Considerations...: Martedi (that's Tuesday in Italian, folks)

Word of the day : supernumerary
: exceeding the usual, stated, or prescribed number
: exceeding what is necessary, required, or desired

Good Tuesday to you, readers! It's starting to cool off a bit down here in Georgia - mid-80s - which is good. Julia and I are just waiting to hear back from job/conference opportunities. Gabriel was testy over the weekend, but he seems to have gotten over it.

The family is off to Milledgeville, Georgia in a few days for a workshop/mandatory meeting for Julia, the first of three she'll have to attend in regards to next summer's teaching-abroad post. Gabriel and I will find stuff to do while she's in her meeting. I had no idea Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia from 1807-1868; surely, there will be some historical stuff to see.

- I did terrible on my NFL picks this weekend: 6-10! Right now, through two weeks, I'm 16-16. So much for 70%!

- Julia and I are big fans of the TNT show Perception, which is winding down its first season. Will and Grace's Eric McCormack is first-rate as Dr. Daniel Pierce, a quirky neuroscientist at fictional Chicago university who helps local FBI agent Kate Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) solve particularly perplexing crimes. A little bit The Mentalist (which I've never seen), maybe a little bit A Beautiful Mind, a little Monk - and yet, I find the show to be fully entertaining and engaging. Pierce, who has conversations with his dead wife (played by Kelly Rowan), is a very watchable, interesting character - alert, hyper-literate, even sad. The cases are fun, and the chemistry between McCormack and Cook works (even though Cook, who's almost 33, looks 17).

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Maya Angelou
T.C. Boyle
Jeffrey Eugenides
Joyce Carol Oates
Junot Diaz
Michael Cunningham
Zadie Smith
Jonathan Safran Foer
Toni Morrison
Salman Rushdie

What do all these famous authors have in common? They all teach! Their day jobs find them teaching various English/creative writing/humanities courses, for both graduates and undergraduates, at American colleges and universities. How would you like to take a class taught by them? I was reading up on T.C. Boyle (whose novel The Road to Wellville I'm currently reading) and I saw that he teaches - and has been teaching - at the University of Southern California since 1978. Naturally, I wondered what other writers out there are forced to earn their keep from teaching.
(Angelou = Wake Forest ; Eugenides, Oates, Morrison = Princeton ; Diaz = MIT ; Cunningham = Yale ; Rushdie = Emory ; Smith, Foer = NYU).

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An entry today for my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:

Diane Keaton
as Faith Dunlap in Shoot the Moon (1982)

One of the best movies about divorce ever made and Alan Parker's best film, Shoot the Moon stars Diane Keaton and the great Albert Finney as couple, with four kids, in the process of a painful separation. Keaton does some of the most revealing, unadorned, un-fussy acting of her life, playing the role of Faith with great delicacy and honesty. Wronged by her cheating husband, wanting to stray herself, Keaton is never concerned with making Faith an attractive victim - which is all the more reason why we relate to and can understand her. Keaton, as great as she is, can be a tic-y, fluttery actress, overly mannered at times (it's almost what we expect of her now), but in roles like this, she reminds us how powerfully natural she can be. She has a great scene where she sings The Beatles' "If I Fell" alone in her bathtub, smoking a joint.

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Finally, some images from JeanLoup Sieff, #61 on Professional Photographer's "100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time" list: