When the rain starts to pour

My pal Corey has shamed me with his generosity. He went and sent me that book on Terry Gilliam & The Brothers Grimm that I posted about a couple of weeks ago. Along with (from my Amazon list) a copy of Stay Awake: Various Interpretaions of Music from Vintage Disney Films, which I've been wanting to get replaced on CD for years.

It was really fortuitious timing, too, as I'd been in a miserable mood most of the day. A nosebleed, a computer than runs like toothpaste being squeezed out with the cap still on...Just started the book, but I think it's a good bet I'm going to enjoy a volume with the words "In Hollywood, No One Can Hear You Dream" printed in large letters upon the back cover.

ETA: The book tells me something I either didn't know or had forgotten about Gilliam's aborted Don Quixote film, as documented in the movie Lost in La Mancha. Christopher Eccleston was to have been among the cast.

So let me get this straight. Eccleston almost works with my favorite director, he gets paid to lie naked on top of an equally naked Kate Winslet, and he helps restore Doctor Who to a place of honor in television.

Lucky old bastard, or what?

But I digress...You know, every once in a while Corey and I get along like sand in oil. Usually because I'm being an overly-sensitive, "difficult" writer or he's being an insensitive or glib actor (and vice-versa, most likely).

But we like each other; at least, I like him, I assume he likes me...anyway he still takes my calls. We have a lot of fave TV shows in common; in fact we "met" via an online Dr. Who forum. This past year I badgered him into watching Veronica Mars and 24 and he became addicted; he tried to turn me on to Freaks & Geeks but it didn't take.

And he's always been incredibly supportive of my writing; as I mentioned last month he's my first reader on most of it. An idea I came up with in recent weeks and really like is that as we get older, he and I are going to turn into The Sunshine Boys, from the Neil Simon film and play of the same name.

I think I'm George Burns and he's Walter Matthau.