September 2005

Yesterday morning I’m driving home down the beach after getting a cup of overpriced joe at the annoying Starbucks downtown. As I make a left hand turn from Las Olas onto A1A, passing the world famous vomitorium (also known as the Elbo Room) I notice a pleasantly dressed woman in her ’30s in a BMW. We keep pace for a while, and I admire her handsome manner, but not so much as to be intrusive into her metal and glass world. Just past Sunrise, she decides to put the pedal down and kick that German piston into high gear. As soon as she does it, I suddenly remember that there is a cop up the road with a radar gun. I saw the sneaky little bugger on the way down the beach about an hour earlier. As she shoots past me I honk the horn and flash my headlights like a mad man. I’m sure at this point she’s thinking: “What’s this freekin’ weirdo doin?” But about 30 seconds later she found out. The cop waves her over to the side of the road for a little yellow present. You never know who you can trust.

The tide is pretty damn high

Originally uploaded by spoot.

The edge of another storm

Originally uploaded by spoot.

A few months ago, a woman made the very remarkable statement to me: “Romance is dead.” I have to wonder if Bogie thought it was, just before he leaned over and gave Betty Bacall a kiss in her dressing room. My TiVo happened to record the very bad (because it has absolutely no resemblance to the book) adaptation of the Hemingway novel, “To Have and Have Not.” It was the film where Bogart met Bacall, 26 years his junior, and her first movie. The magic of the film isn’t in the direction or the script, it’s in the chemistry that the two of them discover, as they are shooting the picture. It’s pretty damn amazing to watch something real happen in a movie. And it’s obvious that something real is indeed happening, and evolving with the movie, from the very first scene when Bogie and Bacall appear together. It’s amazing to see two people click being documented under the auspices of making a movie. And the film was just the “start of a beautiful relationship,” they would go on to spend nearly two decades devoted to each other, despite their age difference, until Bogie’s death. Their story is even enough to get to an old curmudgeon like me. Was you ever bit by a dead bee? If you have, “just whistle.” You know how to whistle don’t you?