Sleep Song

I’ve always wanted to turn in my bed
And watch someone I love sleep.

I’ve always yearned to see
The seraphic look on my lover’s face.

I’ve often wondered what someone else dreams about
During that big pocket of night.

Do they dream of utopia?
Of flying with the angels?
Or running with the gazelles?

Is it swimming in an azure sea
Or scaling the walls of ecstasy
That holds my partner’s sway
As she whiles the night away?

The sweetest dreams are the best ones
With Cupids and Minotaurs and Gods.
The greatest unconscious smiles
Creased against incredible odds.

Whatever dreams may come
To my lover from above,

When I can’t sleep and I can watch,
I’ve never been so in love.

Things I wonder…

--Concerning the college football Bowl system: Who cares? Seems to me, because most of the good colleges in this country field good football teams, that the business of determining the best one is fruitless, to say nothing of arbitrary. Like good movies, music, or works of art, who’s to say which is better? This idea grew builds on one of Woody Allen’s better ones; why can’t the writers and coaches and broadcasters involved in college football get together and just vote for the ten best, without assigning rankings? Why can’t they just get together and the lot of them agree? Why not? Because the guy who sits in the barcalounger quaffing Budweiser and eating nachos wants emotional satisfaction. He wants certainty and simplicity. Nothing is that simple, I promise you.

--I have a rule of thumb: No matter how bad a movie might be, if Meryl Streep or Diane Keaton are in it, it’s twenty times better and I’ll be at that movie in a big hurry. That being said, when is Streep going to do the Mad Moneys and Mama’s Boys and why doesn’t Keaton do films like Doubt anymore? Seems to me it’s a win-win for them. Maybe not so much the young couple making out in the back row. (Related thought: I will publicly kiss the first American screenwriter who gets Isabelle Huppert a role worthy of her crossing the pond, if I don’t do it first.)

--There are grown men in New York City who have never purchased a newspaper in their lives. Messrs. Zuckerman, Sulzberger and Murdoch had better get their shit together.

--A woman so much wiser than me once wrote, “You get what you settle for.” My advice: Sure, never settle, but never have any expectations, either. You’re less bound to be disappointed, and thus, maybe just a little more attractive.

--What exactly goes on in the skyboxes during football games? Are they really watching the game? How much red wine gets imbibed, and how much rack of lamb gets ingested? Is there a lawyer in the skybox who’s willing to sue to reverse the outcome of the game? (Believe me, we’re almost there.) Are there two people in the washroom having it off? Perhaps all of these things and more are true; never put anything past anyone who has more money than you do.

--I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people outside the Philadelphia area who have the slightest idea how to make a Philly Cheesesteak. French bread and melted cheddar cheese do not a cheesesteak make—for the record, have yours like I do, all the way with Whiz.

More later.