. This struck me at about 3:25 a.m, which is exactly when Frank thoughts start, either with a little psychic nudge from "In the Wee Small Hours" or "One for My Baby" if it's actually closer to 2:45 (amazing how often it is). I miss Frank! Astonishing to me that some people won't have been alive when he was.

I don't really have eyebrows, much. I never think about them really either, except I realized recently I could do something about this if I wanted to. I don't think I have enough Femme, but perhaps I just lack courage (one and the same?). I mean, perhaps I should be painting them on in a big calligraphic arch. Conventional advice would be to cautiously fill them in, but I think that's sort of silly. Seems like you should either really have eyebrows or not. Although then it also seems like it'd be hard to stop, once you start, and you'd end up troweling them on late-era Joan Crawford style every morning before you go buy milk, bigger and bigger.

I completely and totally missed the Heppner/Voigt Tristan und Isolde, good golly that must have been amazing. Been woefully inattentive to the season this season.

Knocked Up is missing most everything everyone says it is, but I watched it 2-1/2 times this weekend for sheer purpose of ogling Seth Rogen and his rumbly bass voice. Query: Where do chick lit novels/films and Nick Hornby novels/Judd Apatow films go on a date? Where do--do these--two things meet?

Love from American's favorite gay male son --
Lili v. S.

p.s.

She's tired! (she's tired!)
sick and tired of love (give her a break!)
she's had her fill of love (she's not a snake!)
from below and above (can't you see she's sick!)
...Tired! (she's bushed!)
tired of being admired (let her alone!)
tired of love uninspired (get off the phone!)
she's tired! (don't you know she's pooped!)

p.p.s.

And here's to the girls who just watch--
aren't they the best?
When they get depressed,
it's a bottle of Scotch,
plus a little jest.

p.p.p.s.

Won't you make the music easy and sad?