Egad, I got sunburned doing a 20 mile ride today. Who'da thunk? Since I was going so short, I didn't bother with sunscreen or rolling up my sleeves to avoid a farmers tan. But red as rain are my arms, stopping halfway up my cyclists biceps (read: none). But seeing as it was reasonably warm today and it was an urban ride with no shade, and seeing as I got a flat and patched it in the bright sunlight, I shouldn't be too surprised. Maybe I'll go out again tomorrow to try to right this wrong.

Field of Dreams was on network TV last night and I watched it. It is so embarassing to count it as one of my favorite films of all time. It's not a sophisticated film. It's a shameless tear-jerker, albeit not a conventional one. Theoretically, the film shouldn't "work". The lines, the progression, the ideas - write them down on paper and they don't work, they're hokey, they're campy, they're pedestrian, they're "what the hell, who's gonna buy this?". But it's bold, it doesn't care, the film was made and the delivery is nothing short of sophisticated. Something worked.

I remember when it came out. I was spending the Summer of 1989 alone and isolated in a house in Oberlin, Ohio, writing and recording doomy songs on 4-track. I saw it at the Apollo theater in "downtown" Oberlin one night, and afterwards, all I could do was get on my bike and ride and ride, ride out of town on the flat, straight roads that were sporadically lit. When I stopped at the reservoir, I just felt like melting into the starry Summer sky, just letting my being go, vast nothingness glow. So hokey.

I always thought it was the connection and belief that got me. Keying into something inexplicable, but believing so hard that nothing is unbelievable; a feeling so pure that there's not even a consideration of cynicism. And, oh, the moments, the one-liners that resonate and if executed short of perfect wouldn't have worked. "Hi, I'm Archie Graham", "Daddy, there's a man on the lawn", "I had the same dream", "Sorry", and that whole end sequence. Wow. No other film has ever had me feel like I was being thoroughly brain-washed to believe this thing that was beyond all credibility. I mean, why not believe that these things can happen? Why not believe in magic?