18 june 01

On Saturday I got my eyes examined for the first time in four years. I half expected to be told that my eyesight had become so poor that with the correct prescription I would rediscover that trees had individual leaves and so forth, but in fact my prescription has changed only slightly and now instead of correcting only for astigmatism, I am also ever so slightly nearsighted. Guess I can't complain.

On Sunday my brother and I spent the day at our parents' for father's day, and watched Mel Gibson's The Patriot since it was on television. It was predictable and depressing and manipulative and when it was over I felt like a few hours of my life had been cruelly stolen from me. That night we went to see the Magnetic Fields who played wonderfully as always but were disappointing nonetheless since the only songs they ever play these days are from the 69 Love Songs records, often in the same order they appear on the albums. The only other material they performed was "Strange Powers" by request and "Lonely Highway." I don't plan to see them again for a long while, or at least until they release another album. The real high point of the evening was the opening act, which was an hour of reading by Neil Gaiman, the mastermind behind the Sandman comic series and other projects. He was truly fantastic. And he gets Dave McKean to illustrate his Christmas cards, which I mention for no other reason that it makes me extremely jealous.