I always knew I'd get it in Toontown

derspatchel came in while I was washing dishes and said he had sad news. I asked who'd died. The answer was Bob Hoskins.

The first movie I saw in theaters was *batteries not included (1987). I talk about it when I talk about Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The first movie I saw in theaters that I remember as the experience of seeing a movie in theaters—the Capitol Theatre in Arlington, right before it was multiplexed—was Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Which I have striven to see in theaters at every possible opportunity ever since. Hoskins' Eddie Valiant is a stone cold sad sack with a heart of vaudeville and it took me years to realize his native accent wasn't world-weary L.A. It's not that I never saw him as anyone else. He was a character actor; he had an inimitable face and I can see it on half a dozen different people if I take a look through YouTube. (I wish I'd seen him as Bosola to Helen Mirren's Duchess of Malfi. They must have been amazing.) He was himself and actors are not their characters, especially not characters who drink away their afternoons in a gritty, loopy 1947 just a doodle or two sideways from our own. But I can't help feeling that the world is now bereft of a man who cleared Goofy of espionage charges and kicked a cartoon weasel in the balls, and I am sorry.

P.S. I didn't have a chance to put up this post before we went out for dinner at Magoun's, meaning my endorphin levels are now significantly higher than they might otherwise have been. Curry goat was my first really substantial food since Saturday. I'm really quite happy about it.

P.P.S. phi just showed up with a copy of Khodasevich's Selected Poems for me! I couldn't make the Armory reading on Monday; I'd double-scheduled myself. I can't wait to read them. I have awesome friends. The book's bilingual.