Duck water and parking brakes, a wonderful weekend.

It was a strange warm weekend here in Southern California. Well my actual weekend was good maybe better than good but it was made surreal at the same time by the strange events I witnessed. To start with I have been watching a lot of old films lately and this last week my theatre marque would have read The Outsiders Dir. Francis Coppola, Phantom of the Opera Lon Chaney 1925, Some crap French film about a Donkey that bored me to the point of tearing my flesh from my own face in shear tedium, and Duo Luo Tian Shi ( Fallen Angels) 1995 Dir. Wong. I read The Outsiders when I was a kid but I never saw the film so it was cool but I wish the DVD I borrowed had and interview with Coppola because I would really like to know something about what he was thinking when he made this masterpiece. The Outsiders may be the best bit of cinema Frances will ever make. The Phantom of the Opera from 1925 I saw many times as a kid so this was just me visiting with old friends from the film world and yeah Lon Chaney was one of my inspirations for getting into theatrical makeup as a kid. Fallen Angels is brilliant, great camera work, music, story, acting superb. Its a romantic dark comedy about an assassin living in Hong Kong created with a unique style that Wong gets right were so many have failed. Chinese with English subtitles but there is very little dialog and the music lyrics are English for the most part so I found the it more than easy to follow the action. Okay so with those films in my mind I went about my weekend and watched two car accidents one just a fender bender, guy runs red light kid stuff but the second was a woman that drove her car into a restaurant taking out the front glass wall of the building. No one was hurt not even the driver but like wow man who knew Fullerton had so many search and rescue vehicles? A real light show with sirens and big athletic men in bright yellow safety gear moving about with axes and shovels, Policemen wresting with a belligerent drunk woman shouting something about discrimination and calling the Police all Pigs while I quietly went about my business dropping some packages off at the post office. Oh the carnage I endured that day to insure my art collectors got their artwork on time.

I decided to take a walk in the park the next day the ducks were swimming on the cool dark water of the pond while small black cardinals sang out from the tops of the cat tails now faded and brown with winter's embrace. The black birds flitted about proudly displaying their bright red and gold shoulder markings calling out for mates. I stood motionless listing to their love calls when I caught a glance of a rather attractive young woman standing on the far side of the pond near the water's edge. She was wearing a low cut flowing dress it was black and white she had long straight brown hair and wore tennis shoes. I had just started to think how her tennis shoes were very practical for an outing at the park when she leaned way back raising both of her arms out in an effort to catch her balance. I thought she might topple into the pond as she stumbled forward and then cried out loud Arrrrrgghhh! A duck flew over and loudly quacked wings flapping as the young woman leaned forward and then rose her head up with an expression of discuss pasted on the very front a comic thought bubble for all to see. She grabbed her full round breasts separating them and then thrust her hand between them crying out A Duck Just SHIT on Me! I've got Duck Shit all over my Tits! I just smiled and said that's good luck in China you know?
Yeah no complaints here I've had another wonderful weekend.

Fred Wilder