So, there’s these Hong Kong cop thriller called Infernal Affairs about a crime boss who sends in a bunch of teenagers to train to become police officers and thus his moles…and a cadet who’s enlisted to become an undercover cop inside that same criminal organization. As things progress, the two of them become aware of each other, though they don’t know each other’s identities. Fun premise, right? Yeah…they adapted it here in the US as The Departed. This is the original. I started it tonight, didn’t quite finish it, and it’s SO GOOD. Different stylistically than how we do things, for sure, so in many ways much of it feels over the top…but I recall a maniacally-grinning Jack Nicholson burying his face in a mountain of blow and lighting a table on fire in The Departed so I think “over the top” is rather a matter of taste.
Highly recommend. It’s on Max via Criterion. And InFernal, with an “F.” I made that mistake. I thought it was a “T.”
A rocky day writing-wise, but I still got work done, and I had my butt in my seat when I was supposed to. Coops saw the doc again today and his eye is getting better. Same deal for another week, and then another re-check. He’s opening it a bit more right now, so I take that to mean it’s feeling a little better. Sweet bub. He’s so ready to be out of the cone. But not yet. Another week. I think it’s only been five days, actually. We took him in on Friday.
Joy is underneath the blankets right now. She cracks me up, man. I can see them moving up and down as she breathes. She’s under Liz’s pink top comforter that she sleeps with, and the one I drag over to my side if I want to take a nap in the afternoon, but not get all the way under the covers.
Otherwise, I was very productive today. I got, genuinely, a lot of stuff done that I’d fallen behind on including organizing the finances—things are tight at the moment—posting the podcast episode that was supposed to go up yesterday, all my Netflix stuff—still pretty light, but I have a project incoming, so that’s good…oh, and got my shakespeare reading done. I was really struck today by the quality of a few speeches. A couple from Queen Margaret. One from York. When Shakespeare is on, even in this early stuff, he is ON. Really, really enjoying the reading. Surprisingly so. I wonder if that means I’m old, now.
Night night.