Soft-boiled eggs, The Future and Quentin Tarantino

Another lifetime ago, I lived in Hollywood, CA - in a spacious one bedroom apartment around the corner from Mann's Chinese Theatre.  


My friend PBD and I would eat at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe near the Laemmle's Sunset Five movie theater like every other week and inexplicably for some reason, three times in a row at some point in the evening Quentin Tarantino would be seated at the table next to us.  It was three years after the movie "Pulp Fiction" came out and Tarantino was still in his hey day.  It became a joke to PBD and I that it appeared that Quentin Tarantino was stalking us.  I didn't ask the Universe why it chose to bring QT into our orbit three times in a row.


I would go to the Sunset Five to see indie movies.  I still miss living in a city where you could see so many independent movies at any given time.  I don't think I truly appreciated independent movies until I lived in Hollywood and everyone around me seemed to be "aspiring" - carrying scripts or trailers for movies they had made in their backpacks.  Independent movies no longer seemed like movies anymore, they seemed like individual manifestations of someone's dream, hard work and tears.  Raw packets of self, begging to be noticed and acknowledged.  It wasn't entertainment anymore.  It was personal.  And everyone should have their dreams supported and embraced.  Even if it's only for one moment in time.  So I would go to see independent films and even if they were terrible, I still felt good that I had put my money toward someone's dream versus a blockbuster alien robots movie.


I never saw Quentin Tarantino again.  Perhaps he grew tired of Wolfgang Puck's Austrian/California food selections.  Perhaps after seeing PBD and I at the table next to him time and time again, he thought we were stalking him.  Even though we were always there before him.   (Get over yourself QT, we were here first  Quit stalking us!)  Or perhaps QT was tired of seeing PBD and I while he ate his meals.  We were certainly not as interesting as watching Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta.  I didn't put a lot of thought into it at the time when QT disappeared from my life as quickly as he came into it.  Apparently when I was young, it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility to live in a world where the Universe thrust Quentin Tarantino upon you numerous times.  Today, it seems like the odds of such an event occurring three times in a row were even more stacked than winning the Powerball lottery.


In retrospect, I feel in some way that it was a missed opportunity.  That I should have stood up, walked over and announced myself to QT in some way.  Tell him "nice work on jump-starting John Travolta's career again."  Or say "Hey, do you need an assistant?  I'm great at fetching Starbucks and have a dark, brooding wit."  Perhaps if I had taken a risk to make a fool of myself, I might be listed in the credits of "Kill Bill Vol. 1" today as Assistant to the Director or Junior Starbucks Fetcher.  I feel as if the Universe had lobbed me an easy homer and I just watched it sail by my bat instead.  Intriguing to think what could have been.


It's cold in Florida.  Growing up in the arctic North, I understand that is an incredibly "douche bag" thing to say I am cold when it is only 61 degrees.  When I was young, I walked to school when there was a negative 70 degree windchill for heaven's sake!  So 61 degrees is a raging heatwave compared to those days.  But nevertheless, I am cold.  While my heart still beats like a Midwesterner, my blood has inexplicably rebelled and embraced the South.


I am bundled up in layers and actually wearing slippers.  I don't think I have worn slippers in Florida the entire time I have lived here.  But here I am, staring at Sock Monkey slippers on my feet.  I have no recollection of acquiring said Sock Monkey slippers.  They just seemed to appear one day unannounced with any fanfare or explanation.  And who am I to question the mysterious arrival of Sock Monkey slippers?  Again the Universe seems to be at the helm.


I have been on a quest to cook the perfect soft-boiled egg.  The internet recommends cooking for four minutes.  But since I retrieve my eggs directly from the arctic refrigerator, I have found that about 5 minutes and 15 seconds is the time needed to cook a decent soft-boiled egg.  But even then sometimes its way too watery and I find myself grossed out at the sight of the gloopy albumen.  It's a crap shoot.  You can't tell from the outside of an egg, what you're going to find inside.  You crack open the egg and hope for the best.


So here I am.  Bundled up in layers, wearing slippers of unknown origin, trying to find perfection in a soft-boiled egg.  I have Miranda July's independent movie "The Future" on.  When I first saw the trailer and saw that one of the characters in the film was a dying, talking stray cat; I was both intrigued and wary.  Not wary because of talking cats - wary because of dying, talking cats.  Especially when the cat was dying of what killed my first cat.  A movie with a dying stray cat doesn't have "Feel good movie of the summer" written all over it.  But Miranda July has always intrigued me as a filmmaker and so here I am eating soft-boiled eggs, hoping that "The Future" has a positive ending and doesn't leave me emotionally shattered.  Although I think by definition, indie films aren't supposed to have happy endings.  It might be against the rules.


There is a scene in "The Future" that reminds me of Jack Kerouac's MacDougal Street Blues:  "One moment less than this is future nothingness already."


I'm not going to wait for the end of the movie "The Future" before I finish this blog post.  I'm just going to hope for the best on this particular egg representing someone's dream.


And in the end, isn't that all we can ever do?