October 21, 2014

Some fun conversations on Twitter after some folks read my Sunday diary entry.

This is such an interesting observation. I’m sure Durham has its share of racist white people, but I can only assume that there are also a ton of white people who are, to greater or lesser degrees, feeling partially paralyzed by guilt, self-consciousness, reflexive discomfort, whatever. So much easier to just cling to 9th St. and the “DIY District.”

Dear White People [god I can’t wait until that movie opens around here – I hope it plays the Northgate & not the Carolina]: there are black folk who feel the same way. Let’s all try harder to just say hi to each other on the street & whatnot. The little things add up, y’all.

[Side note: Seeing Django Unchained at the Northgate with a predominantly black audience totally fucking ruled.]

Circumstances conspired to keep us from going to a screening of Kiss Me Deadly at Duke tonight. I met Mickey Spillane once, in high school, during the summer when I was at the SC Governor’s School for the Arts. (for all you fact-checkers: It’s a residential program now, but was a summer program at Furman University when I was a kid)

Spillane lived in Murrell’s Inlet, SC, and had for years & years – which is, I assume, the only reason they invited him to the GSA to talk to students. Noir was making a comeback – Black Lizard had just debuted the year before – but it was all Thompson & Goodis, and critical reevaluations of Raymond Chandler. Serious attention hadn’t trickled down to Spillane. Has it ever?

Anyway. Like any good thrift-store haunting freak weirdo high school student in the mid-late 80s, I had a fedora, so of course I took it with me to class & had Mickey Spillane sign it. “Some Mike Hammer,” he wrote. Later in life I guess my value system got skewed way out of whack, because I no longer have the damn hat.

October 21, 2014

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