Incredibly Stupid Bliss

I dropped a bottle of pills a couple weeks ago. Those pink allergy ones. They scattered all over the floor like an exploding star, and I spent what seemed like an eternity picking them up, and I swear to God I got all of them. I even pulled the refrigerator out from the wall, got behind it, etc.  But then today I was sweeping the kitchen and there a couple of them were, in the pile I was getting ready to sweep into the dustpan: two little stupid pink reminders of that dumb experience. I don't know. I keep attaching anything I'm thinking about to Tony Dotson dying, but there you are. A comic slapstick incident (dropped Benadryl bottle) becomes a cosmic experience (two weeks later two small reminders, and then probably in a month another pink reminder and so on.) It's the Chinese water torture method of memory, but also a stupid joke. Which reminds me of Tony's paintings, Tony's personality: This one always got me. Taking something serious as all get out and landing t...

  Some movies have a potency built inside them that can't be unpacked with words or even thoughts. They just have it somehow, and it's not plot or cinematography or even performance that sends a film into this territory: it's a tone inherent in the subject matter maybe, and how the actors and everyone else take that subject matter on and hold it so dearly in their hearts and brains that the movie they make together becomes bigger than what they even thought they could accomplish. Like kindred souls combining into a mutual dream caused by honoring what they love. The Last Showgirl is one of those. The plot, about the last days of a showgirl's professional life on the Vegas strip, kind of feels a little cliche, reminiscent of other loser movies like The Wrestler or The Whale , but Pamela Anderson's face and demeanor and glow (as she portrays Shelly, the main character) make you take all that back. In fact, her face is the plot of The Last Showgirl :  wan, wrinkled, s...