Robin, after weeks of a nomadic existence necessitated by her physical assault of her sister, has found a home. She sings the praises of it incessantly. It is a second story apartment with a balcony. According to her, she has a view of a small strip of well-tended lawn and the back end of the apartment building behind her.
    There is only one problem: it is haunted.
    Well, perhaps not haunted. She admits that it is fully possible that her landlord, for reasons that are unclear to her, is simply trying to get her to think the place is haunted. Lack of any motive that would explain why the landlord, by all other accounts a kindly old Greek fellow who lives with his family on the ground floor, would take her in just to try to chase her out again seems to undermine this theory. But Robin, rigorously faithful to the cause of reason and logic, refuses to toss out this possibility simply because it seems batshit insane. Without evidence that it is batshit insane, the theory stays on the table.

    Speaking of evidence, just what proof does Robin have that her house is haunted?
    I'm glad you asked, dear diary reader. Prepare you self for a chilling and macabre tale of an innocent, if perhaps slightly retarded young woman, who confronts otherworldly mysteries beyond her comprehension. But, even if she learns how to work the dimmer switch, will she be able to withstand the . . . THE GHOST THAT MOVED SOMETHING IN THE KITCHEN

    Before we begin this damned tale of supernatural horror, I must ask that all readers with pre-existing heart conditions skip over this section, jumping ahead to the next boldfaced section title.

    Our bloodcurdling tale begins on a night like any other. On her train commute, as she often does, Robin immersed herself in her reading: "Oh, Garfield! Does you appetite for lasagna know no bounds?" Then, after the train ride and a short car trip, she returned to her empty home.
    She kicked off her shoes and tried to watch television, but then she remembered that the media is run by liberals and decided, instead, that she would take the time to rearrange her extensive collection of eye shadow pencils, again. After nearly three and a half hours of this, she was struck with a sudden urge to get a container of Ben and Jerry's and eat it while calling her friends and asking why she's so lonely. Unfortunately, those calls were never made.
    Duh-duh-duh da-da-duh.
    When she reached the kitchen she was overwhelmed by the horror of what she saw. According to Robin, she had, several evenings ago, she was pretty sure she left her spatula off of its normal storage hook.
    But, on this foul and accursed night, some loathsome force from beyond the reckoning of Earthly science, some foul and eldritch unseen fiend, some unspeakable and thesaurus-shattering entity from parts unknown had hung the spatula up!
    The rest of the kitchen was fine.

    Pretty freaky, hunh? She admits that supernatural forces might not be at work. She's willing to entertain the notion that somebody broke into her apartment and move the spatula-that-she's-almost-certain-she-didn't-hang-up in an effort to scare her.

    Um, that's it.

    Let's move on.

Movie

    Watched The Illusionist. This is a real film, with real stars, and there is all likelihood somebody who makes living telling you what you should see has seen it. I strongly recommend reading their review and, if it sounds good, go see it.
    Instead of talking about the flicker, I'm going to talk about my row mates.

    Now I checked this flick out at the cinema at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (I use the pompous "cinema" to distinguish it from the theater, which the BAM features as well – in the very same building, even). Usually the BAM cinemas are empty. I think, 'cause BAM aggressively advertises their revivals and art house offerings, many folks don't know that they also offer popular first run films.
    Saturday, however, the cinema was fairly busy. Perhaps folks are getting wise. Perhaps the weather, brutally windy wet misery courtesy of the northern fingers of Ernie the Storm, forced people indoors even at the risk of having to watch art.
    In the cinema, an elderly couple sat next to me. This was not, in and of itself, a sign of trouble. What did concern me was the fact that the couple's son, who had come with his wife, sat them next to me and then, despite there still being several places to sit, split to go sit elsewhere. When your row mates are basically ditched next to you, you can assume they are trouble.
    In this case, the wife kept up a running commentary of obvious. Whenever a given character would appear, she would announce them to her husband. "That's the magician," she would say. All activities were explained in simple terms – "She's riding a horse" – and all sets were identified – "They are back at the castle." Now my mother, with whom I hate watching movies, likes to add a commentary to movies where she "predicts" what will happen next. She'll announce who she thinks the murderer is or declare when she sees a twist coming. My chatty row mate, however, was not so ambitious. She simply stated what was happening: "They're kissing" and not "Well, that's going to be trouble."
    The husband said nothing the whole time they were there.

    I couldn't help but wonder about her silent husband. Was he simply so used to the endless litany of the obvious that he no longer bothered to react? Or, weirder, did he actually need this commentary? Was he thinking, "Who the hell is this guy? Oh, he's the magician again. Thanks honey. Oh, great. Now what the hell is she doing? Horse riding? Oh, right. That is a horse, and she's on it. Good eye, dear."

Coney Island

    Sunday, May and I went to Coney Island to visit the aquarium.

    In the shark exhibit, I noticed that the nurse sharks always cruised by the viewing area of the tanks at eye level of the small children. The kids and the sharks were eye to eye. Looking at the rows of hook-like teeth and the unblinking, tiny, doll-like eyes of the sharks, it was impossible not to project some perpetually thwarted, and therefore funny rather than sinister, malice on to the sharks. Like they breezed by, scanning all the tasty children they would never have.
    "Did you see that fat kid?"
    "Yeah."
    "He was so . . ."
    "I know. I know. Why do we torture ourselves? We'll never get one. They never feed us one."
    "But a shark can dream."
    "I'm sick of it."
    Pause.
    "So, want to go cruise by the viewing area and see if any tasty looking small mammals are there?"
    "Sure. What else am I going to do?"

    May took her first trip on the Cyclone. She was silent as a church mouse the whole ride, but she claimed to love it.

Presidents

    Months and months ago, there was a request for the list of presidential bios I read as part of my on going presidential bio project. I'm sorry I've been so late in delivering said list. Books that were notably pleasant to read (in this case, it means the book itself was good, the president himself might have been a loser) are marked with a "*". Books that were a chore to read are marked with a "#".

NB: Lincoln and TR are skipped as I'd read several bios of each prior to the project.

And the list goes:
Flexner, "George Washington: the Indispensable Man"
McCullough, "John Adams"
Ellis, "American Sphinx: the Character of Thomas Jefferson" #
Rutland, "James Madison: the Founding Father"
Ammon, "James Monroe: the Quest for National Identity" *
Parsons, "John Quincy Adams"
Berstein, "The Passions of Andrew Jackson" #
Wilson, "The Presidency of Martin Van Buren"
Cleaves, "Old Tippecanoe"
Chitwood, "John Tyler: Champion of the Old South"
Seigenthaler, "James K. Polk"
Baur, "Zachary Taylor"
Rayback, "Millard Fillmore"
Gava, "The Presidency of Franklin Pierce"
Smith, "The Presidency of James Buchanan"
Trefousse, "Andrew Johnson" *
Bunting, "Ulysses S. Grant"
Trefousse, "Rutherford B. Hayes"
Peskin, "Garfield" *
Karabell, "Chester Alan Arthur"
Brodsley, "Grover Cleveland"
Calhoun, "Benjamin Harrison"
Phillips, "William McKinley"
Coletta, "The Presidency of William Howard Taft"
Brands, "Woodrow Wilson"
Dean, "Warren G. Harding"
Sobel, "Coolidge"
Smith, "An Uncommon Man: the Triumph of Herbert Hoover" *
Freidel, "Franklin D. Roosevelt"
McCullough, "Truman"