Coincidence? Hardly.

So Ricky Gervais and The Office made quite a splash at the Golden Globes tonight. I'm so pleased. I don't take any great interest in these award programs. It's more of a secret rooting thing I do. I hadn't even planned to watch them, but you live in this town and the award shows find you. That and a few glasses of wine and you barely notice your life draining away.

Random comments: Lisa Ling is an embarrassment. Nicole Kidman looked insane, as usual. Peter Jackson reminds me of Paddy from The Blue Lagoon. Better keep him away from the sea when he's drinking. Bill Murray is a class act and perhaps my favorite person in Hollywood. Jim Breuer is fat. He was not on the Golden Globes. I've just got Half Baked on the t.v. right now and I'm noticing his dumpy midsection.

Sweet dreams, Hollywood hopefuls. You've got another year to make someone like me care enough to criticize you.

Now, The English Patient has begun, and I can head for sleep with its beautiful score playing in my head, carrying me back to my big oval bathtub in San Diego, where I used to light candles that smelled of cantaloupe and wait for my favorite tracks to play. It was a big lonely house. I cloistered myself in my big bedroom, mostly. And I wrote poems with the room nearly dark and only a small lamp going. And if I slept in too late, the birds would wake me, and I would curse them.

Is it ever of any value to remember the places to which you can never return?

I have nothing at all that is unkind to say about Juliette Binoche.

These are from today and thereabouts.