NEW PALTZ, N.Y.-

There are certain things in our culture that we assume everybody likes, probably because most people like them, myself included: the Beatles, Manhattan, George Clooney, draught beer, “Stairway to Heaven.”

There are things that most discriminating people aren’t down with that I am (Tom Cruise, Billy Joel).

Then there is the third category: things that most people like—things that cool people are supposed to like, even—that I simply don’t care for. Here, in no particular order, are some of those things:

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LONDON, ENGLAND-

A small rabbit, a small bullet of pepper brown fur, fires across my line of vision. 

The ground underfoot, a soft springy marshmallow of mud, moist with a recent smattering of light rain, clings in clumps to my boot heel. I unzip my pale green corduroy jacket; it’s warm, early evening. The sun is setting, casting strange and interesting patterns of light in the dimming sky.

The sky is smothered by thin, wispy pink candy floss clouds; closer to the horizon the clouds are thicker, darker, smoggier— like smoke. The sky is red; a deep, menacing red, molten sunlight oozing across the skyline.

The billowing eye of a volcano— spread 180 degrees across the periphery of my vision.

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ATLANTA, GA-

That’s from Carson McCullers. Time is an idiot.

Being a child of divorce from an early age, I have abandonment issues. I know — pitiful. It’s not something on which I dwell; it’s just always at the back of my battered brain. Wha’fuck. Who cares.

I hate goodbyes. Absolutely hate them. I’m no good at them.

When my dad made his weekend visits on Sundays, we’d always do something simple like play miniature golf or go to a boat show at the local arena — something cheap because his advertising business wasn’t doing so well and he couldn’t afford child support, and my mom didn’t want to press the issue. She wasn’t one for confrontation. Sunday evenings were filled with the void of his absence and the memory of our simple day together.
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LOS ANGELES-

David Modigliani is the director of a new documentary called Crawford. A hit on the festival circuit, the film offers a poignant view of the small Texas town that was transformed overnight when George W. Bush bought his 1,500-acre ranch on Prairie Chapel Road back in 1999. Crawford just made its groundbreaking premiere online at Hulu.com, and it has been warmly received by both critics and audiences alike. Noteworthy for its even-handed approach, the film features the perspectives of ordinary citizens who were able to witness history at close range during extraordinary times.

Says the Texas Observer:

Modigliani honors [the] spirit of egalitarianism by focusing his film not on Bush and other grandees, but rather on half-a-dozen unfamiliar figures, men and women who live their lives in Crawford out of range of the scores of TV cameras deployed to cover the big cheeses melting in the Texas sun.

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