Conversation Hearts

Alec Baldwin is my perennial sweetheart. I think he's tip-top. If you saw him on Letterman tonight, surely you will agree. If you don't agree, it's because you have a chip on your shoulder; you are broken and can't be fixed. I guess I can see how some people might not like him. And I can also accept that it's POSSIBLE that he's not actually so winning and wonderful in real life, but it's also possible that we live in a universe that is actually a mere figment created by the crazed fantasies of an atrophying boy in a coma. Lots of things are possible. Alec Baldwin has been a longstanding item on my list of men I would like to kidnap and keep tied up in a basement. My affection has a way of appearing to go dark at the edges, but I assure you that I have no malicious aspirations towards the many men I admire and clamber after. It's just more amusing than saying that I keep a scrapbook of their clippings. Anyway, I like him very much on many levels. And sometimes I wish he would be president.

So, I bought this year's "Love" stamps at the post office a few weeks ago. And they're little conversation hearts and they say, "I love you." And I wonder if this is more direct than the stamps that have previously just had the word "Love" on them with some accompanying lovey-dovey graphic. I actually think twice before affixing such a stamp to an envelope. Wondering if the person who receives my resume or my gas bill payment might get the wrong idea. Wondering if my application or my check might get placed in a "special" stack. I think it takes a unique kind of nothing to do to have time for so much neurotic obsession.

There are few people who look more uncomfortable in front of the camera than Sofia Coppola. I have great respect for her when she is behind the camera, though. I'm not expecting her to win an Oscar this year, but it's nice to know that she could.

It occurs to me that the confusion over the password at the walls of Moria was really more a problem of punctuation than of anything else. "Speak, friend, and enter." "Speak 'friend' and enter." What a difference a comma makes. Or a quotation mark, for that matter.