Tom Warner's Journals, Part 1

I love journals and notebooks. With an ADD-addled mind like mine, I'm constantly jotting down thoughts, observations, quotes, lists and reminders that I promise myself I will update to the cerebellum later. Problem is, I have as many journals/notebooks as thoughts, online passwords and clutter. In other words, things get lost!

Today, I needed to write something down and I grabbed a notebook from a pile of them laying in the windowsill. It was from 2008. Here are some sundry selections from nine years ago that I found amusing.

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"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing towards death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving." - Jean Cocteau ("Opium: The Diary of a Cure")

Quote from Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau (aka The Raven, France, 1943). In the Mass scene, Dr. Germain asks the cuckolded psychiatrist Dr. Vorzet if he's religious: "Religious? No, just cautious. I like to take out insurance. It doesn't cost much."

Notes from the 2008 Maryland Film Festival, which I worked as a volunteer, videotaping director Q & A's with the audience:

• Alex Gibney intro'ed his film Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson with a Thompson quote: "You bought the ticket, enjoy the ride!"
• I sat next to the most annoying woman. Middle-aged. I noticed she wouldn't turn her cell phone off. Hid it under a shawl the first 15 minutes of movie. Then she systematically chewed her fingernails - all 10 of 'em! - throughout the movie! (Thank God it was only two hours, any more and she'd probably move on to her toenails!) Then she would transfer her remnants to her left hand and delicately rub the detritus off, like she was rubbing away the salt from pistachios or chips onto the floor near my camera bag. TOTALLY DISGUSTING, She saw me staring at her - I was hoping to shame her, but she was well beyond shame, and I had to cup my head with my right hand, like blinders, so I could escape from her wretched, and most unfortunate, presence in the last good seat in the house in the front row.
• Q&A: A woman asked why Hunter S. Thompson always wore shorts. "Do you know why he always wore shorts?" Laughter. Long pause from Gibney, after repeating the question, then a simple reply: "No." The mystery continues.
• Dumbest question of the night, as usual from Charles Theater fixture Charles Johnson: "Where did Dr. Thompson get his doctorate?" Gibney explained that Thompson bought his title from the Universal Life Church sometime in the '60s, adding that he himself has a "doctorate" from the Universal Life Church. As do I!

"Is there a Doctor in the house?"