Armand wasn't home when I called before noon (PST) on Sunday so I left a message and decided to run a Google/search to see if I could 'drum up some charges'. Well it's a good thing Google was warmed up and ready to go when he called me back.
When I have a thirty minute phone conversation with Armand, I write notes on whatever pieces of paper I might have handy. I draw arrows to associate one train of thought to another train that left the station ten minutes before, and in between it all I google-search for something that Armand claims is taking a senior moment for him to recall.
I just saw Shooter. Is Wahlberg spelled with an "e"?
Yes. (I knew that one).
Now I missed the credits and I'm not sure who the bad guy was in the movie. I think it was...
Danny Glover! (Thanks, Google).
It was one wonderful movie, of it's kind. I think I counted over 300 dead bodies! Do you ever watch those kinds of movies?
I try not to.
I gave a talk some 3 years ago about the fact that there's more sex and violence in books and movies today. I'd like to revise it and mention this movie so I want to spell Wahlberg correctly and present it again...hell, people hear all kinds of theories, they might as well listen to me!
I asked Armand how he fared this past Friday at the Western Pennsylvania Symposium on World Literatures at Duquesne University.
Well, I think I did okay. There were some really polished speakers there and I was the only one who didn't have a script. It gets scary when you're my age. You get these senior moments and you really don't want it to happen when you're about to discuss something like plagiarism.
We were then off on a few minute ride back in time to the origins of the word, plagiarism (kidnapper). Then zoomed back into the present:
It's kind of fun to just blurt out what you have to say, it can be more dramatic. Except that this year, just as I was leaving (the symposium), they announced that they want to publish all of our talks! Now I have to write down what I said!!! I'm so damned busy I can't even turn around.
But then I loaf a lot too. I spent three and a half hours yesterday reading a spy book and went to see The Last King of Scotland.
At that point we travelled off to Africa, careened back to the U.S. to discuss the use of the word primitive in art, Grandma Moses, then off to Paris to find comparable artists, back to plays, Shakespeare and Cervantes, Tom Stoppard and his play, Rosenrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and the thirty odd papers that Armand and his colleagues must go through tomorrow in order to dispense an award.
While I was still trying to regain my balance, Armand was done.
Bye!
After we hung up, the memory of our conversation was like a Google Earth ride! We scanned the globe and went back and forth in time. Armand is faster than a speeding Google, senior moments and all.