Surprise Kiss On Demand

Watched way too much tv yesterday. It’s all this on-demand magic I’m finding on my in-law’s cable. Since they subscribe to HBO I can dip into big taster displays of the on-demand content the network makes available for those occasional afternoons Abby and I come to the Heritage (I love that name, so regal and old world refined) and she takes 2 hour naps on my lap. Most of the movies HBO offers aren’t ones I’d want to spend any more time with let alone watch a first time (She-Devil, anyone?) though I did watch Vacation again a couple weeks ago and found myself almost waking the peanut up numerous times with ripples of suppressed laughter. (When Clark falls asleep on the road…the camera pans from the Griswald kids asleep in the backseat to mom snoozing in the passenger and then pauses just ever so slightly before panning over to Clark with this head thrown back over the seat happily snoring away. This is sitcom goofy, but Ramis was slaying with this stuff back in the late 70's and early 80's.) And watching Rear Window again early last month came with the revelation of Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart’s first kiss, one which happens unexpectedly--in Hitchcock’s celebrated interviews with Francois Truffaut he called it a “surprise kiss.” The first time we see Kelly’s face it practically blooms onto the screen while moving languorously in slow motion downward to Stewarts awaiting lips. She’s like some enchanted current drifting onto the screen and offering the surprise of something unexpectedly sensual.

Yesterday I watched the first 6 episodes of HBO’s Entourage and really enjoyed it. It’s got a sweet harmless center surrounded by a white noise of fatuous dick jokes, rabid pussy philosophizing and copious smoking of the herb. Jeremy Piven’s rapacious agent, Ari, is the scene stealer so far, but I also have a soft spot for Kevin Dillon’s sweetly dumb and desperate Johnny “Drama.”