Grey cool rainy day here... Empty streets slick with rain, winds in from the west. I left my apartment early this morning and went off to sit in chill air-conditioned dark and see "District 9". Not a bad film, really. Nothing exceptional, though. And I read lots and lots of sci-fi in my teens, so the plot was fairly standard. Liked the South African accents, though. Liked that the alien spaceship was hovering over Johannesburg rather than New York or L.A. I'd like to see the short film "District 9" was taken from, I think. Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo said that she might go see "District 9" just to escape the heat in her Montreal apartment. Not a bad idea. It's good escapist fare for a weekend. (And Montreal and Toronto will have essentially the same weather as here for the next few days--- Deepest South heat and humidity in Canada is a scary thought...)

Went over to the coffeeshop by the university gates after the film and read Joan Didion's essays. Listened to Vector Lovers on the Small Psyduck iPod. I've always been in love with the voice in her novels and essays. Cold, distanced, pitch-perfect. Everything Barbara Grizzutti Harrison adduced as an attack on Didion's style and work is pretty much something that attracts me to Didion. Let's make a note of that. I re-read Didion's "Goodbye to All That" and "On the Morning After the Sixties" and "On Keeping a Notebook" and drank skim chai latte and watched the rain fall on the courtyard tables. Three of my favourite essays.

Walked across to the Zeppelin Pilots' Club later and drank a couple of crisp Asian beers with a club sandwich. Tiger beers chilled to perfection, no cheese or tomato with the sandwich. No Saigon beer in the cooler, though: alas.

The beautiful green-eyed Laura-Ashlee texted me while I was there. She'd gone to a vinyl collectors' show in Birmingham today. Bought a couple of Dylan LPs--- she's a major fan of early Dylan. And she bought Romeo Void on vinyl--- I'm seriously thrilled to discover that Laura likes Romeo Void. "Never Say Never" was one of the major dancefloor songs of my Lost Youth. And of course "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)" is another favourite. (Does my opera girl like "White Sweater", too?)

Shelflife Records... I do hope Laura-Ashlee will go to their website and look for vinyl of both Souvenir and Thieves Like Us.

Birmingham... I do want to go to Renaissance Records with Laura. There will be nights where we're on hardwood floors with vinyl spread out around us, drinking single-malt and smoking Gauloises while "Gates of Eden" plays.

Joan Didion's style... There are only a couple of authors whose style has immediately captivated me. I like what Hemingway could do at his best in short stories. I love Didion's ability to evoke hot winds and sunlit emptiness and the afflictions of memory. I loved Cecilia Holland's ability to write spare, austere historical novels. Okay--- no one remembers Holland. She burnt out somewhere at the end of the 1970s. I've never been able to finish anything she wrote after "City of God" (1979). But her early novels--- "Kings in Winter", "Until the Sun Falls", "Rakossy", "The Earl" ---had a style and voice that I loved.

Came home from the Zeppelin Pilots' Club to talk to Laura. We have to start preliminary planning for NYC this autumn. A long weekend on the Skinny Island with my leggy green-eyed girl. Playing Margot and Richie in the AMNH. An afternoon at the Met. Making out on the Nr. 1 train uptown. Dinner at Topaz or Sevilla. We'll own the city, my Perfect Co-Ed Victim and I. Just as we'll own Vienna or Paris or Milan or Krakow.

The "Mad Men" Season 3 premiere is tonight. I'll be watching it here with an icy gin-and-tonic or two to get me into Don Draper's world. And of course I'll go over the episode with Laura-Ashlee later. However not? She's my late night Voice on the aether, my partner to cities and dreamlands.